Did the Talmud Teach that Abraham and Sarah Were Non-Binary?

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Is it true that the Talmud teaches that Abraham and Sarah were non-binary? It's time for the Line of Fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity.

Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on the Line of Fire. And now, here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown. We're going to dig into some really interesting rabbinic text today. We're going to separate fact from fiction on Thoroughly Jewish Thursday here on the Line of Fire.

Michael Brown, welcome to the broadcast. We are here to see you healthy and thriving and growing stronger and stronger in the Lord, infusing with faith and truth and courage. 866-34-TRUTH, 866-34-87, 884. Any Jewish-related question of any kind. Question relating to the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew language, Israel today, Jewish people in history. Question about Jesus being the Jewish Messiah, Messianic prophecy, if it's Jewish-related. Questions about anti-Semitism. Give me a call. This is the day we focus on Jewish-related issues.

866-348-7884. When I wrote my book, A Queer Thing Happened to America, that came out in the year 2011, I looked at a number of developments within Judaism, liberal Judaism, Reform Judaism. I looked at the direction it was going in terms of homosexual activism, in terms of ordaining gay rabbis, gay and lesbian rabbis and things like that. Even looked at a ceremony and a prayer book for someone that was getting sex change surgery, hear a prayer if you pray over them, part of or Reform Jewish Seminary, excuse me, ceremony. So, these of course were developments, they've been going on for years.

It's no surprise. And I got different books, queer Bible commentaries written from a Jewish perspective and things like that in one chapter in A Queer Thing Happened to America. I went through the rewriting of the Bible by gay and lesbian and queer theologians and just some shocking, agonizingly painful quotes even to put in print, but related those.

You could see where things were going. So, again, this has been happening for years. I own the major books that have been written on the subject over the years and debate within various strands of Judaism of how you deal with homosexual practice to this day. Among religious Jews, those who take the Bible, the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible is the Word of God, those who believe in the authority of their traditions, there's no debate, there's no argument, then there has been, just in the same way with Christians that take the Bible as the Word of God and recognize the consistency with which these issues have been dealt with for centuries, there's no debate. There's an ongoing call for compassion for those who are struggling.

There's an ongoing call within traditional Judaism to be compassionate to those who struggle in these areas, but there's no question about what the Bible says or what Jewish law is. So, in that light, I want you to look at some tweets from Rabbi Daniel Bogart. Not familiar with him at all, except this tweet was sent to me today by John Cooper. You know, our friend, the lead singer and frontman of Skillet, he said, look at this bizarre thread here, sent it to me, copied it to James White, and then I saw that James had sent me a direct message on Twitter saying, and today's line of fire. In other words, why not cover it today? Well, I had a different subject planned for today, but I thought, you know what?

Let's make a switch here, and let's go with this. So, I think you're going to find this really interesting as we delve into some ancient Jewish texts. This rabbi, just reading about him before the show, was raised in Reform Judaism. Again, this is a very liberal form of Judaism, and in no way would a Reform Jew look at the Bible as the Word of God the way we would, and in no way would a Reform Jew look at Talmudic and rabbinic traditions the way a traditional Jew would, that they would strongly say that they identify as Jewish, and many traditional rabbis say they're Jewish, but we don't recognize their synagogues as legit or their rabbis as legit. So, this is the thread from Rabbi Bogart.

I'm going to read about the first six tweets. He said, I keep hearing from GOP lawmakers that they just want to return to a Judeo-Christian idea of men being men and women being women. Let's talk about that Judeo part for a moment, because it's a lot queerer and less binary than you all seem to think. He then says this, the most central couple in the Bible is Abraham and Sarah, the founders of the Jewish people, and they were both intersex or non-binary or both.

Millennia ago, the rabbis of the Talmud shared an ancient tradition of this, Yivamot 64a and b. In fact, the rabbis of the Talmud even get into an argument as to which category of the very much non-binary sex-gender spectrum Abraham and Sarah fall into. Don't believe me that ancient Jews didn't see gender as a binary?

Check out the 2,000-year-old sacred Mishnah bikurim 4, 1 through 4. The contemporaries and study partners of the historical Jesus are the rabbis of the Mishnah, and they describe six-gender sex as not two. Now, don't get me wrong, this is still a text with lots of misogyny, but it also clearly shows that we never saw gender as a binary. Once again even queerer, Adam was made in God's image, which according to Bereshit, Rabbi 8-1 means at the moment when the Holy Blessed One created the first Adam, God created them as an androgynous as it is written, male and female created them. Think about it, if Adam HaRishon, the first human being, was made in God's image and Adam was described as, this is the literal word in Hebrew, androgynous, that means that according to the ancient rabbis, God is non-binary. Okay, so those are the claims that Rabbi Bogart makes, and he gives you links to actual text to look up.

So, we're going to do that. We're going to look at these texts to sort this out for the moment. Now, if everything he said is 100% accurate, that would just mean there's some strange traditions preserved in traditional Judaism. The Bible doesn't speak to those things. The Bible doesn't back those things up. The Bible does ultimately say very clearly that God created us male and female. Jesus reinforces that in Matthew 19, 4-6, and says that marriage is God intended in his union of one man and one woman for life.

So, there's no ambiguity in the Bible about that, but are these Jewish traditions being rightly represented? First, let me just say a few things up front. This rabbi is speaking about queer, non-binary, non-gender conforming identities. That's what he's talking about. He's not talking about homosexuality, lesbianism, not talking about that here, all right?

But I do want to say a few things about that up front. This is not the rabbi's focus here, but I want to say a few things up front. Number one, there's no ambiguity in Jewish tradition about homosexual behavior being forbidden. There's no ambiguity in the Torah. There's no ambiguity in the Talmud. There's no ambiguity in the Jewish law codes. And in fact, the Jewish law codes go beyond what's explicit in the Torah, which forbids male-male sexual intimacy, male-male sexual relations, that the Jewish law codes make clear that that behavior is forbidden among women also.

So, that's the first thing. I know he's not talking about that, but I want to reemphasize that, that just as there's no ambiguity as you go through the Old and New Testament in terms of homosexual behavior, there's no ambiguity in the Torah and in Jewish tradition about that. The only ones that have different views on that are the ones that are trying to rewrite or reinterpret or ignore those past traditions.

That's the first thing. The second thing is that Jewish tradition has some very strong statements to make about same-sex, quote, marriage, namely that in the days of Noah that they were marrying one another, men were marrying men or animals, having relations with them, and that's one of the reasons that God destroyed the world. It explicitly says this is one of the reasons that God destroyed the world, same-sex, quote, marriage certificates being written. So, this is in the very same traditions that this rabbi is quoting. Now, I know he's not talking here about homosexual practice or same-sex, quote, marriage.

He's talking about issues having to do with non-binary, intersex, et cetera, but I just want to reinforce that. Also, this point, according to traditional Judaism, chronologically, chronologically, the first commandment is peru uruvu, malu yata'arit, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. That is a commandment given to Adam on behalf of the human race, all right?

Adam there representing the human race, and that's why when you get to Genesis 2, Adam needs a suitable helper, Hava. Adam needs Eve because without Eve, he cannot, they cannot fulfill the calling to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Traditional Judaism, this is a command that every couple must do what they can to procreate naturally, and ideally, to have at least one son and one daughter, thereby fulfilling this commandment.

Obviously, it's not always in your power to do that, and there's some people who are barren, but to the extent you can, it is a requirement in Jewish law to seek to do that. So, heterosexuality is presupposed, and normal sexual functions are presupposed. The question arises is, what happens when someone biologically, genetically, doesn't fit into those categories? What happens biologically and genetically when you're intersex or another category of that, hermaphrodite? So, what happens if you have ambiguous sexual organs, or you don't function normally, sexually, biologically, or you have male and female organs, which would be hermaphrodite?

What happens if that's the case, then how do you sort these things out legally? It's not questioning whether there are males and females, whether there are distinct categories of male and female. Of course there are, just like some people can see and some people are blind. Some people can hear, some people are deaf, right?

You have two eyes, but some people have two eyes that don't work. So, all of the legislature, all of the rabbinic discussion presupposes the categories of male, female, but now you have these others, just like someone with a disability, someone with a handicap, that fall somewhere in between. No one's arguing the existence of intersex people.

No one's arguing the physical and biological issues that we always talk about, that has zero to do with a biological male identifying as a female, or a biological female identifying as a male, or a biological male wanting sex change surgery to become a female, or a biological female wanting sex change surgery to become a male. No such thought exists in the minds of these Jewish rabbis that are being quoted. We come back, we're going to look at some of the specific texts that Rabbi Bogart just brought up. Let's separate fact from fiction, then we'll take your Jewish-related calls after that. Stay tuned. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on The Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks, friends, for joining us on Thoroughly Jewish Thursday. This is Michael Brown, the number to call with your Jewish-related question, 866-348-7884. There are plenty of statements in the Talmud or in larger rabbinic tradition that are very odd.

There are plenty of statements that I have no desire to defend. I do not accept rabbinic authority, otherwise I would be a rabbinic Jew. I also appreciate much beauty in the traditions, much insight in the traditions, much that's worthy in the traditions. But I'm not speaking as a traditional Jew. Again, if I was, I would not be a believer in Yeshua, and I would be living an orthodox or ultra-orthodox lifestyle. So, my question is, when Talmud or Midrash rabbinic traditions are being represented as saying certain things, are they being represented accurately?

That's all we're trying to find out today, all right? So, I first want to point out something to you in terms of how traditional Judaism reads the Torah and reads the Bible in terms of a very, very specific legal focus, a very, very specific focus on specific legal terms, words. So, go over to Deuteronomy 17, and I'm going to look at the commentaries of Rashi, the foremost biblical commentator and Talmudic commentator in Judaism.

So, it says in verse 8 of Deuteronomy 17, if a case is too baffling for you, be it a controversy over a homicide, civil law, or assault, matters of dispute in your courts, you shall promptly repair to the place that your God, your Lord, will have chosen. Now, it's literally in Hebrew, when there's a dispute between blood and blood, or between smiting and smiting, all right? So, many Jewish interpreters understand this, blood and blood meaning homicide, controversy over homicide, or civil law, or assault, something like that.

How does Rashi understand it? Look at what he says, and I'm going to look at his second comment, if there's anything too hard for the judgment between blood and blood. This is what he says, between the blood of the menstruous woman that may be unclean and blood that may be clean. And he's quoting from the Talmud and from what's called Midrash Halacha.

So, isn't that interesting? He reads the words, going back to early Jewish tradition, between blood and blood, which clearly is referring to homicide, bloodshed, right? He understands it between, you're trying to sort out, is your wife still experiencing her period, is she unclean or not? That's between blood and blood. And then, when it goes down a little bit further, let me just scroll down here on my screen, where it goes down a little bit further, then when it's a question about literally between striking and striking, Rashi understands, because the word nega can also refer to a plague, that you're trying to determine the nega and what type of plague this is. Or, you know, is it, you've got in Leviticus where there's mildew, and is the house unclean or not, or is the person unclean or not, etc. So, there's very much a legal reading of things in great detail, in ways that is often surprising. Like, wow, I wouldn't think the text was talking about that. So, you're often dealing with legal categories. Where do we put this person?

Where do they fit when there's some of these abnormalities? Okay, so let's go over to the first text that Rabbi Bogart cited, and it's from Yivamot. This is in the section called Nashim, Women, in the Mishnah and the Talmud. So, the end of page 64a and beginning of page 64b, Rabbi Yitzchak said, for what reason, so we're reading from the expanded translation of Adin Stanschatz, Rabbi Yitzchak said, for what reason were our forefathers initially infertile? Because the Holy One, blessed be he, desires the prayers of the righteous. So, they're infertile, so that they would look to him in prayer. Rabbi Yitzchak said, why are the prayers of the righteous compared to a pitchfork?

Etir is in the verse, and he let himself be entreated. This indicates that just as this pitchfork turns over produce from one place to another, so the prayer of the righteous turns over the attributes of the Holy One, blessed be he, from the attribute of rage to the attribute of mercy. This is just complete plays on words and false etymologies and things like that, just to make homiletical points. Then it says this, Rabbi Ammi said, Abraham and Sarah were originally tumtumim, so that's literally hidden, of people whose sexual organs are concealed and not functional. In other words, it's saying that biologically this was their original condition, that they were tumtumim, the reason they were infertile, the reason they were unable to have children, because their sexual organs were not properly developed. As it is stated, look to the rock from which you were young and to the hole of the pit from which you were dug, Isaiah 51.1, and it is written in the next verse, look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you. So again, a midrashic homiletical interpretation, which indicates that sexual organs were fashioned for them, this is the Steinchild's explanation, signified by the words eun and dug over the course of time.

Okay, so let's just stop there for a moment. What this tradition is saying, and this is just one opinion that is thrown out in the midst of a discussion, is that they were originally tumtumim, so again, literally in Hebrew, hidden, meaning that their sexual organs were originally hidden and not properly developed. No one is questioning in the text whether Abraham was a man or Sarah was a woman. The text is not dealing with that at all. There's nothing queer about it.

This is biological. This is dealing with the phenomenon of intersex or of improperly developed or non-properly functioning sexual organs. There's nothing that questions if Abraham was a man or a woman. There's nothing that questions if Sarah was a man or a woman. It is fully, completely understood, no one questioning, Abraham a man, Sarah a woman. However, they were infertile. Were they infertile for the reason that they were tumtumim and that their sexual organs were not properly functioning, developed, they were hidden.

That's one idea, and based on a strange interpretation of these verses in Isaiah, it's deduced that God, over a period of time, caused their sexual organs to now come to full fruition and function. That's all. What's that got to do with a biological male identifying as female or a healthy 18-year-old biological genetic woman getting sex change surgery because she really believes deep down she's a man? Zero.

Zero connection whatsoever. Okay, well, what about the other text from the Mishnah, Bikarim, and this is in an agricultural part of the Mishnah in Talmud, but it is, Talmud can get into all kinds of other discussions, all right? All kinds of other discussions. So, I'm going to start reading. It starts with the word androgynos in Hebrew, right? The hermaphrodite, this is from Mishnah, Bikarim, beginning chapter four. The hermaphrodite is in some ways like men and in other ways like women. In other ways, he is like men and women, and in others, he is like neither men nor women. So, it fully recognizes you have the two categories of male and female.

That's not the question. What do you do with someone who has male and female sexual organs that exist for very, very tiny part of the population? Judaism has to deal with this because of legal questions.

Where do you put this person legally? It's not a matter of their state of mind, how they feel about themselves. It's a matter of their physical development, their biological development. That's the only, and I emphasize only, question here. Where do you put them legally because you have male and you have female? You have these categories. Where do they fit?

So, it goes on. In what ways is he like men? He causes impurity with white discharge like men.

He dresses like men. He can take a wife but not be taken as a wife like men. When he is born, his mother counts the blood of purification like men. He may not be secluded with women like men. He is not maintained with the daughters like men.

He transgresses the law of you shall not round, meaning the corners of your beard, etc. And he has performed all the commandments of the Torah like men. So, once he's identified as male, that's it. He can't marry females. There's no thing about, well, let's alter his organs or anything like that or change the way he identifies.

It's all legal categories. So, this is where he fits. And in what ways is he like women? He causes impurity with red discharge like women. And he must not be secluded with men like women. And he doesn't make his brother's wife liable for yibum, levered marriage. And he does not share in the inheritance with the sons like women. And he cannot eat most holy sacrifices like women. At his birth, his mother counts the blood of her impurity like they do when they give birth to a girl. And he is disqualified from being a witness like women. If he had illicit intercourse, he is disqualified from eating true maw like women.

So, in other words, and I'm going to stop here rather than get too densely into the details. In other words, this person is going to be classified as either male or female, all right, depending on his bodily functions and depending on how he has been raised and recognized. He's going to be put in one category or the other. And then that's the category that he's in, male or female, because those are the only categories that exist. And there may be things where there's overlap in terms of how he is treated under the law or if recognized as a woman, how she's treated under the law. But none of this, zero, has anything to do with queer identity, anything to do with a person's self-perception contrary to biological realities. Nowhere, nowhere in all of Jewish literature is someone who is fully recognized as a functioning biological male, able to identify or recognize that they can identify as female or change to female. It does not exist. It's a fact. And anything about miraculous divine intervention, let God intervene how he wants in developing organs that are not properly developed.

That's a whole other story. We'll be right back with your calls. It's the Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome, welcome to the Line of Fire on this thoroughly Jewish Thursday.

Michael Brown, delighted to be with you. Here's the number to call with your Jewish-related questions. 866-348-7884.

866-34-TRUTH. Remember to visit RealMessiah.com. That is our Jewish outreach, Jewish information website with answers to the top 100 Jewish objections to Jesus with links to many video debates I've done with rabbis, links to our Think It Through TV series we did with the Inspiration Network a few years back, all kinds of other great resources.

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Click on donate. All right, we go to the phones and we will start in Jackson, Mississippi with Jonathan. Welcome to the Line of Fire. L'chaim, Dr. Brown.

Hey, thank you. My question is, I first started really getting into Hebrew roots, teachings through Zola Levitt on television, I think in the late 80s or 90s, and I really learned a lot. And in the 2000s, I found a local messianic congregation and I was going there to check it out for a while until I heard the rabbi say that those that were ethnically Jews needed to keep the 613 laws in the Torah. And that just upset me so much. I thought about what Paul would say to him, you know, and I wrote him a letter and everything and I quit attending and I'm just concerned about the bent towards legalism in some circles in this movement. And I wanted your comment. Yes, so Jonathan, you know, the pendulum swings in different ways, right?

And often to get to the middle, it swings past and has to swing back. So for sure, you learned over the years about the horrible history of anti-Semitism in the church and the degree to which the church cut itself off from its Jewish roots. You surely learned about that and even, you know, separating Easter from Passover and things along those lines and kind of removing the Jewish identity of Jesus. So, as things are recovered, as people recognize the Jewishness of Jesus and the gospels, as they recognize God's ongoing purposes for Israel, as they recognize it's perfectly fine for a Jewish believer to live as a Jew, then things can swing a little further where you say, well, every Jewish believer must keep all the laws otherwise they're not right with God, or they need to live like a traditional Jew, or Gentile Christians are obligated to keep the law of Moses and it keeps getting more extreme. So, what we recognize as good and healthy is, number one, the understanding that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, that he doesn't abolish the law, but that he fulfills, that God's purposes for Israel remain, that the church has not replaced Israel in God's plan of salvation. We recognize that and we recognize that it's perfectly fine for a Jewish believer to continue to live as a Jew, perfectly fine for a Jewish believer to observe the seventh-day Sabbath.

There's not a command in the New Testament to observe an eighth-day Sabbath, you know, first day of the week Sunday Sabbath. There's not a command for a Jew to become a Gentile upon salvation. We also recognize that in Jesus, Jew and Gentile are exactly equal. Even though we're distinct, like male and female are distinct, we're exactly equal in our standing in the Lord.

One is not higher than the other. You say, well, where do they get the idea that Jewish believers are obligated to keep the law? They would look at texts like Acts 15, where Peter and Paul and Jacob, James discuss Gentile followers of Jesus and the Torah. And it says, okay, they aren't obligated to keep this. It's kind of assumed that Jews will do so, but the Gentile Christians are not obligated to. Or Galatians 5, where Paul is telling the Galatians, don't you understand? If you're circumcised, you're obligated to keep the whole law. So, they would say, well, then those who are already circumcised, Jews, they should continue to live under the law. Or they would say, Matthew 5, Jesus says, whoever violates one of the least of these commandments and teaches others is least in the kingdom, that means you have to uphold them all. Or Paul in Acts 21 saying how zealous he is for the law, demonstrating it by going to the temple and offering a purification sacrifice. So, texts like that are put together in such a way to argue that it is mandatory for Jewish believers in Jesus today to keep the Sinai Covenant.

Of course, I differ with that for many of the reasons that you would, that our relationship to the Torah has changed, that we are not under it as a system of justification, we're not under its condemnation, we're not under it to bring us to the Messiah, Galatians 3, Romans 6, other passages, and we are now living in a new and better covenant as the Holy Spirit writes his Torah on our hearts and as we see through the New Testament how we are to live. So, it's perfectly fine for a Jewish believer to say, hey, I'm a Jew, why shouldn't I keep the Seventh-day Sabbath? Great.

Hey, I'm a Jew, why shouldn't I keep kosher and identify with my people who do? Great. Fine.

Why shouldn't I keep the biblical holidays versus later holidays? Great. Good. I'm with you on all of those points. The moment you say you are obligated to, or that every Jewish believer is obligated to, that's where I have a difference. And then again, that can get into legalism, as you say, or putting an emphasis in a wrong place. So, for those who encourage it in solidarity with our people and as a witness, fine. For those who say it's obligatory, we have a difference. Thank you, Dr. Brown, for your erudite response.

Well, you are very welcome, sir. And obviously, each of the verses I cited, each of the points we made, we could go into greater depth on, right? And within the Messianic Jewish movement, there are fine believers who love the Lord, who are not legalists, who differ over these points. They would just say it's really God's best if you do your best to live in harmony with Torah, in light of the Spirit. Others would say that you may be in a church, you may be in a Messianic congregation, as long as you love the Lord, let the Lord lead you. There are disagreements among fellow Jewish believers, but it's all within the Lord.

And then there are other lines that we believe are wrong to cross. Hey, thank you for your important question. I appreciate it. 866-34-TRUTH. Let's go to Russ in Salt Lake City, Utah. Welcome to the line of fire.

Hey, Dr. Brown. I just wanted to let you know you're a blessing to the body of Christ and also a blessing to the Jewish community. Well, thank you.

Let me just say this, Russ. I don't know that the Jewish community looks at me as such a blessing. You know, I've been called public enemy number one by rabbis years ago because of our outreach efforts, but in truth, in truth, I am standing for our community and wanting to see what's best.

So thank you. Well, my question is, we are presently going through a class of the tabernacle, you know, in the wilderness and different things like that. So there was a couple questions came up, and I said, well, I'm going to call Dr. Brown. I know that you've probably answered these a thousand times. Number one is, is the grain offering in which the people were supposed to give in the wilderness, the question came up, where did they get the grain? Because they probably didn't have time to take it out of Egypt. Now, the second part of the question is, and then I'll ask it, then I'll hang up. But the second part of the question is, is from my understanding that the Ark of the Covenant was taken in about 586 B.C.

and hidden or taken someplace or whatever. And so the second part is, is how were the people, the people, the priests sacrificing in the holiest of holies that they didn't have the mercy feed or anything to sprinkle the blood on? Right. So actually, the second question, Russ, has come up recently. Someone asked me that identically, or I saw it posted somewhere.

The first question doesn't come up much at all, so don't worry about them being answered over and over. So with regard to the second question, there was only once a year when the priest would go into the holiest place of all, right? And then he would sprinkle the blood of the atonement offerings, the goat for, the one goat that was killed and its blood was brought into the holiest place of all on the Day of Atonement on Yom Kippur, according to Leviticus 16. So there was no mercy seat there. There was no Ark of the Covenant there.

So what did he do? You would understand, he would just sprinkle it in that place. But wouldn't that tell you the whole time that something was missing? In other words, as you're doing it, wouldn't there be a recognition the entire time the Second Temple stood that something was missing in it, even a further witness to redemption needing to come through the Messiah? So that's as best as we would understand it, that the ritual was still carried out, but you did not have the Ark of the Covenant over which the blood would be sprinkled.

So it would be sprinkled within the holiest place of all, the Kodesh Karashim, but there would be no mercy seat or atonement cover there. As far as where the Israelites got the grain from, the Bible is not explicit. There's the great question of why was there no meat to eat when they had so much cattle? One answer would be that the cattle was being reserved for animal sacrifice or for other things, milk and things like that, the females, but the Bible doesn't address that directly.

As to where they got the grain from, it's not explicit. Now bear in mind that the plan was not for them to be in the wilderness for 40 years. They were passing through, the laws and commandments were given, and now they're supposed to march on, take the promised land, so immediately they'll have grain. Did they have grain to offer the entire time in the wilderness? The Bible doesn't say. So you could even say that the grain was an ideal part of the law, but they could not practice it until they got into the land.

In other words, you could speculate in these different ways. The bottom line is the plan wasn't to stay there. The plan was get the laws, get everything set up, tabernacle built, etc. Now let's go and conquer the promised land, and then you have all the grain that you want. Hey, thank you for the questions.

They're very interesting, in fact, and we only have limited and we only have limited information to give the answers. We'll be right back. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks so much to our Truth team in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. They're the ones that take your phone calls, and they're the ones that bring in that beautiful Jewish music on our Thoroughly Jewish Thursday and other things. Thanks for the great job, team.

866-348-7884. By the way, as I was getting ready yesterday, about to travel again, God willing, over the weekend into the next week and broadcast for some different locations, I was getting vitamins together and things that I take with me and supplements and grabbing some of my trusted Dr. Mark Stengler supplements. You can get them, too. The best I know to get in a wide variety of areas, really good health supplements, so they supplement my healthy lifestyle, and I want you to check them out when you have time. Vitaminmission.com, but there are three reasons. First, they're good for you. You'll find some really good health supplements there. Second, you get a 10% discount as a listener to the broadcast. And third, with every purchase you make, Dr. Stengler turns around and donates back to our ministry generously.

So go to vitaminmission.com. Let's get you healthy physically as well as spiritually, which is our ultimate goal. All right, with that, we go to the phones to Hallie in Fort Worth, Texas. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Hello, Dr. Brown. Thanks for taking my call.

You bet. So my question is, I'm a Christian that's 25% Jewish bloodline on my mom's side. I don't know that side of my family, and I've been doing a deep dive into my roots. And what I'm finding over and over again is the majority of the Jewish bloodline today are Ashkenazi Jews, which are of European origin. I understand that the Israelites were dispersed back in the biblical days. My question is, where is the disconnect between the Hebrews and the Israelites of the Bible and the Jewish Ashkenazi bloodline today? Yeah, so it's a question that comes up a lot.

There's no disconnect. It's simply a matter of migration, assimilation, intermarriage, things like that. I would differ on this one point, though, when you just said the majority of Jewish bloodline Ashkenazi. If you went to Israel today, you'd find a high percentage that have Sephardi background.

Some have other backgrounds as well. So in America, the great, great majority of those who recognize that they are Jewish, they would have an Ashkenazi bloodline as opposed to Sephardic. My wife, Nancy, was basically all Ashkenazi. I was 90% Ashkenazi, 10% Sephardic when we did DNA tests. If you go to Europe, you'll find it similar to that as well. The more you get towards the Middle East, the more you get towards Africa, things like that, then it'll shift a lot, and you'll find much more Sephardi and other background as well.

But here's what happened. The best that we can tell, as Jewish people were scattered around the world, right, so some of this goes back 2,700 years, some of it goes back 2,500 years plus, and then ongoing, some of it goes back 2,800 years, the scattering has continued all through the centuries. What happened was that those that we trace back to Ashkenazi got down, according to studies I've read, DNA studies, they got down to fairly small numbers of population. So it was a cluster group as opposed to millions of people at that point. So many of them have now assimilated, and they've lost all connection to the Jewish people for many, many centuries.

That's completely gone. So when you intermarry out, right, you now lose touch with your people, your history, and over a period of time, your origins are lost. Let's just take, ethnically, people arrive from China, they come into America, right, and their kids now marry other kids who are Caucasian, and their kids marry other kids who are Caucasian.

You go down a few more generations, there's no hint anymore that there's no hint anymore of Asian look, of Chinese ethnicity at all. So it's the same with those who were practicing Judaism. They now intermarry with those who are not, and then within a few generations, that Jewish identity is completely lost. It happens to this day with, say, Jews in America, that if they intermarry out and they're not practicing Judaism themselves within a few generations, they've lost all connection to Jewish history.

On the flip side, what if people marry in? What if they now convert? What if there are Jews scattered in Africa and they begin to intermarry with the surrounding peoples who are now darker-skinned than them, right? Let's say the Israelites originally scattered would have been more like brown-skinned, say, if you want to just pick something generic here. So they now begin to intermarry with these people who are converting to Judaism and joining the Jewish people.

Same in Europe. You've got all these Caucasians who are lighter-skinned. They are now intermarrying with the Jewish people, converting into Judaism. As these numbers multiply, multiply, multiply, you end up looking European but still maintaining your Jewish identity. So that's what happened with the Ashkenazis. Over a period of time, they multiplied and grew and multiplied and grew as practicing Jews and as people born to practicing Jews.

But at one point, there was a lot of intermarriage in, and that's where the shift came from what would have been a more Middle Eastern identity now to a more Caucasian identity. Does that make sense to you? Yes, it does. So is the Ashkenazi bloodline connected to the Hebrew bloodline or is it too far back to tell? No, no, no, absolutely so. Absolutely. No, there's no question about that.

It's just that it gets like into a little funnel for a little while, right? So if you think of, just think of this, you have the tribes of Israel, but over a period of time, they become united under the title of Jews. So in New Testament times, you were called a Jew if you're from the tribe of Levi, if you're from the tribe of Asher, if you're from the tribe of Judah, Benjamin, right? You've got different people in the New Testament and their tribal identities are mentioned specifically in the text, yet they were all called Jews because that was the general broader description. And then you have Ashkenazi Jews who may have the last name of Cohen or Levi, and their tradition tells them that they are descendants of the tribe of Levi or specifically descendants from the priestly line of Aaron, and DNA has confirmed that, that they all kind of go back to this common source several thousand years ago in the Middle East, etc. So yeah, there's no question that the Ashkenazi bloodline continues from the Israelite bloodline, right?

It just comes under the umbrella heading of Jews because that's how the 12 tribes became galvanized. Hey, thank you for the call. Oh boy, time is short.

Tell you what, Adam and Marshall, North Carolina. I don't know how far we can get, but let's start. Welcome to the line of fire.

Well, that's unfortunate. I was hoping to have a good long conversation with you, but... Well, it's tough to have a good long conversation and a short radio broadcast, but throw out the in brief, at least. You understood, absolutely. So, yeah, I haven't listened in a while and I just jumped on here and listened to, not the last caller, but the one before talking about observant of the Torah, and so my, I think rather than an answer to a question, I was hoping to have a conversation of back and forth as regards to, I guess my question would be, should any who worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and have faith in Yeshua explain to me why they should not walk according to Torah? Of course, because God gave us a new and better covenant. Yeshua fulfilled what was written.

Jeremiah 31? Yeah, mm-hmm. Yeah, so... So, he put art and caused us to want to do it, correct? Right, so do you want to offer blood sacrifices? Not at all, and I don't want to eat pork either.

I want to do all of it. No, no, hang on, do you want to offer blood sacrifices? Because that was part of the Torah.

No. Okay, why not? Because there is no temple, there is no levitical point. What if there was, what if there was a temple standing? Would you want to offer blood sacrifices? Well, if that's what he commanded, I see it in Isaiah, is it 65 where he says when Yeshua is reigning during the millennial reign? No, but right now, right now, if there's a temple standing, would you want to offer blood sacrifices?

No, not at this point. I have Yeshua as his right hand father. Exactly, okay, exactly. So that's the whole point, Adam, that under the new and better covenant, we are not required to call to do some of the things written in the Torah, that God has given us a new and better way through Yeshua.

So the moral commandments of the Torah he takes to a higher level, everything having to do with priesthood, with approach to God, the sacrificial system, he fulfills in his own... Hebrews, the priesthood had to change, correct? Exactly, exactly. Right, right. So listen, tell you what, hopefully we can have this conversation another time, because I've got just a handful of seconds. We can have an intelligent conversation back and forth on this. Obviously, we can't take a whole show on it, but feel free to call in another day, Thursday or Friday. We normally work for this, and we'll have our conversation. You've obviously thought about this, and we can have a good intelligent conversation back and forth on it.

Fair enough? But, Adam, I saw in the description you wanted to have a discussion, but I wanted to bring you on nonetheless, at least while we had a few seconds. All right, so hopefully to be resumed. And anyone who couldn't get through today, by the way, 15 minutes from now, we're starting our weekly exclusive YouTube chat, 4.15 Eastern Time, at Ask Dr. Brown, askdrbrown on YouTube. Let's continue our interaction there. God bless. Another program powered by the Truth Network.