שמע ישראל ה 'הוא האלוהים שלנו הוא אחד

Shema Yisrael Adonai Elohaynu Adonai Echad
"Hear Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One"

An Introduction to the Way of Y'shua
Part 8: The Holy Scriptures
By Rabbi Yochanan ben Avraham (John of AllFaith) © 11.24.2002 (latest revision 11.17.10)

שָׁלוֹם עֲלֵיכֶם
Shalom aleichem
Welcome and Peace!

The Holy Scriptures

According to traditional Jewish reckoning the world was created in the year 1 HH (Ha'luach Ha'ivri), which is to say roughly 3761 B.C.E. If we accept this, our study thus far has spanned 5771 years of development in biblical religion. That's a long time! Kingdoms, religions, customs, calendars, languages, technologies... far more has come and gone than we will ever realize even existed!

So its logical to ask: Can we be certain that what we believe today is what was originally believed when the various revelations were being granted?

The answer is easy: No, we can't.

In fact we can be absolutely certain the opposite is true! Our beliefs reflect our times as theirs reflected theirs in the past. The attempt here is not to mimic the beliefs of ancient cultures but to re-discover the timeless Truths contained within those experiences and manifest them in harmony with our experiences, in our own service to the Echad Elohiym. These timeless Truths are reflections of Torah.

Our goal should be to live as Torah observant Nazarenes in terms of our present realities not to slavishly conform to the norms of previous cultures. At best we could only imitate them anyway; we want to find real experiences with the Living God, not pretend to be what we are not! We are not first century people.

Balance is essential.

Many people go too far and serve the Book instead of the Creator. Never forget that HaShem is not a book, not even the Torah. Torah leads us to HaShem; we serve HaShem as taught by Torah and presented by His Son Cohen Gadol Y'shua and his emissaries. If this is not clear I suggest going to the beginning of this study and reading from there. This is part 8 and much has already been explained.

HaShem is alive. He is active and through His Ruach HaKodesh (His active Presence) and the on-going ministry of His Son Y'shua, Adonai is ready to lead us into all truth. The Book is part of that sojourn.

The ancient scrolls provide our doctrinal foundations and teach us how to relate with Adonai as a living Being. They shed light on true biblical religion and help us avoid the false doctrines that are so prevalent. HaShem desires living, loving fellowship with His creation but it must be on His terms. The Holy Scriptures establish those terms. However unless you spent 40 years walking with Moshe through the desert you can't really expect to have the realizations of those people even sitting in the annual Sukkot with the Ushpizin (Holy Guests)! Unless you sat with Adon Y'shua and heard his talks you wont fully grasp what his first talmidim experienced. No, we have our own deserts to cross as they had theirs. We have our own experiences sitting with Y'shua and they had theirs. HaShem is not only the God of our fathers, He is also the God of our children! And we are the link to their experiences!

Through the Scriptures we learn how to develop our own relationships with HaShem. These experiences must be lived out in our lives, in our cultures, within our paradigms.

Balance is essential.

Tradition and Free Will

While we seek personal living relationships with Adonai understanding how we came to be here through the past and what He has already revealed is vitally important. This is the task of Tradition.

Tradition is essential therefore! However if our traditions disconnect us from the Torah and/or from HaShem's living Presence (God forbid!) then we need to reform those traditions and reconnect with the root of the Tree. This is what Adon Y'shua did with his reforms. He did not establish a new religion, he reformed the eternal one, returning it to its intended form.

Free will is essential however free will does not mean anarchy. It is foolish to start from scratch in every new generation as though nothing had been passed down to us. We must learn from the traditions of the past because they are our anchors!

Understanding the past, both the positive and negative, we are empowered to exercise our free will in His service. Not as drones, but sons and daughters of the King!

And yet again, just because doctrines were believed in the past does not mean we should accept them today. In the past slavery was commonly accepted along with all manner of things we today find unacceptable. Some of these can even be supported biblically (I Corinthians 7:21 for instance). No, they lived in their times and we live in ours.

Balance is essential.

We should learn from the words of George Santayana:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

So let us seek to understand how we came to be here and then determine if "here" is where HaShem would have us to be and to continually, generation after generation, draw ever closer to the Echad Elohiym.

The Holy Scriptures

The Holy Scriptures have been the constant teachers of "the People of the Book" generation after generation. The Book does not bring liberation but it does provide the only owner's manual Adonai has given us! In the Book therefore we have a firm foundation on which to stand as we seek knowledge and the blessings of the One God. When we apply our free will to its wisdom we draw closer to the One True God. Knowledge of the Scriptures is therefore essential to walking the Nazarene Way.

CJB: Acts 17:11 Now the people here [in Berea: now known as Veria in northern Greece] were of nobler character than the ones in Thessalonica; they eagerly welcomed the message, checking the Tanakh every day to see if the things Sha'ul was saying were true.

The King James Version here says "scriptures" rather than "Tanakh" as the CJB paraphrase has it. The Greek word is graphe' and means "writ," the "documents" (i.e. "scriptures" as the KJV has it). It is estimated that Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles around 60 C.E. By this point some of the New Testament books had been written but they had not yet been canonized nor were they widely known. The "Scriptures" being referenced in this verse must be the Tanakh.

The Berean Nazarenes understood that the way for them to determine whether or not Paul's teachings (and writings) were true was to determine if they were consistent with the Tanakh. Likewise, if our doctrines today are contrary to Scripture we need to reform our views.

Paul's Writings

There is a strong anti-Paul sentiment present among many of those who are currently questioning Nicene Christian dogma. This is unfortunate. Such people tend to point to Paul as the reason the Nazarene Way Movement went off tract. This view is both historically and textually incorrect. Paul's teachings are completely consistent with those of Adon Y'shua.

Whereas Y'shua was teaching ethnic Jews Paul was teaching Gentiles (and some Hellenistic Jews). Paul's audience lacked the innate cultural and religious upbringing to understand the Jewish Nazarene Way. Being Jewish is more than a set of beliefs, its a worldview, a paradigm and so Paul words things in ways he hopes will bring them understanding. For example Paul is often criticized for this account:

KJV: Acts 17:22 Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.
17:23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.
17:24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands...

All Paul is saying is here that you people acknowledge that you do not know. Let me tell you about the True God. This was simply a teaching devise to draw his hearers attention. Anyone who has does evangelism understands this technique.

Despite Paul's critics, according to Peter Paul's writings are to be accepted as graphe' or scripture. Peter wrote:

KJV: II Peter 3:15 And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you;
3:16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.

The Greek text has this as loipoi graphe which definitely tells us that these writings of Paul, in Peter's view, are to be accepted as part of the holy documents (that came to be known as the Bible). The Bereans contrasted Paul's teachings with those of the Tanakh and determined them to be consistent.

As a highly educated theologian (Acts 22:3) much of what Paul taught and wrote is difficult to understand however when we accept his writings as holy writ and study them in harmony with the Tanakh and the teachings of Adon Y'shua, we see the wisdom and truth the Ruach Hakodesh reveals through Paul. Peter even goes so far as to say that those who reject Paul's teachings (his writings) do so "unto their own destruction." If one accepts the authority of Peter therefore one should also accept the writings of Paul as inspired writ to be consistent.

As we examine the Rise of the Universal Church in the next section of this study the Scriptures will therefore be the standard by which we will make our assessments. This was the standard used by Y'shua and by Paul.

KJV: Acts 17:2 And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures.

Acts 17: CJB: 2 According to his usual practice, Sha'ul went in; and on three Shabbats he gave them drashes from the Tanakh,

For The Bible Tells Me So...

Since the Scriptures are so important we need to determine their reliability. Its too easy to say "God said it, I believe, that settles it." As anyone knows who has seriously studied the history and transmission of the Bible its not that straight forward.

Even if one accepts that all 66 books were directly spoken by God and written down perfectly by inspired scribes (which the Bible nowhere teaches) still one has to deal with the conflicting manuscripts and obvious scribal errors. So let's look into this a bit. Nothing is to be gained by wearing blinders and pretending the Bible we have today is "inerrant" and identical to the original manuscripts (NONE of which exist today). We need to understand the Book as a book.

Tanakh/Miqra

The Hebrew Scriptures (known to most Christians as the "Old Testament") are commonly known to Jews as the TaNaKH. This name is an acronym:

Biblical Hebrew has no vowels so two "a" vowel diacritics are added for pronunciation (and written as dashes below the Hebrew letters T-N-KH).

The name Miqra means "that which is read."

The entire Tanakh or Miqra is sometimes referred to as "the Torah" because it is all accepted as inspired teaching. For the same reason some Nazarenes refer to all 66 books of the Bible (i.e. the Tanakh and the B'rit Hadashah books) as "Torah" because the Word of HaShem is revealed throughout. "Torah" then in this context can be thought of as synonymous with "Holy Writ." Those who accept non-canonical books such as the Books of Maccabees, the Protevangelion of James, the Book of Enoch etc. do not normally refer to them as Torah. Those who accept the additional rabbinic writings such as the Talmud, Mishna etc. usually refer to them as the "Oral Torah" because they were passed on orally for some time before being written down.

As discussed above "Torah" is the Eternal Word and Wisdom of HaShem and so all Holy Scriptures and inspired commentaries (like the Oral Torah) arise from or reflect the One Torah (although there are different levels of inspiration and emphasis: the Five Books of Moshe always being preeminent). Nonetheless, to avoid confusion when I refer to "the Torah" here I am usually speaking of the Five Books of Moshe only. When this is not the case the context should make the meaning clear.

Throughout the centuries pious Jewish scribes meticulously guarded the Tanakh's integrity (especially the Torah's). A few inadvertent errors slipped in but for the most part we can be confident that the Tanakh we have today in the Masoretic Text (the standard Jewish Bible) is the original as inspired by Adonai and His Ruach HaKodesh. Because of this we can be confident that quality translations of the Masoretic text will be as close to the original text as possible. Reading the text in the original language (mainly Hebrew) is obviously preferable as the richness of the language can not be fully brought out in translation, however there are solid translations available such as those included in the Textus Receptus (Received Texts) translations including the Authorized King James Version which remains the preeminent English translation.

Because of the above statement concerning scribal errors it is probably worth sharing an example. There are a few of these.

An Example of an Error

The account of what happened to the two angels who visited Sodom is virtually identical with the account of the estranged man who was given refuge in the home of another as recorded in the book of Judges. I discuss these two accounts in more detail in my study of Sodom and Gomorrah so I'll only give an overview here to illustrate the point at hand.

Genesis 19 records how the angels entered Sodom, were encouraged by Lot to come to his home for the night and how before they lay down to sleep the people (the enowsh: all the people of the city, not just the men) surrounded the house from every quarter. They called unto Lot demanding to yada or interrogate his guests: "Bring them out unto us that we may know [yada] them." The citizens of Sodom wanted the two men brought out so they could interrogate them as possible spies. Sodom had recently been overrun by enemies (and restored by Avraham) and the people of the city were paranoid of another attack. They feared that the men (the angels) might be spies and they wanted to interrogate them. So great were their fears (and lack of faith in Adonai) that they abandoned the Laws of Hospitality (a serious offense) so severely that even Adon Y'shua uses them as an example of this grave sin (Matthew 10:11-15). Lot understood what such an interrogation would entail. The people were a lynch mob and intended to murder his guests in cold blood. Under the Laws of Hospitality Lot was duty bound to protect them.

Judges 19 describes an amazingly similar account. Here a stranger also arrives in need of lodging for the night. Being an Israelite the man wanted to rest for the night in an Israelite city (rather than staying with non-Israelites in nearer towns) so he presses on to Gibeah, a city of the House of Benjamin near Jerusalem. Because he can find no place to sleep he (like the angels in Sodom) decides to sleep on the streets. As in the Sodom account a righteous man finds him and insists that he comes into his house where its safer. In both cases we have righteous locals fulfilling the requirements of the Law of Hospitality but in both cases these laws are violated by angry mobs with dire results.

At Judges 19:20 the kindly old man (like Lot) offers him food, fodder for his animals, washes his feet and so on as was appropriate. As the two men sat speaking with one another, drinking wine and having a nice time, the people of the town, as in the Sodom account, learn of the man's presence, encircle his house and begin beating on the door shouting: (Judges 19:22) "Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know [yada] him." As in the Sodom account, the demand to "know" the stranger is the Hebrew word yada, meaning to interrogate him.

As in the Sodom account, the good householder goes out to the crowd and beseeches them saying: "Nay, my brethren, nay, I pray you, do not so wickedly; seeing that this man is come into mine house, do not this folly." Here also the townspeople reject his plea for mercy and justice. As in Sodom the householder says: (Judges 19:24) "Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing."

Our interest here is with biblical integrity and scribal error not with these specific events, so we note this verse:

KJV: Judges 19:30 And it was so, that all that saw it said, There was no such deed done nor seen from the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day: consider of it, take advice, and speak your minds.

No such deed was ever done? What about at Sodom? Even the wording is almost identical. Clearly one of these accounts is a re-telling of the other, a scribal error that crept into the text. Which is the original is a matter of scholarly debate but that one is an insertion into the text seems certain. In my opinion the most likely answer is that scribes working on Judges 19 inadvertently copied from a scroll of Genesis, perhaps laying on the same scribal table. This borrowing was not necessarily (nor even probably) intentional but it happened at a critical point in the textual transmission and remained.

The point is, the Bible is amazingly well preserved, especially the Tanakh, but it does contain a few scribal errors in the texts themselves.

The Hebrew Bible has weathered the storms of time amazingly (miraculously) well. Its purity of transmission over thousands of years itself testifies that HaShem has preserved it. However in its present form it is not without error and this needs to be acknowledged if we are serious students of the Word.

The Torah is always accepted as the supreme authority by Nazarenes.

Torah

The Torah (the Five Books of Moshe) is divided not only into the Five Books of Moshe and their traditional chapters and verses but also into parshah or weekly reading portions.

The entire Torah is read by the devout once each year from Simchat Torah to Sukkot. The day after the conclusion of Sukkot (Feast of Booths, Feast of Tabernacles) is known as Simchat Torah ("Rejoicing with/of the Torah") and marks the conclusion and beginning of the annual Torah reading cycle. Torah is the heart of biblical religion and the weekly parshah readings are a key way we connect with the Torah and its Author on a consistent basis. Chabad offers the Parsha readings as well as interesting commentaries on them.

We are advised to read the daily divisions of the weekly parshah sections and then to re-read the weekly parshah on Shabbat with like minded Believers. This is a great time to discuss the weekly readings and clarify their teachings. Simchat Torah celebrates the centrality of the Torah and is a component of the Biblical holiday of Shemini Atzeret ("Eighth Day of Assembly"), which follows immediately after the festival of Sukkot.

The B'rit Hadashah (New Testament)

Unfortunately the near certainty we can have in the historic preservation of the source texts (i.e. the Masoretic text) of the Tanakh is not the case with the New Testament. The books of the B'rit Hadashah (New Testament) are much less certain in their historic transmission and manuscript preservation. This is not intended as an attack on the New Testament however we need to understand the truth and this means correctly understanding how we got the library now called the New Testament and what its textual limitations are.

A detailed history of how we got the books now accepted as the New Testament is outside the purview of this study, however the path to our modern Bibles is far from certain and filled with human negotiations and power struggles that are fascinating to study and important to grasp. Despite these historic twists and turns the presence of holy inspiration is still clearly present throughout all 66 books of the Bible we have today.

The formula to determine what is inspired text and what is interpolation is:

Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth

This is called "rightly dividing the Word of Truth (II Timothy 2:15) and is essential for accurate doctrine. When discussing various topics we all use "proof texts" we believe will support our positions. These texts need to always be interpreted in consideration and conformity with all the teachings of the Bible, not as isolated stand-alone fragments.

We know for instance that Adon Y'shua never differed from the Torah (Matthew 5:18) but he did reform the understandings of his hearers. His reforms (and those later given by Paul) gave different insights into biblical religion but were always harmonious with it. Nothing that violates Torah can be true biblically speaking.

For this reason preference is always given to the five books of Moshe even though the B'rit Hadashah sheds new light on how the Torah is best interpreted/understood. Those passages in the B'rit Hadashah that contradict the Tanakh such as Matthew 1:22,23 (these verses misrepresent what is said at Isaiah 7) are understood as later interpolations and editorial insertions into the text. Determining these insertions is not always easy, however when we understand that the Greek and Aramaic versions are later editions of the now lost Hebrew original texts this determination is a bit easier. Let harmony with the Torah be your guide.

HaShem does not contradict Himself.

The reason the New Testament is less established than the older Tanakh is that while carefully hand copied editions of the Torah were kept in every Jewish synagogue the world over and regularly studied by the Torah-knowledgeable pious Jewish sages, for many years the books that were eventually canonized as the New Testament were in the hands of politically minded Papal bishops, professional theologians and Roman politicians who viewed the books as means to controlling the masses rather than as independent sacred texts.

One of the great strengths of the Tanakh is the fact that despite its many negative commentaries on the Hebrew/Israelite people they still carefully preserved it in tact. Most cultures would have edited out the negatives to make their group look better, not so the Jews. In the Tanakh they have carefully preserved the true history of their service as God's people, both the positive and the negative. This fact supports its accuracy and its textual preservation through the millennia.

On the other hand the Gentiles who gained control of the Nazarene Way clearly lacked the devotion, Torah knowledge and dedication to the texts shown by the rabbis and their predecessors. This lack of Torah knowledge and dedication to the texts resulted in the myriad of conflicting scrolls and codices we now must shuffle through and to the replacement of the Hebrew originals by the Greek and Aramaic edited editions.

Hellenization

As the Catholic ("universal") church rose to dominance in the third and fourth centuries C.E. the various scrolls were viewed more as tools to confirm Vatican authority than as Holy Writ to be protected, preserved and honored. The Church scribes produced numerous conflicting and sloppy manuscript copies of copies that, in many cases, taught completely different doctrine (for instance see my short comparison of the Textus Receptus based KJV with the now popular NIV Here. The New International Version (NIV) comes from completely different manuscript sources than the Authorized King James (KJV) and in many cases teaches wholly different doctrine, deletes scores of words and even entire verses contained in the KJV (Textus Receptus). It also add words and phrases with absolutely no manuscript support from ANY source in order to support its humanist teachings.

Again, this is not the place for a detailed consideration however the most voluminous and widely used of the manuscript collections is the Textus Receptus (Received Texts). The Bible trusted by the Christian faith for the past 1700 years is now widely discarded by the emerging Laodicean Church (Revelation 3:14-19). Among the versions translated from the Textus Receptus is the Authorized King James Version, the best selling book of all time, the Geneva Bible, the Bishop's Bible and others. Translated from the centuries-rejected manuscripts is almost every modern version on the market. This is not a coincidence given the days in which we are living.

Although we have no original versions or even direct copies of the original New Testament books, there is good reason to believe the New Testament (like most of the Tanakh) was originally written in Hebrew, however early on contentions arose between the Greek and Hebrew speaking Nazarenes and these disputes eventually lead to the Greek text replacing the original Hebrew. We read of one such division in the early talmidim community here:

CJB: Acts 6:1 Around this time, when the number of talmidim was growing, the Greek-speaking Jews began complaining against those who spoke Hebrew that their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution...

The Greek speaking Jews were those who embraced Hellenism (the overlaying of Greek culture) and the abandonment of Hebrew culture. This trend empowered the rise of the Nicolaitan heresy (Revelation 2,3) and the replacement of the Hebrew Nazarene Way Movement with the Roman Papal Church.

While most scholars still accept that the New Testament was originally penned in Koine Greek, other scholars believe the early Greek speaking Nazarenes (largely disciples of Paul) destroyed and replaced the Hebrew originals with their Greek translations in a bid for supremacy within the growing Way movement.

The Hebrew and Greek B'rit Hadashah

It seems most likely to me that this textual transition from the original Hebrew B'rit Hadashah collection of Scriptures to the Greek (and Aramaic) edited translations took place gradually, at first as the natural result of Greek speaking Gentile conversion.

Consider this from the noted fourth century Catholic "church father" Epiphanius:

...But these sectarians... did not call themselves Christians -- but "Nazarenes," ... However they are simply "completed Jews." They use not only the New Testament but the Old Testament as well, as the Jews do... They have no different ideas [from the Jews], but confess everything exactly as the Law proclaims it and in the Jewish fashion -- except for their belief in Messiah, if you please! For they acknowledge both the resurrection of the dead and the divine creation of all things, and declare that God is one, and that his son is Yeshua the Messiah. They are trained to a nicety in Hebrew. For among them the entire Law, the Prophets, and the... Writings... are read in Hebrew, as they surely are by the Jews. They are different from the Jews, and different from Christians, only in the following. They disagree with Jews (4) because they have come to faith in Messiah; but since they are still fettered by the Law -- circumcision, the Sabbath, and the rest -- they are not in accord with Christians.... they are nothing but Jews.... They have the Goodnews according to Matthew in its entirety in Hebrew. For it is clear that they still preserve this, in the Hebrew alphabet, as it was originally written.
-- (Epiphanius; Panarion 29).

Epiphanius is referring specifically to Matthew's Gospel here but the sense of his words goes beyond that, suggesting that these Nazarenes had preserved, at least as late as the fourth century C.E., versions of the New Testament in its original Hebrew. Obviously he considered this to be a problem and commented on them as heretics.

Nazarenes were "trained to a nicety in Hebrew."

It is often argued that Hebrew was not widely used by Jews in the first century. The idea being that the books of the B'rit Hadashah would not have been written in a language people didn't speak. Note what Epiphanius says however: ... They are trained to a nicety in Hebrew.

Just as devout Muslims read al Qu'ran in its Arabic original and learn Arabic to do so if its not their mother tongue, so too according to no less a recognized Church authority than Epiphanius, not only did the fourth century Nazarenes preserve the ability and knowledge to read Hebrew, they were expertly trained in it "to a nicety!" Understand that these were were not "Sunday Christians!" Adon Y'shua's talmidim of the first four centuries considered their religion to be the most important thing in their lives and millions of them even died for their faith. Learning Hebrew in order to read the Holy Scriptures would have been nothing!

However as the number of Greek speaking converts increased, as the Gnostic and Nicolaitan heresies more and more undermined the true Nazarene faith, devotion to HaShem and his Nazarene Way subsided until the point that Christianity was simply another religion. Those who could still read (the early Catholic Church opposed literacy) more and more began relying on translations rather than the original Hebrew texts.

Replacement of the Hebrew originals probably began gradually as more and more Greek speaking converts began using the Greek translations, thus empowering them as the standards in their far flung communities -- even as popular use today has largely unseated the far superior KJV with the NIV. Then as the Catholic counsels usurped authority over the Way Movement they finalized this process by outlawing and destroying the Hebrew originals as part of their ongoing fight against "Judaizing."

"Original Hebrew New Testament Released by Vatican!!"

Can you imagine reading this headline in the newspaper (or on your favorite news site)? It would be a far more important discovery than even the Nag Hammadi Library in Egypt in 1945 or the discoveries of the caves at Qumran!

Well, if this presentation of what happened to the original Hebrew B'rit Hadashah books is accurate this could well happen!

If the original Hebrew New Testament manuscripts still exist within the Vatican vaults the librarians may some day decide releasing them is to their advantage. If this actually happens at some point -- and those familiar with the prophecies of the coming Rex Mundi will doubtless understand this -- this revelation may not be the positive it appears at first thought!

The discoveries at Nag Hammadi and at the Dead Sea in the caves of Qumran were great boons that have enriched our understandings of biblical cultures, beliefs and so on tremendously. On the negative side however they have also prompted an upsurge in Gnostic heresies and mostly unjustifiable attacks on the Bible (even though all and all the findings support the Bible).

Consider the possible implications of an original hand written New Testament in Hebrew being released! Certainly such a major event would shed light on the historic Y'shua and his teachings (which would be good) but there could well be seriously dark implications to such revelations as well.

According to the Dark Prophecies (i.e. those of the Bavarian Illuminati, several "secret societies," Theosophy, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," Lucius Trust etc) Rex Mundi (known to most Christians as the coming Anti-Christ) is going to convince the world that he is a physical descendant of Y'shua and Mary Magdalene -- whom they maintain were married; the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee referenced at John 2 being theirs. The release of such a text could empower the Rex Mundi's High Priest (the prophesied False Prophet) to convince the world (and more importantly the Jews and Nicene Christians) that Rex Mundi is a physical descendant of Y'shua, descended from King David through the prophetically requisite route. Such a document could prove that the coming leader meets all biblical requirements of Messiah exactly as the Dark Prophecies state.

If what experts agree appears to be the "preserved original Hebrew New Testament" that could easily be spun as a divine sign that Messiah has now arrived in the person of the man or group that releases them! The power of such a book's teachings on a desperate world would carry incredible weight!

Imagine what could be done if a seemingly pristine "original handwritten series of scrolls of the New Testament books and letters" was suddenly released by the Vatican and if those scrolls included unexpected surprises! Such a work would be very persuasive if handled with dark wisdom and expert deception!

What if this book does teach the marriage of Y'shua and Mary took place? What if it confirms that Mary and Joseph of Arimathea fled to France with the daughter of Mary and Y'shua as they say? What if it contains a prophecy saying the Holy Blood (San Grael) would be cared for and nurtured in Europa until the time of the Messiah's revelation? What if that's true?

And what if its all a lie (II Thessalonians 2:11)? What if the original Hebrew New Testament is released and does not say any of these things they claim but the released manuscripts are so expert in their forgeries that no one can tell? Such professionally compromised texts could have been altered centuries ago, the Bavarian Elite have been planning this for an unimaginably long time as we mortals consider time as I discuss in my studies on the Merovingians.

Such a document would rock the Nicean Church to its foundations, especially if the Vatican authorizes it, especially if its released during a time a global chaos by a man who seems capable of restoring order and uniting fragmented humanity!

Texts are tricky things!

Today many serious people are looking to the writings of the Nag Hammadi Library, to the Gospel of Thomas, to the Book of Enoch, to the various alleged Nazarene writings and so on seeking truth. All of these books have their place in serious research but its vital to not loose sight of why these works were rejected from the Jewish and Christian cannons in the first place.

Gnosticism is a deadly spiritual cancer that seriously threatened the early Nazarene Way. John even refers to those who hold these heresies as antichrists (I John 4:3). As more people are beginning to see the Nicolaitan Heresies for what they are many are being seduced by the re-emerging presence of Gnosticism. There are several internet groups advocating versions of these heresies in the name of restoring the original teachings of Y'shua.

Age alone does not substantiate a text as inspired nor its teachings as valid. This is at times the problem we have with the Aramaic Peshita New Testament. Its historicity to the 2nd century seems fairly certain but some of its passages, if accepted, fundamentally alters biblical doctrine and infuses Gnostic ideas.

The Greek manuscripts for the New Testament exists in "families" of texts. The Textus Receptus (received texts) was until recently the most widely used biblical source materials (producing the Geneva Bible, the Bishops Bible, the original German Luther Bible, the Authorized King James and most other Reformation-era New Testament translations). The new bibles are paraphrases of other Greek source materials (the Majority Texts etc). But there is also the Peshita which has a history, allegedly, all its own.

The Aramaic Peshita

Further confusing things is the claim of certain eastern Christians (in Syria etc) that the Apostles hand delivered a copy of the original New Testament (excluding the books of II Peter, II John, III John, Jude and Revelation) written in Aramaic (Syriac) to the Byzantine church fathers. The claim being that this Peshita is the original New Testament and that the Greek version (in Koine Greek) is a poor and substantially edited copy of it.

The word Peshitta means simple, common, straight (vulgate). Supporting this claim is the existence of the Tanakh Peshita -- even though the two portions are not directly related and this position in my opinion demonstrates nothing helpful.

There are substantial doctrinal differences between the standard Greek New Testament and the doctrines espoused in the Aramaic Peshita. The differences between the conflicting Greek texts -- i.e. between the Textus Receptus and the other Greek manuscript textual families -- and the differences between the Greek and Aramaic text is far more serious doctrinally. The Peshita is far more Gnostic in its doctrines and thus even though Aramaic is much closer to Hebrew as a language than Greek, doctrinally the Greek New Testament is much closer to the teachings and religious paradigm presented by the Tanakh.

Despite the claims of the "Aramaic Supremacy" movement, the vast majority of scholars believe the Peshita was translated from the early Greek versions of the New Testament as do I. Unlike many scholars I am also convinced that the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament are in most cases edited translations of now lost Hebrew originals.

Thus in my opinion neither the Peshitta nor the Koine Greek texts are the original. We have a few solid references to the existence of an original Hebrew B'rit Hadashah (New Testament) and I believe the original was written in Hebrew and has been lost (or is hidden within the Vatican Library vaults). Unfortunately without the original we must rely on the accuracy of the Greek New Testament canon and seek to understand it within the Hebrew context of the first and second century Nazarenes. And we can have confidence in our New Testaments, but we must avoid the wrong assumption that it is the original and/or that it is in all cases identical to the original.

The Catholic Church and the Cannon

In Part 9 we will consider the rise and fall of the Roman Universal Church. For now we will look briefly at how the Catholic Church determined the official canon of the Christian Scriptures and how the Papacy views them.

It may come as a surprise to most non-Catholics who believe in solo scriptura (the dogma that the Bible is the supreme and final authority for Christians) but according to the official dogma of the Catholic Church the Vatican hierarchy and its catholic tradition always takes priority, even over the Bible.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

36 This living transmission, accomplished in the Holy Spirit, is called Tradition, since it is distinct from Sacred Scripture, though closely connected to it. Through Tradition, "the Church, in her doctrine, life and worship, perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes."
37 "The sayings of the holy Fathers are a witness to the life-giving presence of this Tradition, showing how its riches are poured out in the practice and life of the Church, in her belief and her prayer." -- Catechism of the Catholic Church, chapter two: God comes to meet man: Article 2: the transmission of Divine Revelation.

The "Church of Rome" took upon itself the authority to even overrule the Scriptures (hence the Protestant cry of "Solo Scriptura!").

This supreme authority granted the Vatican, among other things, the authority to determine which books and in which form would be included in the New Testament. With this self-appointed authority the Bishop of Rome (the Pope) dictated what the Nazarenes-cum-Christians were to believe and what was to be condemned as heresy. The Vatican took upon itself the authority to directly overrule even the Torah itself! Of this authority we read:

... Rather the Church maintains that its official teachings and pronouncements (made by the pope or a church council approved by the pope) will be protected from error. Hence, Catholics look upon the Council of Jerusalem recorded in fifteenth chapter of Acts as a primitive example of the Church's authority to teach and guard the truth received from Christ by the apostles.
The development of the canon of Scripture illustrates the Catholic view of the authority of the Church. During the early centuries of the Church there was wide disagreement over which books formed the canon. For instance, many considered several books not found in the New Testament today to be part of Sacred Scripture, such as Clement's Letter to the Corinthians or The Shepherd of Hermas. On the other hand, some questioned or rejected the canonicity of books ultimately included, such as Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, and Revelation. However, this issue was ultimately settled through church councils, and papal pronouncements.
Thus, for the faithful Catholic, the reason one ultimately accepts that the books found in the canon are inspired is because he trusts the Holy Spirit to guide and protect the Church's official teachings in matters of faith and morals. Whether the issue is the canon of Scripture or the proper understanding of a biblical passage, orthodox Catholics view the Church's ability to teach authoritatively as God's gift to humanity to protect His revelation for all times and peoples. The Church maintains that God instituted the three pillars of Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium (the Church's teaching authority) to uphold His revelation to humankind. "In accord with God's most wise design," they are "so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others. -- Source: http://www.bible-researcher.com/catholic-intro.html

In part by Vatican design, most Christians were illiterate until the last few hundred years. For those who could read copies of the Bible were scarce and the Vatican determined when they were available and to whom. On those occasions when literate Christians gained access to the Bible, reading it was often illegal, or at the least strongly discouraged by the Papacy. Reading the Bible without Vatican permission could result in prison or even death. In such a situation all most people knew about the Bible was what they heard their priests say on Sundays and what they could piece together from the stained glass windows of the churches.

The Gutenberg Bible printed by Johannes Gutenberg, in Mainz, Germany in the 1450s made the Bible available to far more people and since that time the Bible has remained the best selling book of all time without exception. The King James Version remains for now the best selling book in history.

What became of the disallowed biblical texts (including the original Hebrew New Testament) during these dark centuries is largely a matter of conjecture. We do know that several contradictory versions and low quality manuscripts and fragments survived and that most modern Bibles are based on these discarded works rather than on the Textus Receptus.

We can also see clearly that as these new bibles are being embraced the Church is developing more and more of the Laodicean traits foretold by Prophet Yochanan (Revelation 3:14-19). This is not a coincidence.

In the next section we will consider the Rise and Fall of the Universal Church and how the Vatican used its self-proclaimed authority to fundamentally alter the Nazarene Way of Y'shua and establish the Universal Church that overshadowed the Way.

What's important to remember from this section is that the Bible is the Word of HaShem and that its order of authority is:

The Torah -- the five books of Moshe -- are the ultimate written authority that all other scriptures and doctrine must agree with if Nazarenes are to accept them as inspired and true.

Let's continue now with Part 9: The Rise and Fall of the Universal Church.

Our Study of the Way of Y'shua Continues in Part Nine

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