The Hebrew Yeshua vs. the Greek Jesus

The Hebrew Yeshua vs. the Greek Jesus

Nehemia: It was a few years ago that Michael Rood came to me, and he asked me about a verse in the Gospel of Matthew that we're about to look at. And there, Yeshua says, in Matthew, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do.” And what Yeshua seems to be saying here is that the scribes and the Pharisees, they sit in the seat of Moses. They have some type of Mosaic authority; whatever they bid you observe, whatever they command you to do, that you must do if you're a disciple of Yeshua.

And actually, I've dressed today as a modern-day Pharisee. I don't normally dress this way, but I've dressed in the garb of a modern-day Pharisee to illustrate to you what it would mean to obey the Pharisees. You would have to dress according to the traditional Pharisaical dress and follow Pharisaical practices. This is what it would mean to obey the Pharisees.

Now, what is this seat of Moses? What's a Moses’ seat? Well, this is a Moses’ seat from the ancient synagogue of Chorazin, in the Galilee, that was unearthed by archaeologists. And the idea of a Moses’ seat was that there was a special stone chair in the synagogue where the head of the synagogue would sit and teach with authority. And what Yeshua seems to be saying is that the Pharisees are the ones that teach with authority, so do whatever they tell you to do. You must obey them if you believe and obey what Yeshua says.

Here is a Moses’ seat from the ancient synagogue at Delos. This is from an island in Greece. This is actually the oldest synagogue that's ever been unearthed by archaeologists, and already in the first synagogue ever found by archaeologists is one of these seats of Moses, these Moses’ seats, where the head of the synagogue would sit and teach with authority. And what Yeshua seems to be saying very clearly is that the Pharisees are the ones that sit in the seat of Moses. Whatever they command you to do, if you are a disciple of Yeshua, you must do that.

Well, a few years back, Michael came to me and asked me what I thought of this verse. And I explained to Michael that as a… I'm a Karaite Jew. Karaite is a Hebrew word that refers to Jews who only believe in the Old Testament, and as a Karaite Jew, I don't actually look to Yeshua as the Messiah. So, my first reaction was, “Well, I see you have a problem, Michael, but it's not my problem, it's your problem.” But I agreed to look at this and research this as a textual problem. I have a background in academia; I have a degree in biblical studies and archaeology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and I've worked in various research projects, such as, as a translator on the Dead Sea Scrolls Reader.

So, I said, “Okay, here's a 2,000-year-old text which doesn't make a lot of sense. There’s a problem here. Let's see if I can apply linguistic and textual tools on this like I would on a problem in the Dead Sea Scrolls or any ancient text.”

What really is the problem though? What’s the problem? What does it mean to obey the Pharisees? Well, I knew exactly what this meant, because I was actually raised as a Pharisee, as a modern Orthodox Jew, before I became a Karaite and Old Testament Jew. I was raised as a Pharisee, and one of the things I knew was that to obey the Pharisees would mean to follow rules and regulations that govern every aspect of life, literally from the moment you wake up in the morning until the moment you go to sleep at night.

Here's an example of one of these rules and regulations, something that I was taught growing up. I was taught from the Shulchan Aruch, which is a universally accepted guide to modern Pharisaical living, and there the Pharisees teach that when a person wakes up in the morning, first he must “put on his right shoe, but not tie it. Then he must put on his left shoe and tie it and go back and tie his right shoe.” Now, do you really think that Yeshua was commanding you to obey the Pharisees who tell you to do these things? But that's what it said. That's what it says in Matthew 23, “whatsoever they bid you observe,” whatsoever they command you to do, “that observe and do.” Do that.

And it really seems that he’s commanding his disciples to obey these rules and regulations that cover every aspect of life. By the way, it gets even better, because another rabbi came along and added some notes to this book, and he lived in a country where they didn't have shoelaces! Literally! He explains, “Even with our shoes, which do not have laces, a person must still put on his right shoe first.”

Now, if you were going to obey whatever the Pharisees command you to do, you’d not only have to dress in this manner, but you have to put on the clothes according to specific rules and regulations. Is that really what Yeshua is commanding? Is that what he's commanding you, as his disciples, to do?

Well, when I was having a discussion with Michael, I said, “Okay Michael, I see this is very inconvenient for you as a disciple of Yeshua. It’s not my problem, it’s yours. But other than the great inconvenience of obeying the people that tell you which shoe to put on first in the morning, what makes you think that’s not what Yeshua meant? He clearly says that.”

And Michael pointed me to some verses in the very same passage, in Matthew 23. For example, Matthew 23 verse 13 says, Yeshua says there… he’s speaking to the Pharisees. He says, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.”

Now here, ten verses later, after saying the Pharisees have Mosaic Authority, that they sit in the seat of Moses and you should obey them, he then says they shut up the kingdom of heaven against men. So, what’s going on here? Something doesn’t fit, something’s not meshing here.

Here's another verse, Matthew 23 verse 27, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees hypocrites! Ye are like unto whited sepulchers,” whited graves, whited tombs, “which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.” Now, is Yeshua really commanding his disciples to obey these Pharisees? “Whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do”? But that's what it says.

Now, I still wasn't convinced. I said to Michael, “Okay, what Yeshua seems to me to be saying in the English is that the Pharisees are hypocrites, and because they are hypocrites, they make these burdens, and they foist them upon the nation. Because they have Mosaic authority, they have the right to do that, even though they don't actually do their own commandments.” They make all these manmade laws, which they have the Mosaic authority to do according to Yeshua and Matthew 23 verses 2 to 3, but they don't actually follow these laws themselves because they're hypocrites, and that's how they keep people out of the kingdom of heaven.

And so, I said, “What really makes you think that you don't have to obey the Pharisees?” And Michael mentioned to me, “Well there's another account that seems to be contrary to Yeshua instructing his disciples to obey the Pharisees, and that's the account in Matthew 15 of the washing of the hands.”

This is a very interesting account that I had come into contact with many years before. About ten years ago living in Jerusalem, I met a very interesting fellow, and he one day revealed to me that he was actually a Torah-keeping Christian. I had no idea what that meant. I said, “Torah-keeping Christian! What on earth is a Torah keeping Christian?” I’ve lived in Israel for twelve years, but I was born and raised in Chicago, and in Chicago, all the Christians I’d ever met always told me that “the Torah is a curse that was laid upon Israel, and Jesus died to set them free from the curse. They're now free from the law.”

And I said, “Okay, what then is a Torah keeping Christian? If most Christians are saying ‘the Torah is a curse’, why are you keeping this curse?” He knew I was a Karaite Jew, and he knew that Karaites, being Old Testament, are very textually oriented. And rather than explain to me in theory, he said, “Okay, let me show you in the New Testament the actual words of Yeshua that will explain to you what I mean by a Torah-keeping Christian.”

And my friend opened up to me Matthew chapter 5 verse 18 and showed me the words of Yeshua himself. And there Yeshua says, “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass,” by the way, is heaven and earth still around? Yes, they are, that’s a good thing. “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” And my Torah-keeping Christian friend explained to me, “Look, you see it's very clear - Yeshua didn't come to do away with the Torah, not even the most minutest point of the Torah, the jots and the tittles, the dots and the dashes, even the smallest points of the Torah, even those Yeshua didn't come to do away with.”

I thought this was very interesting and really very refreshing. This was certainly much better than “the Torah is a curse and Jesus died to set them free from the curse”, and I said, “Okay, so this means you do everything that it says in the Torah, the most minutest points, the jots and the tittles, everything in the Torah you do?” And he says, “Yes, everything in the Torah, but…” I knew there was a “but” coming there! “But there are certain things that Yeshua did do away with.” Okay, I figured it's too good to be true. “For example, like what?” I asked him. And he explained to me that originally in the Torah there was a commandment that before a person eats, they must wash their hands, and Yeshua came and did away with this old ritual, this extraneous ritual. And I said, “I grew up as a Pharisee, washing my hands before I eat several times a day, two or three times a day. Every time I wanted to eat a proper meal, I had to go through the Pharisee ritual of washing the hands.”

And so, I immediately said to him, “Okay, you're telling me Yeshua did away with this law from the Torah. Where does it say in the Torah that a person must wash their hands before they eat?” Because I knew it wasn't in the Torah. But he was sure it had to be there, and he opens to Leviticus, and he starts flipping through the pages trying to find it. It had to be with all those rituals and sacrifices in Leviticus and Numbers, and he can't find it, and I'm telling him it's not there. And after a little while he believes me, and says, “Okay, well if this isn't from the Torah, then where is it from?” I was raised with this Rabbinical practice, so I knew it wasn't from the Torah.

And before I explain to you where it comes from, let me illustrate to you what it actually means to wash the hands. This is a special ritual that the Pharisees practice, and the Pharisee ritual of washing the hands begins with a special jug that fulfills certain requirements and specifications. And you take that jug… and by the way, if I take a bar of soap and rub it over my hands and put water on them, I have not fulfilled the ritual of washing my hands. I have to use the jug and do a specific ritual. The ritual begins, I pour water over my left hand, then I pour water over my right hand, and then I do this a second time - pour water over my left hand and pour water over my right hand. And according to some traditions, I do this a third time, I pour water over my left hand and pour water over my right hand.

And I still have not fulfilled the Pharisee ritual of washing the hands, because I have not done the most important part of this ritual. And the key part of this ritual I've not done is the blessing that comes after the actual pouring of the water. And the blessing in Hebrew goes as follows, “Baruch atah Adoni Eloheinu, melech ha’olam, asher kid’shanu be’mitzvotav ve’tzivanu al netilat yadayim.” Which translated into English reads, “Blessed art thou Lord, king of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments, commanding us to wash the hands.” And this is what Pharisees say every time they eat bread. Every time they sit down for a proper meal, they wash their hands and make this blessing.

And I actually grew up with this blessing, saying this on a daily basis. And at a certain point I went to my Rabbis, and I said, “We're saying this all the time, several times a day. Where are we actually commanded to wash the hands? If we're making this blessing, commanding us to wash the hands, where is that commandment in the Torah?” And I had, already by this point, started to study Torah, and they explained to me that actually nowhere in the Torah are we commanded to wash the hands. However, the rabbis have made what’s called a rabbinical enactment.

The rabbis, according to the rabbis, have the authority to make enactments that add new laws to the Torah, add new laws that the people must follow. And these rabbinical enactments, these are called in Hebrew, takanot. Takanot refers to these rabbinical enactments. That’s really a very important concept, takanot, that’s something we’re going to see again later tonight. So, let’s everybody say together this word, takanot!

Audience: Takanot.

Nehemia: So, these takanot are these rabbinical enactments, and the classic example of one of the takanot is the commandment of the Rabbis to wash the hands. Well, I asked my rabbi, “Okay, the rabbis made this enactment to wash the hands. Why are we blessing God for commanding us to do that?” And my rabbis explained to me that God has given the rabbis the authority to make these enactments, and by obeying the rabbis, you’re indirectly obeying God.

Now, I ask, “Where are the Rabbis given the authority to make these enactments?” And they said, “Oh, stop asking so many questions.” And actually, we're going to see a little bit later what the real source for that is, and it's quite shocking.

So, the washing of the hands is one of these rabbinical takanot, and when I explained this to my Torah-keeping Christian friend, he was in shock. He couldn't believe it, because he had been certain this was a law from the old covenant that Yeshua died to set him free from. And when I showed him this is actually a man-made law that the rabbis sat down one day and enacted, he said, “Okay, well what's going on here? Let's go back to Matthew 15 and see what's really happening.” Because he had completely missed this. Is this really reflected in Matthew 15?

And we looked at Matthew 15 verses 2 to 3, and there, the Pharisees come to Yeshua, and they say to him, “Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they wash not their hands when they eat bread.” Yeshua answered and said to the Pharisees, “Why do you also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?”

Now, when I read this, it was immediately obvious to me that there's a very sharp contrast here between “the tradition of the elders” and “the commandment of God”. “The tradition of the elders” and “the commandment of God” are two separate and distinct things, and what Yeshua is saying is that these “traditions of the elders”, these takanot, these man-made laws of the Pharisees, they are a transgression of “the commandment of God”.

And I realized that my Torah-keeping Christian friend completely missed this because he doesn't know anything about Pharisaism. He hadn't been raised with Pharisaism like I had, and so he didn't understand all these interactions and conflicts that Yeshua was having with the Pharisees. He reads about these “traditions of the elders”, and he thinks, “Oh, that's the Torah. And ‘the commandment of God’, maybe that's some type of higher law.” He didn't quite understand this because he didn't understand Pharisaism. And I explained to him that in order to understand all these conflicts Yeshua’s having with the Pharisees, what he really needs is a crash course in Pharisaism, which you're all about to get right now!

I explained to my Torah-keeping Christian friend that the ancient name was Pharisees. And actually Pharisees comes from the Hebrew word Perushim, which means “the separated ones”, and at the time of the Second Temple they were separated off from the mass of the nation. Later on, after the destruction of the Temple, they began to take over more and more Jewish institutions, and today their modern name is the Orthodox Rabbis or Orthodox Jews.

Now, this is something that Orthodox Rabbis actually proclaim very proudly, that they are a direct continuation of the Pharisees of Second Temple times. And in fact, in order to be called an “Orthodox Rabbi,” a person must have rabbinical ordination from a previous rabbi, and that rabbi from a previous rabbi, going back in an unbroken chain all the way back to the Pharisees of the 1st century. So, the Rabbis of today are literally a direct continuation, one rabbi to the next, from the Pharisees of the 1st century.

And Pharisaism, ancient Pharisaism and modern Orthodox Judaism are both founded upon five fundamental principles, five fundamental principles of Pharisaism, which I lovingly call, “the five iniquities of the Pharisees.” And before we go into the first principle of Pharisaism, and which is really the most foundational principle, I want to throw out a question to you: how many Torahs are there? How many Torahs? Very simple question; it’s not a trick question. How many Torahs are there?

Audience: One!

Nehemia: One Torah. But if you're a Pharisee, there are two Torahs. And that's your most fundamental doctrine and belief - that when Moses went up to Mount Sinai for forty days and forty nights, the Creator revealed to him two separate and distinct revelations: the written Torah and the Oral Torah. The written Torah is what you were referring to, the Five Books of Moses. That was the revelation that was written down. However, the second Torah according to the Pharisees, which is the Oral Torah, which is also known in English as the Oral Law, and they believe that God revealed to Moses this oral revelation which was transmitted from Moses to Joshua and so on and so on, down to the Pharisees of the 1st century, and even down to the rabbis of today.

Now, everything we're going to learn today about Pharisaism is really predicated upon this concept of the Oral Law, the Oral Torah. If we don't understand Oral Torah, we're not going to understand anything else about Pharisaism. Everything else flows from that concept.

Now, the concept of the Oral Law is really an ancient concept. The first reference to it, the first datable historical reference, is an incident from the era of Shammai. Shammai… many of you may have heard of Hillel. Hillel was the author of the Seven Rules of Hillel. His sidekick was Shammai. And an ancient source tells us, “An incident with a certain gentile that came before Shammai.” The gentile said to Shammai, “How many Torahs do you Pharisees have? Shammai answered: We Pharisees have two! Two Torahs, the written Torah and the Oral Torah.”

So, this is an ancient concept that goes back to approximately at least 20 Before the Common Era, approximately 50 years before Yeshua’s ministry. And really, it probably goes back even a few hundred years before that. So, this is an ancient doctrine, and really, the most fundamental principle of Pharisaism is the theology or the doctrine of the two Torahs, the written Torah and the Oral Torah.

Now, the Pharisees explain that the written Torah is sort of an outline; they often give the analogy of a lecture. The notes that you're writing down right now, those notes, that's the written Torah. And the actual details, everything I'm saying, that's the Oral Torah. And because of this, the Pharisees explain that the written Torah is completely incomprehensible without the Oral Torah. The Oral Torah completes the written Torah and really fills in all the details. You cannot understand the written Torah without the Oral Torah according to the Pharisees.

Now, one of the major changes in Pharisaism in the last 2,000 years is that the Oral Torah has actually been written down, and today it's written down and contained in four collections of writings.

The first one of these to be written down was the Mishnah, which was written down around the year 200 of the Common Era. And it contains the collection of Pharisaical traditions and teachings and practices and customs and laws, and that's really the backbone of the Oral Law.

The next thing to be written down was the Jerusalem Talmud, which was written down around the year 350 of the Common Era. You might think it was written in Jerusalem, but in fact it was written in Tiberias. It was called Jerusalem to give it more prestige. That was written down around the 350 of the Common Era. In the Jerusalem Talmud, it contains discussions of, “When the rabbi said X,Y,Z in the Mishnah, what were they talking about?” And it elaborates and discusses and examines the Mishnah.

The next thing to be written down is the Babylonian Talmud, which actually was written in Babylon as the name implies, around the year 500 of the Common Era. Finally, the last thing to be written down was the Midrash, which was written down over many hundreds of years, from around 200 up until the year 900 of the Common Era.

These four bodies of writings, these four collections, collectively are today what's known as the Oral Law. Even though it was originally oral - in the time of Yeshua it was still oral - today, the Oral Law has been written down. And this is really the most fundamental principle of Pharisaism, the doctrine of the Oral Torah. Everything else we're going to hear today about Pharisaism is predicated upon this.

The second principle of Pharisaism is the absolute authority of the rabbis; the rabbis have absolute authority on earth to interpret Scripture. And this is epitomized by the saying in the Midrash, which we now know as part of the Oral Torah. In the Midrash it says, “Even if the Pharisees instruct you that right is left, or left is right, you must obey them.”

Well, what does that mean? What that means is if my rabbis tell me that this is my right hand, I have to obey them. By the way, it doesn't say I have to believe them. I'm allowed to even say and know that the rabbis are factually wrong, but I must obey their authority because they have the absolute authority to interpret Scripture.

And in fact, when I was growing up, I was told that if the rabbi is wrong, the sin is upon him. But you, as the individual believer, cannot take the initiative to question the authority of the rabbi. If your rabbi tells you this, you must accept it and follow it.

Well, I really had a problem with this when I was growing up and I began to study the Torah, and I began to study the Talmud, the Oral Law, and I could see in the Torah that this was clearly the word of God. In the Torah we read, “And Yehovah spoke unto Moses, saying.” And we get to the Prophets, and we read, “Thus says Yehovah.” It's clearly the word of God. And we get to the Talmud, and we read, “Rabbi Meir says this, but Rabbi Akiva disagrees and says that.” And I looked at this and I went to my rabbis, and I said, “Look, one is the word of God, the other is clearly the words of men. Shouldn't we accept the word of God over the word of men, especially since they're not consistent with each other?” And my rabbi said, “No, absolutely not! Although these things are spoken as the words of this rabbi or that rabbi, the actual content of their words were revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai.”

And I wasn't convinced, and I came back, and I said, “Look, the way the rabbis are interpreting Scripture and the Oral Law, the way they're interpreting the written Scripture is just not consistent with what it says in Scripture. And I can read, and I can see that's not what it says.” And I said to them, “Shouldn't we reject this Oral Law and just accept the written Scripture?” And my rabbi said to me, “No, absolutely not. You must not say such things. That's what the Karaites say!”

And I said, “Who?” And I investigated and I found out throughout history there had always been Jews who only believed in the written Scripture, and they were called Karaites. Kara is the ancient Hebrew word for Scripture; Kara-ite is a follower of the Old Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures, and we'll talk about that a little bit more later.

I really had a hard time with this Oral Law, and I just couldn't accept it. One day, one of my rabbis sat down and he said, “Enough of questioning the authority of the rabbis, Nehemia. You must accept their authority.” And he began to tell me a very famous story, the story of Rabbi Eliezer, which is a foundational story in Rabbinical theology.

And the story of Rabbi Eliezer, it's told in the Babylonian Talmud, and it goes as follows: Rabbi Eliezer was the greatest of the sages of his era. He was actually the teacher of Rabbi Akiva, who's maybe one of the most famous rabbis that ever lived, so you can imagine how great Rabbi Eliezer was. And one day Rabbi Eliezer is in the Rabbinical Academy and he's having a debate with all the other rabbis on some minutiae of Rabbinical Law about whether a certain type of oven is ritually clean or ritually unclean. And Rabbi Eliezer says, “that oven is ritually clean”, and all the other rabbis say, “it's ritually unclean”, and Rabbi Eliezer is trying to convince the other rabbis he's right. He's one and he's against this mass of other rabbis.

And the Talmud explains that on that day, Rabbi Eliezer brought forth every argument in the world and he couldn't convince the other rabbis he was right. He brought forth Scriptural arguments and rational arguments and he couldn't convince them he was right. He doesn’t know what to do, he's getting very frustrated, and finally he says, “I know what I can do to convince them, I'm going to invoke a miracle.” And Rabbi Eliezer shouts out, and he says, “If I'm right, let the trees prove it!” And at that moment they heard the snapping of wood, and all the rabbis ran outside, and they saw an entire orchard of trees being ripped from the roots and flying up in the air. And they looked at this and they said, “This is a miraculous occurrence. Rabbi Eliezer has invoked a miracle to prove he’s right, and the miracle has come to pass.” And they looked at this miracle and they turn to Rabbi Eliezer, and they say, “Sorry, Rabbi Eliezer, we don't listen to trees.” Oh, boy! What's he going to do? “You don't listen to trees? I just brought a miracle!”

So, he says, “Okay, maybe we're not quite understanding each other here,” and he says, “let's try this again. I'm going to invoke a second miracle. If I'm right, let the river prove it!” And at that moment, they heard the rushing of the water. It was a very great river, and they run outside, and they see this mighty river begin to flow backwards, and they look at this and they say, “This is a miracle! A second miracle has now been invoked that Rabbi Eliezer has brought to prove he's right. We're very impressed.” They turn to Rabbi Eliezer, and they say, “Sorry Rabbi Eliezer, we don't listen to rivers.” He's brought two miracles and they’re not listening to what he's saying. He's brought Scriptural arguments and rational arguments and two miracles, and they won't listen to him.

So, finally in desperation, he yells out and he says, “If I'm right, let the walls of the academy prove it!” And at that moment they heard the walls begin to shake and rumble. And the Talmud explains that the walls came to a 45-degree angle, collapsing in. Of course, if they'd fallen in the entire way, the story would have ended right here! And the rabbis look at these walls and realize they've almost been killed by these falling walls. And they turn to Rabbi Eliezer, and they say, “Wow! Three miracles! Now we’re really impressed. This can't be a coincidence; this is clearly a series of miraculous events.” They turn to Rabbi Eliezer and say, “Sorry Rabbi Eliezer, we don't listen to walls.” He doesn't know what to do. Three miracles and they won't accept his opinion; they won't accept these proofs that he's right.

And finally, in utter desperation he calls out and he says, “If I'm right, let heaven prove it!” And at that moment they heard the crack of thunder, followed by a voice, “Why do you dispute with Rabbi Eliezer? In all matters, the Law agrees with him.” And by the way, that's an actual recording that was made at the time!

They've heard this voice calling out from heaven saying, “Rabbi Eliezer’s right, why are you arguing with him?” And they hear this and they're very impressed. They turn to Rabbi Eliezer, and they say, “Scriptural evidence and three miracles and God calling down to us from heaven telling us you're right,” and they turn to him and say, “we're very impressed but sorry, we don't listen to heaven.”

And as my rabbi was telling me this story, he opened up to me the Book of Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy chapter 30 verse 12. And there it actually says concerning the Torah, that the Torah is not in heaven, “it is not in heaven”. And these are the words that the rabbis said to Rabbi Eliezer, and they explained to him that God has no say in interpreting Scripture because the Torah is not in heaven. The Torah is here on earth, and the rabbis are the ones who have exclusive authority to interpret Scripture. God has no say in it.

And my rabbi turned to me as he was telling me this story and he said, “You see Nehemia? God Himself can't question the interpretation of the rabbis. So, who are you to question their interpretation?” And as I was hearing this, I was in shock. And I have to tell you, for years I struggled with the Oral Law. It was very difficult for me, because my father was a rabbi, and many of my ancestors were prominent rabbis. The man after whom I'm named, Nehemia, was a famous rabbi in Chicago. And for me to break from this Oral Law, which had been the heritage of my ancestors, was very difficult for me. And for years I struggled with this, and I had doubts, and I wasn't sure. But when I heard this story, I turned to my rabbi and I thanked him and I said, “Now I know this is not of God.”

Now the story actually has a continuation; it gets worse. The Talmud goes on… my rabbi didn't tell me this part, but later, I read this directly out of the Talmud, and it tells about how, later on, after the faceoff between Rabbi Eliezer and the other rabbis, one of the rabbis named Rabbi Natan was wandering through the forest. And who does he meet in the forest? He meets the prophet, Elijah.

Of course, the rabbis believe that Elijah never died. If you've ever been to a Rabbinical Passover Seder, one of the things that you'll notice very prominently, they'll stop in the middle of telling the story of the Exodus and they’ll open up the door to let Elijah in.

Well, Rabbi Natan, according to the Talmud, actually met Elijah, and he said to him, “Elijah, when we said to God that the Torah is not in heaven,” and by the way, if you look at that passage where it says, “it is not in heaven” and you read two verses earlier, what it's actually saying in the context is, “the Torah is not too difficult for you”. It's saying there, “you have no excuse not to keep the Torah. It’s not too difficult, it's not across the sea or in heaven that you have some excuse to say, ‘I need someone to go up to heaven to get it for me’. The Torah is not too difficult.” That's what it actually says in Deuteronomy 30, but the rabbis only take those five words out of context. And Rabbi Natan asked Elijah, “What was God's reaction when we said, ‘the Torah is not in heaven’?” And Elijah explains, according to the Talmud, that at that moment God laughed and said, “My sons have defeated me! My sons have defeated me!” And this appears in the Babylonian Talmud, the Tractate of Baba Metsia, page 59b.

The point of the story is, I don't believe that God actually said those words as the Talmud claims. But the point of the story in the Talmud, whether the words were said or not, is that the rabbis have vanquished God; that the rabbis have absolute authority on earth to interpret Scripture, and the rabbis have defeated God in this sense. He has no say in how Scripture is to be interpreted on planet Earth. In heaven He can say whatever He wants, but down here on earth, the rabbis have absolute authority.

And this is a fundamental principle of Pharisaism – that you really can’t understand Pharisaism without understanding this concept. Now, we’re beginning to see a problem here, because in Matthew 23, Yeshua seems to be upholding this concept. He's saying, “The Pharisees sit in the seat of Moses, they have Mosaic authority.” “Whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do”, “whatever they command you to do, you better do it.” What's going on here?

Well, the third principle of Pharisaism is what I call Irrational Interpretation. The rabbis don’t call it that, they call it Midrashic Interpretation. This is sometimes translated into English as homiletical or hermeneutical interpretation. And what it does is it systematically ignores the language and context of Scripture. And the principle behind this method of interpretation, of this approach, is that Scripture is a divine code, and only the rabbis have the knowledge and authority and tools to decipher that divine code. And we've already seen an example of that with the words “it is not in heaven” from Deuteronomy 30. The rabbis took only those words “it is not in heaven” out of the context, disembodied them from the context, and imbued them with a meaning that was never intended, that God has no authority in how to interpret Scripture.

Let's look at another example, a classic example of Midrashic interpretation, or irrational interpretation, Exodus 23 verse 2. There we read in the Torah, “You shall not go after the majority to do evil, neither shall you testify in a matter of strife, to incline after the majority to pervert justice.” What this means is that you must not follow what the majority says just because the majority says it. You must follow the truth, even if you're the only one doing that. And if you're testifying in a court case, you must not say that a certain person is guilty just because everybody says he's guilty. You must testify the truth, even if you're the lone voice of reason, because to do otherwise would be a perversion of justice.

Now, this is a very, very, important commandment in the Torah, that we must follow the truth and not the majority, not to be sheeple, following after the herd. But the rabbis take this verse, and of course, they have the absolute authority on earth to interpret Scripture, and using this authority, Scripture being a divine code, they arbitrarily take off words from the beginning and words from the end, and what they're left with is the principle, “incline after the majority”.

And in fact, this is a very important principle in Pharisaism, when there was this debate between Rabbi Eliezer and the rabbis. Why was it so important for Rabbi Eliezer to convince the other rabbis that he was right? Why couldn't he just say, “I'm a very wise man, you're very wise men, let's agree to disagree.” Why did he have to invoke miracles and have God calling out from heaven? Why couldn't they just agree to disagree? Because the rabbis said to Rabbi Eliezer, “you must incline after the majority”. They said to him, “In Exodus 23:2, it has already been written that ‘you must incline after the majority.’ We’re the majority. You have to accept our opinion.” That's why it was so important for him to convince them. If he can't convince them, he has to accept this opinion that he knows to be factually untrue.

Now, what's wrong with this? Who's to say Scripture’s not a divine code? That's what the rabbis would respond. They’d say, “Okay, we're taking these words out of context, but that's the original intent that God had when He gave the Torah. Who's to say Scripture’s not a divine code?”

Well, I know Scripture is not a divine code because it tells us in Deuteronomy exactly how to interpret Scripture. Deuteronomy chapter 31 verse 12. It describes there a commandment that the Torah must be read out loud in a public reading. And there we're told, “Gather the nation, the men, the women, the children, and the sojourner in your gates, in order that they hear, and in order that they learn and fear Yehovah your God and diligently do all the words of this Torah.” And the purpose of this public reading every seventh year of the entire Torah, from Genesis to the end of Deuteronomy, is so that Israelites would hear the Torah. By hearing the Torah, they would learn the Torah, and by learning the Torah, they would know to do the Torah.

It goes on in verse 13 and it explains, “And their children who did not know.” That seven-year-old boy who's never heard the Torah before, it's his first time, “their children who did not know, they shall hear and learn to fear Yehovah your God.” Now, this is very important, because what this means is that the way the ancient Israelites learned Torah was by hearing it. And actually, this is the way that God intended that the Torah be understood, by coming every seventh year and hearing it in the public reading. Someone who's never heard Torah before, someone who does not know, will simply learn it by hearing it.

Now, once we realize that, we realize that you can't take five words out of context, “it is not in heaven”, because when I'm hearing it, I'm hearing the entire passage, I'm hearing the entire verse. I can't take two verses here and three words there and half a verse here, and proof text myself into an entire theology. I have to actually read Scripture within its context and look at all the evidence and all the context, not just taking a few words here and a few words there, because that's what the ancient Israelites would have understood and heard when they heard the Torah read out loud every seventh year.

Now, why is it that they had to hear the Torah? Why couldn't they simply sit in their houses and read Torah like we do today? Why did they have to actually hear it out loud, and come all the way to Jerusalem every seventh year? Well, the reason for that is that the average ancient Israelite did not have a copy of the Torah in his house. It took great wealth and resources to have a copy of the Torah in your house.

And in fact, there's a specific law in Deuteronomy 17 that the Messiah, anointed King of Israel, must write for himself a copy of the Torah. And the reason he must write for himself a copy of the Torah is that if he doesn't write for himself a copy of the Torah, he won't have one. He can't go to the store and buy one for $3. If he doesn't write it out letter for letter, word for word, he simply won't have one. And if he doesn't have one, he can't reign as a righteous king. As a righteous king of Israel he has to have the Torah at his side at all times, and that's why Deuteronomy 17 has a specific law commanding the king to write a copy of the Torah.

Again, why did it take such great resources to make a copy of the Torah? Let's remember, in ancient times if I wanted a copy of the Torah, I had to start off with an entire flock of sheep that I could slaughter in order to make parchment. Not everybody could afford to do this. I had to have barrels and barrels of ink in order to actually write the Torah. And bear in mind, you couldn't go in ancient times to Office Depot and say, “I need thirty barrels of ink.” You had to actually have someone go out and produce the ink and produce the barrels. This was the whole industry just to write one book! And finally, maybe the most expensive part is, you had to have a scribe sit for at least a year and sit and copy letter for letter, word for word, in order to have a copy of the Torah for yourself.

So, the average Israelite simply did not have a copy of the Torah. He didn't have the wealth or the resources to produce a copy of the Torah. And the Creator knew this, and that's why He took into account and said that the way the average Israelite will learn Torah, the simple shepherd and farmer, is by simply hearing it every seventh year. Once we realize this, we realize that the way Scripture is intended to be understood is by looking at the language and the context. And that's key to understanding the correct interpretation of Scripture, looking at the language and the context.

Now, this is actually a big challenge for us. We can’t just show up every seventh year and hear it, because we have certain challenges that ancient Israelites did not have. The first challenge we have is a linguistic challenge, the language. The Torah is not written in King James English, it's actually written in Biblical Hebrew. The problem is that nobody today in the world speaks Biblical Hebrew. I've lived in Israel for twelve years and I'm fluent in Modern Hebrew, and I actually read Biblical Hebrew fluently, but nobody speaks Biblical Hebrew as their native tongue.

To give you an idea of what the difference is, it's like the difference between the English you speak here today and the English of Chaucer. You could pick up the writings of Chaucer and you probably would understand a few words on each page, but unless you're specifically trained to read that dialect of English, you won't understand what Chaucer is saying. And that's the challenge we have with Biblical Hebrew. We have to understand the language as it was originally spoken 3,500 years ago, the language that was spoken by the ancient Israelite shepherds and farmers that could simply show up and hear the Torah read and understand it.

So, we have to work a lot harder than they did. And that's part of what it means to be in exile, to be thrown out of the Land of Israel and lose our language, to be scattered throughout the world. These are the things that we have to deal with being in exile.

The next thing we have to look at is the context. And we've already talked about textual context. That is, I can't just take the words “it is not in heaven” and disembody them from the context. I have to look at the entire passage or I'm twisting what Scripture says. And there's also historical context. Let me illustrate what I mean by this historical context with an example. Three times in the Torah we're commanded, “Lo tevashel g’di b’chalev imo”, “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” Three times that appears, word for word, jot for jot, tittle for tittle, the exact same commandment, three times. Three times.

Now, the rabbis, of course, look upon Scripture as a divine code, and when they hear three times, Exodus 23, “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk”, Exodus 34, “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk”, Deuteronomy 14, “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk,” they hear that three times and they say, “Scripture is a divine code, and when codes have repeated things, it's to encode extra hidden meaning. And when it appears, the same commandment three times, that actually indicates three different things.”

What are the three different things this indicates? Of course, only the rabbis have the authority to interpret what those three things are. The first one, according to the rabbis, is you shall not eat meat and milk together. The second time it says, “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk”, what it really means is you shall not cook meat and milk together, and the third time it appears, it means you shall not even benefit from meat and milk cooked together. What do they mean by benefit? You may not even feed it to your dog.

Well, that's how the Pharisees, the rabbis, look at it. When I hear three times that the Creator tells me, “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk”, I first ask the question, “What would the ancient Israelite shepherd or farmer have understood if he heard these exact words repeated three times? If he was that boy, that seven-year-old boy who knew nothing?” Deuteronomy 31 verse 13, he didn't know anything; what would he have understood? And I came to the conclusion after a linguistic and textual analysis that what I would understand from hearing this three times is “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk!” It's very clear! It has nothing to do with meat and milk!

Now, today we know that's correct. We know that's the correct interpretation, because archaeologists have uncovered ancient documents written by the Canaanites from a city in Syria called Ras Shamra which had ancient Canaanite writings, and there the Canaanites talk about how they have a fertility rite where they would boil a kid in the milk of its mother as a fertility rite for one of their goddesses. And so today we know that the reason the Torah forbade us from partaking in this pagan practice or forbade us from boiling a kid in the milk of its mother, is that this was an ancient pagan fertility custom or sacrifice, and that's why the Torah doesn't say “don't eat meat and milk together” or “don't boil meat and milk together”. Because it’s not talking about that, it's talking about a very specific pagan fertility sacrifice of boiling the kid in the milk of its mother. It's not even a dietary law. It's a pagan sacrifice we're forbidden from partaking in.

And every ancient Israelite, shepherd or farmer, would have known this. They interacted with the Canaanites, and they knew these pagans. They knew their ways, and they knew that they were sacrificing kids in the milk of their mothers, and the Torah’s coming to forbid them from doing that.

That's the difference between interpreting Scripture as a divine code and actually interpreting Scripture in its context, according to its language and according to its historical context. And what this teaches us is that we have to use archaeology and history in order to uncover and try to get a better picture and understanding of what the Torah is commanding us. That's the third principle of Pharisaism.

The fourth principle of Pharisaism is sanctified tradition, and in Hebrew this is called minhag, or “custom”. And there's a principle in Pharisaism, “minhag yisreal torah hi”, “A custom of Israel is law”. And what that means is that a custom done over and over by an Israelite or a Jewish community over time becomes sanctified, and it becomes an actual law.

So, I mentioned today that I'm dressed as a modern-day Pharisee. I don't actually dress this way normally; I'm dressed in the garb of a modern-day Pharisee to illustrate to you what it would mean to obey the Pharisees. And this is actually a sanctified outfit, a tradition that's been sanctified over time. And if you go to Jerusalem or New York or certain parts of Chicago you'll see people all over dressed like this because they're following the sanctified tradition of their ancestors.

Now, what do we mean by a sanctified tradition? The classic example of a sanctified tradition is wearing the head covering, and right now I'm going to illustrate to you what it would mean not to follow the traditions of the Pharisees, the sanctified traditions. We're going to peel away some of these man-made laws, some of these sanctified traditions. I’m going to take off the hat because this is a traditional Pharisee hat. I'm going to take off the hat and peel away a layer of tradition. And now I'm left wearing the kippah, the skullcap; and the kippah is a tradition that's been sanctified over the last approximately 800 years. A thousand years ago there was no such thing as Jews wearing kippahs; it didn't exist. There was no such custom like that. Approximately over the last 800 years this custom has been sanctified over time. And today it's been so sanctified that there is an actual law with its own rules and regulations that the Pharisees teach, that you must wear the skull cap if you're a male. And this is described in the Shulchan Aruch, which we’ve seen before as the modern universally accepted guide to Pharisaical living. And there it says about the kippah, the skullcap, “One may not walk four cubits with an uncovered head.” So, this is not just a folk custom, “Oh, I feel Jewish if I wear a kippah.” No! If you wear the kippah, you're following this man-made law that's been sanctified over time, and now it's taking on its own rules and regulations. “One may not walk four cubits with an uncovered head.” Let's see how that would work.

So, I’m going to take off my kippah, peel away another layer of tradition, and we're going to see what this means. So, if I'm following the sanctified tradition I can walk one cubit, and I can walk a second cubit, and a third cubit, and if I walk that fourth cubit then I'm violating the laws of the Pharisees, this sanctified tradition.

There's another law there, in the Shulchan Aruch, concerning the head covering. And there it says, “It is forbidden to pray with an uncovered head.” That's very interesting, and I think that matter speaks for itself. But what you can see here is that this is not just a folk custom or tradition, this is something that has been sanctified over time and now is taking on its own rules and regulations.

Well, what's wrong with that? Many people will say, “Well, it makes me feel good to wear a kippah. It makes me feel more Jewish, not just to wear the kippah, the skullcap, but to follow all these different traditions, even if I'm not Jewish by extraction. I feel good following these traditions, it makes me feel closer to the ancient roots.” What's wrong with that? What's wrong with adding new commandments, with sanctifying these traditions?

What's wrong with it is that the Torah specifically forbids us from doing this! In Deuteronomy chapter 4 verse 2 it says, “You shall not add unto the matter which I command you today nor shall you diminish anything from it, to keep the commandments of Yehovah your God which I am commanding you!” There’s a specific prohibition in the Torah from adding to the Torah!

So, if we add these man-made laws, if we follow these sanctified traditions, we are partaking in adding to the Torah. Now, it's very interesting here, because in the same breath that it forbids us from adding to the Torah, it forbids us from taking away from the Torah. So, to follow one of these sanctified traditions is no different than abolishing the Sabbath. Adding to the Torah, taking away, those are both a violation of this fundamental law in the Torah of adding or taking away from the Torah.

Now, this appears a second time. There's a second witness to this, Deuteronomy 12:32. “All that I'm commanding you, you shall diligently do; you shall not add to it or diminish from it.” You must not add to the Torah or take away from the Torah. And the question becomes, if you follow these man-made laws, these sanctified traditions, who are you obeying? Who are you being obedient to? Are you being obedient to our Creator? Or are you following these man-made laws which are in addition to the Torah?

This appears a third time! Proverbs 30 verse 6, there we’re told, “Do not add unto His words, lest He reprove you and you be found a liar.” I don't want God calling me a liar. I don't want any part of that.

The fifth principle of Pharisaism is very similar to number four, and the fifth principle is the “commandments of men”, or “enactments”. In Hebrew, the takanot. The takanot, that's the fifth principle of Pharisaism. Has anybody heard that word before, takanot? Is that familiar from anywhere? Yes? Okay. So, let’s all say it together, takanot!

Audience: Takanot!

Nehemia: Okay. So, takanot, these man-made laws, and these are actually called by the rabbis… there is another term for this, mitzvot derabanan, “commandments of our rabbis”. And the rabbis actually make a very clear distinction between laws that they derive from the Torah, albeit using their irrational method of interpretation, and laws that they derive simply by either tradition or by a Rabbinical enactment. And the truth is that sometimes they can't distinguish between whether a certain law was established by tradition, by doing it over and over, or whether it was established by an actual rabbi sitting down and making a new enactment. And so really those are very related and similar categories. But there's a very clear distinction between that and laws derived from the Torah even using their irrational methods of interpretation.

Now the classic example of takanot, or “commandments of our rabbis” is the washing of the hands. And because the Oral Law gives the rabbis the absolute authority to make these new enactments - they have a divine God-given right to make new enactments - because of that you make the blessing, “Blessed art thou Lord, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments, commanding us to wash the hands.” The rabbis know very well that God never commanded us to wash the hands, but what they mean by this is that God commanded you to obey the rabbis. By obeying the rabbis, you're indirectly obeying God. And this is very interesting. What this means is every time you sit down to eat a meal and wash your hands, you're actually proclaiming the God-given authority of the rabbis to make these enactments.

Now, how many people are thinking here, “I'm not going to do these Rabbinical enactments. They're not from the Torah.” How many people are thinking that? Okay, we’ve got a good group of Pharisees here, most people are… How many people are thinking they’re not going to follow these man-made laws because they're not from the Torah? Okay, that's much better.

Now, this is what the Oral Law says to everyone who raised their hands. It says in the Midrash, which is part of the Oral Law, it says, “A person must not say, ‘I will not keep the commandment of the elders because they are not from the Torah.’” You must not say that. “The Almighty says to such a person,” now they're literally putting words in God's mouth, “The Almighty says to such a person, ‘No, My son! Rather all that they decree upon you, observe!’” And then it goes on, and now it quotes Deuteronomy 17:11, “As it is written, ‘According to the instruction which they teach you.’”

Now, you could look up in Deuteronomy 17, and it's not talking about the Pharisees or rabbis. You won't see them mentioned anywhere. What it’s actually talking about is the High Priest at the Temple and the prophetic judge. And what it talks about there is if there's a difficult court case and the lower judges… remember Moses came along and he appointed lower judges, and lower judges below them, because he couldn't handle judging every matter by himself.

So, what it’s describing in Deuteronomy 17 is if one of those lower judges comes along and says, “I don't know what the law is here”, or “this is a difficult case, I don't know what to do”, then he goes to the high judge at the Temple, or to the High Priest at the Temple. This is not talking about the Pharisees or the rabbis. And actually in various passages such as in Ezra chapter 2 verse 63, it talks about an actual case they had like this. And it says there that this had to be decided by the High Priest with the Urim and the Thummim, or in Hebrew the Urim and the Tummim, which was a prophetic device that the high judge would go and ask, “What is the answer?” He would ask from God; he wouldn't just make it up, because God actually does have a say in how Scripture is interpreted.

But the rabbis apply this to themselves, because to them God has no say; only they have a say. And then it goes on in the Midrash… remember, God is speaking here, the Almighty. And it goes on there and it says, “Even I must obey their decree.” Even I, God, must obey the decrees of the rabbis. And by the way, it quotes a verse there from Job, which has nothing to do whatsoever with the authority of the rabbis, or God obeying them. But the principle here is that the rabbis are given absolute authority, not only to interpret Scripture but to make new enactments, and God Himself must obey those enactments according to the Oral Law.

Well, now that we understand Pharisaism, let's get an overview. We see these five principles of Pharisaism, and the first principle is the concept of the two Torahs, the written Torah and the Oral Torah. Then we have the authority of the rabbis, the absolute authority of the rabbis to interpret Scripture. God has no say in it, only the rabbis do. Irrational or Midrashic interpretation; Scripture is a divine code and things can be taken out of context. Sanctified tradition, such as the kippah. And the takanot, or commandments of men, such as the washing of the hands.

Now, it was very interesting, I was giving this talk about a week ago, and afterwards a woman walked up to me, and she said, “Nehemia, when you were talking about the five principles of Pharisaism, you didn't really mean the Pharisees. You really meant my denomination of Christianity, right?” And I said to her, “I'm talking about what I know from my first-hand experience, I don't really know anything about your denomination of Christianity. But if the shoe fits… just make sure to put on the right shoe first! And don’t tie it!”

Now that we understand Pharisaism, what we need to do is go back to Matthew 15 and see if we can understand what's happening. The Pharisees come along and say to Yeshua, “Your disciples are transgressing the tradition of the elders because they don't wash their hands before they eat,” which is that ritual we saw before. What is exactly going on there? There in verse 3, Yeshua says to the Pharisees, “Why do you also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?” So how do the Pharisees transgress the commandment of God by their tradition? How is the Pharisee tradition a transgression of the commandment of God? They're adding to the Torah! Deuteronomy 4:2, Deuteronomy 12:32 and Proverbs 30 verse 6 forbid us to add to the Torah! And by adding these laws to the Torah, this commandment to wash the hands, it’s a transgression of the commandment of God.

Yeshua goes on in verse 6 and he says to the Pharisees, “Thus have you made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.” How did the Pharisees make the commandment of God of none effect? This is something that I see every day in modern day Israel. I see it all the time.

One of the things that most people are surprised at when they come to Israel for the first time is that most Jews in Israel do not observe the Sabbath. Most people, when they come to Israel, are shocked to see that, and if you ask the average Israeli, “Why don't you keep the Sabbath?” He'll respond and tell you, “It's impossible to keep the Sabbath.” And I respond, “Okay. I've been keeping the Sabbath my whole life. Why is it impossible?” And he'll tell you, “Well, if I keep the Sabbath, I have to do this and I have to do that, and I can't do this and I can't do that.” And every single thing he lists is something… these man-made traditions and laws that the Pharisees have foisted upon the nation, these heavy burdens they've loaded up upon the nation, and the average person can't always distinguish between what has the Creator commanded us and what are these man-made laws that the Pharisees have commanded. And because of that, they just completely give up and say, “Okay, I just can't do it.” They give up. And by requiring these man-made laws, the Pharisees have made the commandment of God of none effect. They've made it impossible to keep the Torah.

Now, I've been keeping the Sabbath my whole life, and I know from firsthand experience that it's a pleasure to keep the Sabbath! The Sabbath is a delight! It's only when you add all these man-made laws and rules and regulations, then it becomes impossible to keep and it becomes a burden. And this is how the Pharisees make the commandment of God of none effect. Well, what we can see here very clearly in Matthew 15 is Yeshua is warning his disciples not to follow the man-made laws of the Pharisees. You must not follow the man-made laws.

He goes on in verse 7, this is a very interesting passage, and he says, “You hypocrites,” speaking to the Pharisees, “You hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you saying,” and now he quotes Isaiah 29 verse 13, “This people draws near into me with their mouth, and honors me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.”

Well, now we know what he's talking about, “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men”. That is Pharisaism with their Oral Law and their man-made authority to interpret Scripture even above that of God and their takanot and their sanctified traditions. That’s “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men”.

Now, when I first read this, I was very intrigued, for a different reason than you're so intrigued by it. I was intrigued by this because Matthew 15:9 is actually a paraphrase of Isaiah 29:13. Isaiah 29:13 actually speaks about, in Hebrew, “mitzvat anashim melumada”, which is translated variously as, “a learned commandment of men” or “a commandment of men learned by rote” or some variation of that translation. And the reason I was so intrigued by this is that I knew that, throughout history, Karaite Jews, strictly Old Testament Tanakh-following Jews, have always quoted these verses from the moment that Pharisaism was invented, have always quoted Isaiah 29:13 in reference to the Pharisees. And I thought this was very interesting that Yeshua was applying the same exact verse to the Pharisees back in the 1st century.

And back when I was sitting with my Torah-keeping Christian friend, I said to him, almost thinking out loud, I said “You know, Yeshua really sounds to me like a Karaite.” And I asked him what he thought of that. And at first, he was very offended, and he said, “No! Karaites? That’s some Jewish sect from the Middle Ages, and Yeshua wasn't part of that, and you're trying to take him over.” And I could see he didn't really understand what this Hebrew word Karaite meant. And so, I explained to him that actually the word Karaite comes from the Hebrew word kara, which is the ancient Hebrew word for the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament. And many of you may know the modern Hebrew word, Tanakh. Tanakh is an acronym which stands for the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings and that's a word that's only been used in the last few hundred years. The ancient Hebrew word for Scripture is Kara and the variation of that is Mikra, which is still used today in Israel, Kara or Mikra. And if Kara, meaning Hebrew Scriptures, someone who follows the Hebrew Scriptures is called a Kara-ite or a Kara-ite… Kara is Hebrew scriptures or Old Testament, a follower of the Old Testament is a Karaite.

Now, earlier I explained to you that as a Karaite I only believe in the Old Testament. And you probably thought, “Don't all Jews just believe in the Old Testament?” Now you know that many Jews today actually believe in the Oral Torah. And when I say I’m a Karaite, that means I only believe in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Tanakh, the Kara, the Old Testament, and not in the Oral Torah that the Pharisees have invented.

Now, the term Karaite was used throughout history very often to distinguish those that followed the Hebrew Scriptures from the Talmudists, that is the rabbis, or the Pharisees, the Talmudists. Once the Talmud was written down in around the year 500 of the Common Era, it began to be disseminated throughout the Jewish world and many Jews embraced it and declared that they were followers of Talmud, Talmudists. And other Jews said, “Talmud? Oral Law? What's that? Our ancestors only knew about Kara, we are Karaites.” And that's what the term means.

And when I said that Yeshua sounded like a Karaite, what I meant is that he seemed to be telling people to return to the Torah and not follow these man-made laws of the Pharisees.

Now that we understand Matthew 15, we really have a problem, don't we? Or actually, I don't have a problem, but you really have a problem. Because in Matthew 15, Yeshua is very clearly warning his disciples not to follow the man-made laws and traditions of the Pharisees, but in Matthew 23, he says they have Mosaic authority! “The Pharisees sit in the seat of Moses, whatsoever they command you to do, that observe and do.”

So, what's going on here? Matthew 15 very clearly is contradicting Matthew 23, the way it reads in the English. Well, when I first began to research this question, the first thing that I did is I looked in the Greek and I saw that the Greek says the exact same thing as the English; it didn't really help me. At this point, I was pretty much out of ideas, and I went to a colleague of mine at the Hebrew University, where I was studying, and he was a big expert in New Testament Studies. And I said, “Can you point me in some direction here? Give me some kind of indication of how I should proceed to try and solve this problem.” And he began to explain to me that, according to some scholars, the New Testament wasn't written in Greek; it was actually written in Hebrew. I thought that was very interesting, and I said, “Hebrew? Why would you think the New Testament was written in Hebrew?” And he explained to me that in certain parts of the New Testament you have something which are called Hebraisms.

Hebraisms are Hebrew thought patterns which are literally translated over into Greek, and when you read them in Greek, they sound like broken Greek. They sound like they were translated by a foreigner; it doesn't make sense. Let me illustrate to you what a Hebraism is by bringing you an Englishism, or an Englicism. In English, we have an expression, “dead as a doornail”. Now, imagine if I translated the phrase, “dead as a doornail” into Chinese, and the Chinamen will come along and read, “Dead as a doornail? How dead is a doornail?” It doesn't mean anything in Chinese – at least as far as I know from Chinese – but it certainly doesn't mean anything in Hebrew. And that's what a Hebraism is, these expressions and thought patterns that are translated over into Greek, and they make no sense in Greek. And what that means is, you can read certain parts of the New Testament and see that they're clearly translated from another language, from Hebrew.

I began to read Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts and Revelations in Greek, and I could see, “Yes they're full of these Hebraisms, they sound like they were translated from Hebrew.” And I wasn't really clear how this helped me, though, with Matthew 23. Okay, so let's say these books were in Hebrew. Here's the standard grammar of New Testament Greek, Blass and Debrunner. This is the grammar used in every seminary in the world, the standard grammar of New Testament Greek. And there it says, “Many expressions which a Greek would not have used,” such as ‘dead as a doornail’, “many expressions which a Greek would not have used were bound to creep into a faithful, written translation of a Semitic original.”

So, it's universally recognized by scholars that certain parts of the New Testament were written in a Semitic language and then translated into Greek. And the debates that go on between scholars is, which parts of the New Testament and how much? And what was that Semitic language? Was it Aramaic? Or was it Hebrew? That's something I'll touch upon a little bit at the end, the question of Aramaic. But it's universally recognized that certain parts of the New Testament were written in a foreign language and translated.

And as I was studying this I said, “Okay, we have these Hebraisms, and I'm reading the New Testament in Greek,” and I went back to my colleague at the university and I said, “How did this help me? This was a very interesting homework assignment you gave me, but how did this help me?”

Ooh, how did that get in there? That's actually a picture of my dog! And I thought this would be a good place to insert some comic relief in the middle of this intensive linguistic discussion. But basically, that's the look I had on my face when I was like, “How does this help me?” And she really has nothing to do with the story, other than that she's extremely beautiful.

And I'm looking at him and I'm saying, “Okay, Matthew 23, what does this have to do with being written in Hebrew? It doesn't help me; I don't have the Hebrew.” And he said, “Oh Nehemia, I forgot to tell you the most important part.” What's the most important part he forgot to tell me, the most important part? That the Hebrew version of the Gospel of Matthew has actually survived down to modern times. And that's known today as Shem-Tov’s Hebrew Matthew.

Shem-Tov’s Hebrew Matthew is named after a rabbi who lived in 14th century Spain named Shem- Tov Ibn Shaprut. And Shem-Tov Ibn Shaprut lived during the Spanish Inquisition, at a time that was plagued by something called “The Disputations.” The Disputations were public debates that were forced upon the Jews by their Catholic oppressors, and the Jews were forced to defend their religion against the Catholic religion, and it was pretty much a no-win situation for the Jews. If the Jews lost these debates, they could be forcibly converted to Catholicism; if they won the debates, they would very often have to flee town, flee Spain, because they’ve now insulted the Catholic religion. Well, most Jews would agree that it's better to have to flee town than to be forcibly converted to Catholicism, any day of the week and twice on Sunday!

And Shem-Tov Ibn Shaprut sat down and said, “Okay, I want to win these debates so I don't have to be a Catholic,” and he sat down and wrote a book called Even Bochan, which translates to English as the Test Stone, in which he systematically goes through the arguments that the Jews could use in these debates. And interestingly enough, one of his main arguments was to systematically go through the words of Yeshua and show how the Catholics don't actually follow what Yeshua said. For example, he points out in his book that Yeshua upheld the Sabbath, and he says, “How come you Catholics don't keep the Sabbath? Yeshua upheld the Sabbath.”

At the end of his book, Shem-Tov Ibn Shaprut says, “If we Jews really want to win these debates, what we need to do is start reading the New Testament.” And at the end of this book, he includes an appendix, which was the Gospel of Matthew, of course in Hebrew, because the whole book is in Hebrew. And because this was included as an appendix to the Test Stone, this became known as Shem-Tov’s Hebrew Matthew.

Now, Shem-Tov’s Hebrew Matthew was known for centuries by Hebrew scholars; however, it was simply assumed that Shem-Tov had translated his Matthew from Greek into Hebrew. That was just an assumption, and scholars never even bothered reading this book because they assumed it was translated from Greek and that it wasn't really important. In the 1980s, a series of linguistic studies were carried out and they found that Shem-Tov’s Hebrew Matthew actually has certain characteristics which make it sound like this book wasn't translated from Greek, but actually that it was written in Hebrew.

And one of the main characteristics that you find in Shem-Tov’s Hebrew Matthew are what are known as Hebrew word puns. A Hebrew word pun is when you take two similar sounding Hebrew words, use them with different meanings in the same passage, and that creates a beautiful poetical style and flow to the passage. And every ancient document written in Hebrew has these Hebrew word puns. The question is, though, what are they doing in a book that's supposedly translated from Greek?

Well, first let's look at some examples of Hebrew word puns. The Tanakh, the Old Testament, is full of Hebrew word puns. Literally every page of the Tanakh has Hebrew word puns. For example, in chapter 2 it says, “The first man was called Adam” Adam, Adam. And it says, “he was taken from the ground”, adamah. Adam, adamah, “man”, “ground”, that's a classic Hebrew word pun. Two similar sounding Hebrew words with different meanings, a classic Hebrew word pun. When you read it in Hebrew, it flows, and it's beautiful, and it just makes perfect sense.

Another Hebrew word pun appears at the end of Genesis 2. It says, “The man and his wife were naked.” “Naked” in Hebrew is arumim. In the very next verse it says, “the snake was clever.” “Clever” in Hebrew is arum. Arumim, arum, two similar sounding Hebrew words with different meanings, a classic Hebrew word pun.

Now, in these last two examples, the Hebrew word pun really is just brought in to beautify the text, to make it flow and sound poetic. Sometimes though, the Hebrew word pun is intricately interwoven into the actual message of Scripture. For example, in Jeremiah chapter 1, we read, “And the word of Yehovah came to me saying, ‘What do you see Jeremiah?’ And I said, ‘I see an almond branch.’ And Yehovah said to me, ‘You have seen well, for I am diligent to do My word.’” Now, when you read this in English, it makes absolutely no sense. What is the almond branch doing there? It's like a red herring - what is that almond branch doing in the prophecy? What does it have to do with diligence? In Hebrew it's immediately obvious, because almond branch, “almond” is shaked, and “diligent” is shoked. Shaked, shoked, two similar sounding Hebrew words with different meanings, a classic Hebrew word pun.

Well, of course Genesis and Jeremiah have Hebrew word puns, they were written in Hebrew. But what they found is that Shem-Tov’s Hebrew Matthew also has Hebrew word puns. And we’re just going to bring a few examples, but there are many, many examples.

Matthew Chapter 9 verse 8, “And the crowds saw, and they feared very much.” Now, when you read this in English you say, “Okay, what's the word pun?” But in Hebrew it’s immediately obvious, “and they saw” is vayiru, “and they feared” is vayiru, two similar sounding Hebrew words with different meanings. This is a classic Hebrew word pun. But what is this doing in a book that was supposed to be translated from Greek? It shouldn’t be there, should it?

Here's another one, Hebrew Matthew 12 verse 13, “Then he said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand,’ and he stretched out his hand… And it was after this that Yeshua knew and he turned…” and again, in English, what's the word pun? You don't see anything. In Hebrew it’s immediately obvious, vayet, “and he stretched”, vayet “and he turned”, two similar sounding Hebrew words with different meanings, a classic Hebrew word pun.

What is this doing in a book that was supposed to be translated from Greek though? You would only have these Hebrew word puns if this was written in Hebrew.

Here's another example which is very interesting. Here in Hebrew Matthew chapter 18 verses 22 to 35 we have the Parable of the Debt. This is the famous parable which talks about a king who's owed a debt by his servant, and that servant can’t pay, so he goes down the food chain and oppresses his own servant. Five times in the parable it talks about paying, it says “to pay” five times, pay, pay, pay, pay, pay. The Hebrew word for “pay” is shalem, so five times in the Hebrew it says shalem. Shalem, shalem, shalem, shalem, shalem. Let’s all learn that Hebrew word. What’s the Hebrew word? Shalem! So, five times it says to shalem, to “pay”.

Then in the moral of the parable, it appears in verse 35, and there Yeshua says, “So shall My father in heaven do if you do not forgive each man his brother with a complete heart.” And the Hebrew word for “complete” is shalem. Now this is a classic Hebrew word pun that, just like in the example of Jeremiah, is intricately interwoven into the actual message of the parable. And without recognizing this Hebrew word pun, you’re missing something. It's like that almond branch; you don't understand the connection there. In Hebrew, you immediately see the connection. He says it five times, and on the sixth time, it has a different meaning. A classic Hebrew word pun.

Now, it's very clear that this parable must have been spoken in Hebrew because this Hebrew word pun is intricately interwoven into the actual parable. So, if this was translated from Greek, that would be an impossible coincidence. And you have many Hebrew word puns like this in Shem-Tov’s Hebrew Matthew. We only looked at a few examples.

Here's a word pun that actually appears in Greek Matthew. Greek Matthew 16:18, Yeshua says to Shimon, to Peter, he says, “You are Peter and upon this rock I will build My church.” This is a Greek word pun that appears in the Greek Gospel of Matthew, and based on this verse many scholars have argued that this is definitive proof that Matthew wrote the Gospel in Greek. “Matthew didn’t write in Hebrew; he must have written in Greek because there's a word pun in the actual Greek text.” Now, we've already seen three word puns in the Hebrew, and that's just a very small sampling. There's only one word pun in the entire Greek text.

Now let's look at the Hebrew and see what it says there. In Hebrew Matthew 16:18 it says, “You are a stone, and I will build my house of prayer upon you.” If you read this in Hebrew, you immediately see the word pun in the Hebrew, because “stone” is even, “I will build” is evneh. Even, evneh, “stone”, “I will build”, that's a classic Hebrew word pun, two similar sounding words with different meanings. A classic Hebrew world pun. Now, if this verse was the definitive proof that Matthew wrote the Gospel in Greek, well, the very same verse has a word pun in the Hebrew, so that proof falls away.

Now, when I first learned of this I thought, “This is incredible. How could this be that the Gospel of Matthew was written in Hebrew? That's ridiculous! Okay, you bring me these linguistic arguments, but you can’t just show up after 2,000 years and tell me the book was written in Hebrew. You have to have some kind of earlier evidence for this. Earlier than Shem-Tov Ibn Shaprut.”

And my first question was really, “The New Testament is preserved from the 3rd century and onwards in 5,000 manuscripts, and every one of those 5,000 manuscripts is in what language? It’s in Greek! So how could Matthew be written in Hebrew if there are 5,000 Greek manuscripts?”

My next question was, “Those manuscripts are maybe from a few hundred years after Matthew wrote the Gospel. Maybe in the earlier period there will be some type of testimony that would have to prove that it was written in Hebrew, maybe from one of the Church Fathers.” And I said, “Okay, if Matthew was really written in Hebrew, how come none of the Church Fathers tell us that?”

And I actually investigated and found out that they do tell us that! They tell us that as a fact! Papias was one of the early Church Fathers who lived from 60 to 130 of the Common Era. And he's referred to as a disciple of a man named John the Presbyter, who you know as the author of the Gospel of John. And Papias, with his inside information, he says matter-of-factly, in the beginning of the 2nd century, less than 100 years after Yeshua’s ministry, he says, “Matthew collected the words in the Hebrew language.” He states this as a fact, a universally known and recognized fact that Matthew wrote his gospel in the Hebrew language.

And he goes on, and he says, “and each translated them as best he could.” That's very interesting, that second-half, because what he's reflecting here is a recognition that it was a very difficult thing to translate this gospel from Hebrew into other languages, and everybody did their best. They might not have always been very successful, but they did the best they could to translate these things into other languages from the Hebrew.

Well, let's look at some of these manuscripts of Shem-Tov’s Hebrew Matthew. This is a manuscript from St. Petersburg, the St. Petersburg Manuscript. And Shem-Tov’s Hebrew Matthew actually was published in 1987 based on the nine manuscripts that were available at the time. This manuscript from Saint Petersburg was at that time behind the Iron Curtain, and the Soviets wouldn't let anyone look at it. And it wasn't used when Shem-Tov’s Hebrew Matthew was published. And because of that the present publication, based on the nine manuscripts, is really an incomplete picture of what's contained within this document, because it wasn't based on all of the manuscript evidence. And this is really a fascinating manuscript because this is the first time this manuscript is being seen in the Western World; the first time this manuscript is being shown here. This is an unpublished manuscript, and who knows what’s contained in these pages.

Now, when I went to look at this manuscript in Jerusalem… actually this is in St. Petersburg, in the former Soviet Union, in the city that was previously known as Leningrad. And with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, a delegation of Israeli scholars went over to St. Petersburg, and they began to microfilm all the Hebrew manuscripts they could get their hands on, literally to photograph every single page.

And when I went to look at the St. Petersburg manuscript in Jerusalem, I took it out and when I brought it back to the librarian at Israel’s National Library, he said to me a very interesting thing. He said, “Nehemia, was there anything interesting in that manuscript?” I thought that was a very strange question. I had looked at many manuscripts. I'd never had the librarian ask me if there's anything interesting there, that's just not his job. And I said, “Why are you asking me that question?” And he said, “Because no one has ever checked out that manuscript to look at it before.” This had been sitting in Israel for more than ten years, and no one has looked at this manuscript. No one had studied it, quite simply because there are thousands of these Hebrew manuscripts that have been uncovered from the former Soviet Union, and it will take generations and generations of Hebrew scholars to study all these manuscripts and decipher them, and no one's gotten around to this one. Simply, you can imagine that Hebrew manuscripts of New Testament books are not very high on the agenda of some Israeli scholars. So, who knows what's contained within the pages of this manuscript? No one knows. Well, I know, but really no one knows because no one’s studied it. And what revelations of truth are waiting to be revealed by studying this document.

Here’s another unpublished manuscript, which is the Breslau, or Breslav Manuscript. This also originated in a city in Eastern Europe, in the former Soviet Union. However, today this manuscript is not in Breslau, it's actually in Prague. There's a very interesting story behind this unpublished manuscript as well. In the 1940s, the Nazis ransacked Europe looking for Jewish artifacts, Judaica articles of artwork and manuscripts and Torah scrolls, anything that they could get their hands on. And they brought them all to Prague and they set them up in a museum which the Nazis called The Museum of the Extinct Race, because the goal of the Nazis was to make the Jews extinct. And actually, to this very day, that’s the largest collection of Judaica in the world, this former Museum of the Extinct Race. And who's extinct today and who isn’t? That's a testimony I think. We’re still here!

This is another manuscript. This manuscript actually is published, this is from the British Library. And the answer to our question of Matthew 23 can actually be found in this manuscript in the bottom five lines there, which is the section from Matthew chapter 23 verses 1 through 3. And when we read that in the Hebrew, we'll get a completely new understanding, everything that we're seeing now, these contradictions, Matthew 15, don't obey the Pharisees, Matthew 23, do obey the Pharisees. Right now, we're struggling with this contradiction. When we read it in the Hebrew, everything will fall into place and we'll have a much clearer understanding. Everything will make sense.

Now, I want to give you some advice, because I know this is a very long session, but this is stuff that you won't learn anywhere else, and this is really foundational stuff. What we're presenting here today is the tip of the iceberg. You don't even know the iceberg exists yet! We're just establishing the foundation… really these are foundational things.

And here's the book that I wrote on this. It's called The Hebrew Yeshua Versus the Greek Jesus, and as you may have guessed, the reason I've called it that is that the way Yeshua’s words are presented in the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew is fundamentally different from the way they're portrayed in the Greek version. And that's why I called it The Hebrew Yeshua Versus the Greek Jesus. And I highly recommend this book because this is really foundational stuff, and there's a lot more that I'm not even going to be able to present here today. So really, I recommend you get this book and read it a few times. Give it to your friends and to your rabbis and your pastors so they can also share on… especially your rabbis and pastors, so they can share on this very important topic, which really I lay some of the foundations which, in future years, you'll see that amazing things are going to be revealed from this Hebrew Gospel of Matthew.

Let me again give you a piece of advice, because this is a very long study and I've just completed the first half of the study. Michael's going to come up and say some very important words, so don't run away yet. But when Michael's done, we're going to have a short break and then I'm going to come back and do the second half. Now, the second half, really we're getting deep into this Hebrew Matthew, and it's really, in a way, the most important part. So, my advice is if you can only come to one half of the study, come to the second half!

So, in Matthew chapter 23, we've seen that Yeshua says, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat:” they have this Mosaic authority, “All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.” And here, it really sounds like Yeshua is saying very clearly, “You must obey the Pharisees, they sit in the seat of Moses. You must obey whatever they command you to do if you're going to be obedient to what Yeshua says.” Well, we've already seen this doesn't really make sense. Matthew 15, Yeshua warns his disciples not to do according to the ways of the Pharisees. Their traditions of the elders transgressed the Torah. However, in Matthew 23 he’s saying obey whatever they tell you to do. If they tell you to put your right shoe on first in the morning, you better obey them because they have Mosaic authority. What's going on here?

Well, the answer is here, in the Hebrew, and if you can read this old Hebrew script, then you already know the answer. This is what it looks like transcribed into modern Hebrew print. And what Yeshua says there in Hebrew Matthew chapter 23 verses 2 to 3, Yeshua says, “Al kiseh Moshe yeshvu ha’pirushim ve’ha’chachamim: ve’ata kol asher yomar lachem shimru ve’assu u’be’takanotayhem u’ma’aseyhem al ta’assu she’hem omrim v’hem einam osim.”

So, there you have it. There you see, it's very clear. This is what it would look like translated into English, there Yeshua says, “The Pharisees and sages sit upon the seat of Moses. Therefore, all that he says to you, diligently do, but according to their reforms and their precedents do not do, because they talk but they do not do.”

Now that's a very subtle difference between what you saw in the Greek, a difference of one single word, or primarily one single word. In the Greek it said in Matthew, “all that they say” you must obey, all they say, “they” being the Pharisees. In the Hebrew he says, “you must obey all that he says”, “he” being Moses.

So, the difference of this one single word fundamentally changes Yeshua’s message. What he’s saying now is, if their claim to authority is that they sit in the seat of Moses, so do as Moses says, obey Moses. They claim their authority is they are sitting in this ornate stone chair in the synagogue, they’re teaching with supposed authority, sitting in the seat of Moses, so obey Moses. Do what Moses says.

Now, how did this happen? How did we change from “they say” to “he says?” Well, this is what it looks like in Hebrew, in the Hebrew manuscripts, and you can see it's very similar, it's almost identical. The difference between “he says” and “they say” is the difference of one single letter, the Hebrew letter Vav. This one single letter, the addition of this one single letter changes Yeshua’s original message, which was an instruction to his disciples to obey Moses, to an instruction to his disciples to obey the Pharisees. So, it changed his message from something that made perfect sense, their claim to authority is they sit in the seat of Moses, so do what Moses says, to this message which contradicts his own words in Matthew 15, which is to obey the Pharisees.

He goes on there, Yeshua, in Hebrew Matthew, and he says, “according to their reforms and their precedents do not do,” and the word I’ve translated here as “reforms”, in Hebrew is takanot. We've heard that word before, so let's all repeat that word, takanot! So, takanot are these man-made laws, like the washing of the hands, and Yeshua’s warning his disciples not to do according to their takanot.

And I translated this before as “enactments”, a more precise dictionary definition of takanot is “reforms that change biblical law”. That's how the word is defined more precisely in the Jastrow Dictionary, which is the standard dictionary of early Rabbinical Hebrew, late Second Temple Hebrew, “reforms that change biblical law”, and the classic example of one of these man-made laws, these takanot, is the commandment to wash our hands, of the rabbis, before you eat bread.

Well, now that we understand Matthew 23, we see that Yeshua is not telling you to obey the Pharisees, he's telling you to obey Moses. We still have to go back to Matthew 15 and see what it says there in the Hebrew. If we started off with what was a contradiction in the Greek, we can't just look at the Hebrew of one passage and not the other.

So now let's look at Matthew 15 in the Hebrew, and there we read, Yeshua says to the Pharisees, “Why do you also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?... you made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.” Can anyone guess what the Hebrew word behind “tradition” is? The word is takanot! So not only is there no contradiction in the Hebrew between Matthew 15 and Matthew 23, but in the Hebrew, there's a consistent message throughout the entire book. There’s this consistent string that runs through the book that Yeshua’s warning his disciples not to follow the takanot of the Pharisees, these man-made laws of the Pharisees.

If we go on to Matthew 15 in the Hebrew, we're reading verse 9, remember how in the Greek it said, “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” and I had mentioned that that was a paraphrase of Isaiah 29:13, which says, “learned commandments of men.” Others translate this “commandments of men learn by rote”. In the Hebrew Matthew, there's the exact quote from Isaiah word for word, “learned commandments of men”. Now that's very interesting. If Hebrew Matthew is supposedly this translation from Greek, wouldn't it have the Hebrew equivalent of “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” rather than the exact precise words of Isaiah? That's very, very, interesting.

Yeshua goes on. He warns against the takanot of the Pharisees. He also warns against their precedents, not to do their precedents, and the Hebrew word for “precedents” is ma’asim. Ma’asim is a word we’ll look at in a moment, but these are two really important words, takanot and ma’asim. Because these are the two things that if you're disciples of Yeshua that he's warning you not to do, the takanot and ma’asim. So, let’s say those words together, takanot and ma’asim!

Alright, so what are these ma’asim? Ma’asim are “precedents.” The literal meaning is “actions” or “deeds”, and in the Greek it translates this as ergon, which in your English you have “works”, the works of the Pharisees. But what are the works of the actions or deeds of the Pharisees? In Pharisee terminology, ma’asim refers to “precedents”, or “acts or deeds that serve as precedents”. And what do they mean by that? Well, we've already seen that Pharisee law means to legislate every aspect of life, literally from the moment you wake up in the morning to the moment you go to sleep at night.

For example, the Pharisees command their disciples which shoe to put on first in the morning. So, what does a Pharisee do when he comes to a new situation where the Oral Law doesn't tell him what to do? For example, if he lives in a country where you don't have shoelaces, and he doesn't know which shoe to put on first in the morning because he doesn't know which one to tie first because there are no laces. So, what he does is he combs the Oral Law looking for instruction, and he combs tradition and man-made laws, and if he can't find any instruction on which shoe to put on first in the morning, if there are no laces, then he goes and he looks at the precedents of one of his rabbis. Meaning, he looks and he says, “We know that such and such a rabbi, on such and such an occasion put on his right shoe first even though he didn't have laces,” and that becomes a precedent, that then establishes what the proper norm, the proper standard of behavior is. The assumption is this rabbi could not be sinning, and if he put on his right shoe first, even though it didn’t have laces, that's the proper standard for behavior.

And what Yeshua is saying is, don't look to the precedents of the Pharisees as the proper standard of behavior. Don't do according to their precedents. Do as Moses says, not according to their takanot and their ma’asim.

Let's look quickly at an example of a precedent. This is a precedent brought in the Talmud, and it says, “A ma’aseh”, ma’aseh is the singular for ma’asim, so a precedent. “A precedent in which Rabban Gamaliel” you probably thought it was pronounced “Gama-liel”, the correct Hebrew pronunciation is “Gamliel”. And Gamaliel, as you all know, was the Pharisaical teacher of Shaul of Tarsus, of Paul. However, this is Gamaliel’s grandson, Gamaliel II. So, “A precedent in which Rabban Gamaliel II and the elders were traveling in a ship, when a gentile made a ramp on which to descend, and Rabban Gamaliel and the elders descended by it.” Okay, so what on earth is this talking about? The Pharisees start off with the principle that if somebody built something for you on the Sabbath, you may not use that. If they build a ramp for you on the Sabbath, you may not use that ramp. And so, then they asked the question, what if the ramp is built on the Sabbath, but it's not specifically for me? May I use that ramp? And the Oral Law doesn’t tell them what to do, so they go, and they say, “Okay, we remember that one time Rabban Gamaliel II descended on such a ramp, and that tells us that this was the proper behavior, and that such a thing is permissible.” In other words, the behavior of the rabbi in a specific circumstance becomes the standard by which one should behave in the future.

And what Yeshua is warning his disciples is, don’t do according to their takanot, and don't do according to their ma’asim. Their claim to authority is that they sit in the seat of Moses, so do as he says. Do as Moses says.

Now what we see up until now is that the words of Yeshua in the Greek, what we may venture to call “the Greek Jesus” because that's what he's called in Greek, Iesous, Jesus. The Greek Jesus, he's coming and he's changing Torah, adding to Torah, taking away. He's saying, “Oh, don't worry about not adding to the Torah, do whatever the Pharisees tell you to do. If they tell you what shoe to put on first in the morning, put on that right shoe first.” Even though that contradicts what he said eight chapters earlier in Matthew 15.

We've seen now, on the other hand, the Hebrew Yeshua is actually telling people, “Do as Moses says. Their claim to authority is they sit in the seat of Moses, do as he says. Do as Moses says.” So, the Hebrew Yeshua - or Yeshua words as he's portrayed in the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew - is actually upholding Torah.

Now, what about this statement, “because they talk but they do not do”? When I first read this, my question was, “What do they talk and what don't they do?” When we read this in the Greek, it's very clear that it's saying they're hypocrites, but now in the Hebrew, we have a whole new context. He's not saying to obey the Pharisees even though they don't do what they say themselves, he's saying obey Moses. So, what's this, “they talk and they do not do”? What are they talking and what aren't they doing? And when I first read this, I really wasn't sure what the answer was. It wasn't so clear. And the answer came to me in a very roundabout way. I'd received an e-mail a number of years back from someone who was confusing Karaites and Samaritans. I mentioned to you that Karaites are strictly Old Testament Tanakh Jews. Samaritans, of course you know from the New Testament, are the people in Samaria who worship on Mount Gerizim; let's get a quick rundown of the difference.

Karaites, of course, believe in the entire Tanakh, the Old Testament, whereas Samaritans believe only in the Five Books of Moses, the Torah, and their Torah is actually different than the Torah used by all the other Jews. In the Torah of the Samaritans, it commands them to worship on the high place, on Mount Gerizim, which is a mountain just outside of Nablus, of Shechem, whereas the Karaites worship at Jerusalem and turn to Jerusalem in prayer like King Solomon talks about in 1 Kings 8. Of course, Karaites are Israelites or Jews, whereas Samaritans are Babylonians who were forcibly settled in the Land of Israel by the Assyrian kings after the ten northern tribes were exiled from Israel.

And the story of the Samaritans is really given in 2 Kings chapter 17, where it talks about how the ten tribes were exiled from Israel and the king of Assyria didn’t want this to be an empty land. So he brought in these people from Cuthah, from Babylon, and settled them into the Land of Israel, into the northern part of Israel. And it talks about how, when they first settled in the land, they were attacked by a plague of lions and they said, “Why are we being attacked by lions? It must be because we're not worshiping the local God.” So, they went to the king of Assyria and said, “Can you please give us a priest that will teach us how to worship the local God?” Who, of course, in this case is the God of Israel. So, who does the king of Assyria send them? He sends them one of the priests from the ten northern tribes. This is one of the priests that had gotten the ten northern tribes exiled in the first place, and what he teaches them is the ways of the ten northern tribes that have gotten them exiled. And he brings with him the Torah, but he also at the same time teaches them to do according to the ways of these ten tribes, worshiping at the high places, sacrificing outside of the Temple in Jerusalem, on Mount Gerizim and in other places.

And then in 2 Kings 17 verse 34, it summarizes the ways of the Samaritans and it says, “Until this very day they do according to their former ways, according to their statutes and their judgments” this how it reads in the Hebrew, “they do not fear Yehovah, and they do not do.” And then in the Hebrew, the words “they do not do” is isolated in such a way that it emphasizes those words. And then it completes the sentence, and it says, “according to the Torah and commandments that Yehovah commanded the children of Jacob.” So, what don't the Samaritans do? They don't do according to the Torah.

Now, after I had read Matthew 23 and then I reread this passage, I realized in Hebrew this sounds very similar. There’s a similar style here, and it seems to me that Yeshua was echoing the words of 2 Kings 17:34 about the Samaritans. And I think what he was saying is that just as the Samaritans of old do according to their statutes and their judgments, and they do not do according to the Torah, so too the Pharisees of his own era, do according to their takanot and their ma’asim, their reforms and their precedents, and they talk Torah, but they don't do Torah. And what does he mean they talk Torah? They're sitting in the seat of Moses, talking Torah to you all day long, but what they're really telling you is not Torah, it's just in the guise of Torah. What they're really telling you are their own reforms and precedents, and they don't really do Torah.

So again, what we see up till now is that in the Greek, Jesus is coming along and changing Torah, saying “obey the Pharisees”, whereas in the Hebrew he’s actually upholding Torah. Now, in light of that, how do we explain this passage, Matthew 5?

Matthew 5, six times Yeshua says in the Greek… he says, “You have heard it said, but I say.” And what it really sounds like when you read this in English is that Yeshua, or in the Greek, Jesus, is coming along and changing entire Torah commandments, adding, taking away, modifying. So, what's going on? Did he uphold Torah or did he not uphold Torah? And this is especially a very difficult textual question, because in that very same passage, in verse 17, he says he's not come to do away with “one jot or one tittle”! So how can he then turn around and a few verses later start changing things saying, “you have heard it said, but I say”?

Well let's look at one passage here, one passage that particularly caught my eye. This is Matthew 5:33 to 37. It says there in the Greek, “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.’ But I tell you, do not swear at all”! And here, very explicitly, Jesus is saying in the Greek not to swear at all. It’s an absolute prohibition if you're a disciple of Jesus to swear, to make any kind of oath.

And in fact, you can go to any court in the United States where there's the practice of putting your hand on the Bible and saying, “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.” And you could tell them, “I'm a devout Christian, a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth, and because of that I can't swear, because Matthew 5:34 tells me I may not swear.” And they won't think you're trying to pull a fast one. And they'll tell you that, in fact there’s a standard formula for someone who's a devout Christian, who's allowed to say “I affirm to tell the truth” and no one's going to think you're trying to pull a fast one or lie. Because it’s a standard thing that many devout Christians actually do. They won’t swear, because Jesus says do not swear at all.

He goes on, “either by heaven for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply, let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ Anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” Who's the evil one?

Audience: Satan.

Nehemia: Okay, we’ll use that as a working definition. You're defining him as Satan. We won’t get into that whole question, though. So, Satan, if you say anything beyond yes or no, then you are from Satan according to the NIV translation of Matthew 5. And what that means is if you say, “I swear by Jerusalem, yes I will do such and such,” you are from the evil one. And if you say, “I swear by heaven, no I will not do that,” you are from the evil one.

Well, I had a real problem when I saw this. I said, “Okay, that doesn't really sound… there’s something wrong with this.” And the reason I had a problem with this was, for me, really began in Exodus 3:15. Many years ago, I was studying in Jerusalem under a Karaite sage named Mordecai Alfandari, and he was a very brilliant man. He would never try to convince you of anything. He would just present you the Scriptural verses and you would see he was always right. One day, he sat me down and he said, “Nehemia, read to me Exodus 3:15 out loud.” And I said, “Okay, I'll read it to you out loud.”

Now bear in mind, being raised as a Pharisee there were certain things that had been so ingrained that I’d been taught. And I just couldn't break free from them for many years, even after I became a Karaite, because these things have been ingrained so deeply. And you tell me after I'm done reading this, what Pharisaical practice I'm expressing here.

And back then, when I read this verse to Mordechai following my Pharisaical indoctrination, “And God said further to Moses, thus shall you say to the children of Israel, Adonai, Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is My name forever and this is My memorial from generation to generation.”

So, did I say anything wrong there? I said, Adonai instead of what it actually says there, and in fact it says there in the Hebrew, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, which I pronounce as Yehovah, others pronounce as Yahaweh or Yahaveh, and I won't go now into the reasons for those differences. But it's very clear that the letters in Hebrew are Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, Yehovah, or Yahaweh, and I'd read it following the rabbinical ban on the name, as Adonai, which is “Lord”. And in fact, in all of your English Bibles, or most of your English Bibles, you'll have capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, which is following this rabbinical ban on the name. In fact, in the Hebrew texts of Scripture, the name of the Creator, Yehovah, appears 6,828 times, nearly 7,000 times! That's an average of approximately seven times in each page of the Hebrew texts of Scripture. And in every single instance, virtually, that you read in your English Bibles, you'll see it's “translated” as “LORD”, capital L-O-R-D in small caps, which is simply the translation of Adonai, and this comes from a rabbinical ban on the name.

In the Mishnah, it explains that anybody who reads that name according to its letters, and not as Adonai, has no portion in the world to come. So, there's an absolute ban on pronouncing the name of the Creator that the Pharisees teach. In fact, most Pharisees today refer to the name of the Creator as the “Ineffable name of God.” Ineffable means “unpronounceable.” You may not pronounce his name. I was taught with my mother's milk that the greatest sin that I could possibly do was to say the name of the Creator. That was utter blasphemy to say His name out loud, and I was taught to say Adonai. And even after I went to the Scriptures and became a Karaite, turning just to the Hebrew Scriptures, this was something that was so deeply ingrained that when I read this verse, I ended up reading it, “Lord, this is My name forever and this is My memorial from generation to generation.” Even though right there in front of me were the Hebrew letters Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, Yehovah.

Now, when I realized this, the words of the prophet came to mind, “They have eyes, but they do not see.” And I was talking about myself. The letters were right there in front of me, but being so indoctrinated and this being so deeply ingrained, this ban on the name, I'd read it as, “Lord”.

What about the end of this verse? Exodus 3:15, it goes on, it says, “this is My memorial from generation to generation” Yehovah’s memorial, what does that mean, “memorial”? Today only dead people have memorials. So, what's His memorial? That's just a horrible translation! The word that they translate as memorial, the Hebrew word is zekher. Now zekher in Hebrew does mean “to remember”, but it has a much broader meaning than it does in English. Zekher, in Hebrew, is to refer to something explicitly. To refer to something, you can refer to it with your mind, and that's to “remember it", or you could refer to it with your mouth, and that’s to “mention it”, to summon it up in your memory or to summon it up with your mouth.

Now, Exodus 23:13 has the same word and there it says, “and the names of other gods you shall not zekher nor shall they be heard upon your mouth.” Now here it's very clear from the context that zekher does not mean “to remember.” It's not telling you, “Don’t remember Easter”, it's telling you “Don’t mention Easter”, which I've just done now for educational purposes. But it's very clear from the context that it shall not be heard upon your mouth. You must not mention it; don't even mention those names of the pagan gods.

And when we're talking about the God of Israel, what it’s saying is “this is My name forever, this is My zekher, My ‘mention’, from generation to generation.” What that means is, whenever we summon up His name, whether in our minds or in our mouths, whenever we refer to Him, we must refer to Him by his name, which is Yehovah, or others pronounce Yahaweh. But it's very clear that his name is not “Lord”, that's just a title.

Now once I realized this, everything started to fall into place. Verses that I've read fifty times and I went over them before and I never realized the significance of them, and that from these verses it's very clear that the name of the Creator is not ineffable. For example, Deuteronomy 6:13 says, “You shall fear Yehovah, your God, and you shall worship Him, and in His name shall you swear.” And others translate this “in His name you shall make oaths.” Now, after I realized that the name of the Creator is not ineffable, I realized, how can you swear in His name if you're not allowed to pronounce His name? It's very clear from this verse that the name is not ineffable, it's not forbidden to pronounce the name of the Creator. In fact, that's how we're supposed to mention Him, we're supposed to refer to Him.

Again, a second time it says, Deuteronomy 10:20, “Yehovah, your God you shall fear, and Him shall you worship, and to him shall you cling, and in His name shall you swear.” Now, the practice of swearing in the name of the Creator, in the name of Yehovah, is something we see throughout the entire Tanakh.

For example, in 1 Kings 2:23, we see that King Solomon makes a vow and he says, “So shall Yehovah do to me and even more.” Now, what does he mean by that, “So shall Yehovah do to me and even more”? First of all, by invoking the name of the Creator, he’s swearing in the name, just like it says in Deuteronomy. “So shall Yehovah do to me and even more,” and what he means by that is he's laying a curse upon himself saying, “If I’m lying, may Yehovah do to me X, Y, Z.” It doesn't even tell us what the X, Y, Z is, that’s not the point of the story. So shall Yehovah do to me and even more than that, and even worse than that.

Another vow formula that we see throughout the Tanakh is the vow that King David uses in 1 Samuel 20 verse 3, and there King David says, “As Yehovah lives.” He's making a vow in the name of the Creator, Yehovah, saying, “As Yehovah lives.” What he means by this vow is, “If I’m lying, by my very actions I'm denying the life of the Creator.” That's a very serious vow, and the opposite is also true, “If I'm telling the truth, by my very actions I'm declaring the life of the Creator.”

This vow formula, “as Yehovah lives”, is actually related to a very important end times prophecy which appears in Jeremiah 12:16. And this verse was always fascinating to me, this whole passage, because if you read the passage, this is one of the few verses in the entire Tanakh, in the entire Old Testament, which is explicitly and exclusively speaking to the gentiles. This is a verse that has absolutely nothing to do with me; this is a promise to the gentiles for the end time. And there it says, “And it shall be if they nevertheless learn the way of My people to swear in My name ‘As Yehovah lives’”, if gentiles will learn to swear, “‘As Yehovah lives’, in the way that they taught My people to swear by Baal,” meaning the gentiles used to swear “as Baal lives”, and they came and they taught that practice to Israel. If those same nations will learn to swear, “As Yehovah lives” then “they shall be built into My people.” That's a very important end time prophecy for the nations, that they'll be built into Israel if they'll learn to swear, “As Yehovah lives”.

Now, you should be getting a little bit nervous here right now because Jesus has forbidden you to swear under any circumstances, and if you swear, you're from the evil one, according to the Greek Jesus. But let's see what it says in the Hebrew. In Hebrew Matthew 5, we read, “You have further heard what was said by the ancients, ‘you shall not swear falsely by my name,’” that's a direct quote word for word from Leviticus 19:12. “But you must pay your vow to Yehovah,” which is a paraphrase of Deuteronomy 23:21.

And then he goes on and he says, “But I say to you, that you must not swear by anything falsely,” falsely is what he says in the Hebrew. So, in the Hebrew, he is not prohibiting vows, he's prohibiting false vows. “Not by the earth, which is His footstool,” meaning you must not say, “I swear by the earth” and be lying; you have to be telling the truth if you swear by the earth. “Nor by Jerusalem, which is His footstool, nor by your head because you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your yes be yes and your no, no. Anything added to this is evil.” And we’ll get back to, “anything added to this is evil” in a minute.

But in verse 37, he starts off saying, “let your yes be yes and your no, no.” Now he’s not talking about making vows here, he's talking about making false vows. So, when he says, “let your yes be yes”, what he means in this new context is if you say, “I swear by Jerusalem! Yes, I will do such and such,” that better be a true yes, that better not be a false yes. And if you say, “No! I swear by the throne of God, I will do such and such,” that better be a no, you better not be lying there.

Now, why would he need to tell us not to make false vows? Or why would he need to tell you not to make false vows? Isn't it obvious that you shouldn’t make false vows? That's pretty obvious. But what happened, apparently, is in that period some Pharisees came along and they said, “Okay, well it says in Leviticus 19:12, ‘you shall not swear falsely by My name’, so if I don’t use the name, I’m allowed to swear falsely.” That’s what the Pharisees were teaching in this period, that you're allowed to swear falsely as long as you don't use the name. Because it says, “by My name”, and anyway, they don't use the name so they can swear falsely all day long.

What Yeshua is saying is, “No! When it says in Scripture ‘not to swear falsely by My name’, it doesn't mean you can swear falsely by other things.” Yes, as a keeper of Torah, you're supposed to be swearing by the name of the Creator, that's what we read in Deuteronomy. But if you're going to swear by other things, that doesn't mean you're allowed to lie! The principle behind this commandment is not to swear falsely. Even if you don't use the name, you're not supposed to swear falsely. And I think that's obvious to anybody who uses common sense and looks at this in its context that this is not a permission to vow falsely or to swear falsely. Simply, the way that an Israelite should be swearing is by the name, and if you're swearing by the name, you must not swear falsely.

And all Yeshua is doing here is, he is bringing out the underlying Torah principle, saying, “No, what you Pharisees are doing, opening up these loopholes, saying ‘I’m allowed to swear falsely’, that’s not the point of the commandment. You’re over-literalizing it. You’re taking the words and disembodying them from the context and from the meaning behind what it’s saying. You’re only taking the words and not the spirit of what it’s really saying.” Which is the contextual meaning that anyone with common sense would understand.

Now, there's no doubt that 2,000 years ago, when Yeshua said this, he would have been accused by the Pharisees of adding to the Torah, because they said it does say, “by My name”, and if you tell me I can’t swear falsely by Jerusalem, where does it say that in Scripture? Now, to anyone who uses their common sense, to the simple Israelite shepherd or farmer who comes and hears “you shall not swear falsely by My name”, it's obvious that you can't swear falsely by other things as well. That's obvious.

But to the Pharisees that's not so obvious, because to them Scripture is divine code. And Yeshua wanted to make it very clear that he's not adding to Torah, he's just bringing out the underlying Torah principle, and that's why he ends his statement saying, “anything added to this is evil”. He wouldn’t add anything to the Torah because that would be evil. And this is simply a paraphrase of Deuteronomy chapter 4 verse 2, “do not add anything to the Torah or take away”, and Yeshua is simply reiterating this basic Torah principle.

Now, what we have in the Greek Matthew, like it or not, is an abolition of vows. Jesus is coming along and abolishing vows. You're forbidden to swear by anything, that's a fact, that's what he says there. In the Hebrew Matthew on the other hand, we have an abolition of false vows. That's a very different message, isn't it? A very different statement. He's not abolishing vows; he's abolishing false vows.

And really, what we see is the Greek Iesous as he's called in the Greek, the Greek Jesus, is abolishing entire Torah commandments, “Don't worry about adding to the Torah, obey whatever the Pharisees tell you to do. And don't worry about vowing in the name of the Creator, don't vow at all, that's what I'm telling you to do. Don't swear at all.” Whereas we've now uncovered a Hebrew Yeshua, the words of Yeshua as he's portrayed in the Hebrew, and there, he's upholding Torah. He's saying, “Their claim to authority is they sit in the seat of Moses. Do what Moses says, do as he says. And they're telling you that you can jump through these loopholes and swear falsely? No, that's not the point of the commandment. The point of the commandment is to not to swear falsely at all.”

Now, you as believers need to make a real decision. You have to ask yourself a question. The Greek Jesus is changing the Torah, adding, taking away, abolishing, modifying. The Hebrew Yeshua is upholding the Torah. You need to make the decision, and ask yourself the question, who are you going to believe? You can't just ignore the Greek and you can't just ignore the Hebrew, they're both there. You need to make the real conscious decision, who are you going to believe? Are you going to believe the Greek Jesus that's changing Torah? Or the Hebrew Yeshua who's upholding Torah.

And by the way, I don't want anyone to walk away from here tonight and say, “Nehemia claims that there were two people who walked the earth and taught 2,000 years ago, one named Jesus, the other named Yeshua.” That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is the way his words are portrayed in the Greek is fundamentally different than how the words are portrayed in the Hebrew. And you need to decide which one of those statements you believe - what’s portrayed in the Greek or what's portrayed in the Hebrew.

Let me help you out with that decision there. Let's look at Hebrew Matthew chapter 23 verses 16 and on, and there Yeshua is speaking to the Pharisees throughout Matthew 23, and there he says to the Pharisees, “Woe to you, you blind chairs.” You could look in the Greek and you'll see it says, “Woe to you, you blind guides.” In the Hebrew he says, “you blind chairs”. Remember, Matthew 23 verse 2, he said, “they sit in the seat of Moses”, and now he's calling them “the blind chairs”. “Yeah, you're sitting in that seat, but you're blind chairs.”

“Woe to you, you blind chairs, who say that he who swears by the sanctuary is not obligated.” Does that sound familiar? “Swear by the sanctuary is not obligated.” In other words, if you say, “I swear by the Temple of Jerusalem”, you’re allowed to lie because you haven't used the name. “Who say that he who swears by the sanctuary is not obligated but he who vows by anything that is sanctified to the sanctuary building is obligated to pay.” Meaning, if you make a vow to bring something to the Temple, then you have to pay it. Well, that's very convenient, isn't it?

“Mad men and blind men! Which is greater, the sanctuary or the thing which is sanctified to the sanctuary? And you say he who vows by the altar is not obligated but he who vows to bring a sacrifice must give it.” Meaning if you say, “I swear by the altar in Jerusalem”, then you're allowed to lie because you haven't used the name. But if you swear to bring a sheep to the altar, then you have to give it because some of the priests were Pharisees, and the Pharisees have got to eat, so it's a simple economic consideration. “Which is greater, the sacrifice or the altar? The sanctuary or the sacrifice?”

And this next verse, verse 20, is really, I think, the decisive verse. There he says, “He who swears by the altar swears by it and by all that is in it.” So here he’s actually upholding vows. Now, what happened to “if you make a vow by anything, you're from the evil one”? That's not here at all, that's not reflected at all. He's saying, “If you make a vow, you must keep that vow, you must not swear falsely.”

Now, the reason this is so significant is because in the Greek, in the very same verse in Greek Matthew, he says, “Therefore, he who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it.” In other words, in the Greek he's saying the exact same thing as he's saying in the Hebrew on this particular verse - upholding vows. Meaning that in Matthew 23:16 to 20, both in the Greek and the Hebrew, Yeshua is saying no to false vows, yes to true vows. Well, what happened to anybody who swears is from Satan? That's not being reflected here even in the Greek!

So, let's summarize what we have here. Against vows we have Greek Matthew 5 - and by the way Greek James 5:12, which is a paraphrase of Greek Matthew 5. In favor of vows, we have the Torah, that's a pretty significant one, we have Jeremiah 12:16, Hebrew Matthew 5, Hebrew Matthew 23, and then even Greek Matthew 23. So, what you can see is the Hebrew is consistent with itself and it's consistent with the Torah. He's against false vows, in favor of true vows, whereas the Greek is not even consistent with itself. In Matthew 5 he is against vows altogether, and in Matthew 23 he's upholding vows. So the Greek is not even internally consistent, and you need to make the decision, who are you going to believe? The Hebrew Yeshua, how Yeshua's words are portrayed in the Hebrew, or the Greek Jesus, the way he's portrayed in the Greek?

Now everything I've talked about up till now is described in much greater detail in my book, The Hebrew Yeshua vs. the Greek Jesus. Now you understand the title, that the way his words are portrayed in the Hebrew is different than how they're portrayed in the Greek.

And now I want to talk about a few things which are not discussed in my book, but they're going to be discussed in my next book, which I'm writing right now. And the first thing I want to talk about are the manuscripts of Shem-Tov’s Hebrew Matthew. And one of the things that we find is that Hebrew Matthew was published in 1987 along with the English translation. And when it was published, it was published based on nine manuscripts. And of those nine manuscripts, you find that over time, the manuscripts go through a process called “assimilation”, assimilation to the Greek. And what that means is that they start out very different from the Greek, and over time a Hebrew scribe comes along and says, “Wait a minute, that's not what it's supposed to say in the Hebrew. That's not what it's supposed to say in Matthew.” And why does he say that? Because he's read the Greek. And what he ends up doing is changing the Hebrew to match the Greek.

So, for example in Hebrew Matthew 5:34, we saw the sentence that makes sense, that Yeshua’s original words were, “I say to you, that you must not swear by anything falsely.” Well, some Hebrew scribes came along, and in some manuscripts, when they were copying them, they said, “Wait a minute, I know it doesn't say ‘falsely’ in the Greek.” And what they did is they deleted this word, and you end up with the Greek reading in the Hebrew, “I say to you, that you must not swear by anything”, which doesn't make sense. Now, the reason this is important is that of the nine manuscripts that were published, two of these are very close to the Hebrew original words of Yeshua. Meaning that when you compare them systematically with the Greek, you find many differences, and when the Greek doesn't make sense, the Hebrew does. Whereas the other manuscripts that were published have been highly assimilated to the Greek, meaning that in many places - not consistently - but in many places where the original Hebrew words make perfect sense and differ from the Greek, in these seven other manuscripts they've been adapted and modified, assimilated to match the Greek.

And really of these nine manuscripts, these two, the one in the British Library, and the other one which is designated as Manuscript C, are really the two most important manuscripts. And all these nuggets of truth and information that we're finding, consistently appear in these manuscripts. In the other manuscripts they appear haphazardly; sometimes it’s been modified, sometimes it hasn't. And what that means is, out of the nine manuscripts two are really the most important. Why is it important? Because there's more than nine manuscripts.

From my preliminary research, I've been able to find that there are at least 23 manuscripts of Shem-Tov’s Hebrew Matthew, and these are actually specific designations of manuscripts from around the world. For example, you can go to London, to the Montefiore Library, and ask to see Manuscript Number 286, and that’s the manuscript of Shem-Tov’s Hebrew Matthew. And these other 14 manuscripts have never been published.

Now, of the first nine manuscripts, if two out of those contain all these nuggets of truth and information, who knows what's in these other 14 manuscripts? No one knows, they haven't been studied, and until they're actually published, we won't know what information will come out of these manuscripts.

The next thing I want to talk about is the question of the age of a manuscript versus the age of composition. That's a very important topic that we have to understand. This is a basic concept in textual studies, that the age that something was copied, the date that a manuscript was copied, very often differs from the date that it was originally written.

For example, if you open up The World Almanac and Book of Facts from 2005, that book was printed in 2005. However, if you turn to the Declaration of Independence that was copied and printed in 2005, but it was originally written in what year? In 1776. So, although the age of the manuscript, or in this case the printing, is 2005, the original date of composition is 1776. Why is it important? Because Shem-Tov Ibn Shaprut copied Hebrew Matthew in 1380. That doesn't mean that he wrote Hebrew Matthew or composed Hebrew Matthew in 1380.

Let's look at some other examples of this. Josephus Flavius was a famous Jewish historian who lived in the 1st century, and he wrote a history of the Jews called Antiquities of the Jews, and that was written in the 1st century. However, our earliest complete manuscript, or earliest manuscript of Antiquities of the Jews is only from the 10th century, 900 years after he wrote his original book.

Now the original book written in the hand of Josephus, that's been gone for more than 1,000 years. And the reason for that is that manuscripts very often will not last more than a few hundred years, and if they're not copied, and copies made of those copies, and copies made of those copies, then the book won't survive. And in this case, the earliest manuscript of Antiquities of the Jews is from the 10th century, even though no one in the world denies that this book was written in the 1st century.

Here's another interesting example. The earliest complete manuscript of Isaiah is from the 1st century Before the Common Era, from the Dead Sea Scrolls. However, Isaiah wrote his book and prophesied 700 years earlier. The original book written by Isaiah, that's long gone, that's been gone for more than 2,000 years. Our earliest complete copy is from only 700 years after Isaiah wrote his book.

And the significance of this is that, although Shem-Tov Ibn Shaprut copied Hebrew Matthew in 1380, the linguistic contextual evidence proved that it's much earlier than 1380. And in many cases, more original than the Greek version.

The last thing I want to talk about is the question of Hebrew versus Aramaic. This is something that's gotten a lot of attention recently, the Aramaic question. How many people here have seen the movie The Passion of the Christ? Okay, a good number of people. In the movie The Passion of the Christ, what language did Jesus of Nazareth speak?

Audience: Aramaic.

Nehemia: You're right, he spoke Aramaic. Okay. Well, I think we should stop the discussion here, because it wouldn't be right for me to argue with such a great Hebrew scholar as Mel Gibson. No, but seriously, Mel Gibson went and talked to, I'm sure, experts who told him that in the 1st century Yeshua spoke Aramaic. And why is it that he thought that? Or why is it that his experts thought that?

And here's one verse that has a lot of people very much confused. Acts 26:13 to 14. This is a famous vision that Shaul has, that Paul has, on the road from Damascus. And there Paul describes his vision, he says, “About noon… as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun… and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, ‘Shaul, Shaul, why do you persecute me?’” And Paul, Shaul, describes that he asked who's speaking, and he explains that the answer was that Yeshua's speaking.

So according to the… and by the way, this is the NIV translation, which I'm sure you all know stands for the “Nearly Inspired Version”. Now according to the NIV translation, what language did Yeshua speak to Shaul in?

Audience: Aramaic.

Nehemia: According to the NIV, Yeshua spoke to Shaul in Aramaic. Well, let's get to the bottom of this, because if you look at other translations, you probably already know that they don't have the word “Aramaic”, they have a different word. So, why is it that the NIV translates, “I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic?” I mentioned earlier that, based on internal linguistic evidence, it appears that Acts was originally written in Hebrew. However, we have not yet uncovered the Hebrew original of Acts, all we have is the Greek translation of Acts.

So, let's look at the Greek translation, and see in the Greek translation, what is the word that is translated into English by the NIV as Aramaic? The word in Greek that’s translated as Aramaic is the Greek word, Hebraidi. Hebraidi. Do we have any Greek scholars in the audience that could tell me the meaning of… any three-year olds that could tell me the meaning of this word, Hebraidi? Hebraidi is Hebrew! It's obvious! You don't need to be a Greek scholar to know that Hebraidi is Hebrew! So, Shaul didn't hear Yeshua speaking to him in Aramaic, he heard Yeshua speaking to him in Hebrew! So, what language did Yeshua speak?

Audience: Hebrew.

Nehemia: Hebrew! Okay. So, what we can see here is that there's been an intentional modification and change by some of the translation to cover up the fact that Yeshua spoke Hebrew.

Now, here's another verse that has a lot of people confused, Psalm 22. And there we read the statement, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” And where's that familiar from? Of course, everyone knows that's Yeshua’s dying words. Yeshua’s dying words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And let's look at how these appear in the Greek. In Matthew 27 verse 46 we read, “Yeshua cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” That is to say, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Now, from the words, “that is to say”, you already know that the Greek is translating something from a foreign language. And in fact, the words “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” those four words are not Greek words. Those are foreign words that are quoted in the Greek, and in fact, those words are Aramaic. So, if we looked at this verse it sounds like, if you looked at it in the Greek, it sounds like Yeshua must have spoken Aramaic. His dying words were in Aramaic.

Let's look at the Hebrew though; we've already seen the Greek doesn't always match the Hebrew. In Hebrew Matthew 27:46 it says, “Yeshua cried with a loud voice, saying in the holy language, Eli, Eli, lama azavtani?” Now, “Eli, Eli, lama azavtani?” That's Hebrew. So, in Hebrew Matthew his words are quoted in Hebrew, and not only are they quoted in Hebrew, but his words are specifically identified as being spoken “in the holy language”.

Now, throughout history, Hebrew has been known primarily by two names - Ivrit, which is just the Hebrew word for Hebrew, and “the holy tongue”, lashon ha’kodesh, “the holy language” or “the holy tongue”. So, according to Hebrew Matthew, Yeshua spoke his final words in Hebrew. And not only that, but it's specifically identified as the language he's speaking in, in Hebrew, just like in Acts. It says Yeshua cried out speaking in Hebrew.

Well, what's going on here? And really, we can't get to the bottom of this topic today, we're just going to present the tip of the iceberg. And really, when we look at this and we follow this to its logical conclusion, you get an entire new understanding of that final scene, as Yeshua’s dying, of what happened there.

But we'll look at just the preliminary information. So, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” These words are quoted in the Greek text in Aramaic. The Greek text quotes these words in Aramaic, that's a fact. The second fact we have is that the Hebrew text quotes these words in Hebrew and specifically states that these words were spoken in Hebrew. So, how could both these statements be true? Or can they both be true?

Well actually, they can both be true, because if I look just at the Greek, I would determine that the Greek was translated from Aramaic. If I look at the Hebrew, I would determine that the Hebrew was spoken in Hebrew and written in Hebrew. How could both of those be true? The only way they could both be true is if there's a missing Aramaic phase. And what happened apparently is the Hebrew was translated to Aramaic, and then from Aramaic, it was translated into Greek. And actually, there's a lot of evidence to support this - that the Greek was translated from an Aramaic original - but it would seem from this evidence and lots of other evidence that I can't go into now, that the Aramaic was a translation from the Hebrew.

Now, this is very significant because what this means is that the Greek is not a second-hand translation from Hebrew, it's a third-hand translation from Hebrew. And remember that Papias told us that… Matthew wrote his gospel in Hebrew, and many did their best to translate them. Well apparently, the Greek translator took one look at the Hebrew and said, “No way, I'm going to go right to the Aramaic translation.” And what we have is a translation of the translation in the Greek.

Well, I talk more about a lot of these topics in my book, The Hebrew Yeshua vs. the Greek Jesus, and I want to say some final closing words.

I mentioned at the beginning that I don't look to Yeshua as the Messiah, and that really hasn't changed. I believe strictly in the Tanakh, the Old Testament. However, my understanding of who Yeshua was has changed. I started off doing this study believing, as most Jews do, that Yeshua came to usurp the Torah, to lead people astray, to change the Torah and modify the Torah, and lead people away from the Torah. And now I found that in the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, the Hebrew Yeshua was actually leading people back to Torah, upholding the Torah, saying if their claim to authority is that they sit in the seat of Moses, then do as Moses said. That he's not come to change “one jot or one tittle”, but he’s simply upholding the Torah.

Thank you.