Insights Into the Hebrew Language

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Are you ready for some fascinating insights into the Hebrew language? It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Michael Brown is the Director of the Coalition of Conscience and President of Fire School of Ministry. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH, that's 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks friends for joining us on this thoroughly Jewish Thursday broadcast on The Line of Fire. A little later in the show, I want to play a special clip for you. Our brand new TV show exclusively on the Awakening TV network, brand new TV network, that's debatable, just aired for the very first time, I believe it's going to be a tremendous series that will minister to a lot of people, but we've got an excerpt to play, a few minute excerpt from the broadcast, so we're going to do that a little bit later in the show, and the phone lines are open, not just for Jewish related questions, but in particular, if you have a question about Hebrew, Hebrew language, a verse in the Hebrew Bible, Hebrew word, something you've heard about the language, or how it works, or something like that, any question of any kind, yeah, Jewish related, we'll take those, but any question of any kind, in particular about Hebrew, the Hebrew language, or something in the Hebrew Bible to do with the language or translation, give me a call, 866-348-7884. Okay, every language operates differently. Every language has different syntax, different sentence structure, what words you put first, what words you put last.

Every language is different, is unique in certain ways. There are language families that have similarities between them, so the Semitic language family, there are similarities between the languages, be it Southeast Semitic or Northwest Semitic or wherever it lay, there are similarities, and yet each language is a distinct language, and most of the Semitic languages have their own distinct script, so even though they may have more in common than say the Romance languages and things like that, they each have their own script, or many of them have their own script, but each language unique, different, and then poetry in one language may be different than poetry in another language. One language may use rhyme more, another may use meter more, another a combination of both, and then when you're translating from one language into another, you always have the question of do I want to be as literal as possible, so try to follow the sentence structure, the order of the original as much as possible to give the reader in the target language a feel for what's happening in the original language, or do I want to do my best to convey in readable, let's say we're translating into English, in readable clear English what the original says, so translators struggle with it, and then you have something totally different, a paraphrase where you are rephrasing it, you're putting it in your own words. To say this again, never ever ever ever use a paraphrase as your primary Bible.

Never ever ever use a paraphrase as your primary Bible, because you are getting it rephrased through someone else's mindset and lens and ideology, it's kind of like a mini commentary as you're reading it. But you have what's called dynamic translations, which are translations but will not so much follow the original word order as say what was this text saying, word by word, phrase by phrase, how can we best say it in our own language, and then you have those that are more literal that are saying okay, let's try to convey the feel of the original into the language we're going into, say in this case English, even if in doing so it doesn't read that well in the language you're translating. So the problem with that is that it reads beautifully in the original language and powerfully. Now you're sacrificing that by translating it into English in a bit of a stiff way. The virtue of that is, but hey, you kind of know here's where the original author was putting his emphasis or if he was using the same word in the same context, it's being translated like that. On the flip side, if you go the dynamic way, the virtue of that is it's vibrant in the Hebrew, it's vibrant in the Greek, and you're putting it into English in a vibrant way.

Great. Now the downside there, the weakness is that perhaps the reader is not getting all the nuances that they would have gotten with the word or emphasis of the original. So that's a tension and translators have to work that through. And as I did a translation of Job and now doing a translation of Isaiah, I wrestle with these things all the time. Now here's what's interesting, Isaiah, more than any other Old Testament author, uses alliterations and rhymes. They are not a normal part of Hebrew poetry and you go through the Psalms, the Psalms do not rhyme from verse to verse. You know, we have our little English saying you're a poet and you don't know it, right?

You know, rhyming and things like that, even in that very simplistic childlike way. Hebrew does not normally rhyme. Hebrew relies more on meter, so an emphasis, maybe syllables, how many in the first half of the verse, how many in the second half. It's more ideological that the first half of the verse says this and the second half supplements it in some way.

Sometimes there is a particular meter that gives a particular feel. There's something scholars call kinah, which is a lamentation, which is an uneven feel. You have maybe three syllables in the first half of the verse and two in the second half, which gives kind of a limping, mourning feeling. But what about rhyme, alliteration?

You don't have it that much, but Isaiah does it more than anybody. So the question is, do you want to translate the way where you're giving from the Hebrew to the English in terms of vocabulary, or do you want to translate in such a way where you're giving the feel of the original? Got it?

So let's give you some examples. Isaiah chapter one, Isaiah chapter one, verse two starts out with shimushamayim b'hazini aritz. So notice this, shimushamayim. So you hear the shimsham, shimushamayim, b'hazini aritz, you may even have alliteration in the second half as well, which is literally, here, oh heavens, give ear, oh earth. Well, that one you can actually translate into English in such a way where they feel the alliteration a little bit, here, heavens, give ear, earth, right?

So that works. It both conveys what the Hebrew is saying accurately as well as gives a good feel in English. Okay, let's scroll down to verse 29, all right?

As we go down to verse 29 and Isaiah is, I'm sorry, verse 23, Isaiah is bringing a rebuke there and says, sarayich sororim v'chavrei ganavim. So it is literally, your princes are rebellious, but most scholars believe there's an intentional alliteration here in Isaiah, sarayich sororim. You hear that, the sar, sar, soror, sarayich sororim. So the New Jewish Publication Society translates, your rulers are rogues. I might translate, your rulers are rebels. Well, hang on, it says sarayich, which is literally your princes. It can mean rulers, but more specifically your princes. But if you say your princes are rebellious, now you're not getting the alliteration from the Hebrew. So my solution there would be, well, rulers is very close. So I would say your rulers are rebels.

And then in a footnote just say literally princes instead of, princes instead of rulers there. Okay, let me give you an example from Isaiah, the second chapter. Isaiah chapter two, and this is one of the lengthiest borrowings, alliterations, where Isaiah is conveying a message that's very important. And he says that in the last days, at the end of the age, how the mountain of the Lord's house will be exalted above all the other mountains, and all the nations will come streaming to it. It's quite an image. Some translate as if it was based on an Aramaic related word, that they'll gaze on it with joy.

Some of these other translations have it. All nations will come streaming. So they're going to come streaming up the mountain.

That's the image, right? And many peoples will come and say this. We want to go to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us of his ways and we will walk in his path. So here they are, Viyorenu midrachav v'nelchah b'orchotav. Now he turns and says to his own people, Israel, because his own people have been walking in disobedience. And here he's saying in the future, all the nations will come streaming to Jerusalem and want to learn from the ways of God. So he turns to his own people in verse five and says, Beit Yaakov, house of Jacob, l'chu v'nelchah b'or Adonai, come and let us walk in the light of the Lord. So there is an absolute definite play on the words of the nations who say about the God of Jacob, Viyorenu midrachav v'nelchah b'orchotav.

And he will teach us of his ways and we will walk in his paths. And then this, oh house of Jacob, l'chu v'nelchah b'or Adonai. So you have the same words here, v'nelchah, and we will, they say, let's go. So here he says, l'chu, let's go.

And then what? V'nelchah, and we will walk, both say the same thing. But when the nations say, b'or chotav, in his paths, they say, b'or Adonai, in the light of the Lord. Clear example in the book of Isaiah of powerful alliteration playing with the Hebrew. How do you convey that in English? In some cases you can, in some cases you can't.

It's just, you just can't do it. One last example, Isaiah chapter five, Isaiah chapter five, and there is the parable of the vineyard. And it says, v'gam yekhev chatev beau. And he even used a wine press in it, a yekhev, v'gam yekhev chatev beau, va'yekav la'asot an'avim. V'yekav, wine press, va'yekav, and he waited.

So you have a definite, he waited expectantly, you have a definite wordplay there. But then the most dramatic is down a few verses, okay? So let's just look at this one as we scroll down to verse seven here.

This is the most dramatic of all, that God says the vineyard, that's the house of Israel, that's my people. And he waited, God waited, l'mishpat, for justice, v'hineh. But look, mispat, murder, lit'sdakah, for righteousness, v'hineh, t'sakah, a cry.

So he looked for mispat, instead mispat, he looked for t'sadakah, instead t'sakah. How in the world do you convey that in English? I've wrestled with that. We'll be right back. It's the Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome, welcome to Thoroughly Jewish Thursday. This is Michael Brown, 866-34-TRUTH. Any Jewish-related question of any kind, as always on a Thursday.

But in particular, if you have a Hebrew-related question, give me a call, 866-348-7884. So there is a brand new subscription-based network, the Awakening TV Network, AWKNG. Celebration Church in Jacksonville is behind it with a large network of supporters and investors to really make it into a very, very high-quality network. And it's got everything from cooking shows to teen talk, et cetera, to Bible teachers getting on, and Dr. Michael Heiser, for example, I have a show on there. We've been in dialogue about the best way that we could do something for the network and partner together. And we've got a couple of things in the works, one still to come. But the project that we started on, that we've already recorded eight shows for, they built a studio just for this, and we've recorded their first eight shows, and every one of them is worth watching. It's called That's Debatable with Dr. Brown. If you want to find out more or follow things, just follow That's Debatable on Instagram.

All right? That's Debatable on Instagram. Or if you follow us anywhere on social media, we'll be posting about this. But that's the link specifically for Awakening TV. Again, it's subscription-based, but part of our arrangement is we can take a three-minute excerpt from the 30-minute show each week and play it for all of you to watch freely. Then if you want to watch more, of course, you can subscribe to the network.

It's very inexpensive to do so. But I want to play an excerpt. This aired, so premiered yesterday, and some of the shows are more focused debates, like against an atheist or a Muslim. This was as friendly and gracious as could be both ways, but we'll give you a little preview. Again, this is a three-minute highlight from our new show. After this, we're going straight to the phones.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to That's Debatable with me, Dr. Michael Brown, where everything is debatable, there's only one truth. On today's show, we're going to be posing the question, are there good reasons to leave Christianity?

You have your own issues, your own questions, but you came here for a debate, and that's exactly what we're going to do. John Steingard is former lead singer and guitarist of the award-winning and Grammy-nominated Christian band Hawk Nelson. After going public with a change in belief and resulting departure from Christianity, John now hosts a podcast and YouTube show, which focuses on the gray areas between belief and unbelief. He currently identifies as an agnostic atheist. The question we're pondering is, are there good reasons to leave Christianity?

I'm someone who fairly publicly did do exactly that, so I do feel that there are good reasons. For me, these reasons are sort of twofold. The first is experiential, it's sort of like, how do I see Christianity playing out in the world? And the second is intellectual, it's like, are the claims of Christianity true? And so I'll tackle each of those one at a time. The first one, on the sort of experiential side, I'll be the first to admit that I know lots of people who have done great good in the world that were motivated by their Christian faith.

So I think that that is something that's worth considering. At the same time, I've seen a lot of issues on which a lot of harm has been done, and I think that harm is sometimes justified by a Christian worldview. All I had my entire believing life was challenges, intellectual challenges, and then coming to faith in a Pentecostal church that believed in divine healing.

What if you don't see it? So I wrestled through those things and agonized over the issues, but had the exact opposite experience that the more the years went on, the more convinced I was of the truth of the Bible, the truth of the gospel. The journey that I would challenge you to go on and encourage you to go on is one where we say, can we have everything that God has spoken of with his supernatural intervention without some of the negative baggage?

That's the great challenge. That's the journey I've been on for almost 50 years, but I'm sure that God and his word are solid, true, and reliable. I would think deep down there's something inside of you that says there must be more, that speaks of immorality, that speaks of right and wrong and good and evil, that speaks of purpose and destiny. And honestly, I don't understand if you take God out of the picture, how there can really be purpose, meaning, destiny. The fact that we desire some sort of transcendent purpose is actually evidence that we would, in fact, create these systems of religion to help give us that. I just urge you again in the midst of the wonder, the mystery, don't exclude. You had an experience, you've walked away from, quote, the God of Christianity, reexamine, reconsider. That gives you a little excerpt.

Yes. That's a three-minute excerpt from the broadcast. You can find out more Awakening TV, AWK, and GM. Let's pray for John, for God to work in his life in such a way that he encounters God more deeply than ever. All right, to the phones, 866-34-TRUTH.

We start with Derek in Detroit, Michigan. Thanks for calling the line of fire. Hey, Dr. Brown, thanks for taking my call.

You're very welcome. So I just had a question about the word nefesh, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but the main word in Hebrew that's translated to soul in the Bible? Yeah, accent the first syllable, nefesh, and you got it exactly right, nefesh. Yes, sir. Okay. Okay, nefesh. Okay. So just a couple questions. First, I wanted to ask, you know, in general, why that and how that can be translated into so many different English words, so many different ones.

And then, well, actually, first, I'll let you just answer that. Yeah. So nefesh is multifaceted in meaning. It can just refer to a person.

So you know, if Abraham acquired X number of souls, it just meant people that worked for him. It can be a way of saying me, just, you know, I myself. It can refer to the inner being in certain passages, and it can actually mean neck. Probably that was the most fundamental meaning it had to do either with breathing and then with breathing, breath, hence life, and then breathing, hence throat, neck.

So when the psalmist would say, the waters have come up to my nefesh, meaning up to my neck, or they put shackles on my nefesh, meaning neck. So different contexts, it has different meanings. And it's the same with English words. We're just used to it, either so we see a word in 10 different contexts. You know, for example, take the word hard, right? If I say the test is hard or the rock is hard, I mean it in two different ways, correct?

But when you read it in English, you don't even think twice. So that's why the various meanings. And then when we say soul, what do we actually mean by that? You know, that can be ambiguous, but that's why the word itself in different contexts can have different meanings. So when the psalmist says, bless the Lord, all my soul and all that is within me.

So is he saying bless the Lord, you know, my inner being, or is he saying me, myself, with everything, bless the Lord? So even the translation there, you know, can vary. Okay, yeah, that makes sense to me. But I'm dealing with somebody who, you know, there's a lot of different doctrines out there.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with, like, the Hebraic perspective, I think it's Johnny Renner that has authored that. But basically, the argument on that word is, he's arguing that that word nefesh refers only to the whole, you know, being as a creature, and so there's no such thing as the eternal soul. That's basically what they're arguing.

Yeah, well, that's unrelated. That's actually unrelated to the meaning of nefesh, because the Bible can speak of someone's nefesh leaving them. So is it their breath that leaves them, or the soul that leaves them? Or does the nefesh go into Sheol, into the netherworld? So whether or not the Hebrew Bible speaks of an eternal soul or not is a separate issue. The word nefesh in and of itself could go either way.

You could say it simply refers to human breath, or it does refer to a human soul, which can exist outside of a body. And then you'd have to determine based on other verses. So it's a legitimate question to ask.

It's a perfectly fair question to ask. Does the Bible speak of an eternal soul? The Greek equivalent is suke. And then you have, but it's not an exact equivalent, because again, each language has a different emphasis. But if you think of Matthew 10 28, where Jesus says, Fear those who kill the body but can't kill the soul. He's originally speaking in Hebrew or Aramaic, so this would have been the word used, right? So kill the body but can't kill the soul, but rather fear God who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

That would indicate that the soul can live on outside the body, but then of course God can destroy it. Yeah, so that's a legitimate question, but it's a totally separate one from the actual meaning of nefesh. Fair enough? Yes, sir. Thank you. All right, thank you for the question.

I really appreciate it. 866-34-TRUTH. Okay, we're going right back to the phones on the other side of the break. If you've tried to call in on Thursdays and Fridays and found the phone lines jammed and you can't get through, now's a great time to call.

We'll be able to take some more calls, 866-34-87884. Yes, it's true that we could focus on the continued rising tide of antisemitism right within Congress, within the House of Representatives and people like Ilhan Omar. Yes, you could talk about the rising tide of antisemitism in other countries abroad, serious concerns. Fortunately, you can talk about that almost every single week because that's the world in which we live.

And Jew hatred is almost the default attitude of the world outside of God's intervening grace or the influence of a Bible-related message that changed people's thinking. But the good news is that despite the hatred, God's purposes for His people Israel will ultimately prevail. We'll be right back. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome, welcome to The Line of Fire on this thoroughly Jewish Thursday. At the beginning of the broadcast, those just joining us now, I talked about beauty of the Hebrew language, uniqueness of the Hebrew language, every language being different. And the challenge when the rare time when the Hebrew writer uses a play on words, uses a alliteration, a rhyme, there's not a lot of rhyming in the Hebrew Bible. You have more of it say in what would be like a hymnic passage in the New Testament where it seems they're quoting an early hymn and you've got more plays on words and things like that or alliteration.

You have some of the Hebrew Bible, but not much. And again, poetry in English where we used to rhyme, but that's not a characteristic of ancient Hebrew poetry. Modern Hebrew poetry can use that, but ancient Hebrew wouldn't do that.

Even medieval Hebrew poetry will have rhyme and things like that, but not ancient. So in any case, when you're translating and I'm working on the book of Isaiah now, I really wrestled over some verses where is there a way? Is there a way where I can convey the alliteration, the word play in the Hebrew, the rhyme in the Hebrew translated into English, whereas the English makes sense, whereas the English is conveying what the Hebrew is saying? Or do you just translate it into English to convey the thought and then put a footnote saying here's the play on words? So I've wrestled with that, spent considerable time on a couple of verses, really chewing on different ways to do things. But I like to take the challenge to try to convey that so you get the feel as much as possible. If you look at the ISV, the International Standard Version, and if you look at the rendering in the New Testament, oh, say Philippians 2, 1 Timothy 3, each of which are quoting ancient hymns or credal sayings among the believers, they're written in rhyme to convey that this is different.

That's challenging to do. Here all of you who are German speakers or German readers, I want to encourage you to look at Martin Luther's original Mighty Fortress is Our God, right? And then to look at the English translation because the English translation rhymes faithfully. The question is at what expense?

In other words, how accurately does it bring the German into the English in terms of the overall feel and message? And how much does it sacrifice to get the beauty of the rhyme, the flow, and that? So that's a question for you. All right. 866-34-TRUTH.

We go to Andy in Hinsdales, New Hampshire. Welcome to the line of fire. Hello, Dr. Brown. Shalom. Shalom.

And I wanted to make a comment. I love the Yiddish language, how they use words like schlep, minutia, mishigas, those are all awesome words. And my question actually was, where in the Bible or why do the Jewish people not utter God's name or when God's name is written it's not written in full? Yeah, so it's just based on the tradition that the name is too sacred to pronounce.

The tradition seems to be at least a couple thousand years old. It's reflected, for example, in Septuagint. We don't have the original manuscripts of the Septuagint, so we don't know, it doesn't go back to the very beginning of Dead Sea Scrolls, the same thing where you would either not in the Septuagint instead of using the equivalent of Yahweh's name, it would say Kurios Lord, or in Dead Sea Scrolls you would write it in a different script, either that was reverential or saying we pronounce it differently. So for sure, this has been a tradition, the better part of the last two thousand years, if not for several hundred years before that, where God's name was considered too sacred to pronounce, so when you would see the tetragrammaton YHWH, when you would see that, you would say Lord instead. Now traditional Jews have gone further with that, traditional Jews have gone further so that if they refer to Elohim, God, if they're not reading from scripture or praying, when they say Elohim, they instead will say Elokim, they pronounce it differently. So it goes even further, when they spell it, they won't even spell God, they'll spell G-D or L-R-D, and they normally refer to God as Hashem, which literally means the name. So instead of pronouncing His name, you call Him the name, but then Hashem becomes the name in itself. So it's just a Jewish tradition out of reverence for God that His name is too sacred to pronounce, and then it comes down to any title for God is too sacred to spell directly, unless it's in the Bible or in a prayer book, a simple reason. Now would the English translation also be Jehovah?

No, highly unlikely. That's based on a misunderstanding. That's the vowels from Hebrew, Adonai, with the consonants, so that's Lord, with the consonants for YHWH. YHWH would be the most likely pronunciation, but we can't be dogmatic. If you go to AskDrBrown.org, A-S-K-D-R Brown.org, AskDrBrown.org, just type in Jehovah, and you'll see a whole article that I've written that discusses that, so the original pronunciation of the name. Those who say, oh no, absolutely, we know it's Jehovah or Yehovah, sorry.

The strong evidence, overwhelming evidence is against it, but it's a discussion to have. All right, so the way you see it in our English Bibles, the 6,300 times roughly that YHWH occurs, the tetragrammaton, you'll see it as capital L, then small caps, O-R-D, so not capital L, then small o-r-d, but capital L, small caps, O-R-D, and that's telling you that the original is the tetragrammaton, the divine name. Hey, thank you, Andy, for the call. 866-344-TRUTH, let's go to you in Edmonton, Canada. Welcome to the line of fire. Thanks, Brother Michael, how are you doing? Doing very well, thank you. Good. Thank you very much for taking my call, I really appreciate it.

Sure. Listen, I've been struggling with the Hebrew translation, because I use the Blue Letter Bible a lot, and I like to study the etymology of the different Hebrew words that are found in Scripture, so I went into—and one of the things that I'm struggling with is Genesis 3.17, where God is handing down the—what word I'm looking for—He's handing down the judgment upon Adam for listening to the voice of his wife, and he says, in the ESV it says, cursed is the ground because of you. Cursed is the ground because of you.

In the KJV it says, for thy sake the ground is cursed. So my question is, because I want to understand the meaning, because I've studied the etymology of the word, I think it's a blur, because of, you know, and I'm wondering, is it because, in other words, it's your fault, Adam, that you did this, therefore I'm doing this? Or is it for your sake? In other words, because you did this, I need to do this for your sake, to help you— No, it's not—in this context it definitely means because of you. In another context it's possible, again, with prepositions and certain particles of speech, parts of speech, there can be a variance in meaning—I mean, this is—for your account, what does that mean? You know, for your sake or because of you.

That's not a preposition, but to use that as an example. No, Bava Recha here is definitely because of you. That's certainly what it means. It's not a good thing, it's a negative thing.

It's the ground is being cursed, Bava Recha, because of you, for sure. Gotcha. Okay. Okay. That was my question.

Absolutely. And again, if you look at a lexicon, it'll give you, you know, sometimes pages of references as to—here, let's take the preposition, be, right, so it's one letter in Hebrew. It can mean in, it can mean by, it can mean through, it can be by means of, and that's just, you know, one preposition.

But again, we have these things in English, we're just not conscious of them because it's our language. Thank you for the question. So here, let me ask you this. When you leave your neighborhood, do you go up the street or down the street? Is it up the street?

Is it down the street? So here, how do you say it again, do you just walk up the street here or do you walk down the street? There's a pretty big difference, up versus down, right?

And yet, we might use it either way. One person might say, walk down the street, then turn right. The other might say, walk up the street, then turn right. Let's say you're just learning English, it's like, well, which way do I go? What's the same way? Well, no, you said up, you said down, but same—so you see how the ambiguity can be there.

And then you try in a Bible translation to see exactly what it means, et cetera. It's a science. All right.

Let's go to Sid in Bastrop, Texas. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Shalom, Dr. Brown, thank you for taking my call. You bet. Yes. I have a question concerning this lost Hebrew Gospels of Catalan. Is there such a thing— Yeah, so where are you getting the information from about this?

Well, I went to the NRB 2021 last week, and there was a booth set up there. And the gentleman had some paperwork there, and he says, he wrote in a book, Sons of Zion versus the Sons of Greece, and he talks about this lost, the Hebrew Gospels of Catalonia, and the Shem Tov Matthew. So here's the deal. Actually, someone referenced his work the other day, so I bought his book, and I've got it on my desk in my study at home. Number one, there are a lot of exaggerated and even inaccurate statements in his book.

In other words, he makes a lot of sensationalistic claims and does raise a bunch of things that people should be thinking about and wondering about. But in terms of scholarly rigor, in terms of Semitic scholarship, in terms of understanding the ancient versions and how they work and manuscript evidence, just spot checking at different places, I've found quite a few errors, misstatements, exaggerated statements. So the big question is this. Are there original Hebrew Gospels that have been lost?

That's question one. Question two, are the manuscripts that we have of Hebrew Gospels, like the Shem Tov Gospel, which we understand was a translation done by a rabbi into Hebrew to counter Christian missionaries? And the argument would be, George Howard wrote about this extensively, the argument would be that it wasn't just a translation it did, but that underlying that is an original Hebrew Matthew.

Nehemia Gordon has argued for that. That's a separate issue. So are there original Hebrew Gospels that have been lost? Question one.

Question two, do these later manuscripts, over a thousand years later, do they in any way reflect those originals? So I'll answer on the other side of the break. Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution. Get into the Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome, welcome to Thirdly Jewish Thursday on the Line of Fire. So Sid, in Texas, was there an original Hebrew Gospel of Matthew? Possibly, but it seems more certain that there was a collection of the original sayings of Jesus in Hebrew, possibly Aramaic, but probably Hebrew, in a collection of his original sayings that we have lost. And it's possible, there was another book, you know, maybe Hebrews, there was a Hebrew version of that, that the early Jewish believers had, that's possible. But if those were there, there's some ancient references in early church writings, as well as in early Jewish writings, about the Hebrew Gospel or Hebrew collection of sayings or Aramaic collection of sayings that Matthew preserved, or another book or two. But we don't have any of those. If those existed, we don't have any of them whatsoever. When someone says this is based in the original Hebrew, we don't have an original Hebrew Gospel. There was no ancient manuscript preserving any of that, or the earliest Aramaic. We don't have that.

What about these later manuscripts from 1,500 years, etc., do they preserve any of an original Hebrew Matthew? Possibly, but highly unlikely. That's the best answer.

It's very exciting. Oh, we discovered it. It's possible, but it's highly unlikely. Just to say that if there were any things written in Hebrew or... In the original language, or a Hebrew version of Matthew or of Hebrews, we simply don't have them. They do not exist. Okay. I have one more question, real quick question. Yeah, go ahead. Real quick.

Yes. So I know there's... You have biblical Hebrew, which is the Hebrew spoken or written from Moses, and then you have, you know... And then there's like, I've heard like a Mishnaic Hebrew, like a Hebrew of the Mishnah. There's vast differences between... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's substantial differences. There's biblical Hebrew, which itself has a lot of variation, because that's over like a thousand years, and a lot of it, the vocalization is kind of leveled out by the later Masoretes, or the traditions have leveled it out. But within biblical Hebrew itself, you... Within biblical Hebrew itself, you have variations in style, northern and southern dialects, and from the most ancient to the latest. And then Mishnaic Hebrew would be the development that is connected to the latest books of the Old Testament.

You know, some of the similarities might be found there. So there are definitely differences. So Rabbinic Hebrew, then as it develops into Middle Ages, and then modern Hebrew is a big jump. So the difference from biblical Hebrew to Mishnaic Hebrew is there, but more minor. The difference from biblical Hebrew to modern Hebrew is a much more massive jump. So I'm strong in biblical Hebrew, fairly weak in modern Hebrew, especially speaking. My reading's better, but speaking. And there are plenty of Israelis, I mean, born speaking Hebrew, totally fluent, but they struggle with the Hebrew of the Hebrew Bible. Just like English language.

Any language that's been around this long, right, you know, you're going to have things where from a thousand years later, it's going to be harder to read or understand. Thanks for the question. Let's go over to Todd in Provo, Utah. Thanks for calling the line of fire. Yeah, first of all, thank you, Dr. Brown, for your wonderful program. I really enjoyed it. I appreciate your study and skill and getting into the details. It's refreshing and instructive, and I benefit from it. So thank you. You're welcome.

Great. My question has to do with the word selah, S-E-L-A-H. It's in Psalm chapter 3, verses 2, 4, and 8, where the psalmist will make a statement, you know, that's profound and beautiful, and then at the end, he'll just say selah. And I don't know if that's kind of like a modern version of amen or hallelujah or wow or yeah, this is it, man, or ponder that, think of that, you know. I don't know what it means, and I'm just curious, because I have a friend named Selah from a Jewish family, and they don't know what it means. Right, so the reality—right, it's found all over the Psalms, selah. The reality is that scholars debate the meaning. Some think it's a musical notation, some think—if it has a meaning, if there's one thing you'll hear a lot, especially in church circles, it's kind of like a pause to get you to think, like ponder this, right, like, so, you know, not necessarily wow, but just stop, pause, ponder, think.

But we don't know, if I was to pull up right now the most major comprehensive biblical Hebrew lexicons, dictionaries, massive data in them, you'd find that there's disagreement. So the most common idea is that it's a musical notation, and we don't know the meaning of it, or it's something to pause, reflect. You know, others, you know, if it's a musical notation, you know, modulating or doing something with a key, but we don't know for sure, and it's best not to be dogmatic on it. But what I would do is just make sure you—every so often there are translations that just omit it because they think it's some musical notation, we don't know what it means, but it is part of the original Hebrew text, so it shouldn't be omitted. It just put in selah, even though we don't know what it means. But what I'd encourage you is get a concordance, right, just, you know, search, search in Bible software or online every time it occurs, and then read all the verses and see, does it seem like a pause?

Does it seem—does that fit? That's how I'll do my research. If there's something I'm looking at and there's a particular meaning it's supposed to have, so I'll look at every time it occurs, hundreds of times, and say, okay, it's in these three categories, or it always seems to mean this, or boy, it's clear here, it's not clear there. That's how you can best sort it out.

But scholars agree with your Jewish friends that we don't know exactly what it means. Sorry to burst any bubbles there. All right, and let's go over to David in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Thanks for calling. Hey, how are you doing? Doing just great, thank you. Great.

I heard you for many years and had the opportunity to actually hear you speak at New Canaan Society in Winston a few years ago, so— Ah, okay, yeah, with Stu Epperson, Jr. Yeah, yeah, I remember that. Absolutely. Well, real quick, a question that's kind of been on my mind for many years, and I don't have that adequate resources, even with the internet, to find anything to get a concise answer.

I'm beyond studying something for four years to get an answer, so I figured you'd be the best source to ask this question. It's simply this. With all the places, I think primarily Paul, but I think Matthew also puts it quite a bit. In fact, I would venture to say that most of the New Testament quotes in the Old Testament are from the Septuagint. Would you think that's true? Oh yeah, yeah, no argument about that.

Okay. Well, how do you think—first of all, why do you think in certain places the Septuagint, when it's translated into English, is so different from the Masoretic text, and how did—I guess the Jews of the—was it 100, 200 BC when the Septuagint came about? I guess since they're closer to feeling like, when scholars today look at it—this is my guess, and then I'll be quiet and just let you respond—they trusted their understanding of it to trust that, rather than us, 2,000 years later, trying to understand ancient or classical Hebrew verses where they were. But then that's putting a lot of emphasis on the non-Christian sectors. So just give me a paragraph on that.

Yeah, I gotta jump in just because I've got a very short time here. Number one, the New Testament writers writing in Greek primarily quoted from the Septuagint because that was the Greek Bible. So if you're quoting in Greek, just like when I'm writing, I'm quoting in English, so I'll use the ESV or NIV or some English translation, and then here and there I'll translate directly—if there's a special point I want to make, I'll translate directly from the Hebrew or modify a translation a little bit based on the Greek, which I'm not as strong in. But remember, if you're a reader and you're getting this and the Bible's being quoted and you have access—can't read the Hebrew—you have access to the Septuagint, maybe in your Jewish community you have access to it or you've learned it. So you're quoting from the Bible that people are reading, so that's why they're primarily quoting the Septuagint. Now here and there, there are clear deviations. Paul will clearly deviate from the Septuagint at times. Matthew, for example, in Matthew 8 and Matthew 27 clearly deviates from the Septuagint at times. So they did deviate when there was a point they wanted to make.

As to why sometimes the rendering will be so different, maybe Hebrews 10 is the most extreme, quoting from Psalm 40 in the Septuagint, a body, you have prepared me, whereas the Hebrew is literally oznayim karita li, is ears you have borne out or cut out or borne through for me. What does that mean? It's obscure. There's great debate among Hebrew scholars to this day as to what it means, and the Septuagint apparently in what would be called pars pro toto, the part for the whole, says what means the consecrating of the ear, so the preparing of a body. But it's obscure.

In other words, it's difficult, and that's the conclusion they came to. Your last question as to why should we rely on our scholarship more than the Septuagint is because we can see from other ancient versions. We can see from, say, the ancient Aramaic translation paraphrase, the Targum. We can see from discussion of verses and how they're used where the Septuagint may have just gone its own way, or the authors or the translators of Septuagint may have had a point they wanted to make and they were trying to illustrate something, etc. So yes, we use it.

We highly esteem it. We use it as an important resource in terms of how things were translated and understood. But then there were other Greek versions. There's Theodotion and Aquila and things like that because the Septuagint was not accepted as the standard even back then. Good questions, hope the answers are helpful. See you tomorrow.