"For Moses has had throughout many generations those who preach him in every city, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath." Acts 15:21

The ancient tradition of publicly reading the Torah of Moses each Sabbath during the course of one year continues in Jewish communities throughout the world. In our new "Torah Pearls" series a Karaite Jew, a Methodist, and a self-styled "Recovering Pentecostal" will meet on the common ground of the Word of God each week to discuss the weekly Torah "portion". This is a rare international collaboration of men of faith on three continents coming from three different religious backgrounds. In the spirit of A Prayer to Our Father, we have decided to take a "Berean" approach by placing the primary focus on the Old Testament context of the weekly portion, "testifying to both small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said" (Acts 26:22).

The new Torah Pearls series will be posted weekly at Truth2U.org.

Archives of past episodes are already available for download or streaming audio.

Nehemia Gordon
Jerusalem, Israel

Our tour events will be posted at:
http://APrayerToOurFather.com/appearances/

Nehemia Gordon
Jerusalem, Israel

Keith Johnson has taught me that sometimes the "pastoral" thing to do is to let your opponents speak. In this spirit, he has posted the "highlights" of an interview with the self-proclaimed "instigator" behind the recent events that led to the "Aramaic Letter". Keith has also added some pictures of documents mentioned in the interview along with images that reflect his interpretation. The highlights of the interview with the instigator are posted at: http://vimeo.com/22128964. I believe this interview fully confirms everything I said in my note "The Aramaic Letter Exposed". The full 95-minute uncut interview can be found at http://truth2u.org/.

The recent incident with the Aramaic Letter reminded me about an unreturned library book that I took out from the Spertus College of Judaica in 1990. When I was in high school I used to ditch class to go to the college's library in downtown Chicago to read books about Jewish history and Biblical studies. One of the books I came across mentioned a Jewish translation of the Tanakh preserved by the Syriac Aramaic speaking church. I grew up reading Jewish Aramaic translations of the Tanakh such as Onkelos and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. The thought that a lost Jewish translation would be preserved by a Christian church fascinated me. I searched through the library catalogue and discovered they had a series of volumes containing the "Peshitta" translation of the Tanakh into Syriac Aramaic. When I opened up the Peshitta Tanakh I was surprised to find it written in an unfamiliar script. Jewish Aramaic is written in Hebrew script, but this Christian version of the Old Testament was written in "Syriac" Aramaic. Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic that in ancient times was spoken in the region of Edessa, today in northern Syria and eastern Turkey. The Syriac script contained the same twenty-two letters as Hebrew but was written in a cursive style that looked like Arabic squiggles. I decided to take out a Syriac grammar from the library and teach myself to read the script. It took me months but in the end I was able to decipher the Syriac text. I remember going to visit a Syriac Aramaic speaking church in Chicago to consult the priest about proper pronunciation. This was the first time I ever spoke to a Christian priest in my life. I'd be lying if I said this experience was a paragon of Jewish-Christian dialogue. The priest remarked to me that I could read better than many of the teenagers in his church; I was 16 at the time. He then added in a disappointed tone: "If only you believed in Jesus!" He went on to tell me I needed to accept Jesus or burn in hell forever and tried to shove his beliefs down my throat. It was a very unpleasant experience and needless to say I never went back to that church. I decided to check out the Syriac Aramaic Peshitta translation of the Old Testament from the library and kept renewing it so I could practice reading the exotic script on my own.

After graduating high school, I spent the summer of 1990 in California and when I returned to Chicago I found out my mother had decided to make Aliyah (move to Israel). In preparation for her move she sold her massive collection of books to a used book store. She apparently didn't realize that among her thousands of books were about a dozen of my library books including the Syriac Aramaic Peshitta translation of the Tanakh. That used bookstore sure got a bang for its buck buying my family's books in bulk. Also included in the sale were two binders full of rare coins that I spent my childhood collecting. To this day I get choked up remembering my precious Morgan dollars and Walking Liberty half-dollars that were gone when I returned from the West Coast. In retrospect the loss of the coins and the library books was well worth it as it resulted in the Aliyah of my mother and two youngest sisters. I haven't thought about this in years but last week I contacted the library and compensated them for the library books I never returned.

A few years after my encounter with the Aramaic priest in Chicago, I was studying at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. There I learned about two encounters that the Jews of the Middle Ages had with the Syriac Aramaic translation of the Tanakh, encounters that went far better than my own. The first is mentioned in a letter written by Timothy I, the Nestorian catholicos (patriarch) of Baghdad (Seleucia), around the year 800. Timothy writes about an Arab hunting dog that ten years earlier disappeared in the area of the Dead Sea. When the dog's master went looking for his pooch he stumbled upon a cave full of Hebrew scrolls. The Arab hunter informed the Jews of Jerusalem who came down in droves to redeem their sacred writings. Timothy was in communication with these Jews about the content of the ancient scrolls discovered in the caves. He was interested in Old Testament quotations in the New Testament which seemed to differ from his own Syriac Aramaic Old Testament. Timothy wanted to know whether any of these quotations matched the Hebrew scrolls discovered in the cave.

This seemingly fanciful story is confirmed by a 10th century Karaite Jewish historian named Jacob al-Kirkisani who mentions a Jewish sect called the "Cave People". Kirkisani explains that they are called this because their writings were discovered in a cave. A second confirmation comes from the Cairo Geniza, a medieval repository of discarded Jewish writings. The Cairo Geniza contained two key Second Temple period documents, the Damascus Covenant and the Wisdom of Ben Sira. Both documents were believed to have been lost after the destruction of the Temple but then suddenly re-appear in the Cairo Geniza a thousand years later. Apparently they were rediscovered in the cave mentioned by Timothy I. Timothy's exchange with his Jewish informants in Jerusalem is a rare example from the Middle Ages of positive interfaith dialogue between Christians and Jews, one based on mutual study and cooperation rather than antagonistic disputations and argumentation.

A second example of Jewish contact with the Syriac Aramaic Tanakh comes from the time of Hai Gaon who was the rabbinical leader of the large and important Jewish community of Babylonia in the 11th century. Hai instructed one of his disciples to contact the Nestorian catholicos and ask him about the Syriac Aramaic translation of the word YANI in Psalms 141:5. This unusual word is of uncertain meaning even today. The King James Version translates it as "(it) shall (not) break (my head)" in the verse,

" Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me; it shall be excellent oil, which SHALL not BREAK my head… Psa. 141:5 [KJV]

The Jewish Publication Society translates the same word as "let (my head not) refuse", a profoundly different translation from the King James. A survey of other English versions turns up a variety of translations such as "let (it not) anoint (my head)" (NRSV) and "let (it not) make fat (my head)" (Wycliffe). All of these are educated guesses.

Hai Gaon understood that Aramaic is a sister language to Hebrew and hoped he could learn something about this obscure word from the Syriac Aramaic translation. Today this approach is called Comparative Semitic Linguistics. It's based on the observation that all Semitic languages share common roots with similar meanings. Any modern scientific lexicon of Biblical Hebrew should contain a survey of the meaning of a given root in all the Semitic languages including Aramaic, Arabic, Akkadian, Sabean, and Geez. Hai Gaon was a pioneer in this field by consulting the Syriac Aramaic Tanakh and was revolutionary in engaging in interfaith dialogue with the Aramaic-speaking church. Here too, this interfaith dialogue was constructive and focused on learning from one another rather than divisive disputations and argumentation.

The lesson of the lost library book is that some people are not spiritually mature enough for constructive interfaith dialogue but we shouldn't let that spoil it for the rest of us. My prayer is that God continues to grant me the opportunities to follow the example of Timothy I and Hai Gaon in building bridges and looking for common ground so I can learn from others who believe in the one true God and his prophet Moses. Now if only I could find someone who can read Syriac Aramaic!

Nehemia Gordon

Jerusalem, Israel

"When the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the exiles were building a temple for the LORD, the God of Israel, they… wrote a letter to Artaxerxes. The letter was written in Aramaic script and in the Aramaic language… The king sent this reply: …issue an order to these men to stop work…" (Book of Ezra, Chapter 4)

I recently spent two weeks traveling around Israel with Keith Johnson, the Methodist pastor who co-authored with me A Prayer to Our Father on the Hebrew origins of the Lord's Prayer. The original purpose of Keith's visit was to prepare for a 12-part teaching series on Christian television entitled "Finding Common Ground in an Ancient Hebrew Prayer." The day after Keith arrived in Jerusalem he received an ominous e-mail from the general manager of the television satellite network informing him that the planned filming was cancelled. She went on to say that if Keith wanted the program to ever be reconsidered, his Jewish friend Nehemia Gordon—that's me—would be required to participate in a televised debate with a Jewish convert to Christianity. When Keith informed me of this I couldn't believe my ears. We had gone from a Jew and Christian walking together on common ground, back to the time of the Spanish Inquisition. In those dark centuries the Catholic Church pressured Jews to engage in public disputations with their "converted peers." The most infamous of these disputations took place in 1263 when the rabbinical sage Nachmanides was forced to debate Pablo Christiani. This Jewish convert to Christianity was notorious for convincing the French king to force the unconverted Jews in his realm to wear the hated yellow star, a practice later adopted by the Nazis. Nachmanides knew that nothing but hatred and persecution ever resulted from these debates and he pleaded with King James I of Aragon to release him from the disputation. Here I was nearly 750 years later and the general manager of a Christian television network was giving me an ultimatum to engage in a disputation with one of my "converted peers." It was surreal. I felt like she might as well have asked me to wear a yellow star to make the picture complete.

The morning after receiving the ultimatum, I returned from walking my dog to find Keith sitting on the sofa with an astonished look on his face, the kind he gets when something spiritual happens. He told me that when he woke up he heard a voice saying "The book of Ezra, stopping the work." He then opened his Bible to the 4th chapter of Ezra where he read about a letter sent by the enemies of Israel to the king of Persia. In the letter they demanded that the king stop the Jews from building the Jerusalem Temple, the place where God caused his name to dwell forever (1 Kings 9:3; 2 Kings 21:7). What's unusual about this letter is that it's one of only a handful of passages in the Tanakh written in Aramaic. At the time Aramaic was the international language (like English today) and the Book of Ezra quotes the Aramaic Letter word for word in its original language. Keith told me he understood the significance of this when he checked his e-mail a few minutes later. There was a follow-up from the manager of the Christian television network with more details about her ultimatum. She explained that her converted Jew was challenging the validity of the Aleppo Codex, the Leningrad Codex, and Hebrew Matthew, claiming instead the "textual primacy" of his own Aramaic version of the New Testament. Keith had referenced the first two of these Hebrew manuscripts in a 12-part teaching series he had already done on the same television network. Because of the converted Jew's challenge, Keith's first series on the subject of God's holy name was now pulled from television after airing only seven episodes. A modern "Aramaic Letter" had been sent and the work of honoring God's holy name was stopped.

When Keith discussed with me the idea of debating the converted Aramaic Jew, I knew the issue was not really the three Hebrew texts. The Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex are indisputably the most important manuscripts of the Tanakh or "Old Testament." The Aleppo Codex is considered so important that it is on display alongside the Dead Sea Scrolls at the "Shrine of the Book," the section in Israel's national museum dedicated to the Tanakh. For its part, the Leningrad Codex serves as the basis of the Hebrew Bible used in every seminary and university in the world. As far as Hebrew Matthew is concerned, Keith and I have never claimed it was the original word-for-word Hebrew gospel written 2,000 years ago. In our book and interviews we explain that Hebrew Matthew has gone through a long process of textual transmission. Its importance is that, despite this long transmission, it is not a translation. We encourage people to consider Hebrew Matthew as "another witness" along with Greek, Aramaic, and others to the original words of Jesus, or "Yeshua" as he was known 2,000 years ago.

I knew what the ultimatum was really about from a Bible symposium Keith and I participated in last year alongside the same converted Aramaic Jew. Before agreeing to do the symposium, I made it clear I was happy to discuss textual issues but was not interested in a modern-day "disputation" about matters of faith. This was reiterated and agreed upon the night before the event. Despite all this, the converted Aramaic Jew used his platform to inflame the Christian and Messianic audience against me as a Jew who doesn't believe in Yeshua. I wasn't entirely surprised. The day before the event I knew I was in for trouble when I attended a Messianic Sabbath gathering of about 200 people. At one point in the event someone read the traditional weekly Torah portion in English. They then asked me to read the traditional portion from the Prophets in Hebrew. I was honored to read the word of God in the presence of those who believe in him and his perfect word, even if we disagree on some fundamental matters of faith. If I'm not mistaken, the section they had me read was from 1 Kings. When I finished reading in Hebrew, they asked the converted Aramaic Jew to read a section from the New Testament in Aramaic—he was there promoting his new edition of the New Testament which had the English and Aramaic on opposite pages. What followed were two of the most painful minutes I've ever experienced. The converted Aramaic Jew virtually broke his teeth on every letter, and after making it through about two verses there were calls from the audience begging him to just read it in English. He then read the English with perfect fluency. When I saw how he struggled to read his own Aramaic text, the one printed in the Bible he is supposed to have translated, I knew there would not be a serious discussion of texts at the symposium the next day.

The low point of the symposium came when the converted Aramaic Jew pointed at me and with spittle flying from his mouth warned the audience that Hebrew Matthew is contrary to faith in Yeshua because it never calls their beloved savior "Messiah." It was a powerful speech. In the Hollywood version, young women would be fainting and grown men would be weeping. The only problem was that not a word of it was true. Now let me stop here and remind everyone that I'm not Messianic or Christian. I'm a Karaite Jew who believes Yeshua existed and had some valuable things to say, but doesn't "believe in him" in the Christian sense. Having said that, here are some of the passages in the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew where Yeshua is, in fact, identified as the Messiah: 1:16; 2:4; 16:16-17, 20; 23:10; 26:7, 68; 27:17, 22. Hebrew Matthew 27:17 is particularly interesting because it has a form of the word Messiah in a place where it is missing from the Greek. This Hebrew text of Matthew was discovered by Professor George Howard of the University of Georgia and published back in 1987, when I was still in high school. Anyone can get his Hebrew Gospel of Matthew from Amazon.com and verify these verses for himself.

They say that those who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it. I have no intention of repeating history by debating a converted Jew, or any Christian for that matter, on the validity of our respective faiths. The history of such debates has never brought anything to the Jewish people but persecution and suffering. Nachmanides himself was forced to flee Spain after he won the disputation against Pablo Christiani. Beyond the historical sensitivities, I don't feel it is my calling to convince Christians to abandon their beliefs or to accept mine. I have found that one's core beliefs are a matter of personal faith and relationship with God, not something that yields to hostile argumentation and disputation.

After several e-mails back and forth between Keith and the general manager of the Christian television network, she added one last, surprising, piece of information. The real issue wasn't Hebrew Matthew, or the Aleppo Codex, or even the Aramaic. The real issue was that "several trusted sources" had told her I was secretly grabbing hold of believers and convincing them to give up their faith in Yeshua. This is an old rumor that I referred to last year in my note entitled "The Ass Speaks Out." What I didn't reveal back then was that the very same converted Aramaic Jew was involved in that rumor. His exact role is still unclear to me. However, it was in the context of that rumor I first heard through intermediaries he was insisting that I engage him in a public disputation. For the record, I was not then, nor have I been since, going around trying to convince anyone to change his core beliefs in Yeshua or against Yeshua. Since the rumor has resurfaced, I think it's time for the ass to speak out again and tell the whole story I only alluded to the first time.

The seminal event behind the rumor was a meeting of three families in a double-wide trailer in Central Texas. It was arranged by a friend of mine who happens to be an ex-Christian who converted to Judaism. On one visit to Texas, she asked me to join her and her husband in meeting two other families of ex-Christians. Another friend of mine from the Dallas area who is a "Hebrew roots believer" also attended the meeting. When we got there, everyone took turns sharing their life stories. Each family had a different set of experiences and I found the whole thing fascinating. At the same time, I was a little uncomfortable for my "Hebrew roots believer" friend who was sitting there quietly while the ex-Christians explained why they had stopped believing in Yeshua. Towards the end of the session I decided to ask the question, "Did I ever try to convince any of you to give up your faith in Yeshua?" The woman who organized the meeting told everyone that back when she and her husband were Christians, I had encouraged them to take their faith seriously and not drop a lifetime of belief because of minor textual questions they were struggling with. The second family said they had never communicated with me before but had been encouraged in their Christian faith years earlier when reading my book The Hebrew Yeshua vs. the Greek Jesus. The third family had not read any of my books and didn't really know much about what I taught on the subject (shocking, I know!). The father explained that he began to question his faith in Yeshua and the New Testament after reading a book called Two Witnesses, written by an ex-Worldwide Church of God member.

The next part of the story provides a real-life example of my approach to matters of faith—and should help debunk the rumor that I go around trying to convince people to abandon their belief in Yeshua. After the discussion in the double-wide trailer, everyone descended on the potluck meal like locusts. I was standing off to the side when a woman in her twenties walked up to me and discreetly asked if I could help her. She told me she had some reservations about giving up Yeshua and asked if I could help convince her that Yeshua was not the Messiah. I told her this was something I could not do. I explained to her that this is a matter of faith and personal belief that she needed to work out for herself in fear and trembling, with prayer and study. I also suggested that she speak to her pastor, rabbi, or priest. I don't regret anything I said, and if I had to do it again I wouldn't change a thing.

The trouble began when the young woman with the doubts followed my advice and spoke to a Messianic pastor. She told him about the meeting and he is the one who started the rumor that I came to Texas to convince believers to give up their faith in Yeshua. According to one version of the story that made its way back to me, he or one of his people phoned a prominent Messianic teacher at two in the morning. They reportedly told this Messianic teacher that I had a group of believers in a room at that very moment and was going through the reasons why they should give up their faith. They were hysterical and wanted to know what to do about it.

I only heard about these rumors some time later. I was on tour when I got a call from another prominent Messianic teacher. He asked me point blank if the rumors were true. I told him they weren't, but if he really wanted to get to the truth he should talk to the people who were in the double-wide trailer in Central Texas. To my surprise, he actually went through with it and in the end the Messianic pastor who started the rumor was forced to retract his story. Of course, by then the rumor had taken on a life of its own. In some Messianic circles I became a mythical figure, like the archvillain Keyser Soze in the movie The Usual Suspects. The mere mention of my name made some Messianic believers nervous. Fathers would tell their children that if they weren't good, Nehemia Gordon would come in the middle of the night and snatch away their faith. The fact that none of it was true didn't matter.

Now I need to stop here and say something to my fellow Jews. I know some of you are saying to yourselves, "Nehemia! What's wrong with you! Why aren't you trying to convince Christians to give up their faith in Jesus?" My cousin recently told my mother she was worried I was becoming a Christian because I spent so much time dialoguing with them. I want to allay her fears and those of my other Jewish brothers and sisters: I am not becoming a Christian. As I've already said, I simply don't feel I've been called to convince Christians to give up their faith. If you look at the writings of the Jewish counter-missionary Rabbi Tovia Singer and the Christian apologist Dr. Michael Brown, the arguments haven't fundamentally changed in nearly 2,000 years. I don't think I would have a great deal of original thought to contribute to this discussion. On the other hand, I think there is so much more to be gained in our respective walks of faith by focusing on what we have in common rather than on our differences. If we can find a way to do this with some sound scholarship, who knows what we could discover about ourselves and each other! The sky's the limit!

My father, an Orthodox rabbi, has a different take on it. When he read the last chapter of A Prayer to Our Father, in which Keith Johnson and I call for more Jewish-Christian interfaith dialogue, he was not pleased. He said to me in his deep bass voice, "We have our thing and they have their thing. Why do you want dialogue? Just leave it alone." When I look back at the tragic history of Jewish-Christian relations over the last 2,000 years I am convinced that a lack of dialogue is decidedly unhealthy. On the flip side, people like Pablo Christiani and his modern-day incarnation create division and hatred by throwing fat on the fire. God promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that those who bless them would be blessed and those who curse them would be cursed (Genesis 12:3; 27:29). I believe the nations of the world have much to benefit by meeting Jews on common ground in that they will be blessed for blessing the descendants of Jacob. It also provides both of us an opportunity to learn about one another in a way that lets us grow in our respective faiths.

I want to make it clear that this is not about Messianic Jews, converted Jews, or whatever you want to call them. Throughout history, Messianics have often suffered persecution alongside their Jewish brothers. They had the extra burden of internal Jewish pressure for holding beliefs that were unpopular, to say the least—something I can identify with as a Karaite Jew. I have nothing against Messianic Jews and I count some of them among my closest friends. I can be friends with them because we respectfully agree to disagree on our differences and focus on what we have in common.

Another thing this is not about is Aramaic vs. Hebrew. I for one am convinced that Aramaic has great value for the study of the New Testament and, indeed, for the Tanakh as well. If nothing else, the various Aramaic versions shed light on how the Bible was understood by Semitic-speaking groups in different periods. I look at the Aramaic versions as witnesses, and the more witnesses the better. As with anything, you need to swallow the wheat and spit out the chaff. This is even true, believe it or not, of things that I say! (No, just kidding! You should blindly accept all my words!)

I thought long and hard before deciding to expose what happened with the Aramaic Letter. I've been attacked plenty of times in the past and usually grit my teeth and bear it in silence. One of the things that convinced me to speak out this time was something that happened while Keith and I were on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. We were talking about the Aramaic Letter and Keith insisted it was time for me to write a second "Ass Speaks Out" note. I told him he should write it and jokingly suggested he call it "The Black Ass Speaks Out." He was not amused and glanced at me from the driver's seat with an annoyed look on his face. And then his jaw dropped. He started yelling, "Look at the ass! Look at the white ass!" I gave him a perplexed look of my own. Then my neck was unexpectedly jerked to the side as Keith suddenly pulled the car off the road and came to an abrupt stop. He told me he had just seen a white donkey running along the roadside parallel to the car. I thought he was just being spiritual until he got out and started looking for it. I followed him into the wilderness and after a few minutes we found it. It was an Onager, more commonly known as the "Wild Asian Ass." It had scruffy white hair that blended in perfectly with the barren limestone hills of the Judean Desert. As I stared down the wild ass, looking directly into its eyes, I knew what I had to do. When I later looked up the phrase "wild ass" in the Bible I found the following verse:

"Who has let the wild ass go free? Who has loosed the bonds of the swift ass?" (Job 39:5)

Even though the Aramaic Letter has been sent, the work will not stop. The work of building bridges and finding common ground will continue. The work of empowering Jews and Christians by giving them access to the Hebrew sources of their respective faiths will continue. The work of teaching, explaining, and glorifying the name of the Father of Creation will continue. The wild ass has been set free and no bonds will hold it back from doing the will of the Creator.

Nehemia Gordon

Jerusalem, Israel

March 25, 2011

Click on the word to hear it in Hebrew and see the translation:

avee-noo she-ba-sha-mai-yeem, yeet-ka-desh sheem-cha, ve-yeet-ba-rech mal-choot-cha, re-tson-cha yee-h'-ye a-sui ba-sha-mai-yeem oo-va-a-rets, ve-tee-ten lach-me-noo te-mee-deet, oo-me-chol la-noo cha-to-tay-noo ka-a-sher a-nach-noo mo-cha-leem la-chot-teem la-noo, ve-al te-vee-ay-noo lee-day nees-sa-yon, ve-shom-ray-noo mee-kol rah, a-men.

An interactive resource DVD featuring Andrew Hodkinson singing the prayer is available from Sound the Shofar.

Part Two

Christine Darg's interview of Nehemia Gordon on
"Was the Gospel of Matthew Originally in Hebrew?" (Source: Vimeo)

Gordon and Johnson provide a gentle walk through unfamiliar territory surrounding the Lord’s Prayer. The territory is unfamiliar because they explore the Hebrew version of this well-known passage of Scripture. The walk is gentle because they have included their personal experiences as they traveled the land of Israel in search of the Hebraic roots of these verses. In a combination of travelogue, history and linguistic detective work, this book guides the reader to insights that only appear in the Hebrew original. It is a journey worth taking.

Clearly written with the average reader in mind, A Prayer to Our Father does not overwhelm with etymological intricacies or theological arguments. Instead, it presents a journey of enlightenment, for the authors and for the reader, as it traverses the land of Israel, examining culture and history in an effort to peel back two thousand years of translation accumulation. The journey reaches its climax in an analysis of the Hebrew worldview connected to our Lord’s simple prayer. The insights – and corrections – discovered in this recovery are formidable and immediately applicable. This is a valuable contribution to any believer’s library.

A. J. Moen, D. Phil.
Academic Dean
Master’s International Divinity School
Evansville, Indiana

“Ass – a long-eared, slow, patient, sure-footed domesticated mammal, Equus asinus, related to the horse, used chiefly as a beast of burden.” (Dictionary.com)

It’s been several months since the publication of my book A Prayer to Our Father, which I wrote together with Keith E. Johnson, a Christian pastor from North Carolina. This book explores the Hebrew origins of what is commonly known as the “Lord’s Prayer”. Many of my Jewish brothers and sisters have expressed great concern over the book. Some have even speculated that I have secretly converted to Christianity and am leading others into the Christian faith. Some of my Christian friends have joined in this speculation thinking that perhaps there is a “surprise ending” to the book in which I proclaim my faith in Jesus. On the flip side, some Messianics are spreading the false rumor that I allegedly hold secret meetings during my speaking tours in which I try to convince “believers” to abandon their faith. I hate to disappoint the rumormongers but none of these is true. I have not converted to Christianity nor do I attempt to convince anyone to change their faith. I suppose the reason for these false speculations is that some people have a hard time understanding why a Jew who does not believe in Jesus would write a book on his teachings unless he has a secret agenda. I thought I explained this rather well in my books but I guess not everyone reads my books. Or perhaps I am not as eloquent as I like to think. So I am writing this to try and set the record straight.

Let me start with my views on Jesus of Nazareth, or as he was known 2000 years ago, “Yeshua”. Over the past few years I have gained a great respect for his teachings, but I have not embraced the Christian faith nor have I become a “Messianic Jew.” I clearly state this in all of my presentations in order to avoid any possible confusion. I am, as I have been for over twenty years, a Karaite Jew, which means I believe the Tanakh (“Old Testament”) to be the perfect word of God. As a Karaite Jew, I await the coming of an anointed King (in Hebrew: “Messiah”) who will be a direct descendant of King David. I have no idea what his name will be and therefore I do not rule out the possibility that his name will be “Yeshua”. Many Jews, and Karaites in particular, may vehemently disagree with me on this last point. All I can say is that when the anointed descendant of David reigns as a flesh and blood king over Israel, as promised in the Scriptures, we will all know his name as an accomplished fact.

So why do I have what one of my sisters – a devout Orthodox Jew – refers to as an “unhealthy interest in Jesus”? It started many years ago, when I came out of Rabbinical Judaism and began researching all of the world’s religions. I was particularly interested in ancient Judaism in all of its forms and this naturally included the teaching ministry of Yeshua of Nazareth. My interest in this subject is not as unusual as my sister might think. Over the past century, Jewish scholars have increasingly carried out research to uncover the Hebrew background and context of the New Testament. One of the greatest of these scholars was Professor David Flusser, himself an Orthodox Jew, who taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I was trained in the study of ancient Jewish texts at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where I earned my Masters Degree in Biblical Studies and I view my own research on the teachings of Yeshua as part of this scholarly tradition.

To give this research some context, a number of years ago I was privileged to have worked with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written by an ancient Jewish movement called the Essenes. While I believe the Dead Sea Scrolls contain great value, at no time did I ever become an Essene. Furthermore, as a textual scholar researching the scrolls it was not my role to convince anyone whether or not to believe in Essene Judaism. My role as a scholar was to attempt to understand what these ancient documents meant in their original linguistic, historical, and cultural context. This is how I see my role in exploring the Hebrew background of the New Testament. It is not my role as a textual scholar to lead anyone into the Christian faith. Nor is it my role to lead anyone out of the Christian faith. These are issues of personal faith and belief that are beyond the scope of my research. My role as a textual scholar is to understand what Yeshua taught in the linguistic, historical, and cultural context in which he preached. For those who believe in Yeshua I would think this should be of great importance. But it should also be important for non-Christians, as Yeshua was indisputably a pivotal figure in world history who profoundly influenced the development of Western civilization.

In addition to my interest in all forms of ancient Judaism, there is another reason I think it is important for me to share the results of this research, especially with Christians. It relates to an experience I had many years ago in Jerusalem. Living in the Holy City, I meet all kinds of interesting people. One such gentleman was an American tourist who described himself as a “Messianic Gentile”. I had heard of “Messianic Jews” before but did not know what a Messianic Gentile was. He explained that he believed Yeshua to be the Messiah and wanted to live as Yeshua lived. He told me that as a Jew, Yeshua refrained from eating pork and went to the synagogue on the Sabbath. Although he had no Jewish ancestry that he knew of, he too wanted to live as Yeshua had lived, refraining from pork and going to a synagogue on the Sabbath. At the time I had never met anyone quite like this and was very intrigued. We ended up spending many long hours discussing our respective beliefs and practices. One day he was telling me about the prayers in his congregation back in America and he proudly announced that in his Messianic synagogue they recited the Amidah. When I heard this I was shocked because I knew something he obviously did not know. The Amidah is the standard prayer of Rabbinical Judaism and I grew up as an Orthodox Jew praying this prayer three times a day. The Amidah is also known as the “Eighteen Benedictions” but today actually contains 19 benedictions. The 19th benediction, which my friend obviously did not know about, is called the Birkat HaMinim which means “the Blessing of the Heretics”. Despite its name, it is actually a curse of the so-called “heretics”. Historical sources, most notably the Talmud, inform us that this 19th benediction was added to the Amidah around the year 90 CE in order to prevent those Jews who accepted Yeshua as the Messiah from participating in synagogue services. At the time, the Rabbis did not have the authority to prevent Yeshua’s Jewish followers from attending the synagogues but they reasoned these people would stop coming if a public curse was proclaimed upon them during every prayer service. When this “Messianic Gentile” told me his congregation recited the Amidah during their services I thought surely he meant the Amidah without the Birkat HaMinim. So I asked him to show me his Messianic prayer book and I quickly flipped to the section containing the Amidah. To my horror I found that it indeed contained the Birkat HaMinim. It had been translated in a very clever way to obscure its meaning, but there it was in black and white in both Hebrew and English. I was heartbroken at the thought of an entire group of devout people, who were searching in their own way for Scriptural truth, proclaiming a public curse upon themselves because they did not understand the historical context of their own faith. They wanted to live as Yeshua lived but ended up reciting a prayer created to curse those who believed in Yeshua. I realized then and there that the Almighty had blessed me with an understanding of ancient languages and ancient Jewish texts and I was morally obligated to share that information with anyone who needed it, even if I disagreed with them on important matters of faith.

As a Jew, it is not all that strange for me to interact with people that I disagree with on matters of faith. This is part of the pluralism inherent in Jewish culture in general. There is an old saying that “if you ask two Jews you get three opinions.” This witticism is based on a fundamental principle in Rabbinical Judaism that there are seventy true meanings to every single word in Scripture. The result of this doctrine is that multiple opinions can be tolerated, even when they are diametrically opposed. This approach has imbued Jews with a relatively pluralistic attitude towards matters of belief, especially when these beliefs do not result in any practical expression of ritual observance. This is in sharp contrast to the Christian tradition of breaking fellowship, and indeed in earlier centuries of burning people at the stake, over the subtlest of doctrinal nuances.

As a Karaite, I do not agree with the Rabbinical principle that there are seventy true meanings to everything in Scripture. I believe there is only one true interpretation. However, with the Temple in ruins and the People of Israel in a state of Exile we do not necessarily know what that one true interpretation is. This necessitates a pragmatic pluralism which in some ways is even more tolerant than Rabbinical Judaism. Karaite Jews believe we must do our best to discover the truth but also humble ourselves before God and admit that we can never know for sure “until a priest with Urim and Thummim should appear” (Ezra 2:63). This humility means not judging our brothers for disagreeing on matters of faith, and even on matters of ritual observance, as long as they do their best to discover the Scriptural truth. I am not saying every Jew, nor even every Karaite, always lives up to these ideals but they are nevertheless values deeply rooted in Jewish culture.

Considering that there are, according to the World Christian Encyclopedia, over 33,000 denominations, I would have thought Christians to be even more tolerant to differences of faith and practice than Jews. To be sure, this may be true for many Christians. However, I did not realize how alien this pluralistic approach was to some Christians until last year when I was on a speaking tour in the USA. After one of my presentations a man walked up to me and thanked me for the information I had shared. He told me that he had been told by his congregation leader not come to my presentation. The congregation leader had warned him that as someone who does not believe in Jesus I was not “anointed” to speak the truth. The man objected to his congregation leader: “If God could use Balaam’s ass to speak the truth then surely he could use Nehemia”.

I suppose most Jews would be deeply offended at being compared to a female donkey but I was more disturbed by the arrogance of this man’s congregation leader. I was raised with the tradition of the Rabbis who taught: “Who is a wise man? He who learns from every man.” (Ethics of the Fathers 4:1). Karaite Jews wholeheartedly embrace this principle, often quoting the words of the 12th century Rabbinical sage Maimonides (Rambam): “Accept the truth from whoever speaks it.” When Maimonides said this he was referring to the mathematical and astronomical knowledge he learned from ancient Greeks sources. He did not dismiss or ignore this knowledge even though it came from pagans because the knowledge was true in its own right. It is important to note that this was not simply “secular” knowledge to Maimonides; it had practical application to the observance of certain biblical commandments.

The original disciples of Yeshua and their heirs understood that truth had value regardless of its source. Evidence of this can be found in the Book of Acts, which quotes the words Gamaliel, a leading Pharisee of the 1st century. Although Gamaliel was not a believer in Yeshua, the Book of Acts considered what he said to be valuable and true in its own right. The notion that a Christian today would categorically deem what Jews have to say as worthless and untrustworthy because of our different beliefs is the zenith of arrogance. I am reminded of the words of Paul of Tarsus (admittedly a Jew) who warned the Gentiles:

“But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the rich root of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you.” Romans 11:17-18

I suspect Paul was talking about something that was already happening in his own time: Gentiles were embracing the faith in Yeshua and boasting that they were better than the Jews who did not share their new belief, even though these Jews were the “root” of their faith.

As if this arrogance were not bad enough, shortly after being compared to Balaam’s ass, the specter of anti-Semitism reared its ugly head. I had been invited to speak at a Christian conference when the organizer received a dire warning from a local Christian pastor. The pastor proclaimed that as a “non-believing Jew” I was operating under the control of the “spirit of Antichrist”. When I heard this I thought the pastor meant it metaphorically, but it turns out he meant there was a literal demonic spirit that was influencing my every move. He explained that it was nothing against me personally but all “non- believing Jews” are under the spirit of Antichrist. Boasting against the root is one thing, but this amounts to cursing the root.

Some of my fellow Jews reading this are probably thinking: “So why bother, Nehemia! Let the goyim languish in their ignorance.” My answer is that there are countless Christians out there who want to understand their faith in its original historical, cultural, and linguistic context. Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew who spoke Hebrew and lived as a Jew among Jews. It just so happens that God has blessed me with a knowledge of ancient Judaism and ancient Hebrew and I feel compelled to share this information with those with those who need it, even if I disagree with them on important matters of faith. The Torah teaches us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves which means to treat others as we ourselves want to be treated. I know that if I lacked vital knowledge I would want someone who had this knowledge to share it with me. I must, therefore, share the knowledge I have with those who need it. I am not saying I know everything or that I have all the answers. But if God could use a donkey to speak to Balaam perhaps he is using me for some purpose that is beyond my comprehension. I pray that like Balaam’s ass this is a burden I can continue to bear.

Nehemia Gordon