Poetry, Short Prose and Walking

As the World Warms Up

Dale offers the theme “as the world warms up” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.

I was walking along the beach on Friday afternoon. The sun was hot. The sand was hot. If it warms up any more I will have to put my sandals back on. So I waded in the water along the beach and saw a small section where some seaweed (and other stuff) was moving to shore.

I have no idea why I took these two photos of the same seaweed. The hot sand gave me hope they might fit the prompt.

Seaweed floating into shore — Another view of the same seaweed and debris floating to shore

Exploration 85 – Oral Torah

23 Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples,
²Saying The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat:
³All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.
Matthew 23:1-3, King James Version

The oral Torah is part of the tradition of Rabbinic Judaism in addition to the written Torah of the Bible. Not all Jews accept this second Torah. Those who don’t are called Karaite Jews.

Nehemia Gordon, a Karaite Jew, described this oral Torah in the first half of the lecture below. Given Yeshua’s (Jesus’s) objections to the Pharisees he suspected Yeshua was an early Karaite Jew (although Christian and Messianic believers know He is much, much more).

Being also a Hebrew scholar who studied the Shem Tov Hebrew manuscript of Matthew as well as one who found other manuscript copies of it Gordon attempted to answer a question about Matthew 23:3 that has puzzled some. In spite of Yeshua’s objection to the oral Torah of the Pharisees why did He tell His disciples to do whatever “they bid you observe”?

Gordon observed that in the Hebrew manuscript of Matthew Yeshua told his disciples to do whatever “he” bid you observe where the “he” referred to Moses, not the Pharisees. If this section of the manuscript is more authentic, the puzzlement can be explained by a scribal error.

His explanation is in the second half of his talk starting about 1:15:50 in the video. For more details see his book, The Hebrew Yeshua vs. the Greek Jesus.

I am grateful to Benjamin Andreessen’s very detailed posts on this and similar topics in his MeWe group Hebrew Shalom.

To hear a positive view of the oral Torah see Rabbi Berel Wein’s informative and short presentation of Jewish history especially episodes Rebellion Against Rome and Exile, What Is the Talmud, and Writing of the Talmud.

Weekly Parashah Readings
Parashah: Shemini 23 Adar II, 5782 – March 26, 2022
Torah: Leviticus 9:1 – 11:47
Haftarah: 2 Samuel 6:1-7:17
Brit Chadashah: Hebrews 7:1-19; Hebrews 8:1-6
Resources: Chabad, Hebrew4Christians, Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar

Ingredient – Six Sentence Story

Seemingly faraway in time and space Athaliah was the daughter of Jezebel and King Ahab and the wife of Jehoram son of King Jehoshaphat of the southern hill country.

She observed how her mother handled the problem of Naboth when he refused to trade his vineyard to please her father. In her husband’s name Jezebel directed two false witnesses to accuse Naboth of cursing God and king resulting in him being stoned to death. As her father took possession of the vineyard like windfall from the forbidden tree in the middle of the garden a prophet gave Ahab a piece of God’s mind.

That her mother got away with stuff like that bewitched Athaliah allowing toxic ingredients of cold-blooded manipulation to manifest. She was ready to usurp the reign of the southern hill country.

Denise offers the word “ingredient” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. Eugenia offers “faraway” for her prompt this week.

For the details of what happened to Naboth see 1 Kings 21. To read about Athaliah see 2 Kings 11.

Art From Nature

Dale offers the prompt “art from nature” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge. I chose a fall flower with a bug, a huge leaf with a heart-like center and the shapes that happen to sand when people walk on it.

Exploration 84 – Yehováh, Not Yahweh

Some people pronounce the divine name in the Bible represented by the four Hebrew letters, yud-hey-vav-hey, YHVH, יְהוָ֤ה, as “Yahweh”, but is that correct?

The following are some arguments in favor of Yehováh (accent marked on the last syllable to distinguish it from “Jehovah”) as the divine name.

Benjamin Andreessen in a recent post to his Hebrew Shalom MeWe group noted that Nehemia Gordon found manuscripts with full vowel pointings and cantillation marks for the divine name Yehováh. He also gives a brief history starting with the Samaritans and leading to Gesenius for why Yahweh might even be considered today as a possible ancient pronunciation suggesting there is not enough evidence to support it.
Navah provides an explanation favoring the Yehováh pronunciation and an explanation why the Hebrew letter vav would have been pronounced in ancient times with a “v” rather than a “w” sound as it is done by many Hebrew speakers today. He takes a different view of Gesenius than Gordon does.
The following video summarizes Al Garza’s argument for Yehováh.

Jewish Sources for Pronouncing YHVH, Dr. Al Garza

Here are arguments favoring “Yahweh”.

Justin J. Van Rensburg created fifteen video responses to Gordon (see the Hebrew Gospels). His arguments are based on “ketiv qere perpetuum” explained in video 3, that some readings of the vowel pointings are gibberish explained in video 5 and a claim that the vav had a “w” pronunciation in ancient times in video 15.
Brown-Driver-Briggs constructed vowel pointings for the Yahweh sound, but that assumes the vav had a “w” sound in ancient times and the visible vowel pointings in the Masoretic text were faulty. They also used the JEDP documentary hypothesis to classify the evidence. Since I maintain that Moses wrote most of the Torah, I find what they have to say suspicious.

If anyone has more information, or a strong opinion one way or the other, you are welcome to comment.

There is a third position presented by the International Alliance of Messianic Congregations and Synagogues Steering Committee (One Law, Two Sticks, 1-15-2014, page 10) : The problem with praying to God by His so-called “sacred name,” was that nobody was really quite sure what it was. Some said it was “Jehovah,” while others decided it was “Yahweh,” and there were other forms as well. This position would prefer a title such as Lord or Adonai than a specific name.

Until recently this third position was the one I followed saying “May the Lord bless you” rather than may Yahweh or Yehováh bless you. However, it raises the question: Should I be invoking a title when the Hebrew text offers an explicit name?

This issue concerns me because I have unwittingly believed things that I later wished I had not. Until I read Andreessen discuss the “Yahweh heresy” and its suspected origins in “liberal Theology” I had no problem with the ancient Yahweh pronunciation although I didn’t use it. Now I wonder whether the introduction of Yahweh a couple of centuries ago had been part of a larger deception. I don’t want to be fooled any more.

In the video below Nehemia Gordon provided evidence for the divine name being Yehováh citing 16 rabbis who explicitly stated that the correct vowels were sheva, cholam, and kamatz. He did not find anywhere in the database of historical Jewish documents the name Yahweh (about 29:00 in the video). This is the view I now favor.

Weekly Parashah Readings
Parashah: Tzav 16 Adar II, 5782 – March 19, 2022
Torah: Leviticus 6:1 – 8:36
Haftarah: Jeremiah 7:21-28; Jeremiah 9:22-23
Brit Chadashah: Hebrews 7:24 – 8:6
Resources: Chabad, Hebrew4Christians, Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar

Fallen Palm Branch

Roar – Décima

The watchers on the wall will sound
the trumpets warning should they see
the enemy. Persistently
we’ll hold the line. To Him we’re bound.
It’s up to us to stand our ground.
Survival and salvation: May
we thank the Lord for every day
He gives to let our voices roar,
our praises to the heavens soar.
We hear His voice. We rise, obey.

Ronovan Hester offers the rhyme word “roar” to be used in a D-line of a décima having rhyme pattern ABBAACCDDC for this week’s challenge. Eugenia offers “survival” as her prompt this week.

Canvas – Six Sentence Story

Brian didn’t realize how messed up his worldview was until he saw for himself the cracks. Meanwhile Kate itemized the consequences he’d have to face if he didn’t get his head screwed on straight.

The problem was Brian could no longer see the meaningless splatter as anything but garbage. Fifty years from now, perhaps, they’d wish they did things differently, but now, to stop the throbs of screaming, Brian and Kate split up.

Kate met a succession of knights sparkling with possibilities until their dragons (or her own) appeared. Brian covered the canvas with snow white pigment to hide the cracks and bury a voice coming from a source deeper than his own distracting addictions.

Denise offers “canvas” as the word to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Shabbat Shalom – Vayikra

No meat offering, which ye shall bring unto the Lord, shall be made with leaven: for ye shall burn no leaven, nor any honey, in any offering of the Lord made by fire.
Leviticus 2:11 King James Version

Yehoshua Gordon explains why leaven and honey were not acceptable as offerings in his third lecture this week (about 8:00). The leaven represents human arrogance. Unleavened bread represents humility. Honey, or any sort of sweetness to us, represents our desires. We are to give Yehovah what He wants, not what we want.

That might explain why Cain’s offering in Genesis 4 was not as acceptable as Abel’s. Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground while Abel brought the firstborn of his flock. Was Cain’s offering perceived as arrogance? Did it contain leaven or honey or anything sweet?

First Hints Of Spring

Dale offers the theme “first hints of spring” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.

I assembled the collage below in March of last year.

This is not only what March looks like in southern Florida, it is also what April looks like. And February. And January. And December. And November.

I can’t complain even though I can’t tell what season it is.

Exploration 83 – The Hebrew New Testament

…what’s it matter if it’s written in Hebrew or Greek and the answer to that is it doesn’t matter at all unless you care about the truth of Scripture and if you care about the truth of Scripture it makes a huge difference because everything we know about our Hebrew Messiah we know through a Greek filter….
Dr. Miles R. Jones, A Sit-Down Conversation with Dr. Miles R, Jones,
The Messianic Torah Observer Ministry of QFC, (about 1:14:2 5 in the video)

In a series of brief articles Jeff Brenner outlined an argument that Hebrew was the original source language for the New Testament. Here are four topics he covered:

Recent archeological evidence shows that the language of the Israelites during the Second Temple Period was Hebrew.
Evidence from the book of Maccabees and Josephus show the rejection of Hellenistic culture by the Jewish people.
Evidence from Church Fathers and the text suggests the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew.
Hebrew words are transliterated in the Greek texts suggesting the Greek text is a translation from Hebrew.

There are surviving Hebrew manuscripts that could be viewed as copies of copies leading back to original autographs not translations from the Greek or Aramaic. Here are some sources describing and translating these manuscripts.

George Howard translated the Shem Tob Hebrew text of Matthew in The Gospel of Matthew according to a primitive Hebrew text (1987). He knew of nine manuscript copies. Michael Rood claimed there are now 28 known surviving manuscript copies of the Hebrew Matthew (about 7:50 in the video, The Greek Jesus vs the Hebrew Yeshua).
Michael J. and Justin J. Van Rensburg recently finished translating the Hebrew manuscripts of Revelation, James and Jude found in Cochin, India (Ms. Oo.1.16 and Ms. Oo.1.32 from the Cambridge University Library). They argue that these manuscripts can be traced to Hebrew originals. They have finished translating the Hebrew manuscripts of Matthew, Mark, and John and they are in the process of translating Luke coming from Vat. Ebr. 100.
Miles Jones organized a team which finished translating the Epistle of James last summer from a copy in the British Museum. The question of the authenticity of this manuscript (Royal MS 16 A II) as a copy of an original Hebrew autograph is still open.

To understand why these manuscripts are important here are two problems that have been resolved by studying them.

Hebrew manuscripts make clear that the name Joseph referenced in Matthew 1:16 was the name of Miriam’s (Mary’s) father, not husband. Her husband’s name was also Joseph. Without that correction, Jesus was not in the actual line of David. See Michael Rood’s Is Jesus THE Messiah? for why this matters.
Hebrew manuscripts make clear that Jesus did not tell his disciples to obey the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23:3, but Moses. Jesus consistently rejected the Oral Torah of the Pharisees. See Nehemia Gordon, The Hebrew Yeshua vs. the Greek Jesus, for more information on the Oral Torah of Rabbinic Judaism and the copying error that led to the confusion.

Weekly Parashah Readings
Parashah: Vayikra 9 Adar II, 5782 – March 12, 2022
Torah: Leviticus 1:1 – 5:26
Haftarah: Samuel I 15:1-34
Brit Chadashah: Hebrews 10:1-18
Resources: Chabad, Hebrew4Christians, Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar