WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.520 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:40.720 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:41.600 Mahler. 00:00:41.600 --> 00:00:43.840 And I'm still Woe. 00:00:43.840 --> 00:00:48.080 On today's Stone Choir, we are continuing our series on the Septuagint 00:00:48.400 --> 00:00:53.200 with a discussion of some alterations to content of a couple key 00:00:53.200 --> 00:00:57.840 books in the Old Testament, as well as alterations to the timelines 00:00:57.840 --> 00:01:02.320 of really the history of humanity, and particularly the history of the 00:01:02.320 --> 00:01:08.080 Old Testament chronology, which alters things, including the beginning of time itself. 00:01:08.080 --> 00:01:10.720 So we'll talk about that a little bit. 00:01:10.720 --> 00:01:13.600 Before we get into the content, I want to just give a 00:01:13.600 --> 00:01:17.360 brief recap of where we have been, including where we've been for 00:01:17.440 --> 00:01:17.920 last month. 00:01:17.920 --> 00:01:20.720 I'm very sorry that we haven't had an episode for a while. 00:01:20.720 --> 00:01:24.480 Something blows up every time we try to record the day that 00:01:24.480 --> 00:01:27.120 we are gonna record whatever day that happens to be. 00:01:27.120 --> 00:01:29.200 It's pretty much the worst day of my life. 00:01:29.200 --> 00:01:32.000 So I'm not gonna wind up being a podcaster because it's the 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:35.040 easiest job in the world, but it's embarrassing that I still can't 00:01:35.040 --> 00:01:35.840 get it done. 00:01:35.840 --> 00:01:39.360 I lost my voice fifteen minutes into recording last week. 00:01:39.360 --> 00:01:41.840 My voice is still weak, which stinks 'cause I have no margin 00:01:41.840 --> 00:01:42.400 of error. 00:01:42.400 --> 00:01:46.000 Even my voice is strong, it's not strong, so I'm probably gonna 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:48.160 sort of peter out towards the end of this, but we're gonna 00:01:48.160 --> 00:01:50.800 get this done no matter what. 00:01:50.800 --> 00:01:55.440 The Septuagint framework that we eventually evolved as we were looking at 00:01:55.440 --> 00:01:58.720 this massive content we've been looking at for now the last 18 00:01:58.720 --> 00:02:04.560 months. We began in episode 99 with introducing the concept of the 00:02:04.560 --> 00:02:07.520 context window, basically say there's gonna be so much here you can't 00:02:07.520 --> 00:02:08.560 keep it all in your head. 00:02:08.560 --> 00:02:13.200 That's nothing to be ashamed of or worried about, but there's a 00:02:13.200 --> 00:02:16.800 lot going on here beyond just oh a couple verses changed and 00:02:16.800 --> 00:02:19.040 so you know we can we can fix those in our Bibles 00:02:19.200 --> 00:02:20.400 and we don't have to worry about it. 00:02:20.400 --> 00:02:22.800 A septuagin thing is irrelevant. 00:02:22.800 --> 00:02:27.040 In In episode 100 and 101, we went over the Near Eastern 00:02:27.040 --> 00:02:32.880 chronology of the use and then disuse of the Septuagint. 00:02:32.880 --> 00:02:36.960 And then in 101, we talked about what happened in the early 00:02:36.960 --> 00:02:39.840 church in the West up through the Reformation. 00:02:39.840 --> 00:02:42.400 Why did we stop even talking about it? 00:02:42.400 --> 00:02:44.960 Because the whole reason that we're here talking about today is that 00:02:44.960 --> 00:02:48.400 for eleven hundred years it just kind of vanished and no one 00:02:48.400 --> 00:02:50.160 gave it any thought at all. 00:02:50.320 --> 00:02:53.440 And we had to explain why it just went away because that 00:02:53.440 --> 00:02:55.040 was never a conscious decision. 00:02:55.040 --> 00:02:56.160 Which is a big problem. 00:02:56.160 --> 00:02:59.280 That'd be one thing, if the church had decided the Septuagint is 00:02:59.280 --> 00:03:02.320 garbage, it's not authentic, we don't want anything to do with it. 00:03:02.320 --> 00:03:04.400 That would have been wrong, but at least it would have been 00:03:04.400 --> 00:03:05.920 an act of decision. 00:03:05.920 --> 00:03:10.240 Instead, you have Jerome just sort of casually deciding unilaterally, I'm going 00:03:10.240 --> 00:03:12.880 to use what the rabbinic text says. 00:03:12.880 --> 00:03:17.600 And because Greek had been lost mostly at that point and Latin 00:03:17.600 --> 00:03:21.120 was necessary for the church in the West, everyone just went along 00:03:21.120 --> 00:03:22.880 with it because they just needed a Latin Bible. 00:03:22.880 --> 00:03:24.080 And he produced one. 00:03:24.080 --> 00:03:27.840 He was generally respected as a scholar, so we'd explained how that 00:03:27.840 --> 00:03:31.600 happened. It was carelessness on the part of the church, and it 00:03:31.600 --> 00:03:35.200 was nasty on the part of Jerome, if not outright evil. 00:03:35.200 --> 00:03:39.280 And then we're concluding our three part middle part series of the 00:03:39.280 --> 00:03:44.080 Septuagint this week in the Old Testament section where we began with 00:03:44.640 --> 00:03:50.160 the Christological passages in the Old Testament that were changed, some added, 00:03:50.160 --> 00:03:54.320 some removed, some altered, and talked about how important it is that 00:03:54.320 --> 00:03:56.080 these things are being messed with. 00:03:56.080 --> 00:04:00.640 Whether the Septuagint is fake, whether it's wrong, or whether the rabbinic 00:04:00.640 --> 00:04:03.840 text is fake and wrong, these things are different enough that we 00:04:03.840 --> 00:04:08.080 have to really take seriously when you're messing with Christology. 00:04:08.080 --> 00:04:10.400 You're going for the family jewels. 00:04:10.400 --> 00:04:12.320 This is not peripheral stuff. 00:04:12.320 --> 00:04:16.560 So we began there and we began explicitly with Isaiah seven fourteen. 00:04:16.560 --> 00:04:19.440 Because that verse about the virgin birth is the one that everyone 00:04:19.440 --> 00:04:22.960 wants to get tunnel vision on, and pretend that's a big change. 00:04:22.960 --> 00:04:26.320 And so if you clean that up and you can explain that, 00:04:26.320 --> 00:04:29.360 you have to worry about the rest of the Septuagint stuff. 00:04:29.360 --> 00:04:33.040 We've done the episode on a whole bunch of Christology. 00:04:33.040 --> 00:04:36.960 We did the previous episode talking about wisdom literature. 00:04:36.960 --> 00:04:40.480 And because we covered a lot of psalms in the Christology episode, 00:04:40.480 --> 00:04:43.920 we mostly focus on Proverbs and the Wisdom Literature episode the last 00:04:43.920 --> 00:04:47.520 time. And this week we're going to be concluding the Old Testament 00:04:47.520 --> 00:04:53.840 changes focusing on Esther and Job, two books which have been changed 00:04:53.840 --> 00:04:57.840 so radically either in their content or in their or in their 00:04:57.840 --> 00:05:02.560 framing within the broader context of scripture, that they're not even the 00:05:02.560 --> 00:05:06.880 same book in the Septuagint verses the rabbinic text that we're all 00:05:06.880 --> 00:05:07.920 familiar with. 00:05:07.920 --> 00:05:10.640 So we're going to spend a good amount of time today talking 00:05:10.640 --> 00:05:12.480 about the differences there. 00:05:12.480 --> 00:05:15.520 As I said, the last portion, which is where we're going to 00:05:15.520 --> 00:05:20.400 begin this week, is on changes in the timelines, because the big 00:05:20.400 --> 00:05:24.000 change in Job in terms of context is the timeline, which is 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:25.440 completely stripped out of it. 00:05:25.440 --> 00:05:29.360 If you've read Job, he's just floating in space in the olden 00:05:29.360 --> 00:05:33.680 times, this man who, you know, as Christians we believe wasn't mythical, 00:05:33.680 --> 00:05:36.640 but we have no idea who he was, why did he have 00:05:36.640 --> 00:05:37.280 all this money? 00:05:37.920 --> 00:05:40.640 He must have been pretty important, but we don't know anything about 00:05:40.640 --> 00:05:45.920 him. What was deleted by the rabbis explains quite clearly who Job 00:05:45.920 --> 00:05:51.040 was. To begin talking about timelines, I want to point out something 00:05:51.040 --> 00:05:55.600 that will be the case as we're going throughout this episode. 00:05:55.600 --> 00:05:58.880 There's a difference between accuracy and precision. 00:05:58.880 --> 00:06:01.360 Accuracy means getting something right. 00:06:01.520 --> 00:06:04.880 For example, the year of Jesus' birth. 00:06:04.880 --> 00:06:08.800 Some people believe it was AD one as it was calculated, and 00:06:08.800 --> 00:06:11.920 we were using as a calendar, really for only about the last 00:06:11.920 --> 00:06:16.400 eight hundred years, incidentally The early Christian Church had no notion of 00:06:16.400 --> 00:06:20.960 this BCAD thing that was invented in the sixth century. 00:06:20.960 --> 00:06:22.720 And it was surprise, surprise. 00:06:22.720 --> 00:06:27.520 Alkin of York and Charlemagne then normalized in the West the use 00:06:27.520 --> 00:06:32.560 of the year of Jesus' birth as year one for us counting 00:06:32.560 --> 00:06:38.960 forward. It wasn't until the 1700s when Russia began to move away 00:06:38.960 --> 00:06:43.920 from the Byzantine calendar and adopt the calendar the rest of Europe 00:06:43.920 --> 00:06:49.600 uses, that the last vestiges of Christianity using a calendar based on 00:06:49.600 --> 00:06:53.680 the creation of the world was in general use. 00:06:53.680 --> 00:06:56.960 We're not going to talk too much about different calendaring systems this 00:06:56.960 --> 00:07:01.200 week. That will be a significant portion of the bonus episode we're 00:07:01.200 --> 00:07:04.160 going to do when we're talking about how to fix the Septuagint 00:07:04.480 --> 00:07:07.200 translation problem that is ahead of the church. 00:07:07.200 --> 00:07:10.080 We're also going to talk about the calendar problem because it's not 00:07:10.080 --> 00:07:11.680 a trivial one. 00:07:11.680 --> 00:07:16.080 But I bring it up now because it illustrates that as long 00:07:16.080 --> 00:07:18.880 as everyone's on the same page, you're going to be able to 00:07:18.880 --> 00:07:20.320 be precise. 00:07:20.320 --> 00:07:24.000 So when we talk about the current calendar, we all know what 00:07:24.000 --> 00:07:25.280 day we're talking about. 00:07:25.280 --> 00:07:28.160 When you go back in time, if you start looking at historical 00:07:28.160 --> 00:07:31.760 records, you will very quickly run into all sorts of problems where 00:07:31.760 --> 00:07:35.440 if someone hasn't Along and reconciled the counter system we use today 00:07:35.440 --> 00:07:37.840 with one they were using at the time, you can be off 00:07:37.840 --> 00:07:42.240 by months or years, centuries in some cases, like just depending on 00:07:42.240 --> 00:07:45.840 which countering system was being used by whoever is recording. 00:07:45.840 --> 00:07:51.120 Now, the important thing to understand about time, this isn't too philosophical, 00:07:51.120 --> 00:07:52.880 is that it's a dimension. 00:07:52.880 --> 00:07:56.320 It's a part of creation, and it's always relative. 00:07:56.320 --> 00:07:59.840 So, for example, I live in the Northeast, in North America. 00:07:59.840 --> 00:08:03.360 If you live in Northeast, I am almost certainly to the northeast 00:08:03.360 --> 00:08:04.400 of you. 00:08:04.400 --> 00:08:07.040 But Northeast is only a relative comment. 00:08:07.040 --> 00:08:09.840 I'm not northeast of any of you who are listening from Europe. 00:08:09.840 --> 00:08:14.880 I'm southwest because Europe is further north even than where I am. 00:08:14.880 --> 00:08:15.680 It's kind of weird. 00:08:15.680 --> 00:08:18.800 If you ever look at the latitudes, Europe is a lot further 00:08:18.800 --> 00:08:21.840 north than North America relative to the weather that we have. 00:08:21.840 --> 00:08:24.640 It's remarkable how much the oceans change things. 00:08:25.120 --> 00:08:29.280 So in space we understand perfectly well what relativity means when it 00:08:29.280 --> 00:08:31.360 comes to a fixed reference point. 00:08:31.360 --> 00:08:33.600 It's always relative to someone else. 00:08:33.600 --> 00:08:35.760 That's why something like the North Pole is valuable. 00:08:35.760 --> 00:08:38.640 But even then, are you talking about magnetic north pole or are 00:08:38.640 --> 00:08:40.560 you talking about geographic north pole? 00:08:40.560 --> 00:08:43.120 Because they're two different things, and one of them's moving. 00:08:43.120 --> 00:08:44.160 May flip actually. 00:08:44.160 --> 00:08:47.280 That'll be pretty exciting if that happens in our lifetimes. 00:08:47.280 --> 00:08:49.760 Time works the same way. 00:08:49.760 --> 00:08:50.720 Time is fixed. 00:08:51.120 --> 00:08:53.120 It doesn't vary. 00:08:53.360 --> 00:08:55.760 Well, that's that's a physics problem. 00:08:55.760 --> 00:08:58.000 We'll say for the sake of argument, it doesn't vary. 00:08:58.000 --> 00:09:00.160 In terms of, you know, a day is a day, year is 00:09:00.160 --> 00:09:06.080 a year, and for human purposes, that is not gonna be changing. 00:09:06.080 --> 00:09:10.080 So whether Jesus was born in one AD, as some say, maybe 00:09:10.080 --> 00:09:13.840 he was born in three BC, which others say, some you probably 00:09:13.840 --> 00:09:14.960 have strongly held opinions. 00:09:14.960 --> 00:09:15.760 I honestly don't know. 00:09:16.160 --> 00:09:20.240 I've looked at the arguments for both and they seem convincing. 00:09:20.240 --> 00:09:23.360 I have yet to either spend or waste the time trying to 00:09:23.360 --> 00:09:26.240 reconcile them and figure out which one I prefer or make up 00:09:26.240 --> 00:09:27.040 my own or whatever. 00:09:27.040 --> 00:09:27.680 I don't really care. 00:09:27.920 --> 00:09:30.240 Because as long as we're on the same page, we can be 00:09:30.240 --> 00:09:35.200 precise about our comparisons, even if the accuracy of the claim that 00:09:35.200 --> 00:09:39.680 Jesus was born in AD one may or may not be true. 00:09:39.680 --> 00:09:44.880 What is important about the birth of Jesus in terms of timelines 00:09:45.280 --> 00:09:48.800 is that we are two thousand years and change away from Jesus 00:09:48.880 --> 00:09:53.600 birth, which means that around about twenty thirty, you know, five years 00:09:53.600 --> 00:09:57.040 from now, we're gonna be at the two thousandth anniversary of either 00:09:57.040 --> 00:10:00.960 the beginning of Jesus' earthly ministry, or if he was born prior 00:10:00.960 --> 00:10:06.160 to one AD, possibly his death, resurrection, and ascension. 00:10:06.160 --> 00:10:09.840 Both of which I think could potentially have significance. 00:10:09.840 --> 00:10:13.520 Not because man imbues significance to round numbers, but God does. 00:10:13.520 --> 00:10:15.920 God likes round numbers a whole lot. 00:10:15.920 --> 00:10:19.840 So not one iota of my faith hinges upon something happening in 00:10:19.840 --> 00:10:22.800 twenty thirty or thirty three or thereabouts. 00:10:22.800 --> 00:10:23.360 Don't know. 00:10:23.360 --> 00:10:24.160 Don't care. 00:10:24.160 --> 00:10:25.760 But I'm paying attention. 00:10:25.760 --> 00:10:29.360 If things get a hundred times worse between now and twenty thirty, 00:10:29.360 --> 00:10:30.880 I'm really going to be paying attention. 00:10:30.960 --> 00:10:32.960 I would hope that you would too. 00:10:32.960 --> 00:10:34.320 But who knows? 00:10:34.320 --> 00:10:38.800 Like it doesn't matter about the accuracy of what God has not 00:10:38.800 --> 00:10:42.720 predicted specifically is going to happen, but we are told to watch. 00:10:42.720 --> 00:10:45.120 And time does matter. 00:10:45.120 --> 00:10:47.360 One of the things that we've said in the past, I'm really 00:10:47.360 --> 00:10:48.880 glad we did. 00:10:48.880 --> 00:10:53.040 In the episode on evolution, we titled that six thousand years in 00:10:53.040 --> 00:10:57.440 counting. And we mentioned in that episode that there are a couple 00:10:57.600 --> 00:11:00.720 different competing timelines, which we're going to talk about here today. 00:11:00.720 --> 00:11:04.480 There's the rabbinic timeline, which we base the name of the episode 00:11:04.480 --> 00:11:07.600 on, where the creation of the earth was about six thousand years 00:11:07.600 --> 00:11:12.240 ago. If you use the Septuagint numbering instead, which the early church 00:11:12.240 --> 00:11:13.760 did, everybody did. 00:11:13.760 --> 00:11:15.440 It wasn't just a Bible thing. 00:11:15.440 --> 00:11:19.920 It was the general use of the calendar counting back to about 00:11:20.080 --> 00:11:22.400 seventy five hundred years ago. 00:11:22.400 --> 00:11:25.920 So about fifty five hundred would be the beginning of the universe. 00:11:25.920 --> 00:11:29.520 We mentioned in the six thousand years accounting episode that those two 00:11:29.520 --> 00:11:31.760 competing timelines existed. 00:11:31.760 --> 00:11:35.440 And I'm really glad that we chose the wrong one to title 00:11:35.440 --> 00:11:38.160 it because it's an example of one of the things that we 00:11:38.160 --> 00:11:40.640 as a church are gonna have to deal with in the future. 00:11:40.640 --> 00:11:43.280 We will have made mistakes about things. 00:11:43.280 --> 00:11:46.960 When we have relied on the rabbinic text, there are going to 00:11:46.960 --> 00:11:49.200 be cases where we've made mistakes. 00:11:49.200 --> 00:11:52.800 We cannot have any ego bound up and I was wrong. 00:11:52.800 --> 00:11:57.040 Now, it's important to know that there's sometimes the mistakes are incidental, 00:11:57.040 --> 00:11:59.840 as in the case of us naming it six thousand years and 00:11:59.840 --> 00:12:02.400 counting instead of seventy five hundred. 00:12:02.400 --> 00:12:03.680 But in other cases the 00:12:04.560 --> 00:12:08.240 mistakes can be material, which was not there. 00:12:08.240 --> 00:12:10.240 So we don't need to go back and we're not even going 00:12:10.240 --> 00:12:12.960 to change the show notes for that episode because there's nothing to 00:12:12.960 --> 00:12:19.200 retract. Because the argument that we made against evolution, we very specifically 00:12:19.200 --> 00:12:21.440 said it doesn't matter if it was six thousand years ago or 00:12:21.440 --> 00:12:23.040 seventy five hundred years ago. 00:12:23.040 --> 00:12:27.440 Either way, Adam was the first man, there was zero evolution because 00:12:27.440 --> 00:12:28.720 there was zero death. 00:12:28.720 --> 00:12:31.600 So if nothing is dying, nothing is evolving. 00:12:31.600 --> 00:12:35.920 Adam was created from dust, and every man alive since then is 00:12:35.920 --> 00:12:37.760 descended from him, period. 00:12:37.760 --> 00:12:42.800 No monkeys, no whales, no fish, no amoeba, no soup, nothing. 00:12:42.800 --> 00:12:45.360 So the entire argument that we made in the six thousand years 00:12:45.360 --> 00:12:49.280 and counting episode against evolution would have worked identically if we'd used 00:12:49.440 --> 00:12:51.520 Septuagint numbering. 00:12:51.520 --> 00:12:54.400 And had we been making an argument at that time that hinged 00:12:54.400 --> 00:12:57.280 on the 1500-year difference, we wouldn't have done the episode until we 00:12:57.280 --> 00:12:58.880 figured out which one was right. 00:12:58.880 --> 00:13:01.520 But because it wasn't material we didn't really look into it. 00:13:01.520 --> 00:13:04.640 There would have been a different timeline for everything about Stone Choir 00:13:04.720 --> 00:13:08.080 because if we dug into the Septuagint when we did, I think 00:13:08.080 --> 00:13:10.720 we'd probably would have been doing this series a lot sooner because 00:13:11.280 --> 00:13:15.760 the changes, the errors, the mistakes are obvious and they're huge. 00:13:15.760 --> 00:13:19.760 But sometimes your arguments are going to be made in good faith, 00:13:19.760 --> 00:13:24.160 but not predicated on something that you have to give up. 00:13:24.160 --> 00:13:30.000 So evolution is still false regardless of which timeline we're using. 00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:31.840 It's okay to have made mistakes. 00:13:31.840 --> 00:13:35.360 It's important to understand the nature and the character of your mistakes. 00:13:35.360 --> 00:13:39.120 We will, as a church, be getting into the future places where 00:13:39.120 --> 00:13:43.280 we find that certain aspects of what we believe don't actually hold 00:13:43.280 --> 00:13:46.080 up relative to the Septuagint. 00:13:46.080 --> 00:13:48.640 Are we going to be bound up in our egos to say, 00:13:48.640 --> 00:13:51.280 no, I'm a Christian, I would never make a mistake? 00:13:51.280 --> 00:13:54.800 Or are we going to accept the simple fact, the simple argument? 00:13:54.800 --> 00:13:58.640 We weren't actually looking at scripture when we made those conclusions. 00:13:58.640 --> 00:14:00.800 What is our duty to as Christians? 00:14:01.120 --> 00:14:05.360 It's to the Word of God, which then raises the question, which 00:14:05.360 --> 00:14:07.120 is the Word of God? 00:14:07.120 --> 00:14:10.160 And so it's not a circular argument, but you can beg the 00:14:10.160 --> 00:14:13.200 question if you assume that what you were previously using was the 00:14:13.360 --> 00:14:16.320 Was the pure word of God, and it turns out it wasn't, 00:14:16.320 --> 00:14:18.320 which is what we're demonstrating here. 00:14:18.320 --> 00:14:23.920 As Corey will get into later on, our Bibles are littered with 00:14:23.920 --> 00:14:28.240 places where despite claiming to have used the rabbinic text, they ignored 00:14:28.400 --> 00:14:31.360 entirely and used the Septuagint all over the place. 00:14:31.360 --> 00:14:35.040 We confess the Septuagint left and right today as Christians. 00:14:35.200 --> 00:14:40.560 God's preserved our faith by the Septuagint even while post reformation, everyone 00:14:40.560 --> 00:14:42.800 was pretending to ignore it. 00:14:42.800 --> 00:14:47.440 The importance of acknowledging that we made mistakes is necessary because otherwise 00:14:47.520 --> 00:14:49.200 repentance isn't possible. 00:14:49.360 --> 00:14:51.840 You go back and listen to the entire episode on repentance, that's 00:14:51.760 --> 00:14:52.480 the point. 00:14:52.480 --> 00:14:54.080 You have to realize you did something wrong. 00:14:54.320 --> 00:14:56.720 Repentance is not simply a question of sin. 00:14:56.720 --> 00:14:57.680 It's a question of error. 00:14:57.680 --> 00:14:58.960 It's a question of mistake. 00:14:58.960 --> 00:15:02.880 If you've ever accidentally driven down a the wrong side of a 00:15:02.880 --> 00:15:05.840 divided street, I did this once in Madison, it was kind of 00:15:05.840 --> 00:15:07.920 scary, it was late at night, so it didn't matter. 00:15:07.920 --> 00:15:10.640 It was a very wide intersection, I was making a left turn. 00:15:10.640 --> 00:15:12.560 It was confusing the way it was laid out. 00:15:12.560 --> 00:15:16.720 I accidentally went down the wrong way for like ten feet. 00:15:16.720 --> 00:15:20.000 I realized my error as I was turning in and I had 00:15:20.000 --> 00:15:22.320 to back up and then go through another no one else's around 00:15:22.400 --> 00:15:26.480 so no one got hurt, but I repented of my wrong left 00:15:26.480 --> 00:15:28.160 turn. That's repentance. 00:15:28.160 --> 00:15:29.760 You back up, you fix it. 00:15:29.760 --> 00:15:30.800 It's embarrassing. 00:15:30.800 --> 00:15:33.760 It's potentially dangerous, but you gotta do it. 00:15:33.760 --> 00:15:38.240 The alternative, the egoistic approach to making a wrong left turn and 00:15:38.240 --> 00:15:40.560 ending up on the wrong side of a street, you just keep 00:15:40.560 --> 00:15:43.680 going. I'm an excellent driver, I don't make mistakes when I'm driving. 00:15:43.680 --> 00:15:46.000 And you drive down the wrong side and you hit somebody head 00:15:46.080 --> 00:15:51.120 on. We're in that position as a church where we have relied 00:15:51.280 --> 00:15:55.680 in good conscience on things that we are going to realize are 00:15:55.680 --> 00:15:56.880 not reliable. 00:15:56.880 --> 00:15:58.560 And we're going to be covering some of those today. 00:15:59.520 --> 00:16:02.960 But just keep in mind that as you realize these things, don't 00:16:02.960 --> 00:16:04.000 be embarrassed. 00:16:04.000 --> 00:16:05.600 That's not the important part. 00:16:05.600 --> 00:16:09.440 The important part is not that you were wrong about anything or 00:16:09.440 --> 00:16:13.040 whatever. The important part is not that you are embarrassed by a 00:16:13.040 --> 00:16:16.160 mistake. The important part is to be in accord with God, whatever 00:16:16.160 --> 00:16:17.280 God's word is. 00:16:17.280 --> 00:16:21.040 Even if you totally reject everything that we say about the Septuagint, 00:16:21.040 --> 00:16:24.560 and you triple down on the rabbinic text, well, like I just 00:16:24.560 --> 00:16:26.960 said, you're gonna have to burn your Bible that's based on the 00:16:26.960 --> 00:16:28.720 Rabbinic Text because it's not really. 00:16:28.720 --> 00:16:31.520 Your Old Testament is full of Septuagint. 00:16:31.520 --> 00:16:34.640 If you actually reject the Septuagint, you have to get rid of 00:16:34.640 --> 00:16:37.920 every Bible you have and fix the ones that rely on the 00:16:37.920 --> 00:16:41.120 Rabbinic text for frequently the Hebrew is unclear. 00:16:41.120 --> 00:16:44.240 Corey and I were joking earlier, the footnote is so frequently used 00:16:44.240 --> 00:16:47.600 that the Hebrew is unclear, that we wish that we could title 00:16:47.600 --> 00:16:49.600 one of these episodes with that. 00:16:49.600 --> 00:16:51.760 That footnote, the Hebrew is unclear, is basically 00:16:52.640 --> 00:16:54.880 where the church has been. 00:16:54.880 --> 00:16:58.720 But those decisions have been left to these translators and translation committees. 00:16:58.720 --> 00:17:00.720 Usually they don't even footnote the stuff. 00:17:00.720 --> 00:17:03.840 So you as a reader just plowing through scripture have no idea. 00:17:03.840 --> 00:17:06.560 You don't know when you're reading the Old Testament over and over 00:17:06.560 --> 00:17:10.240 again. You've been reading the Septuagint, just in bits and pieces, places 00:17:10.240 --> 00:17:13.680 where the rabbis either corrupted or just lost or confused things to 00:17:13.680 --> 00:17:16.400 the point that or in some cases, Hebrew is just so worthless 00:17:16.400 --> 00:17:19.920 as a so-called language, you can't actually use it. 00:17:19.920 --> 00:17:23.680 God has preserved the church through the Septuagint even while we've been 00:17:23.680 --> 00:17:26.800 wandering through the wilderness here with this Hebrew crap. 00:17:26.800 --> 00:17:30.080 When we come back, we're going to be a little bit embarrassed. 00:17:30.080 --> 00:17:33.360 We're gonna realize that we have to put some footnotes in some 00:17:33.360 --> 00:17:36.000 of our own comments in the past and realize the things that 00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:39.120 we said before we can't say again because they don't hold up. 00:17:39.120 --> 00:17:44.640 Repentance means accepting that and doing it humbly and willfully, and with 00:17:44.640 --> 00:17:48.320 full knowledge that God forgives our errors, but He will not forgive 00:17:48.320 --> 00:17:52.320 those who cling to their error in the face of rebuke. 00:17:52.320 --> 00:17:53.920 The timelines that we're going to be talking about 00:17:54.800 --> 00:17:59.520 here are not new in the Septuagint either. 00:17:59.520 --> 00:18:05.360 Going back to about 220 BC, the timelines that we're going to 00:18:05.360 --> 00:18:09.920 be discussing were where the genealogies, this is principally where the alterations 00:18:09.920 --> 00:18:11.680 have occurred in the rabbinic text. 00:18:11.680 --> 00:18:16.800 In the genealogies in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11, the patriarchs have 00:18:16.800 --> 00:18:20.960 had their generations altered radically and very ham fistedly. 00:18:20.960 --> 00:18:25.680 And In a fashion that is novel to the church. 00:18:25.680 --> 00:18:31.040 Going back to about 220 BC, Demetrius the chronographer, and in 150 00:18:31.040 --> 00:18:35.440 BC roughly, a man named Oipolemus, both of whom were cited by 00:18:35.440 --> 00:18:40.480 Eusebius in three hundred twenty five AD, attest to the Septuagint chronologies 00:18:40.480 --> 00:18:42.160 that we're going to talk about. 00:18:42.160 --> 00:18:45.440 And in the first century of both Philo of Alexandria, the Jewish 00:18:45.440 --> 00:18:51.360 convert into Judaism, we've talked about previously, and Josephus both use the 00:18:51.360 --> 00:18:55.440 Septuagint chronologies as factual. 00:18:55.440 --> 00:19:00.640 So the first time in the church the the rabbinic timelines that 00:19:00.960 --> 00:19:04.960 we're all used to today, the ones that I mentioned in the 00:19:04.960 --> 00:19:09.600 evolution episode, the one thing that I couldn't reconcile about the rabbinic 00:19:09.600 --> 00:19:13.040 timeline of you know, the flood being about forty five hundred years 00:19:13.040 --> 00:19:17.760 ago was that there are pyramids that are forty seven hundred years 00:19:17.760 --> 00:19:19.600 old. That's a fact. 00:19:19.600 --> 00:19:20.800 It's not ambiguous. 00:19:20.800 --> 00:19:25.040 There are unambiguously pyramids that can be proven to be two hundred 00:19:25.040 --> 00:19:25.440 years older 00:19:26.400 --> 00:19:31.520 than the date in the rabbinic text says the flood occurred. 00:19:31.520 --> 00:19:34.480 I'm pretty sure I acknowledge in that episode, I don't know what 00:19:34.480 --> 00:19:35.200 to think. 00:19:35.200 --> 00:19:38.400 It's one of those cases where I believe my lying eyes and 00:19:38.400 --> 00:19:39.840 I believe the Word of God. 00:19:39.840 --> 00:19:42.400 And I couldn't reconcile the two, and so I just basically threw 00:19:42.400 --> 00:19:45.680 it on the altar of Lord I believe help my unbelief. 00:19:45.680 --> 00:19:48.320 Which is often where some of these things come down to. 00:19:48.320 --> 00:19:51.440 We have to be humble enough to say, I'm not smart enough, 00:19:51.440 --> 00:19:52.880 I don't have the reason. 00:19:52.720 --> 00:19:56.080 I don't have the facts to be able to figure this out, 00:19:56.080 --> 00:19:59.520 and I believe scripture, and I'm going to trust God, even when 00:19:59.520 --> 00:20:00.640 I don't understand. 00:20:00.640 --> 00:20:04.160 There's no man in the universe who's so smart that he will 00:20:04.160 --> 00:20:06.000 not at some point run into that. 00:20:06.000 --> 00:20:09.840 Because some of God's mysteries, that's the only way to deal with 00:20:09.840 --> 00:20:14.080 it. We've talked about before, when you talk about communion, when you 00:20:14.080 --> 00:20:19.200 talk about the hypostatic union of Christ, There is no rational explanation 00:20:19.200 --> 00:20:22.000 for what's going on because those are supernatural. 00:20:22.000 --> 00:20:25.040 The difference is that time is real. 00:20:25.040 --> 00:20:26.720 Time is part of creation. 00:20:26.720 --> 00:20:30.480 It's not supernaturally moving around. 00:20:30.480 --> 00:20:34.400 So So the rabbinic timeline that says the flood was 4,500 years 00:20:34.400 --> 00:20:38.800 ago does not jive with archaeological evidence. 00:20:38.800 --> 00:20:43.040 A pyramid could not exist given the description of the flood. 00:20:43.040 --> 00:20:46.240 It just wouldn't be there, wouldn't have been buried under miles of 00:20:46.240 --> 00:20:47.520 silt and mud. 00:20:47.520 --> 00:20:50.000 It certainly would have been destroyed. 00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:53.040 And so when we did that episode, like I don't know, I 00:20:53.040 --> 00:20:56.160 believe forty five hundred years because it's what the Bible says, and 00:20:56.160 --> 00:20:59.120 I believe there's definitely a pyramid sitting here that's forty, seven hundred 00:20:59.200 --> 00:20:59.760 years old. 00:20:59.760 --> 00:21:02.000 I don't know what to make of it. 00:21:02.000 --> 00:21:05.680 But it made me uncomfortable because it didn't seem to add up. 00:21:05.680 --> 00:21:08.640 And we're dealing with a pyramid and we're dealing with years. 00:21:08.640 --> 00:21:10.720 Those are not supernatural things. 00:21:10.720 --> 00:21:12.720 So trust God, but 00:21:12.800 --> 00:21:13.040 you 00:21:13.040 --> 00:21:13.520 know, I 00:21:13.520 --> 00:21:14.800 don't know what do you do? 00:21:14.800 --> 00:21:17.600 All you can do is believe God and not worry about it 00:21:17.600 --> 00:21:18.560 too much. 00:21:18.560 --> 00:21:23.040 However, when you look at the Septuagint timeline, makes perfect sense. 00:21:23.040 --> 00:21:26.720 The flood was much before the construction of those pyramids. 00:21:26.720 --> 00:21:29.200 They could absolutely exist with the timeline. 00:21:29.200 --> 00:21:32.480 They was in use in 220 BC and in you know the 00:21:32.480 --> 00:21:34.720 first century and the fourth century. 00:21:34.720 --> 00:21:38.480 The problem was created by the rabbis to cover up some of 00:21:38.480 --> 00:21:40.560 the other things that they were up to. 00:21:40.560 --> 00:21:45.120 So just remember that as we're going through these timelines, no Christian 00:21:45.200 --> 00:21:48.960 before Jerome ever engaged in the sort of nonsense that we've been 00:21:48.960 --> 00:21:52.480 subjected to, particularly since the Reformation. 00:21:52.480 --> 00:21:56.800 I do want to note that there's a single source in antiquity 00:21:56.800 --> 00:22:01.040 that does represent the rabbinic timelines, something that's older than 00:22:02.240 --> 00:22:06.960 the thousand year old Masoretic text that we're stuck with today. 00:22:06.960 --> 00:22:10.800 There are examples from roughly one hundred sixty, one fifty BC from 00:22:10.800 --> 00:22:14.240 the Qumran Caves of the Book of Jubilees, and there are a 00:22:14.240 --> 00:22:15.520 number of copies of that. 00:22:15.520 --> 00:22:18.480 And the Book of Jubilees, which was an apocryphal book, it's not 00:22:18.480 --> 00:22:22.160 canonical, I think, in any one's estimation, but it was a written 00:22:22.160 --> 00:22:27.120 record, does include at least some of these changes to the genealogies. 00:22:27.360 --> 00:22:33.760 So when Jerome imported the rabbinic changes in the fourth century, it 00:22:33.760 --> 00:22:35.200 wasn't brand new at the time. 00:22:35.200 --> 00:22:38.800 It was something that had been around at least as long as 00:22:38.800 --> 00:22:40.480 about 150 BC. 00:22:40.480 --> 00:22:44.720 But crucially, that's still newer than the evidence that we have of 00:22:44.720 --> 00:22:47.120 the Septuagint timeline. 00:22:47.120 --> 00:22:50.480 So as we're going through the dates today, sometimes we're going to 00:22:50.480 --> 00:22:52.080 talk about 80 BC. 00:22:52.080 --> 00:22:54.000 I'm not going to try to stick to the point of the 00:22:54.320 --> 00:22:57.760 origin date of the earth because we don't know accurately, but we 00:22:57.760 --> 00:23:00.480 know it's in the ballpark of seventy five hundred years ago. 00:23:00.480 --> 00:23:04.000 Some of the counts say seventy five eleven, some say seventy five 00:23:04.160 --> 00:23:05.360 thirty three. 00:23:05.360 --> 00:23:07.440 One of the links will be in the show notes, says I 00:23:07.440 --> 00:23:09.680 believe 7558. 00:23:09.680 --> 00:23:11.120 And we'll link that. 00:23:11.120 --> 00:23:15.120 And I want to include that in the show notes, and it's 00:23:15.120 --> 00:23:16.080 worth looking at. 00:23:16.080 --> 00:23:19.680 We're not vouching for his conclusions, all of them, but it's a 00:23:19.680 --> 00:23:25.040 very excellent summation of just how complicated timelines have always been. 00:23:25.040 --> 00:23:28.080 So this guy who's trying to reconcile the Septuagint, trying to make 00:23:28.080 --> 00:23:31.840 the same kind of cleanup that we are, lays out some of 00:23:31.840 --> 00:23:34.880 the fights and some of the inconsistencies that occur so you can 00:23:34.880 --> 00:23:37.120 understand how complicated it is. 00:23:37.120 --> 00:23:40.560 When we're doing some of the dates in this episode, we're just 00:23:40.560 --> 00:23:42.960 going to use relative dates. 00:23:42.960 --> 00:23:46.160 So we're going to begin later on and we're talking about Job's 00:23:46.160 --> 00:23:50.000 timeline. We're gonna talk about Abraham's birth as basically year one. 00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:52.240 Kind of instead of A D, it's gonna be you know the 00:23:52.240 --> 00:23:53.600 birth of Abraham. 00:23:53.600 --> 00:23:56.960 If that is year one, that is a fixed point in time, 00:23:56.960 --> 00:23:57.840 it's a real point. 00:23:58.160 --> 00:24:02.000 So within the text of scripture, we can make precise measurements from 00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:06.560 the date of Abraham's birth in terms of years, and we can 00:24:06.560 --> 00:24:09.200 be consistent from that point forward. 00:24:09.200 --> 00:24:12.480 That precision is going to hold in everything that we say today, 00:24:12.480 --> 00:24:15.920 even if there's ambiguity about the accuracy of the year in which 00:24:15.920 --> 00:24:17.200 Abraham is born. 00:24:17.200 --> 00:24:19.280 So I hope you can track with this. 00:24:19.280 --> 00:24:23.120 The accuracy of a particular date in the past is not going 00:24:23.120 --> 00:24:26.880 to be relevant to any of the arguments that we're making. 00:24:26.880 --> 00:24:31.200 The relative precision within the text itself does matter, because you can 00:24:31.200 --> 00:24:34.800 move Abraham's birth around a couple hundred years, even with some of 00:24:34.800 --> 00:24:40.080 these timeline things, as long as the text itself is internally consistent, 00:24:40.080 --> 00:24:42.960 you're not going to be falling into error with the conclusions that 00:24:42.960 --> 00:24:44.000 you make. 00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:48.800 Because it doesn't matter to me personally or to you personally whether 00:24:48.800 --> 00:24:53.360 the flood was 4,500 years ago or fifty three hundred years ago. 00:24:53.360 --> 00:24:54.960 What difference does it make? 00:24:54.960 --> 00:25:00.000 It only makes difference relative to whatever other events would have occurred 00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:01.840 before or after that. 00:25:01.840 --> 00:25:04.800 But being specific doesn't really matter. 00:25:04.800 --> 00:25:07.920 So I hope that you can come along with that and not 00:25:07.920 --> 00:25:12.000 get too hung up on, well, if I don't believe, you know, 00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:17.760 if I don't believe 7511 versus 7533 thirty three, that doesn't mean 00:25:17.760 --> 00:25:20.320 that the ballpark figure isn't true. 00:25:20.320 --> 00:25:22.640 It's okay to be off by a little bit, but you can't 00:25:22.640 --> 00:25:24.000 be off by a lot. 00:25:24.000 --> 00:25:27.120 Just like with Jesus birth, whether it was eighty one or BC 00:25:27.120 --> 00:25:29.920 three or some other number, it's really close to that. 00:25:29.920 --> 00:25:31.920 We definitely know it's really close to that. 00:25:31.920 --> 00:25:35.600 It can only be a couple of those years because of historical 00:25:35.600 --> 00:25:39.200 records we have from Judea and Rome and from 00:25:40.400 --> 00:25:42.240 Celestial records that we have. 00:25:42.240 --> 00:25:45.840 We have a very good idea that's right close to the number 00:25:45.840 --> 00:25:46.880 we have. 00:25:46.880 --> 00:25:47.840 That's good enough. 00:25:47.840 --> 00:25:49.040 It's good enough for government work. 00:25:49.040 --> 00:25:50.640 It's good enough for being a Christian. 00:25:50.640 --> 00:25:53.280 What I don't want is for anyone's faith to be undermined by 00:25:53.600 --> 00:25:55.200 I don't know, so I'm going to give up on the whole 00:25:55.200 --> 00:25:57.520 thing. That's not a Christian conclusion. 00:25:57.520 --> 00:25:59.600 We try to get this stuff right, and if you can't figure 00:25:59.600 --> 00:26:02.960 it out, just leave it alone, just like I did with the 00:26:02.960 --> 00:26:06.880 pyramids before, before I knew that the Septuagint timeline was accurate. 00:26:07.040 --> 00:26:09.120 Like I don't have to do with the pyramids, don't worry about 00:26:09.120 --> 00:26:12.080 it. I've never lost a lick of sleep over the fact that 00:26:12.080 --> 00:26:15.840 my lying eyes and the chronology and the rabbinic text didn't match. 00:26:15.840 --> 00:26:17.520 Like I don't know, whatever. 00:26:17.520 --> 00:26:18.880 Doesn't hurt me either way. 00:26:18.880 --> 00:26:21.840 But I'm not going to lose faith in the text. 00:26:21.840 --> 00:26:24.800 The good news is that the more we use a Septuagint for 00:26:24.800 --> 00:26:28.080 these things, the more we find those problems just vanish. 00:26:28.080 --> 00:26:34.000 There are far fewer questions of accuracy and precision of timelines with 00:26:34.000 --> 00:26:36.960 a Septuagint than there are with the rabbinic text. 00:26:36.960 --> 00:26:38.000 And there's a reason for 00:26:38.000 --> 00:26:38.640 that. 00:26:39.760 --> 00:26:39.920 So 00:26:39.920 --> 00:26:43.520 when Woe said that it is ham fisted the way they went 00:26:43.520 --> 00:26:49.040 about making these changes and the changes changes themselves in these genealogies. 00:26:49.040 --> 00:26:51.760 It is almost an understatement. 00:26:51.760 --> 00:26:57.680 They basically just deleted a century in terms of the begetting ages 00:26:57.680 --> 00:26:59.440 of the patriarchs. 00:26:59.440 --> 00:27:04.480 But they were not entirely consistent in doing so, because it would 00:27:04.480 --> 00:27:09.040 have created problems for them down the line had they simply deleted 00:27:09.040 --> 00:27:11.920 a century from each of the patriarchs. 00:27:11.920 --> 00:27:16.080 And so for instance, if you look at this, you actually have 00:27:16.080 --> 00:27:22.160 a very clear trajectory in terms of the age of begetting children, 00:27:22.160 --> 00:27:26.560 from Adam straight through Noah, essentially, Noah being a rather extreme outlier. 00:27:27.760 --> 00:27:30.720 But for Adam you have his age of begetting is two hundred 00:27:30.720 --> 00:27:33.360 and thirty, and then Seth at two hundred and five, Enosh at 00:27:33.360 --> 00:27:36.640 one hundred ninety, Kenan at one hundred seventy, Mahalel at one hundred 00:27:36.560 --> 00:27:42.880 sixty five, Jared 162, Enoch 165, Methuselah 187, bumps up a little 00:27:42.880 --> 00:27:47.280 bit there, Lamac one eighty eight, Noah at five hundred, those are 00:27:47.280 --> 00:27:49.600 the ages from the Septuagint. 00:27:49.600 --> 00:27:52.160 You have a little more of a roller coaster going on over 00:27:52.160 --> 00:27:53.920 in the Masoretic Land. 00:27:53.920 --> 00:28:00.960 You have 130, 105, 90, 70, 65, 162, incidentally matches the Septuagint 00:28:00.960 --> 00:28:01.760 for that one. 00:28:01.920 --> 00:28:05.520 65, 187, one eighty seven again, matches the Septuagint. 00:28:05.600 --> 00:28:11.600 182, they just deleted six years, and then five hundred for Noah. 00:28:11.600 --> 00:28:13.840 Now one thing they did do when they were playing this little 00:28:13.840 --> 00:28:16.320 game and perhaps it hints at the fact that they were in 00:28:16.720 --> 00:28:18.800 fact fiddling with the timeline. 00:28:18.800 --> 00:28:23.440 If you use the Masoretic, then Methuselah dies the year of the 00:28:23.440 --> 00:28:28.160 flood. Rather convenient, that's how it happens, and they actually do comment 00:28:28.160 --> 00:28:32.800 on that in the Talmud, saying that saying that God had Methuselah 00:28:32.800 --> 00:28:36.560 die six days, or seven days, depending on how you read that, 00:28:36.560 --> 00:28:39.520 before the flood in order to provide for a period of mourning, 00:28:39.520 --> 00:28:40.800 and then the flood came. 00:28:40.800 --> 00:28:44.000 And so they wrote a commentary on their edits to scripture. 00:28:44.000 --> 00:28:47.280 Perhaps unsurprisingly. 00:28:47.280 --> 00:28:52.640 However, if you look at the actual timeline in the Septuagint, Methuselah 00:28:52.640 --> 00:28:55.280 dies six years before the flood. 00:28:55.280 --> 00:28:57.520 There's no potential conflict there. 00:28:57.520 --> 00:29:02.400 Some people will attempt to point out that there is a typographical 00:29:02.640 --> 00:29:07.200 or really a scribal error in this case in Alexandrinus in that 00:29:07.200 --> 00:29:12.000 particular codex because it has 167, but clearly that is 187, which 00:29:12.000 --> 00:29:14.320 is what we have in Vaticanus. 00:29:14.320 --> 00:29:19.520 So that is the age, the begetting age for Methuselah. 00:29:19.520 --> 00:29:25.760 But more important really than just these individual changes is the overall 00:29:25.760 --> 00:29:28.560 change, what they did overall to this. 00:29:28.560 --> 00:29:31.600 And we'll get into this a little bit more later on as 00:29:31.600 --> 00:29:33.680 well. I will be commenting on this again in my In my 00:29:33.680 --> 00:29:40.000 closing for this episode, but you have basically a thousand-year difference here. 00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:42.160 This is a significant change. 00:29:42.160 --> 00:29:46.640 So if you're looking at the Septuagint and you calculate these years, 00:29:46.640 --> 00:29:51.760 what you wind up with is 1662 up to Noah. 00:29:51.760 --> 00:29:57.920 Whereas if you are looking instead at the Masoretic, you have 1056. 00:29:57.920 --> 00:30:01.760 That's a rather significant gap, a rather significant edit. 00:30:01.760 --> 00:30:04.880 And as Woe pointed out, this starts to make things not align 00:30:04.880 --> 00:30:08.800 with what we actually know from archaeology of human history. 00:30:08.800 --> 00:30:13.360 You don't have this problem if you're dealing with the Septuagint timeline, 00:30:13.360 --> 00:30:16.080 you have this problem if you're dealing with the Masoretic. 00:30:16.080 --> 00:30:17.920 They created this problem. 00:30:17.920 --> 00:30:21.040 Now for them, they didn't realize it was a problem because they 00:30:21.040 --> 00:30:25.200 didn't have the archaeological records we have today, they did not understand 00:30:25.360 --> 00:30:28.240 they were creating this problem in the timeline. 00:30:28.240 --> 00:30:32.400 They thought they were just editing these dates and changing things around. 00:30:32.400 --> 00:30:35.200 Part of the reason for that, and I will get into this 00:30:35.200 --> 00:30:38.000 more in the conclusion, but part of the reason for that is 00:30:38.000 --> 00:30:43.280 because they wanted to downplay the fact that Christ appeared at a 00:30:43.280 --> 00:30:47.200 point in time that more or less aligned with what the Jews 00:30:47.200 --> 00:30:49.360 thought was going to happen. 00:30:49.360 --> 00:30:53.440 Now, Scripture doesn't actually tell us that the Christ is going to 00:30:53.440 --> 00:30:56.400 appear in the sixth age, which is what the Jews happen to 00:30:56.400 --> 00:31:01.280 think. They thought six thousand years after the creation is when the 00:31:01.280 --> 00:31:02.880 Christ would appear. 00:31:03.040 --> 00:31:04.000 Turns out that if you actually 00:31:04.880 --> 00:31:08.560 run the numbers and look at the Septuagint, it's about fifty five 00:31:08.560 --> 00:31:09.520 hundred years. 00:31:09.520 --> 00:31:11.600 It basically matches what they believe. 00:31:11.600 --> 00:31:16.480 Again, scripture doesn't tell us this, so Christians aren't bound to believe 00:31:16.480 --> 00:31:20.480 that Christ had to appear at some particular point in time in 00:31:20.480 --> 00:31:24.480 history. But it was very inconvenient for the Jews at the time, 00:31:24.480 --> 00:31:28.480 particularly these things happening after the destruction of the temple. 00:31:28.480 --> 00:31:33.040 It's very inconvenient for them to have this long standing tradition of 00:31:33.040 --> 00:31:35.840 saying the Christ is going to appear in the sixth age and 00:31:35.840 --> 00:31:39.600 then lo and behold Jesus Christ appears in the sixth age. 00:31:39.600 --> 00:31:41.840 That looks bad for the Jews. 00:31:41.840 --> 00:31:45.920 And was undoubtedly used in order to convert some of the Jews 00:31:45.920 --> 00:31:49.040 into Christians, because they would have looked at it. 00:31:49.040 --> 00:31:52.320 Our tradition has been saying, for however long they happen to be 00:31:52.320 --> 00:31:56.560 passing this down orally, that the Christ is going to appear And 00:31:56.560 --> 00:31:59.280 then he appeared at the time we thought he would appear. 00:31:59.280 --> 00:32:02.160 That's a pretty strong argument in their context. 00:32:02.160 --> 00:32:05.360 Again, in our context, neither here nor there, because we're not bound 00:32:05.360 --> 00:32:07.600 to believe one way or the other on that. 00:32:07.600 --> 00:32:10.160 But if you add up those numbers, it is about the year 00:32:10.160 --> 00:32:11.280 fifty five hundred. 00:32:11.280 --> 00:32:15.440 Again, as Wo said, there's some leeway as it were there, you 00:32:15.440 --> 00:32:18.800 know, plus or minus sixty years, give or take. 00:32:18.800 --> 00:32:22.000 It doesn't matter the exact date of creation. 00:32:22.000 --> 00:32:25.440 And so if you happen to be someone who's very attached to, 00:32:25.440 --> 00:32:30.080 say, Usher's chronology and you like that number four thousand four BC, 00:32:30.080 --> 00:32:34.480 too bad, the Septuagint very clearly gives us a different date for 00:32:34.480 --> 00:32:37.520 that I kind of liked 4004 BC. 00:32:37.520 --> 00:32:39.120 But that's not the issue. 00:32:39.120 --> 00:32:43.360 The issue is not whether or not we know specifically the day, 00:32:43.360 --> 00:32:45.840 in some cases, some of these men tried to calculate the exact 00:32:45.840 --> 00:32:47.840 day of creation. 00:32:47.840 --> 00:32:52.320 Rather the point is we have these genealogies, we have a chronology 00:32:52.320 --> 00:32:56.720 that scripture gives us, and the one in the Masoretic text does 00:32:56.720 --> 00:33:00.320 not match the Septuagint, and it also does not match what we 00:33:00.320 --> 00:33:02.240 know from history to be true. 00:33:02.240 --> 00:33:07.440 Even If you have things in Scripture, supposed Scripture, that do not 00:33:07.440 --> 00:33:11.760 match facts that you know, you only have two resolutions to that 00:33:11.760 --> 00:33:16.480 possible. One the fact you thought you knew is not in fact 00:33:16.560 --> 00:33:20.240 a fact, but we do know the age of the pyramids, for 00:33:20.240 --> 00:33:22.320 instance, there are other things as well. 00:33:22.320 --> 00:33:26.480 Or the other option, what you have is not in fact true 00:33:26.480 --> 00:33:28.560 to scripture, it is not in fact God's word. 00:33:28.560 --> 00:33:31.440 It has been edited in some way, there's a scribal error, whatever 00:33:31.440 --> 00:33:33.600 it happens to be. 00:33:33.600 --> 00:33:36.800 In our case, we don't have the problem of trying to explain 00:33:36.800 --> 00:33:40.480 away a scribal error, because there is no scribal error. 00:33:40.480 --> 00:33:43.040 There were edits made by the Jews. 00:33:43.040 --> 00:33:45.680 And this is something that early Christians recognize. 00:33:45.680 --> 00:33:49.040 This is not something that we are pulling out of thin air 00:33:49.120 --> 00:33:52.560 or we've created this or we're the first men to notice. 00:33:52.560 --> 00:33:57.120 No, this was recognized early on in the churches, in the very 00:33:57.120 --> 00:34:01.600 early Christian church, and for instance we have Eusebius saying, Therefore we 00:34:01.600 --> 00:34:05.280 suspect that this was something which the Jews did, of the changes 00:34:05.280 --> 00:34:09.120 to the title of the timeline versus the Septuagint. 00:34:09.120 --> 00:34:12.960 This is something that has been recognized by Christians, we just simply 00:34:12.960 --> 00:34:17.360 forgot it over the ensuing centuries, and we have accepted from the 00:34:17.360 --> 00:34:21.040 hand of the Jews this timeline that does not match. 00:34:21.040 --> 00:34:23.440 And there are other wicked things that they do with this because 00:34:23.440 --> 00:34:27.120 as soon as you start tweaking the timeline, there are other things 00:34:27.120 --> 00:34:29.120 that you can do downstream. 00:34:29.120 --> 00:34:32.240 It's not just a matter of minimizing Christ, which of course they 00:34:32.240 --> 00:34:34.960 did, and there were many of the church fathers who commented on 00:34:34.960 --> 00:34:39.120 that as well, saying that the Jews fiddled with verses about the 00:34:39.120 --> 00:34:42.240 Messiah, about the Christ, and we went over that in a previous 00:34:42.240 --> 00:34:46.800 episode. But when you start fiddling with the timeline, it opens up 00:34:46.800 --> 00:34:50.480 the possibility of doing other things downstream. 00:34:50.480 --> 00:34:54.000 And even if you step back and ignore the wickedness of doing 00:34:54.000 --> 00:34:59.280 it itself, and you ignore what they can do downstream, you should 00:34:59.280 --> 00:35:02.400 want to have the actual word of God, not something that has 00:35:02.400 --> 00:35:04.960 been edited by the rabbis. 00:35:04.960 --> 00:35:06.960 Even if there were no importance 00:35:07.840 --> 00:35:12.320 outside of simply being accurate numbers, you should want to have the 00:35:12.320 --> 00:35:13.040 accurate numbers. 00:35:13.040 --> 00:35:13.520 You should want to have 00:35:14.480 --> 00:35:20.160 what God gave to Moses to record for his church. 00:35:20.160 --> 00:35:24.000 Instead of what the rabbis have decided, they would rather have 00:35:26.800 --> 00:35:30.960 When you look at the changes to Genesis 11's chronology, it becomes 00:35:30.960 --> 00:35:32.560 even more blatant. 00:35:32.560 --> 00:35:37.280 In Genesis 11, we have about 780 years that are deleted. 00:35:37.280 --> 00:35:39.600 And they're not deleted haphazardly. 00:35:39.840 --> 00:35:44.560 They're deleted on precise century marks. 00:35:44.560 --> 00:35:44.880 So 00:35:45.760 --> 00:35:49.600 Shem is about 100 when his son is born, and then his 00:35:49.600 --> 00:35:54.400 son when his begetting age, instead of being a hundred and thirty-five, 00:35:54.400 --> 00:35:57.840 as it is in the Septuagint, in the rabbinic text it's thirty 00:35:57.920 --> 00:36:00.560 five. So we go from a hundred to thirty-five. 00:36:00.560 --> 00:36:05.680 And then continuously from Shem through Tara, we we see I'm just 00:36:05.680 --> 00:36:09.200 gonna give you the dates from the Septuagint and you know these 00:36:09.440 --> 00:36:11.200 bunch of numbers, but they're all basically the same. 00:36:11.280 --> 00:36:18.320 100, 135, 130, another 130, 134, 130, 132, 130, 79, 00:36:18.400 --> 00:36:24.480 130. So in the Septuagint they all had their son at about 00:36:24.480 --> 00:36:27.200 the same time, virtually the same age every time. 00:36:27.200 --> 00:36:31.280 There's complete consistency, with the one exception of Nahor. 00:36:31.280 --> 00:36:35.360 In the rabbinic text, you have a hundred for Shem, and then 00:36:36.000 --> 00:36:40.240 Tara has a hundred and thirty, and all of them in between 00:36:40.560 --> 00:36:47.040 have a century deleted, except for Shem's grandson Canaan, who is deleted 00:36:47.040 --> 00:36:52.480 entirely. So an entire man is deleted from scripture, and then Nahor, 00:36:52.480 --> 00:36:55.840 who was last before Tara, because he only lived to be seventy 00:36:55.840 --> 00:36:56.720 nine years. 00:36:56.720 --> 00:37:00.240 They didn't delete a hundred years, they deleted fifty. 00:37:00.240 --> 00:37:02.960 So he went from seventy nine to twenty nine. 00:37:02.960 --> 00:37:08.000 Now, some of you have probably heard of forensic accounting. 00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:12.480 There are certain tells when someone has been messing with numbers in 00:37:12.480 --> 00:37:17.760 a spreadsheet, in somebody's books for finances, that makes it very clear 00:37:18.080 --> 00:37:21.120 that human hands were involved. 00:37:21.440 --> 00:37:26.000 There's certain patterns that to us seem random and we think, well, 00:37:26.000 --> 00:37:28.800 I'm doing something very random when I change this value to that 00:37:28.800 --> 00:37:31.600 value that are not remotely random. 00:37:31.600 --> 00:37:35.760 And when a forensic accountant applies statistical analysis, they stick out like 00:37:35.760 --> 00:37:37.040 a sore thumb. 00:37:37.040 --> 00:37:41.600 You can prove in court that someone has manipulated a spreadsheet by 00:37:41.600 --> 00:37:44.240 the numbers that certain columns end in. 00:37:44.240 --> 00:37:47.920 That will hold up in court because it's provable science that when 00:37:47.920 --> 00:37:52.000 men go into something that's natural and alter it, they produce something 00:37:52.000 --> 00:37:54.240 that's detectably unnatural. 00:37:54.240 --> 00:37:57.360 Now, you don't need a forensic accountant at all here when you 00:37:57.360 --> 00:38:00.400 see going from a hundred to a bunch of guys in their 00:38:00.400 --> 00:38:03.120 thirties to back to one thirty. 00:38:03.120 --> 00:38:07.360 And again, as Corey said the previous timeline, it drifted, it came 00:38:07.360 --> 00:38:12.240 down, but it shifted from the earliest begetting age of 130 for 00:38:12.240 --> 00:38:15.200 Adam or sorry, two hundred and thirty for Adam, one hundred and 00:38:15.200 --> 00:38:18.160 thirty, incidentally was the same one that we see in the rabbinic 00:38:18.160 --> 00:38:22.960 text. Septuagint said Adam begat at two hundred thirty, and then they 00:38:22.960 --> 00:38:26.720 diminish slightly, but they never go below about one hundred and sixty 00:38:26.720 --> 00:38:32.080 two. Suddenly, after Shem, it falls off a cliff, and we lose 00:38:32.080 --> 00:38:37.120 an entire century for seven centuries, and we lose an entire man. 00:38:37.120 --> 00:38:39.360 This is so blatant in its manipulation 00:38:40.640 --> 00:38:46.880 that you can only possibly conclude that either the Septuagint was manipulated 00:38:46.880 --> 00:38:51.360 to come up with numbers that are entirely consistent, both with history 00:38:51.440 --> 00:38:57.120 and with the way numbers behave, or that the rabbinic text was 00:38:57.440 --> 00:39:01.040 radically altered by people who were, as I said, ham fisted. 00:39:01.040 --> 00:39:03.280 Like, this is not subtle. 00:39:03.280 --> 00:39:07.840 Chopping off a one, literally removing a digit from every number, except 00:39:07.840 --> 00:39:11.680 for the man you delete entirely, or you know, because Nahor only 00:39:11.680 --> 00:39:14.720 begat at seventy nine, they had to switch that to twenty-nine. 00:39:14.720 --> 00:39:17.360 Because if they deleted a century from him, he would have been 00:39:17.360 --> 00:39:19.760 begetting before he was himself born. 00:39:19.760 --> 00:39:21.520 That's how blatant it is. 00:39:21.520 --> 00:39:23.920 It's not believable. 00:39:23.920 --> 00:39:27.120 And this is important because this is a timeline that goes directly 00:39:27.120 --> 00:39:29.040 to the flood chronology. 00:39:29.040 --> 00:39:32.800 The previous one doesn't matter so much, this one matters a great 00:39:32.800 --> 00:39:38.880 deal. We have lost almost eight hundred years here in Genesis eleven. 00:39:38.880 --> 00:39:43.840 It was deliberately removed, and as Corey said, like it doesn't even 00:39:43.840 --> 00:39:45.920 matter what their purpose was. 00:39:45.920 --> 00:39:49.600 And it also doesn't matter particularly which numbers you use. 00:39:49.600 --> 00:39:52.160 Like if we're just making up numbers, you know, one's as good 00:39:52.160 --> 00:39:53.040 as another. 00:39:53.040 --> 00:39:55.360 Except we're talking about scripture. 00:39:55.680 --> 00:39:58.240 If God said it, that means it's true. 00:39:58.240 --> 00:40:01.760 And as I've said, I think in the last episode, the way 00:40:01.760 --> 00:40:07.840 Revelation ends should terrorize anyone who would take lightly altering scripture. 00:40:07.840 --> 00:40:12.960 God promises that every curse, every plague in this book will be 00:40:12.960 --> 00:40:16.560 brought upon any man who changes a single thing about it. 00:40:16.560 --> 00:40:21.040 The changes here are not subtle, they're not small, and they're not 00:40:21.040 --> 00:40:24.480 insignificant. That's a big deal. 00:40:24.480 --> 00:40:25.840 All by itself, it's a big deal. 00:40:25.840 --> 00:40:28.640 Even if it didn't, as Corey said, it still matters. 00:40:28.640 --> 00:40:30.960 We should still care about getting it right. 00:40:30.960 --> 00:40:34.640 And when you actually look, we'll provide, I said both these tables 00:40:34.640 --> 00:40:36.720 will be in the length that I provide again. 00:40:36.720 --> 00:40:39.680 We're We're not vouching for the link to the I think it's 00:40:39.680 --> 00:40:43.600 Bible.ca has a very exhaustive examination. 00:40:43.600 --> 00:40:47.200 These numbers won't exactly align with the numbers that Corey mentioned. 00:40:47.440 --> 00:40:49.920 He said the hundred and eighty-eight for Lamek. 00:40:49.920 --> 00:40:51.760 This table says 162. 00:40:51.760 --> 00:40:52.480 Doesn't matter. 00:40:52.480 --> 00:40:53.920 And there's a footnote there on the table. 00:40:53.920 --> 00:40:54.880 So you can read. 00:40:54.880 --> 00:40:57.600 We're not vouching for those numbers and saying you have to believe 00:40:57.600 --> 00:41:00.160 this. So the reason I keep pointing this out is if you 00:41:00.160 --> 00:41:02.720 were to write down every single date and time that we're going 00:41:02.720 --> 00:41:06.160 to mention here and try to reconcile all of them, it's entirely 00:41:06.160 --> 00:41:07.760 possible they won't line up. 00:41:07.760 --> 00:41:08.720 That's okay. 00:41:08.720 --> 00:41:13.120 When we're looking at different points of reference, something's gonna move. 00:41:13.280 --> 00:41:17.280 I can tell me from experience, having spent a lot of time 00:41:17.440 --> 00:41:22.000 doing my own investigation of some other timelines, whenever you pick a 00:41:22.000 --> 00:41:26.160 point as a reference point and start counting forward from it, you 00:41:26.160 --> 00:41:29.680 can You can have something that seems very consistent, makes perfect sense. 00:41:29.680 --> 00:41:32.560 But then you take a different point somewhere in the future in 00:41:32.560 --> 00:41:35.600 scripture and try to count backwards from there. 00:41:35.600 --> 00:41:39.600 It's frequently the case that you've made some mistake that will cause 00:41:39.600 --> 00:41:40.480 them not to line up. 00:41:40.720 --> 00:41:44.560 So there's no precision alignment in the different dates. 00:41:44.560 --> 00:41:46.960 That's certainly been going to be the case with the numbers we're 00:41:46.880 --> 00:41:47.520 using here. 00:41:47.520 --> 00:41:51.280 So don't hold us to the specifics of claims of hundred and 00:41:51.280 --> 00:41:54.000 eighty-eight versus hundred and eighty-two, It doesn't matter. 00:41:54.000 --> 00:41:55.680 One of 'em is right. 00:41:55.680 --> 00:41:59.840 But I only highlight it because if someone wants to play gotcha, 00:41:59.840 --> 00:42:04.160 I say, well, this is six years different, therefore it's all fake. 00:42:04.160 --> 00:42:05.040 Don't be like that. 00:42:05.280 --> 00:42:07.680 That's reddit tier theology. 00:42:07.680 --> 00:42:11.680 That's what Redditors do, atheists do, when they look at scripture, they 00:42:11.680 --> 00:42:13.920 play those games of gotcha. 00:42:13.920 --> 00:42:17.200 It's really important when we're looking at this stuff to try to 00:42:17.200 --> 00:42:19.600 understand it, to try to reconcile it is men have been doing 00:42:19.600 --> 00:42:20.560 for 2000 years. 00:42:20.560 --> 00:42:22.320 Like this work is nothing new. 00:42:22.320 --> 00:42:25.360 This the website is from 2017. 00:42:25.360 --> 00:42:29.120 For 2,000 years, Christian men have been trying to figure this stuff 00:42:29.120 --> 00:42:30.800 out. It's a salutary endeavor. 00:42:30.800 --> 00:42:33.360 It's one I have no personal interest in, which is why I 00:42:33.360 --> 00:42:37.120 don't personally have strongly held beliefs one way or another about which 00:42:37.120 --> 00:42:38.800 is exactly accurate. 00:42:38.800 --> 00:42:43.040 What I do care about is that internally scripture adds up with 00:42:43.040 --> 00:42:46.320 itself. And so there are places where there's wiggle room. 00:42:46.320 --> 00:42:49.120 As Corey and I were talking about this last week before we 00:42:49.120 --> 00:42:53.040 began recording the our aborted attempt, we don't know how long it 00:42:53.040 --> 00:42:55.920 was between the creation of Adam and the fall. 00:42:55.920 --> 00:42:57.360 Personally, I think it's less than a year. 00:42:57.360 --> 00:42:58.400 I think it's probably a lot less. 00:42:58.560 --> 00:42:59.680 Does scripture say that? 00:42:59.680 --> 00:43:01.280 No. Could it have been longer? 00:43:01.280 --> 00:43:06.240 Absolutely. So we can't make we can make assumptions, but we can't 00:43:06.240 --> 00:43:09.600 hold them as religious beliefs. 00:43:09.600 --> 00:43:11.280 We can't go wild about it. 00:43:11.280 --> 00:43:14.640 We can't be absurd because you know, if Adam's first begetting date 00:43:14.640 --> 00:43:18.800 was two hundred and thirty years, Genesis is simply silent about how 00:43:18.800 --> 00:43:21.760 long they were in the garden, how long after they were out 00:43:21.760 --> 00:43:22.640 of the garden. 00:43:23.120 --> 00:43:24.880 Was the child born? 00:43:24.880 --> 00:43:26.160 We don't know. 00:43:26.160 --> 00:43:29.920 You can piously speculate, but what you can't do is draw firm 00:43:29.920 --> 00:43:33.520 conclusions from your speculation and then extrapolate from those. 00:43:33.520 --> 00:43:36.240 Because what you're gonna end up doing with any of these timelines 00:43:36.240 --> 00:43:38.640 is making a mess somewhere else. 00:43:38.640 --> 00:43:42.240 That's precisely what the rabbis did here when they messed with Genesis 00:43:42.320 --> 00:43:43.840 5 and with Genesis 11. 00:43:43.840 --> 00:43:46.720 They made these changes to solve a problem that they had, and 00:43:46.720 --> 00:43:50.080 they created a much bigger mess that is very easy for us 00:43:50.080 --> 00:43:50.560 to clean up. 00:43:50.560 --> 00:43:53.040 We just have to go back to what the early church confessed. 00:43:53.040 --> 00:43:58.160 The early church used the Septuagint and frequently quoted the timeline that 00:43:58.160 --> 00:44:00.240 actually makes sense, that looks sane. 00:44:00.240 --> 00:44:02.480 When you look at the table, you'll laugh. 00:44:02.480 --> 00:44:06.800 Visually, it's absurd, especially the Genesis eleven table. 00:44:06.800 --> 00:44:09.440 It's absurd how blatant the changes are. 00:44:09.440 --> 00:44:12.640 You can decide for yourself which one you find to be credible, 00:44:12.640 --> 00:44:16.240 but just keep in mind, someone was messing with something here, and 00:44:16.240 --> 00:44:17.360 that's a big deal. 00:44:17.360 --> 00:44:21.280 Our contention, and as we've said repeatedly, the closing argument for all 00:44:21.280 --> 00:44:25.200 of this is gonna be last couple episodes, where we just go 00:44:25.200 --> 00:44:29.200 through and quote the places where the New Testament quotes the Septuagint 00:44:29.760 --> 00:44:33.040 opposed to the Rabbinic text, where it says things that are not 00:44:33.040 --> 00:44:35.440 found in the Rabbinic text at all, but are found in the 00:44:35.440 --> 00:44:40.240 Septuagint. The New Testament validates the Septuagint as scripture. 00:44:40.240 --> 00:44:43.600 So when we are treating it as scripture here, it is not 00:44:43.600 --> 00:44:45.840 personal hubris or ego. 00:44:45.840 --> 00:44:49.520 It is with full confidence that Christ and his apostles were not 00:44:49.520 --> 00:44:52.160 wrong when they called it scripture. 00:44:52.160 --> 00:44:55.920 One last minor point that doesn't tie directly to any of this, 00:44:55.920 --> 00:44:58.400 but it's a chronological point that's really important. 00:44:58.400 --> 00:45:00.400 And the reason I came to mind is that a couple of 00:45:00.400 --> 00:45:05.280 weeks ago, in part in preparation for this episode, I rewatched the 00:45:05.280 --> 00:45:09.760 Darren Aronofsky movie called Noah, which is an abomination. 00:45:09.760 --> 00:45:15.440 He's a horrible Jewish director who made hideous blasphemous changes. 00:45:15.440 --> 00:45:18.560 The reason I watched it is that I wanted to know what 00:45:18.560 --> 00:45:22.240 sort of pop culture influences were kind of floating around. 00:45:22.240 --> 00:45:25.440 Because that's where we get most of our theology now. 00:45:25.440 --> 00:45:28.000 You know, people think that when you die you get a harp 00:45:28.000 --> 00:45:31.200 and wings and become an angel in heaven because of Hallmark greeting 00:45:31.200 --> 00:45:34.720 cards. That's pretty much a level of theology inside the church most 00:45:34.720 --> 00:45:35.760 of the time. 00:45:35.760 --> 00:45:40.720 So you may think it's silly that someone would derive their knowledge 00:45:40.720 --> 00:45:44.800 of scripture from a Hollywood movie called Noah. 00:45:44.800 --> 00:45:47.840 I promise you there are people who believe that stuff is real. 00:45:47.840 --> 00:45:51.680 Even if they don't do so consciously, they just internalize it. 00:45:51.680 --> 00:45:56.240 One of the crucial things that stood out in that movie, and 00:45:56.240 --> 00:46:01.600 as you frequently find it in discourse, was the claim that Shem 00:46:01.600 --> 00:46:03.120 was the oldest. 00:46:03.120 --> 00:46:07.360 We frequently see this made that Japus was younger and Shem was 00:46:07.360 --> 00:46:13.360 older. There's potentially some ambiguity in the rabbinic text in Genesis when 00:46:13.360 --> 00:46:16.720 it describes this, I think that you can make a clear argument 00:46:16.720 --> 00:46:19.680 that it's not ambiguous, but that's the problem with ambiguity. 00:46:19.680 --> 00:46:22.320 As soon as somebody's well, I don't think that's clear at all. 00:46:22.320 --> 00:46:23.520 What are you gonna do? 00:46:23.520 --> 00:46:26.480 If you think it's clear and they think it's not clear, even 00:46:26.480 --> 00:46:30.880 if they're being stupid and recalcitrant, to some degree it may not 00:46:30.880 --> 00:46:33.680 be clear, if they're not being completely irrational. 00:46:33.680 --> 00:46:36.960 There's an important note to be made here that when we're looking 00:46:36.960 --> 00:46:43.040 at the Septuagint verses that discuss Noah and Shem and Japh. 00:46:43.040 --> 00:46:50.160 Septuagin Genesis eleven ten states clearly that Sem fathered Arphaxed two 00:46:50.160 --> 00:46:52.000 years after the flood. 00:46:52.000 --> 00:46:56.000 In Genesis five hundred thirty two notes that Noah began fathering at 00:46:56.000 --> 00:47:01.680 five hundred, and in Genesis ten twenty one it says very directly, 00:47:01.680 --> 00:47:05.840 and to Sam himself also were sons born, the father of all 00:47:05.840 --> 00:47:10.320 the sons Hebrew the brother of Japheth the elder. 00:47:10.320 --> 00:47:14.720 So the phrasing in the Greek is similar somewhat to the phrasing 00:47:14.720 --> 00:47:18.880 in the Hebrew referring to brother Japheth the Elder. 00:47:18.880 --> 00:47:23.120 The difference is the Hebrew is a sloppy, fake, messed up language, 00:47:23.120 --> 00:47:24.080 and Greek is not. 00:47:24.080 --> 00:47:26.240 Greek is very meticulous about this stuff. 00:47:26.240 --> 00:47:28.880 So in the Greek, when it says the brother of Japheth the 00:47:28.880 --> 00:47:34.240 Elder, there can be no ambiguity that the elder is modifying Japheth, 00:47:34.240 --> 00:47:39.120 which is in perfect accord with Genesis 532 and 1110. 00:47:39.120 --> 00:47:43.360 Genesis 1110 is very clear the Shem 00:47:44.480 --> 00:47:48.400 first gave birth when he was a hundred two years after the 00:47:48.400 --> 00:47:51.920 flood. So the only way that makes sense if is if Japheth 00:47:51.920 --> 00:47:53.200 is the oldest. 00:47:53.200 --> 00:47:57.680 Which makes perfect sense when you're looking at the blessing given to 00:47:57.680 --> 00:48:00.640 Sam above Japheth. 00:48:00.640 --> 00:48:03.520 So the fact that Shem is younger, and that he was given 00:48:03.520 --> 00:48:07.280 a different kind of blessing than Japheth, and that Japheth was older 00:48:07.440 --> 00:48:10.960 and was given a double blessing, but not all the blessings. 00:48:10.960 --> 00:48:16.320 Shem was given a very particular blessing that only applied to Japheth 00:48:16.560 --> 00:48:20.640 by him dwelling in his tents later on, referring to his progeny 00:48:21.040 --> 00:48:22.640 being the church. 00:48:22.640 --> 00:48:27.120 It makes perfect sense that Shem is younger and that Shem was 00:48:27.440 --> 00:48:30.400 the father of those who begat Jesus. 00:48:30.400 --> 00:48:32.080 That's how God does stuff. 00:48:32.080 --> 00:48:33.600 It happened with Jacob and Esau. 00:48:33.760 --> 00:48:35.520 Like it happens all the time. 00:48:35.520 --> 00:48:39.200 So it's not necessary also for Shem to be the oldest. 00:48:39.200 --> 00:48:42.320 Again, it's one of these places where it's absurd some of the 00:48:42.320 --> 00:48:47.440 changes that are made to try to seem as though the stories 00:48:47.440 --> 00:48:51.840 that the Jews tell have a greater degree of primacy than they 00:48:51.840 --> 00:48:55.120 need, because the truth is very favorable. 00:48:55.120 --> 00:48:57.680 We're gonna get at the end to some of the prayers and 00:48:57.680 --> 00:49:00.400 some of the things that are removed from Esther They make the 00:49:00.400 --> 00:49:03.040 Jews look great, and they still deleted them. 00:49:03.040 --> 00:49:05.120 It's absurd some of the changes that were made. 00:49:05.280 --> 00:49:08.160 They're not only deleting stuff that makes them look bad, they're deleting 00:49:08.160 --> 00:49:09.840 stuff that makes them look good. 00:49:09.840 --> 00:49:13.760 But they did it for related reasons that were worse. 00:49:13.760 --> 00:49:18.480 It was enough for them to manipulate the text to delete things 00:49:18.480 --> 00:49:23.360 that actually make the lineage of Jacob look good because they wanted 00:49:23.360 --> 00:49:24.480 to do other harm. 00:49:24.480 --> 00:49:25.680 It's unbelievable. 00:49:25.680 --> 00:49:27.840 But when you look internally at the text, you don't need to 00:49:27.840 --> 00:49:31.760 refer to early church fathers or heaven forbid podcasters to reach the 00:49:31.760 --> 00:49:32.720 same conclusions. 00:49:32.720 --> 00:49:36.160 When you look at the Septuagint text and you compare it, you 00:49:36.160 --> 00:49:38.800 can only reach these conclusions. 00:49:38.800 --> 00:49:41.920 And And I was thinking earlier today that we've highlighted a number 00:49:41.920 --> 00:49:44.480 of different things in the Septuagint. 00:49:44.480 --> 00:49:46.960 It's like, oh, this is really important, this is really interesting. 00:49:46.960 --> 00:49:49.760 I don't want anyone to get the impression that anything that we 00:49:49.760 --> 00:49:53.280 highlight in this series is the most interesting or the most important 00:49:53.680 --> 00:49:56.000 thing that you're gonna find in the Septuagint. 00:49:56.000 --> 00:49:58.000 I have no idea what that's gonna be. 00:49:58.000 --> 00:50:01.040 Every time, Corey or I look, we find more. 00:50:01.040 --> 00:50:04.480 We find a greater depth of alteration, we find a greater depth 00:50:04.480 --> 00:50:07.600 of wisdom and consistency with the rest of Scripture. 00:50:07.600 --> 00:50:10.160 It's a delight to be reading the Septuagint. 00:50:10.160 --> 00:50:12.960 I have no idea what the juiciest thing in here is. 00:50:12.960 --> 00:50:17.840 As we've said repeatedly, there are centuries of Christian theology ahead of 00:50:17.840 --> 00:50:22.320 us. The scholarship that has yet to be done by the Christian 00:50:22.320 --> 00:50:25.680 Church, especially in English, it's never been done in English. 00:50:25.680 --> 00:50:26.560 Not once. 00:50:26.560 --> 00:50:31.920 There's not been any theology done in English about the Septuagint that 00:50:31.920 --> 00:50:34.960 was not in view of listening to the rabbis lies. 00:50:34.960 --> 00:50:38.400 This is the very most exciting time we've had in church history, 00:50:38.400 --> 00:50:41.280 to be in a place where we can actually fix these problems 00:50:41.280 --> 00:50:44.880 and be faithful in a way that our fathers failed to be, 00:50:44.880 --> 00:50:48.560 in a way that's consistent with the New Testament, consistent with Scripture 00:50:48.560 --> 00:50:52.880 itself, as I said earlier, even consistent with your rabbinic text Bible, 00:50:52.880 --> 00:50:56.160 which repeatedly throws out what the rabbis said, because it didn't make 00:50:56.160 --> 00:50:56.560 any sense. 00:50:56.560 --> 00:50:58.560 So why they do they resort to the Greek? 00:50:58.560 --> 00:51:01.200 Let's just resort to the Greek hundred percent. 00:51:01.200 --> 00:51:02.640 It's gonna clear everything 00:51:02.640 --> 00:51:03.920 up. 00:51:04.080 --> 00:51:07.760 Before we move on to the next part of this episode, there 00:51:07.760 --> 00:51:13.360 is one minor chronological or timeline point that we need to address 00:51:13.440 --> 00:51:17.200 because undoubtedly it will come up in the future it is a 00:51:17.200 --> 00:51:23.040 relevant difference between the Masoretic text and the Septuagint. 00:51:23.040 --> 00:51:27.280 And that is the timeline of the Exodus, which is to say, 00:51:27.280 --> 00:51:31.360 does it include the time in Canaan or does it exclude the 00:51:31.360 --> 00:51:32.480 time in Canaan? 00:51:32.480 --> 00:51:36.240 And you'll see exactly why that is a question when I read 00:51:36.240 --> 00:51:38.640 a few passages from scripture here. 00:51:38.640 --> 00:51:44.160 I am going to read from Exodus twelve, Galatians three, Acts seven, 00:51:44.160 --> 00:51:46.080 and Acts thirteen. 00:51:46.080 --> 00:51:49.360 There are a handful of specific verses that are relevant, but I 00:51:49.360 --> 00:51:52.880 am also going to read some context, because it is generally important 00:51:52.880 --> 00:51:55.360 to have context in these things. 00:51:55.360 --> 00:51:58.880 And so starting with Exodus twelve, I will read first from the 00:51:58.880 --> 00:52:02.480 Masoretic text, the ESV of course, and then I will read from 00:52:02.480 --> 00:52:04.000 the Lexum. 00:52:04.400 --> 00:52:07.680 The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was four 00:52:07.680 --> 00:52:09.360 hundred and thirty years. 00:52:09.360 --> 00:52:12.320 At the end of four hundred and thirty years on that very 00:52:12.320 --> 00:52:15.440 day all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land 00:52:15.440 --> 00:52:16.880 of Egypt. 00:52:16.880 --> 00:52:19.440 And now from the Septuagint. 00:52:19.440 --> 00:52:22.720 Now the sojourn of the sons of Israel, during which they lived 00:52:22.720 --> 00:52:26.160 in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, was 00:52:26.160 --> 00:52:30.080 four hundred and thirty years, and it happened after the four hundred 00:52:30.080 --> 00:52:33.360 and thirty years, all the hosts of the Lord went forth from 00:52:33.360 --> 00:52:35.680 the land of Egypt by night. 00:52:36.320 --> 00:52:40.080 You can see the salient difference between these two, of course, and 00:52:40.080 --> 00:52:44.400 that is, the phrase that is included in the Septuagint and in 00:52:44.400 --> 00:52:48.560 the land of Canaan that is absent from the rabbinic text. 00:52:48.560 --> 00:52:52.960 And so the question is, was there a short sojourn in Egypt 00:52:53.120 --> 00:52:56.240 or was there a long sojourn in Egypt? 00:52:56.240 --> 00:53:00.720 Was it four hundred and thirty years, in Egypt alone, or was 00:53:00.720 --> 00:53:05.520 it four hundred and thirty years, part of that being in Canaan? 00:53:05.520 --> 00:53:10.640 Traditionally, a number of Christian exegetes, particularly in the early church when 00:53:10.640 --> 00:53:15.520 they were indeed using the Septuagint as their Bible, basically divided it 00:53:15.520 --> 00:53:18.800 into a period of two hundred and fifteen years in Canaan and 00:53:18.800 --> 00:53:23.120 two hundred and fifteen years in Egypt, giving the short sojourn in 00:53:23.120 --> 00:53:27.040 Egypt. It is worth noting here in passing there are some manuscripts 00:53:27.040 --> 00:53:30.960 of the Septuagint that have what appears to be a scribal error 00:53:31.040 --> 00:53:34.560 adding a five at the end of four hundred and thirty, yielding 00:53:34.560 --> 00:53:38.640 four hundred and thirty five, however the majority position as it were 00:53:38.720 --> 00:53:42.240 of all the manuscripts is four hundred and thirty, so that does 00:53:42.240 --> 00:53:47.680 happen to agree with the total given in the rabbinic text, the 00:53:47.680 --> 00:53:53.360 difference is where those years of sojourning took place, is Canaan included. 00:53:53.360 --> 00:53:57.920 And so I will also read from Galatians three and Acts seven 00:53:58.000 --> 00:53:58.240 now 00:54:00.320 --> 00:54:04.240 to give a human example, brothers, even with a man made covenant, 00:54:04.240 --> 00:54:06.720 no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been 00:54:06.720 --> 00:54:11.040 ratified. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. 00:54:11.040 --> 00:54:15.280 It does not say and to offsprings, referring to many, but referring 00:54:15.280 --> 00:54:18.720 to one, and to your offspring, who is Christ. 00:54:18.720 --> 00:54:20.240 This is what I mean. 00:54:20.240 --> 00:54:23.680 The law, which came four hundred and thirty years afterward, does not 00:54:23.680 --> 00:54:27.840 annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the 00:54:27.840 --> 00:54:31.760 promise void, for if the inheritance comes by the law, it no 00:54:31.760 --> 00:54:35.840 longer comes by promise, but God gave it to Abraham by a 00:54:35.840 --> 00:54:36.480 promise 00:54:38.640 --> 00:54:41.840 And the high priest said, Are these things so? 00:54:41.840 --> 00:54:46.160 And Stephen said, Brothers and fathers, hear me, the God of glory 00:54:46.320 --> 00:54:50.160 appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he 00:54:50.160 --> 00:54:53.920 lived in Haran, and said to him, Go out from your land 00:54:54.080 --> 00:54:57.040 and from your kindred, and go into the land that I will 00:54:57.040 --> 00:54:57.920 show you. 00:54:57.920 --> 00:55:00.640 Then he went out from the land of the Chaldeans and lived 00:55:00.640 --> 00:55:04.480 in Haran, and after his father died, God removed him from there 00:55:04.960 --> 00:55:08.080 into this land in which you are now living, yet he gave 00:55:08.080 --> 00:55:11.920 him no inheritance in it, not even a foot's length, but promised 00:55:11.920 --> 00:55:14.320 to give it to him as a possession and to his offspring 00:55:14.480 --> 00:55:17.920 after him, though he had no child, and God spoke to this 00:55:17.920 --> 00:55:21.840 effect, that his offspring would be sojourners in a land belonging to 00:55:21.840 --> 00:55:25.680 others, who would enslave them and afflict them four hundred years. 00:55:25.680 --> 00:55:29.040 But I will judge the nation that they serve, said God, and 00:55:29.040 --> 00:55:31.520 after that they will come out and worship me in this place 00:55:31.840 --> 00:55:34.080 This place. 00:55:34.080 --> 00:55:38.080 Some will read these two passages and try to raise an additional 00:55:38.080 --> 00:55:44.960 question about the period in Canaan and Egypt, about the sojourning period. 00:55:44.960 --> 00:55:48.240 And they will try to say, well one says four hundred years, 00:55:48.240 --> 00:55:52.400 Stephen, and one says four hundred and thirty years, Paul. 00:55:52.400 --> 00:55:55.920 And so the question is, is it four hundred and thirty years 00:55:56.080 --> 00:56:01.360 as aligns, incidentally, with Exodus, or is it four hundred years? 00:56:01.680 --> 00:56:05.680 I personally do not take this particular contention very seriously. 00:56:05.680 --> 00:56:08.720 I simply agree with Augustine and other church fathers who said Who 00:56:08.720 --> 00:56:10.640 said, Stephen is rounding? 00:56:10.640 --> 00:56:12.000 We do this all the time. 00:56:12.000 --> 00:56:15.360 We don't often speak of the exact number of years of an 00:56:15.360 --> 00:56:19.120 event unless it's a relatively trivial number of years. 00:56:19.120 --> 00:56:21.760 Which basically means under twenty or so. 00:56:21.760 --> 00:56:26.080 If an event took three hundred and eighty seven years, we're probably 00:56:26.080 --> 00:56:28.160 just going to say it took four centuries. 00:56:28.160 --> 00:56:31.200 If it took four hundred and thirteen years, we're probably going to 00:56:31.200 --> 00:56:32.880 say it took four hundred years. 00:56:32.880 --> 00:56:35.200 This is simply how human beings speak. 00:56:35.200 --> 00:56:38.240 Stephen is giving a speech here, so he simply rounded. 00:56:38.240 --> 00:56:41.760 I think this is a fairly easy one to resolve. 00:56:41.760 --> 00:56:46.640 The final section I am going to read is from Acts thirteen. 00:56:46.640 --> 00:56:50.640 So Paul stood up, and motioning with his hand said, Men of 00:56:50.640 --> 00:56:53.360 Israel and you who fear God listen. 00:56:53.360 --> 00:56:56.880 The God of this people Israel chose our fathers and made the 00:56:56.880 --> 00:56:59.520 people great during their stay in the land of Egypt. 00:56:59.520 --> 00:57:02.640 And with uplifted arm he led them out of it. 00:57:02.640 --> 00:57:05.200 And for about forty years he put up with them in the 00:57:05.200 --> 00:57:09.360 wilderness, and after destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan, he 00:57:09.360 --> 00:57:11.520 gave them their land as an inheritance. 00:57:11.520 --> 00:57:15.280 All this took about four hundred and fifty years, and after that 00:57:15.280 --> 00:57:19.200 he gave them judges until Samuel the prophet. 00:57:19.200 --> 00:57:21.280 Now there are those of course who will look at this and 00:57:21.280 --> 00:57:23.920 say well now we have a third number four hundred and fifty 00:57:23.920 --> 00:57:28.960 years. But they'll ignore what came directly before that, and after destroying 00:57:28.960 --> 00:57:32.080 seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land 00:57:32.080 --> 00:57:33.760 as an inheritance. 00:57:33.760 --> 00:57:38.080 Paul is talking about a period here that includes other things than 00:57:38.080 --> 00:57:39.280 just the sojourn. 00:57:39.280 --> 00:57:43.200 It includes the destruction of those seven nations, as it literally says 00:57:43.200 --> 00:57:44.960 there in the preceding verse. 00:57:44.960 --> 00:57:49.520 And so the four hundred and fifty year period does align with 00:57:49.520 --> 00:57:51.360 the four hundred and thirty year period. 00:57:51.360 --> 00:57:54.240 Paul is simply including something additional. 00:57:54.720 --> 00:57:57.040 And so what are we to make of this? 00:57:57.040 --> 00:57:59.520 I think the best way to look at this is we look 00:57:59.520 --> 00:58:03.360 at what Paul says in Galatians, and in Galatians he gives the 00:58:03.360 --> 00:58:06.480 number four hundred and thirty, he's giving a literal number. 00:58:06.480 --> 00:58:10.800 Because incidentally, when we look at how human beings speak about numbers 00:58:10.800 --> 00:58:14.560 like this, typically we round, but if we give a number that 00:58:14.560 --> 00:58:19.040 is not rounded, four hundred and thirty is not rounded, then we're 00:58:19.040 --> 00:58:20.800 probably speaking precisely. 00:58:20.800 --> 00:58:25.280 Paul here is speaking precisely, and the number that he gives aligns 00:58:25.280 --> 00:58:28.560 perfectly with the number given in Exodus. 00:58:28.560 --> 00:58:32.960 And so the only question that remains is whether or not the 00:58:32.960 --> 00:58:36.560 sojourn in Canaan is included, which is to say, is the sojourn 00:58:36.560 --> 00:58:39.840 in Egypt short or long? 00:58:39.840 --> 00:58:42.320 I am inclined to agree with the early church, and I think 00:58:42.320 --> 00:58:45.840 that is the correct The correct position on this, the early church, 00:58:45.840 --> 00:58:50.400 looking at the Septuagint, believed that the sojourn in Egypt was short, 00:58:50.400 --> 00:58:53.440 about two hundred and fifteen years, and then to get to that 00:58:53.440 --> 00:58:56.640 four hundred and thirty year number, you have two hundred and fifteen 00:58:56.720 --> 00:59:02.320 years of Abram's or Abraham's sojourn in the land of Canaan. 00:59:02.320 --> 00:59:05.760 This is what many of the church fathers believed, this is what 00:59:05.760 --> 00:59:09.520 they argued over against the Jews who sometimes would argue for the 00:59:10.000 --> 00:59:13.760 longer period from whatever text they happen to be using at the 00:59:13.760 --> 00:59:21.040 time. The short Egyptian sojourn happens to harmonize with the genealogies 00:59:21.040 --> 00:59:23.680 and again with the words of Paul, and so I think that 00:59:23.680 --> 00:59:25.280 is the clear choice here. 00:59:25.280 --> 00:59:27.760 It is worth noting before we move on to the rest of 00:59:27.760 --> 00:59:31.440 the episode, simply because there are always going to be those who 00:59:31.440 --> 00:59:37.520 attempt to find supposed discrepancies, seeming inconsistencies in scripture, and try to 00:59:37.920 --> 00:59:43.520 discredit the word of God on the basis of those seeming inconsistencies. 00:59:43.520 --> 00:59:47.600 Typically what it comes down to is the inability of those who 00:59:47.600 --> 00:59:52.640 are advancing these supposed or seeming the seeming inconsistencies to actually read 00:59:52.640 --> 00:59:53.760 the text. 00:59:53.760 --> 00:59:56.880 In the case of Paul's speech in Acts, we'll have those who 00:59:56.880 --> 00:59:59.040 try to argue that he says four hundred and fifty so it 00:59:59.040 --> 01:00:04.240 must be inconsistent, but literally the previous verse explains the additional twenty 01:00:04.240 --> 01:00:04.480 years 01:00:05.520 --> 01:00:09.200 This is simply a matter of reading the text carefully and believing 01:00:09.200 --> 01:00:10.480 what it says. 01:00:10.480 --> 01:00:13.600 There are things where we're going to have to map out exactly 01:00:13.600 --> 01:00:18.800 what happened on the timeline, what happened when, which periods took place, 01:00:18.800 --> 01:00:20.640 where, things like that. 01:00:20.640 --> 01:00:24.560 But that doesn't mean the text is inconsistent or that the text 01:00:24.560 --> 01:00:25.440 is wrong. 01:00:25.440 --> 01:00:28.480 What it means is that we have to read carefully, and some 01:00:28.480 --> 01:00:33.680 of our preconceived notions or our previous beliefs, on the basis of 01:00:33.680 --> 01:00:38.320 the Masoretic, on the basis of the rabbinic text, they are simply 01:00:38.320 --> 01:00:40.560 going to be wrong in light of what we clearly see in 01:00:40.560 --> 01:00:41.680 the Septuagint. 01:00:41.680 --> 01:00:45.760 And what the Septuagint says here is that they lived in the 01:00:45.760 --> 01:00:50.160 land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan during this sojourn, 01:00:50.160 --> 01:00:56.640 and so simply speaking, that is what we as Christians believe. 01:00:56.640 --> 01:01:01.040 The bulk of this episode is undoubtedly going to be going over 01:01:01.040 --> 01:01:05.600 the differences in Esther, but before we get to Esther, we want 01:01:05.600 --> 01:01:07.760 to spend some time in Job. 01:01:07.760 --> 01:01:09.600 Both of us like the book of Job. 01:01:09.600 --> 01:01:12.160 We know that many of you also like the book. 01:01:12.160 --> 01:01:19.120 There are significant difference, pervasive differences, between what the rabbis gave us, 01:01:19.120 --> 01:01:21.040 and the Book of Job. 01:01:21.040 --> 01:01:24.240 We are not going to go over them exhaustively in this episode, 01:01:24.240 --> 01:01:28.320 because that would take significantly longer than an entire episode. 01:01:28.320 --> 01:01:31.360 It would have to be a series unto itself, and probably a 01:01:31.360 --> 01:01:35.600 long one But sort of by way of introduction, I'm going to 01:01:35.600 --> 01:01:41.280 read a quote for you from origin written to Africanus. 01:01:41.280 --> 01:01:44.720 Again, through the whole of Job, there are many passages in the 01:01:44.720 --> 01:01:49.440 Hebrew which are wanting in our copies, generally four or five verses, 01:01:49.440 --> 01:01:53.520 but sometimes, however, even fourteen and nineteen and sixteen. 01:01:53.520 --> 01:01:56.960 But why should I enumerate all the instances I collected with so 01:01:56.960 --> 01:01:57.840 much labor? 01:01:57.840 --> 01:02:01.200 To prove that the difference between our copies and those of the 01:02:01.200 --> 01:02:02.880 Jews did not escape me. 01:02:02.880 --> 01:02:07.120 In Jeremiah I noticed many instances, and indeed in that book I 01:02:07.120 --> 01:02:11.600 found much transposition and variation in the readings of the prophecies. 01:02:11.600 --> 01:02:15.760 Again in Genesis, the words God saw that it was good, when 01:02:15.760 --> 01:02:19.280 the firmament was made, are not found in the Hebrew, and there 01:02:19.280 --> 01:02:22.080 is no small dispute among them about this. 01:02:22.080 --> 01:02:25.200 And other instances are to be found in Genesis which I marked 01:02:25.200 --> 01:02:28.320 for the sake of distinction, with the sign the Greeks call an 01:02:28.320 --> 01:02:32.080 obelisk, as on the other hand I marked with an asterisk, those 01:02:32.080 --> 01:02:35.200 passages in our copies which are not found in the Hebrew. 01:02:35.200 --> 01:02:38.800 What needs there to speak of Exodus, where there is such diversity 01:02:38.800 --> 01:02:41.600 in what is said about the tabernacle and its court, and the 01:02:41.600 --> 01:02:44.880 ark, and the garments of the high priest and the priests, that 01:02:44.880 --> 01:02:48.160 sometimes the meaning even does not seem to be akin. 01:02:48.160 --> 01:02:52.240 And forsooth, when we notice such things, we are immediately to reject 01:02:52.240 --> 01:02:56.240 as spurious the copies in use in our churches, and enjoin the 01:02:56.240 --> 01:02:59.440 brotherhood to put away the sacred books current among them, and to 01:02:59.440 --> 01:03:03.120 coax the Jews, and persuade them to give us copies, which shall 01:03:03.120 --> 01:03:06.000 be untampered with and free from forgery? 01:03:06.000 --> 01:03:10.160 Are we to suppose that that providence, which in the sacred scriptures 01:03:10.160 --> 01:03:13.840 has ministered to the edification of all the churches of Christ, had 01:03:13.840 --> 01:03:17.840 no thought for those bought with a price, for whom Christ died, 01:03:17.840 --> 01:03:21.600 whom although his Son, God who is love spared not, but gave 01:03:21.600 --> 01:03:24.720 him up for us all, that with him he might freely give 01:03:24.720 --> 01:03:25.760 us all things. 01:03:25.760 --> 01:03:28.480 In all these cases consider whether it would not be Would not 01:03:28.480 --> 01:03:31.840 be well to remember the words you shall not remove the ancient 01:03:31.840 --> 01:03:36.400 landmarks which your fathers have set. 01:03:36.400 --> 01:03:39.840 And you can go ahead and find that in your English copies 01:03:39.840 --> 01:03:42.080 of scripture that are based on the Masoretic text. 01:03:42.080 --> 01:03:45.280 You can compare the things said in that quote in particular about 01:03:45.280 --> 01:03:48.800 the firmament and God saw that it was good, and you will 01:03:48.800 --> 01:03:51.920 notice that they are absent, and if they're not absent they are 01:03:51.920 --> 01:03:56.560 footnoted because they are included from indeed the Septuagint. 01:03:57.680 --> 01:04:01.280 But to give some examples of the differences in Job, and again 01:04:01.360 --> 01:04:04.320 we won't be going through exhaustive examples because there are so many 01:04:04.320 --> 01:04:08.560 of them, but starting with Job one, verse five, first from the 01:04:08.560 --> 01:04:11.280 Masoretic, then I'll read from the Septuagint. 01:04:11.280 --> 01:04:14.080 And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job 01:04:14.080 --> 01:04:17.040 would send and consecrate them, and he would rise early in the 01:04:17.040 --> 01:04:20.720 morning and offer burnt offerings, according to the number of them all. 01:04:20.720 --> 01:04:24.400 For Job said, It may be that my children have sinned, and 01:04:24.400 --> 01:04:26.160 curse God in their hearts. 01:04:26.160 --> 01:04:28.480 Thus Job did continually. 01:04:28.480 --> 01:04:30.480 And now from the Septuagint. 01:04:30.480 --> 01:04:33.760 And when the days of the banquet were finished, Job sent and 01:04:33.760 --> 01:04:37.680 purified them, rising up each morning and offering for them a sacrifice 01:04:37.680 --> 01:04:41.200 according to their number, one calf for a sin offering for their 01:04:41.200 --> 01:04:45.360 lives. For Job said, In case my sons have thought evil things 01:04:45.360 --> 01:04:46.720 in their minds toward God. 01:04:46.720 --> 01:04:50.320 So Job acted all the days. 01:04:50.320 --> 01:04:54.560 It is a little different to think something evil or inappropriate toward 01:04:54.560 --> 01:04:58.560 God in one's mind and to curse God in your heart. 01:04:58.560 --> 01:05:03.840 That is a significant change that the rabbis introduced into Job. 01:05:03.840 --> 01:05:05.920 And from the very next verse. 01:05:05.920 --> 01:05:08.400 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to 01:05:08.400 --> 01:05:12.800 present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. 01:05:12.800 --> 01:05:16.800 Now from the Septuagint, and it happened that one day and behold 01:05:16.880 --> 01:05:20.000 the angels of God came to stand before the Lord, and the 01:05:20.000 --> 01:05:21.920 devil came among them. 01:05:21.920 --> 01:05:25.840 Now we could quibble over the difference between the devil and Satan. 01:05:25.840 --> 01:05:28.560 That's neither here nor there, and in fact it is the same 01:05:28.560 --> 01:05:31.920 individual, of course, the same actor is present. 01:05:31.920 --> 01:05:35.200 But there is a difference here between the sons of God and 01:05:35.200 --> 01:05:36.800 the angels of God. 01:05:36.800 --> 01:05:40.320 We could argue about what that difference means and how it aligns 01:05:40.320 --> 01:05:44.640 with other verses in scripture and whether the same language is used, 01:05:44.640 --> 01:05:46.720 but the change is significant. 01:05:46.720 --> 01:05:50.720 They change the angels of God to the sons of God. 01:05:50.720 --> 01:05:54.560 They are They are trying to teach something different. 01:05:54.560 --> 01:05:58.640 As we said earlier about the genealogies, just because something may seem 01:05:58.640 --> 01:06:02.880 innocuous on the surface doesn't necessarily mean that it is. 01:06:02.880 --> 01:06:07.360 There is undoubtedly ulterior motives in play here. 01:06:07.360 --> 01:06:11.120 They have something in mind they are trying to accomplish down the 01:06:11.120 --> 01:06:14.800 line. And notably with the genealogies again, that is going to come 01:06:14.800 --> 01:06:18.320 back in my conclusion for this episode, because it actually plays a 01:06:18.320 --> 01:06:21.200 key part in things that are happening today. 01:06:21.200 --> 01:06:24.320 These are not issues that we left in the past. 01:06:24.320 --> 01:06:27.520 These are things that are ongoing. 01:06:27.520 --> 01:06:30.160 The next example from Job two. 01:06:30.160 --> 01:06:33.520 And you will note that sort of not bearing the lead, but 01:06:33.520 --> 01:06:37.360 you will note the version in scripture in the Septuagint is actually 01:06:37.360 --> 01:06:38.320 significantly longer. 01:06:38.320 --> 01:06:41.200 This is one of those cases where they simply deleted a bunch 01:06:41.200 --> 01:06:42.560 of verses because they felt like it. 01:06:43.440 --> 01:06:46.160 So first from the Masoretic text. 01:06:46.160 --> 01:06:49.680 Then his wife said to him, Do you still hold fast your 01:06:49.680 --> 01:06:52.400 integrity? Curse God and die. 01:06:52.400 --> 01:06:55.760 But he said to her, You speak as one of the foolish 01:06:55.760 --> 01:06:59.600 women would speak, shall we receive good from God, and shall we 01:06:59.600 --> 01:07:00.880 not receive evil? 01:07:00.880 --> 01:07:04.480 In all this Job did not sin with his lips. 01:07:04.480 --> 01:07:06.640 And now from the Septuagint. 01:07:06.640 --> 01:07:10.960 And after much time had passed, his wife said to him, How 01:07:10.960 --> 01:07:14.320 long will you wait, saying, Behold, I wait, for just a little 01:07:14.320 --> 01:07:16.880 time to receive the hope of my deliverance? 01:07:16.880 --> 01:07:20.400 For behold, your memory has been removed from the earth, sons and 01:07:20.400 --> 01:07:24.560 daughters of my belly, pangs and labours that I laboured with hardship 01:07:24.560 --> 01:07:29.360 pointlessly, and you, you seat yourself among the decay of worms, to 01:07:29.360 --> 01:07:32.080 pass the night in the open air, and I am being led 01:07:32.080 --> 01:07:35.600 astray and am a servant wandering from place to place, and from 01:07:35.600 --> 01:07:38.960 house to house, welcoming the sun when it sets in order that 01:07:38.960 --> 01:07:42.640 I might stop my labours and pains, that now come to me. 01:07:42.640 --> 01:07:45.680 Now say some word to the Lord and die. 01:07:45.680 --> 01:07:48.400 But looking up he said to her, You speak like one of 01:07:48.400 --> 01:07:51.840 the foolish women, if we accept good things from the hand of 01:07:51.840 --> 01:07:54.720 the Lord, shall we not endure evil things? 01:07:54.720 --> 01:07:57.840 In all these things that happened to him, in no way did 01:07:57.840 --> 01:08:00.080 Job sin by his speaking before God 01:08:02.320 --> 01:08:07.600 There is a fairly significant difference between saying say some word to 01:08:07.600 --> 01:08:12.000 the Lord and die, and curse God and die. 01:08:12.000 --> 01:08:16.240 Job's wife here is just lamenting what has happened to Job and 01:08:16.240 --> 01:08:17.680 what has happened to her. 01:08:17.680 --> 01:08:22.080 She is not telling Job to curse God, and yet the rabbis 01:08:22.080 --> 01:08:26.240 have changed it, so that she instructs her husband to curse God 01:08:26.240 --> 01:08:28.880 and die. 01:08:28.880 --> 01:08:31.680 One of the other things to note in the text of Job, 01:08:31.680 --> 01:08:36.320 which is universal in the Septuagint, is that you'll find that Job 01:08:36.320 --> 01:08:40.880 is one of the Bible books that uses the words Lord and 01:08:40.880 --> 01:08:43.280 God more than probably almost any other. 01:08:43.280 --> 01:08:46.880 They're talking about or to God the entire time, where God is 01:08:46.880 --> 01:08:48.400 speaking, God is acting. 01:08:48.400 --> 01:08:52.960 So Lord and God appear a whole bunch, which means in the 01:08:52.960 --> 01:08:56.240 rabbinic text, you're going to have the tetragrammaton. 01:08:56.240 --> 01:08:59.840 You're going to have YHWH showing up over and over and over 01:08:59.840 --> 01:09:05.840 again. We talked, I think, in the Judaizing heresy episode about the 01:09:06.320 --> 01:09:09.760 blasphemy of so-called Yahweh. 01:09:09.760 --> 01:09:14.240 There is no Christian nexus to the use of the word Yahweh 01:09:14.400 --> 01:09:18.480 or even to the use of the Tatragrammasan itself. 01:09:18.480 --> 01:09:23.520 This is fundamentally Babylonian black magic name magic. 01:09:23.520 --> 01:09:27.680 This is a black magic practice that the Hebrews brought with them 01:09:27.680 --> 01:09:28.960 from Babylonia. 01:09:28.960 --> 01:09:32.320 Practicing name magic is wicked and damnable. 01:09:32.320 --> 01:09:36.240 What they have done is taken Lord and God that are used 01:09:36.240 --> 01:09:37.600 throughout Scripture. 01:09:37.600 --> 01:09:40.560 The same words are used in the Old Testament and New Testament 01:09:40.800 --> 01:09:44.720 Curios and Theos Lord and God, like Curi 01:09:45.680 --> 01:09:47.280 and theology. 01:09:47.280 --> 01:09:50.400 These words are familiar to us from the liturgy and from just 01:09:50.400 --> 01:09:51.840 being Christians. 01:09:51.840 --> 01:09:53.600 They're based in the Greek. 01:09:53.600 --> 01:09:59.600 The Septuagint doesn't have any tetragrammatum, doesn't have any special magic words 01:09:59.600 --> 01:10:00.960 or letters or anything. 01:10:00.960 --> 01:10:02.720 There's no special symbol. 01:10:02.720 --> 01:10:06.000 It's literally God and Lord. 01:10:06.000 --> 01:10:07.200 That's crucial. 01:10:07.200 --> 01:10:11.760 That's crucial today in a way that was never crucial before, because 01:10:11.920 --> 01:10:16.800 the Judaizing that has taken over the entire church is novel. 01:10:16.800 --> 01:10:22.560 The fact that we have theology published and pastors referencing Yahweh is 01:10:22.560 --> 01:10:24.960 though they're doing something sacred. 01:10:24.960 --> 01:10:27.920 It's profane and it's blasphemous. 01:10:27.920 --> 01:10:30.800 You will not find it in the Septuagint, you will not find 01:10:30.800 --> 01:10:32.320 it in the early church fathers. 01:10:32.320 --> 01:10:35.040 No one who used the Greek, it never would occur to him. 01:10:35.040 --> 01:10:38.880 And to the extent that they commented on it, they disregarded it. 01:10:38.880 --> 01:10:42.400 Theos God curios Lord 01:10:44.000 --> 01:10:49.280 It boggles the mind how much of the modern heresies, both politically 01:10:49.280 --> 01:10:54.400 and theologically that we are beset by, are originated with these sorts 01:10:54.400 --> 01:10:56.640 of small textual changes. 01:10:56.640 --> 01:10:59.280 It's the smallest reframe in the world. 01:10:59.280 --> 01:11:00.880 Because what does it do? 01:11:00.880 --> 01:11:04.320 Suddenly it makes the rabbinic text paramount. 01:11:04.320 --> 01:11:08.640 You can't have the authentic God if you don't have the rabbinic 01:11:08.640 --> 01:11:12.080 text. If you're not looking at Hebrew letters, you're not looking at 01:11:12.080 --> 01:11:14.000 anything that God breathed out. 01:11:14.000 --> 01:11:16.560 And what do we find when we look at God's name? 01:11:16.560 --> 01:11:19.200 We don't find Lord, we don't find God. 01:11:19.200 --> 01:11:24.400 We find special magical symbols with a special magical secret word that 01:11:24.400 --> 01:11:28.160 was so sacred that they wouldn't even write down the full thing 01:11:28.240 --> 01:11:30.400 because it was too powerful. 01:11:30.400 --> 01:11:32.160 That's a magic incantation. 01:11:32.160 --> 01:11:33.440 That's demon summoning. 01:11:33.440 --> 01:11:36.160 That has nothing to do with the Lord God. 01:11:36.160 --> 01:11:41.760 There are archaeological examples going back nearly a thousand years before the 01:11:41.760 --> 01:11:46.160 birth of Christ, to a to a Yah and a Yahweh appearing 01:11:46.160 --> 01:11:49.360 in the Near East, and they're always demon gods. 01:11:49.360 --> 01:11:52.880 There was a demon god by that name that was worshipped, and 01:11:52.880 --> 01:11:56.480 we do have archaeological evidence of it, and what we find is 01:11:56.480 --> 01:12:02.000 as nothing whatsoever to do with the true Israelite religion. 01:12:02.000 --> 01:12:07.760 Those who actually practiced and preserved Christianity as God had instructed and 01:12:07.760 --> 01:12:10.080 intended for them didn't engage in that. 01:12:10.400 --> 01:12:13.280 You find it with their neighbors, and so there were others among 01:12:13.280 --> 01:12:16.080 the Hebrews who pulled that stuff in and adopted it. 01:12:16.080 --> 01:12:19.440 And the rabbis continued it for three thousand years. 01:12:19.440 --> 01:12:22.960 But when we see it and hear it today, we are not 01:12:22.960 --> 01:12:24.560 hearing anything Christian. 01:12:24.560 --> 01:12:27.360 It dies with the Septuagint. 01:12:27.360 --> 01:12:30.160 There are just a few other notes I want to make about 01:12:30.160 --> 01:12:35.440 changes to Job before we get into the chronological changes, because the 01:12:35.440 --> 01:12:40.800 timeline alterations through changes in facts in Job are really the most 01:12:40.800 --> 01:12:42.960 important thing about what was done to it. 01:12:42.960 --> 01:12:46.800 All in all the rabbinic text is about one sixth longer than 01:12:46.800 --> 01:12:49.040 what is in the Septuagint. 01:12:49.040 --> 01:12:51.280 It's mostly poetic repetitions. 01:12:51.280 --> 01:12:55.120 It includes a big chunk of Elihu's speech from chapters thirty two 01:12:55.280 --> 01:12:56.720 through thirty seven. 01:12:56.720 --> 01:13:00.160 Job's wife's speech is omitted entirely. 01:13:00.160 --> 01:13:04.480 The next thing that happens after her diatribe is that Job's friends 01:13:04.480 --> 01:13:05.600 show up. 01:13:05.600 --> 01:13:08.480 Now, Cory and I pointed out in the past, even before we 01:13:08.480 --> 01:13:12.960 understood the Septuagint, Corey had made the point that when you look 01:13:12.960 --> 01:13:16.640 at Job and you look at the wealth that he lost and 01:13:16.640 --> 01:13:19.840 then what was regained, he had to be one of the richest 01:13:19.840 --> 01:13:21.280 men on the planet. 01:13:21.280 --> 01:13:24.320 It was not just oh this guy's has a lot of money, 01:13:24.320 --> 01:13:26.240 this guy's a lot of wealth. 01:13:26.240 --> 01:13:29.920 His riches were off the charts. 01:13:29.920 --> 01:13:34.720 The only reasonable conclusion in this era was that the man with 01:13:34.720 --> 01:13:36.880 that much money has to be a king. 01:13:36.880 --> 01:13:40.240 Because in all of human history, the richest guy in the country 01:13:40.240 --> 01:13:41.120 is the king. 01:13:41.120 --> 01:13:43.440 Whoever has the most money is in charge. 01:13:43.440 --> 01:13:44.160 And you know what? 01:13:44.160 --> 01:13:45.520 That's still true today. 01:13:45.520 --> 01:13:49.200 We paper it over with this fake democracy crap. 01:13:49.200 --> 01:13:52.240 The richest guy is the most powerful guy. 01:13:52.240 --> 01:13:55.680 Now, it only falls apart to the extent that a lot of 01:13:55.680 --> 01:14:02.720 modern wealth is digital, it's notional in nature, such that these guys 01:14:02.720 --> 01:14:06.480 had wealth, they had camels, they had armies, they had land, they 01:14:06.640 --> 01:14:09.280 had stuff, they had real goods. 01:14:09.280 --> 01:14:13.440 That is somewhat different than having extra zeros in your bank account. 01:14:13.440 --> 01:14:18.560 If you get to eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve zeros zeros, you're 01:14:18.560 --> 01:14:22.080 at a level that virtually none of us, probably nobody listening, can 01:14:22.080 --> 01:14:28.320 understand. Nevertheless, until you deploy that capital, it really just impresses people. 01:14:28.320 --> 01:14:29.760 And people are very impressed by it. 01:14:29.760 --> 01:14:30.720 It opens doors. 01:14:30.720 --> 01:14:33.200 You have friends that others would not. 01:14:33.200 --> 01:14:38.640 But the power incumbent doesn't necessarily scale as it did at the 01:14:38.640 --> 01:14:42.560 time. So for Job to have all this stuff, not merely gold, 01:14:42.560 --> 01:14:44.800 not merely a spreadsheet with wealth. 01:14:44.800 --> 01:14:48.800 He actually had the stuff, made him one of the richest men. 01:14:48.800 --> 01:14:52.560 And what is clear in Job both the first and the last 01:14:52.560 --> 01:14:54.880 chapters is that he was a king. 01:14:54.880 --> 01:14:59.040 His friends, his three friends are described, when they showed up. 01:14:59.040 --> 01:15:01.440 I'll just I'll read what Brenton says here. 01:15:01.440 --> 01:15:04.160 Now his three friends, having heard all the evil that was come 01:15:04.160 --> 01:15:06.960 upon him, came to him each from his own country. 01:15:07.840 --> 01:15:12.080 the king of the Famens, Baldad, sovereign of the Saukians, so far 01:15:12.080 --> 01:15:15.040 king of the Menaeans, and they came to him with one accord 01:15:15.120 --> 01:15:17.360 to comfort and to visit him. 01:15:17.360 --> 01:15:20.800 So Job makes very clear the text of Job makes clear that 01:15:20.800 --> 01:15:23.280 his three friends are also kings. 01:15:23.280 --> 01:15:27.200 Which makes sense, because rich people have rich, powerful friends, that's just 01:15:27.200 --> 01:15:28.080 how it works. 01:15:28.080 --> 01:15:32.080 You very rarely at any place in time in history see substantial 01:15:32.080 --> 01:15:34.720 crossing of boundaries of class lines. 01:15:34.720 --> 01:15:36.240 That's normal, that's fine. 01:15:36.240 --> 01:15:40.880 Who better to commiserate with a king who's lost everything than another 01:15:40.880 --> 01:15:45.040 king? I could try to commiserate with Job and uh try to 01:15:45.040 --> 01:15:47.680 give him a good advice, but I wouldn't actually know what it's 01:15:47.600 --> 01:15:51.440 like to lose a king's ransom, to lose a king's kingdom, to 01:15:51.440 --> 01:15:54.640 lose all of his goods, you know, children are children, and they're 01:15:54.640 --> 01:15:55.920 the most precious thing. 01:15:55.920 --> 01:15:58.640 But to lose a bunch of stuff, you have to have it 01:15:58.640 --> 01:16:00.400 to know how much it would hurt to lose it. 01:16:00.400 --> 01:16:05.200 A poor person can't possibly identify in the same way. 01:16:05.200 --> 01:16:07.920 So it makes a lot more sense when you know that Job 01:16:07.920 --> 01:16:10.960 is a king to know that his three friends are kings too. 01:16:10.960 --> 01:16:15.360 And that by itself is contextual, but it doesn't still really play 01:16:15.360 --> 01:16:18.720 into the timeline of things. 01:16:19.040 --> 01:16:22.960 Before I give you Job's actual genealogy at the end of Job 01:16:23.040 --> 01:16:26.880 in chapter 42, this is a portion that's completely delivered from the 01:16:26.880 --> 01:16:27.840 rabbinic text. 01:16:27.840 --> 01:16:29.840 And we'll talk about why. 01:16:29.840 --> 01:16:32.640 The very last line of the same Job that we've all read 01:16:32.640 --> 01:16:36.320 together in the Rabbinic text said, And Job died an old man 01:16:36.320 --> 01:16:38.000 and full of days. 01:16:38.000 --> 01:16:39.520 Like, okay, great, yeah. 01:16:39.520 --> 01:16:41.280 Happy ending. 01:16:41.280 --> 01:16:42.960 But it's not a Christian ending. 01:16:43.200 --> 01:16:46.000 It's a good ending, but it's not the Christian ending. 01:16:46.000 --> 01:16:47.280 Here's the Christian ending. 01:16:47.280 --> 01:16:49.360 Here's what the Septuagint says. 01:16:49.360 --> 01:16:52.240 And Job died, an old man and full of days, and it 01:16:52.240 --> 01:16:55.360 is written that he will rise again with those whom the Lord 01:16:55.360 --> 01:16:57.760 raises up. 01:16:57.760 --> 01:17:01.520 Boy howdy, that is a radical difference, isn't it? 01:17:01.520 --> 01:17:05.280 It harkens back to the comments of Joe Bain earlier, where he 01:17:05.280 --> 01:17:08.480 said that he knew that he would rise bodily, and he would 01:17:08.480 --> 01:17:12.000 see the Lord with his own eyes, even though he died. 01:17:12.000 --> 01:17:15.760 So there the confession that Job makes of the resurrection of the 01:17:15.760 --> 01:17:19.360 dead is left intact in the Rabbinic text, but at the end, 01:17:19.360 --> 01:17:24.720 chapter forty two, where he describes his death, it recapitulates that. 01:17:24.720 --> 01:17:27.280 It is written that he will rise again with those whom the 01:17:27.280 --> 01:17:28.160 Lord raises up. 01:17:28.160 --> 01:17:29.440 That's the gospel. 01:17:29.440 --> 01:17:33.200 Job ends with the gospel of Jesus Christ. 01:17:33.200 --> 01:17:39.600 And then the portion which is deleted entirely from the rabbinic text, 01:17:39.600 --> 01:17:40.480 I'm going to read all of it. 01:17:40.560 --> 01:17:45.040 It's only about a paragraph, but it repeats that his friends who 01:17:45.040 --> 01:17:48.640 came to him were Dalphaz of the children of Esau, King of 01:17:48.640 --> 01:17:52.000 the Thamanites, Baldad, sovereign of the Saukians, so far king of the 01:17:52.000 --> 01:17:58.880 Menaeans. And it also says Job's own genealogy, which is crucial. 01:17:58.880 --> 01:18:01.360 Because the problem that we have with Job, the book, and the 01:18:01.360 --> 01:18:05.120 Rabbinic text, is it's just some guy floating in space, we don't 01:18:05.040 --> 01:18:06.560 know. We don't know when. 01:18:06.560 --> 01:18:09.520 He's in the Near East, we can tell that. 01:18:09.520 --> 01:18:15.120 He's somewhere around that time, but we don't know any specifics. 01:18:15.120 --> 01:18:19.680 The specifics provided in Job forty two in the Septuagint well actually 01:18:19.920 --> 01:18:21.200 we'll read the rest of it. 01:18:21.200 --> 01:18:23.680 This man is described in the Syriac book as living in the 01:18:23.680 --> 01:18:28.320 land of Aesus, on the borders of Eudimea and Arabia, and his 01:18:28.320 --> 01:18:32.640 name before was Jobab, and having taken an Arabian wife, he begot 01:18:32.640 --> 01:18:35.840 a son whose name was Enon, and he himself was a son 01:18:36.320 --> 01:18:40.160 of his father Zar, one of the sons of Esau, and of 01:18:40.160 --> 01:18:42.480 his mother Borsora. 01:18:42.480 --> 01:18:45.200 So that he was the fifth from Abram. 01:18:45.200 --> 01:18:47.840 And then it goes on to list the kings who reigned in 01:18:47.840 --> 01:18:51.280 Edom and it includes Job. 01:18:51.280 --> 01:18:53.520 Job Ab was a king of Edom. 01:18:53.520 --> 01:18:56.080 So it makes clear the reason that his friends were kings was 01:18:56.080 --> 01:18:58.880 that he was a king. 01:18:58.880 --> 01:19:02.880 Once you know that Job has a genealogy, and in fact, is 01:19:02.880 --> 01:19:06.960 a descendant of Esau, descendant of Abram. 01:19:06.960 --> 01:19:10.080 Now we can plug it into the timeline, which is why we're 01:19:10.080 --> 01:19:13.120 gonna finish up the timeline stuff talking about Job himself. 01:19:13.120 --> 01:19:14.720 This is a really big deal. 01:19:14.720 --> 01:19:18.160 I this honestly blew me away. 01:19:18.160 --> 01:19:22.640 The chronology that's provided in Job forty two is mirrored in Genesis 01:19:22.640 --> 01:19:25.840 thirty-six, which we all have. 01:19:26.080 --> 01:19:31.520 Genesis thirty six says Jobab son of Zara, Zare, son of Ragul, 01:19:31.520 --> 01:19:33.040 and Esau. 01:19:33.040 --> 01:19:36.000 And in speaking of the kings it says and Balak died and 01:19:36.000 --> 01:19:39.600 Jobab son of Zara from Borsoba reigned in his stead. 01:19:39.600 --> 01:19:43.920 So Genesis 36 confirms that there was a king Jobab, a king 01:19:43.920 --> 01:19:48.080 of Edom, tells when he reigned, tells who his parents were, and 01:19:48.080 --> 01:19:51.200 it matches up with Job 42. 01:19:51.200 --> 01:19:53.840 Now, it doesn't match up identically. 01:19:53.840 --> 01:19:57.440 This is one of those cases where when you're looking at genealogy, 01:19:57.440 --> 01:19:59.200 there are always issues. 01:19:59.200 --> 01:20:03.040 There are always seeming inconsistencies in all of these genealogies. 01:20:03.040 --> 01:20:07.760 I want to highlight the specific inconsistency in the Septuagint, because it's 01:20:07.760 --> 01:20:11.600 important to acknowledge it, and it's important as the admonishment that I 01:20:11.600 --> 01:20:16.480 gave earlier about not being a rat-it-tier atheist, do not come up 01:20:16.480 --> 01:20:20.240 with some rule that you're going to disqualify the Septuagint because of 01:20:20.240 --> 01:20:23.920 this sort of inconsistency, do not come up with a rule that 01:20:23.920 --> 01:20:29.040 would also nullify the genealogies in Matthew and Luke of Jesus Christ, 01:20:29.040 --> 01:20:32.560 because they also require reconciliation. 01:20:32.560 --> 01:20:36.160 They don't line up perfectly, and we've explained why that is as 01:20:36.160 --> 01:20:36.800 a church. 01:20:36.800 --> 01:20:39.680 Not stonequare, we don't need to do this work, there's nothing novel 01:20:39.680 --> 01:20:43.040 there. The church has always contended with the fact that God tells 01:20:43.040 --> 01:20:46.000 the same story repeatedly in slightly different ways. 01:20:46.000 --> 01:20:47.520 God loves to do that for some reason. 01:20:48.000 --> 01:20:48.960 Don't know why. 01:20:48.960 --> 01:20:51.360 Yeah, we kind of do too, but when he does it in 01:20:51.360 --> 01:20:54.880 scripture and gives us parallax, we don't get to just throw out 01:20:54.880 --> 01:20:58.080 the one that we don't like, even if we can't exactly reconcile 01:20:58.080 --> 01:21:01.920 them. And this is very much a case where unlike the pyramids 01:21:02.160 --> 01:21:06.480 in the timeline of the flood, we have to simply say, Lord, 01:21:06.480 --> 01:21:08.080 I believe help my unbelief. 01:21:08.080 --> 01:21:11.120 If we can't reconcile them, we say it's all true and I 01:21:11.120 --> 01:21:12.080 don't know why. 01:21:12.080 --> 01:21:14.720 That I think that's the most Christian response we can have. 01:21:14.960 --> 01:21:18.320 There are times where that is going to apply. 01:21:18.320 --> 01:21:20.560 And it applies to things in the New Testament. 01:21:20.560 --> 01:21:24.640 The Septuagint does not create any problem here that the church has 01:21:24.640 --> 01:21:26.880 not contended with for a long time. 01:21:26.880 --> 01:21:31.440 So when Job 42 says that Job himself was the fifth from 01:21:31.440 --> 01:21:37.120 Abram, that is not consistent with Genesis 36, which in effect says 01:21:37.120 --> 01:21:40.480 that he was the great grandson of Esau rather than his grandson. 01:21:40.480 --> 01:21:44.000 So what we have here is what is commonly referred to as 01:21:44.000 --> 01:21:48.880 a telescoping generation, where one man in the case of Jobab's chronology 01:21:49.040 --> 01:21:54.080 in Genesis thirty six, Ragul is omitted in Job forty-two. 01:21:54.080 --> 01:21:58.640 There are cases where God omits men from genealogies. 01:21:58.640 --> 01:22:00.480 It's something we've always had to deal with. 01:22:00.480 --> 01:22:01.840 We just have to take it. 01:22:01.840 --> 01:22:05.200 Now, having looked at this for quite some time, trying to reconcile 01:22:05.520 --> 01:22:11.120 it myself, my personal conclusion, and I think the safe Christian conclusion, 01:22:11.120 --> 01:22:16.160 is that we should view the inconsistency in Job forty two where 01:22:16.160 --> 01:22:21.120 it says fifth from Abram, where Ragul is omitted, as for some 01:22:21.120 --> 01:22:24.080 reason Ragul was simply omitted by God. 01:22:24.080 --> 01:22:25.280 We don't know why. 01:22:25.280 --> 01:22:27.280 We know that he was not king. 01:22:27.280 --> 01:22:30.960 His sons were made powerful, but he himself was not. 01:22:30.960 --> 01:22:33.840 That's something that's told in Genesis thirty-six. 01:22:33.840 --> 01:22:35.680 But we don't know what happened to him, but we do know 01:22:35.680 --> 01:22:37.040 that he was a real man. 01:22:37.040 --> 01:22:40.480 So I think that it's the far greater error to go into 01:22:40.480 --> 01:22:46.880 Genesis thirty-six and delete Ragul than to infer his existence in forty 01:22:47.040 --> 01:22:49.280 two, in Job forty two. 01:22:49.280 --> 01:22:52.000 Another thing that's a small detail here, but if you want to 01:22:52.000 --> 01:22:54.480 look at these texts yourself and you want to be really meticulous 01:22:54.880 --> 01:22:59.520 you will find that in Genesis it will say Zara and then 01:22:59.520 --> 01:23:03.840 it will say Zar, Z-A-R-A versus Z-A-R-E. 01:23:03.840 --> 01:23:08.320 And the name for the wife for the land in Genesis 36 01:23:08.400 --> 01:23:14.640 is Borsoba, whereas in Genesis 42 it's Borsoba, so a H A 01:23:14.640 --> 01:23:16.160 versus a B A. 01:23:16.160 --> 01:23:18.640 By itself, if just one of the names were different, you could 01:23:18.640 --> 01:23:22.160 say, well maybe that's slightly it's an inconsistency, I'm not sure if 01:23:22.160 --> 01:23:22.960 the same person. 01:23:22.960 --> 01:23:26.160 When both the father and the mother are off by only one 01:23:26.160 --> 01:23:29.120 character, it's absolutely the same person. 01:23:29.120 --> 01:23:31.600 And this is not just a Bible problem. 01:23:31.600 --> 01:23:35.680 About ten years ago, I took a road trip around the country 01:23:35.840 --> 01:23:40.400 and I had the privilege to visit family graveyard on my mom's 01:23:40.400 --> 01:23:44.000 side in western North Carolina in Ash County. 01:23:44.080 --> 01:23:47.200 Mentifour is one of the places flooded out it out. 01:23:47.200 --> 01:23:51.280 The family plot is up on Top of the Hillside, and I 01:23:51.280 --> 01:23:54.320 found it online on Find Grave and made sure that was one 01:23:54.320 --> 01:23:57.520 of the waypoints that I visited because my grandfather who's buried there 01:23:57.600 --> 01:23:59.600 actually helped build the Blue Ridge Parkway. 01:23:59.600 --> 01:24:01.120 Yeah, my grandfather helped build it. 01:24:01.120 --> 01:24:04.080 If you look that up, he was born in eighteen ninety seven. 01:24:04.080 --> 01:24:06.480 My grandpa was eighty two when I was born. 01:24:06.480 --> 01:24:07.360 He was really old. 01:24:07.360 --> 01:24:10.640 It's like there's you know, talking about generational compression and sliding. 01:24:10.640 --> 01:24:12.480 That still happens today too. 01:24:12.480 --> 01:24:15.760 My grandma's about twenty years younger than him, and my mom was 01:24:15.760 --> 01:24:18.480 the third youngest of nine brothers and sisters, so 01:24:18.720 --> 01:24:18.880 you 01:24:18.880 --> 01:24:19.600 know, 01:24:19.600 --> 01:24:23.760 things can start to stretch even in modern days. 01:24:23.760 --> 01:24:28.480 The reason I mention the family plot is that in that graveyard 01:24:28.560 --> 01:24:34.240 with graves going back about 150 years, the surname of my mom 01:24:34.880 --> 01:24:37.280 is spelled three different ways. 01:24:37.280 --> 01:24:41.040 So within living memory, the same people were spelling the same surname 01:24:41.040 --> 01:24:42.400 in different ways. 01:24:42.400 --> 01:24:45.760 So if you've never done genealogy before, you probably haven't run into 01:24:45.760 --> 01:24:50.000 that. But when you look at the Old Testament, when you look 01:24:50.000 --> 01:24:54.400 at scripture and you find these minor inconsistencies in spelling, it's important 01:24:54.400 --> 01:24:56.720 to verify is it the same person or is it somebody with 01:24:56.720 --> 01:24:59.200 a similar name or you know a different person with you know 01:24:59.360 --> 01:25:02.320 an approximate name, or is it the same person with the same 01:25:02.320 --> 01:25:04.480 name just being recorded in a different way? 01:25:04.480 --> 01:25:08.000 Because if it could happen to people who were my ancestors 75 01:25:08.160 --> 01:25:11.760 years ago, it can absolutely happen 4,000 years ago. 01:25:11.760 --> 01:25:13.360 It's nothing new. 01:25:13.360 --> 01:25:18.400 Prior to basically universal literacy, and even with universal literacy, people have 01:25:18.400 --> 01:25:22.480 not always been completely consistent about even spelling their own names. 01:25:22.480 --> 01:25:25.120 And you know, sometimes they'll diverge and then sort of get locked 01:25:25.120 --> 01:25:30.080 in. So in that family plot, a couple generations back, people were 01:25:30.160 --> 01:25:31.680 spelling them inconsistently. 01:25:31.920 --> 01:25:35.040 At some point, one of those inconsistencies got locked in in a 01:25:35.040 --> 01:25:36.480 couple different ways. 01:25:36.480 --> 01:25:38.880 Genealogy looks kind of weird sometimes. 01:25:38.880 --> 01:25:41.920 If you are gonna be autistic and you're gonna be meticulous about 01:25:41.920 --> 01:25:44.240 precision, it's really frustrating. 01:25:44.240 --> 01:25:49.760 Because you can't necessarily get exact perfect matchups of everything. 01:25:49.760 --> 01:25:53.440 But way you can rest assured is that regardless of whether or 01:25:53.440 --> 01:25:56.080 not you know your great grandparent's name, you know that you had 01:25:56.080 --> 01:25:57.440 to have a great grandparent. 01:25:57.440 --> 01:26:00.240 Even if you know you were adopted or was lost for whatever 01:26:00.240 --> 01:26:03.280 reason, that person had to exist or you wouldn't be here. 01:26:03.280 --> 01:26:06.880 That is an absolute biological mathematical certainty. 01:26:06.880 --> 01:26:10.880 So it's absolutely a certainty that Job had parents and grandparents and 01:26:10.880 --> 01:26:11.440 so forth. 01:26:11.440 --> 01:26:14.480 And when we look at Job forty two and reconcile with Genesis 01:26:14.480 --> 01:26:18.400 thirty six, the only thing we have to contend with is this 01:26:18.400 --> 01:26:24.320 telescoping generation where Ragul is eliminated, and Job is in effect called 01:26:24.320 --> 01:26:28.320 a grandson of Esau rather than a great grandson, which even today 01:26:28.320 --> 01:26:29.680 is not strange. 01:26:29.680 --> 01:26:34.560 You know, if you're a northwestern European man, you would call Charlemagne 01:26:34.560 --> 01:26:37.520 your grandfather, or you could, because virtue all of us are going 01:26:37.520 --> 01:26:39.920 to be have been descended from him. 01:26:39.920 --> 01:26:44.080 It's not abnormal to skip the forty generations between here and there 01:26:44.080 --> 01:26:47.360 to say Charlemagne's my grandfather. 01:26:47.360 --> 01:26:49.760 Scripture itself does this as well. 01:26:49.760 --> 01:26:52.080 God said to Jacob, I am the Lord the God of your 01:26:52.080 --> 01:26:55.760 father Abraham and the God of Isaac, even though that was skipping 01:26:55.760 --> 01:26:56.960 a generation. 01:26:56.960 --> 01:27:00.160 Jacob also asked, Do you know Laban the son of Nahor? 01:27:00.160 --> 01:27:03.360 However, Genesis makes clear that Laban is the son of Bethel, the 01:27:03.360 --> 01:27:05.040 grandson of Nahor. 01:27:05.040 --> 01:27:08.800 So regardless whether you're using a Septuagint or the rabbinic text, there 01:27:08.800 --> 01:27:11.600 are cases where men are called sons or actually grandsons and so 01:27:11.600 --> 01:27:15.680 forth. That sort of lineal descent, we're all sons of Adam. 01:27:15.680 --> 01:27:17.600 It's normal to talk that way. 01:27:17.600 --> 01:27:23.680 When you're getting into the specificity of exactly which generation it is, 01:27:23.680 --> 01:27:25.280 there's sometimes ambiguities. 01:27:25.440 --> 01:27:28.480 That's particularly the case in these cultures in this day. 01:27:28.480 --> 01:27:31.360 So I pointed out because if you dig into it, all this 01:27:31.360 --> 01:27:32.480 is this doesn't match. 01:27:32.480 --> 01:27:33.680 This can't be the same. 01:27:33.680 --> 01:27:35.040 Therefore, what are you going to do? 01:27:35.040 --> 01:27:36.960 Are you going to throw it all out? 01:27:36.960 --> 01:27:39.920 If that's your conclusion, just know you're going to be throwing out 01:27:39.920 --> 01:27:42.640 Matthew and Luke and a whole bunch of other stuff. 01:27:42.640 --> 01:27:44.480 Because these problems are nothing new. 01:27:44.480 --> 01:27:48.320 And they're nothing that should concern anyone with strong and mature faith. 01:27:48.320 --> 01:27:50.720 And if you're new to the faith, don't worry about it at 01:27:50.720 --> 01:27:54.080 all. Don't get tied up in genealogies and worny worrying about this 01:27:54.080 --> 01:27:57.440 stuff. It's not the crucial part of the faith. 01:27:57.440 --> 01:28:00.160 But what is crucial is not lying about God. 01:28:00.160 --> 01:28:02.320 If it turns out that there's been a mistake, an error, an 01:28:02.320 --> 01:28:04.320 omission, we try to do better. 01:28:04.320 --> 01:28:07.440 And in the case of the Septuagint, what we find is that 01:28:07.840 --> 01:28:12.400 the removal of this detail that Job was actually the king of 01:28:12.400 --> 01:28:17.760 Edom, and that he was descended from Esau by a couple generations, 01:28:17.760 --> 01:28:22.480 is profoundly important because what has just happened by that one fact 01:28:22.800 --> 01:28:28.560 in Job 42 is that Job the man is ripped out of 01:28:28.560 --> 01:28:32.640 mythology and placed directly in a timeline that's in the Bible. 01:28:33.680 --> 01:28:38.240 This appears in two parallel paces in the first five books of 01:28:38.240 --> 01:28:39.040 the Bible. 01:28:39.040 --> 01:28:42.240 In Numbers 20 and in Deuteronomy 2, where the same story is 01:28:42.240 --> 01:28:43.680 basically retold. 01:28:43.680 --> 01:28:46.240 Like I said, God likes to repeat Himself and tell the story 01:28:46.240 --> 01:28:47.760 in slightly different ways. 01:28:47.760 --> 01:28:51.040 And it's really important to look at both of them together because 01:28:51.040 --> 01:28:55.200 when you plug in the fact that Job was somewhere in the 01:28:55.200 --> 01:28:59.920 neighborhood, somewhere around this time, and he was the king of Edom, 01:28:59.920 --> 01:29:03.280 it radically reframes the end of the Exodus. 01:29:03.280 --> 01:29:09.280 I'm just gonna briefly summarize the key events in Numbers twenty here. 01:29:09.280 --> 01:29:12.480 The Israelites revile Moses and God. 01:29:12.720 --> 01:29:15.360 God tells Moses and Aaron to speak to the rock and to 01:29:15.360 --> 01:29:16.800 provide water. 01:29:16.800 --> 01:29:20.080 Moses strikes the rock instead of speaking to it. 01:29:20.080 --> 01:29:25.760 God immediately pronounces death upon both Aaron and Moses for their disobedience. 01:29:25.760 --> 01:29:28.720 So that's one paragraph in numbers twenty. 01:29:28.720 --> 01:29:31.200 The next paragraph is numbers twenty is this. 01:29:31.200 --> 01:29:35.120 The king of Edom, who is unnamed, says he'll kill the Israelites 01:29:35.120 --> 01:29:37.120 if they set one foot in his land. 01:29:37.120 --> 01:29:39.360 He says he's going to send his army out, you're not crossing 01:29:39.360 --> 01:29:41.120 our border at all. 01:29:41.120 --> 01:29:45.760 And there's no moral commentary whatsoever in the text against the king 01:29:45.760 --> 01:29:47.520 of Edom for doing so. 01:29:47.520 --> 01:29:51.680 And then the next paragraph, concluding numbers twenty, God told Aaron to 01:29:51.680 --> 01:29:54.880 give his son his priestly garments and go up on a mountain, 01:29:54.880 --> 01:29:56.400 and God killed him on the spot. 01:29:56.400 --> 01:29:58.400 Aaron didn't die of natural causes. 01:29:58.400 --> 01:30:00.480 Aaron didn't die of old age. 01:30:00.480 --> 01:30:04.320 Aaron died because God said now it's your time to die. 01:30:04.320 --> 01:30:08.160 And while that is true for all of us, it is seldom 01:30:08.160 --> 01:30:10.880 true in such an immediate fashion. 01:30:10.880 --> 01:30:13.920 And it's I think it's notable just looking at Numbers twenty as 01:30:13.920 --> 01:30:15.760 a story in general that you know Yeah. 01:30:15.760 --> 01:30:17.760 Aaron wasn't the one who struck the rock. 01:30:17.760 --> 01:30:19.280 Moses struck the rock. 01:30:19.280 --> 01:30:24.000 But they were brothers, they were there together as leaders. 01:30:24.000 --> 01:30:25.440 Aaron did nothing. 01:30:25.440 --> 01:30:29.200 I'm sure it makes perfect sense when you read the story how 01:30:29.200 --> 01:30:33.760 much the Israelites had been haranguing Moses, it makes perfect sense that 01:30:33.760 --> 01:30:34.960 he got angry. 01:30:34.960 --> 01:30:38.240 And God said there's gonna be water coming out of this rock. 01:30:38.240 --> 01:30:40.960 He probably took his staff and struck it with both hands as 01:30:40.960 --> 01:30:41.840 hard as he could. 01:30:41.840 --> 01:30:43.040 He was pissed. 01:30:43.040 --> 01:30:46.880 He was angry, and that was sin. 01:30:46.880 --> 01:30:51.200 Undoubtedly Aaron shared his frustration which boiled over into anger at the 01:30:51.200 --> 01:30:55.680 Israelites and their grumbling, the fact they were reviling him, and reviling 01:30:55.680 --> 01:31:00.400 God by extension, because God had placed them there as their leaders. 01:31:00.400 --> 01:31:03.680 That one act of disobedience, in a case of Aaron, God struck 01:31:03.680 --> 01:31:05.040 him dead almost immediately. 01:31:05.040 --> 01:31:07.280 He's dead by the end of the chapter. 01:31:07.280 --> 01:31:11.280 So this came up earlier today, it's unrelated, but there's a blow 01:31:11.360 --> 01:31:17.200 up on X recently, once again, about the sinful past of girls 01:31:17.440 --> 01:31:21.760 and what obligations men have to take a girl as a wife 01:31:22.160 --> 01:31:24.640 who may have been acting up in horrible ways. 01:31:24.640 --> 01:31:28.320 Some I think it's protestia published an article saying that if an 01:31:28.320 --> 01:31:34.560 OnlyFans model, in quotes, if an OnlyFans prostitute becomes a Christian and 01:31:34.560 --> 01:31:38.240 stops doing that, you have a Christian obligation to marry her. 01:31:38.240 --> 01:31:43.440 And all those claims are always predicated on the notion that once 01:31:43.440 --> 01:31:47.680 someone is forgiven by God, all the consequences are wiped away in 01:31:47.680 --> 01:31:48.480 this life. 01:31:48.480 --> 01:31:52.480 You can never have any consequences applied to you once Jesus forgives 01:31:52.480 --> 01:31:58.160 you. If that were true, either Aaron is burning in hell, or 01:31:58.480 --> 01:32:00.160 has God sinned, because 01:32:01.360 --> 01:32:03.120 Aaron was a godly man. 01:32:03.120 --> 01:32:07.120 It was this one sin that condemned him to physical death. 01:32:07.120 --> 01:32:09.520 It did not condemn him to eternal death. 01:32:09.520 --> 01:32:13.920 He was properly mourned immediately by the Israelites For the appropriate period 01:32:13.920 --> 01:32:17.840 of time, because he was a great patriarch. 01:32:17.840 --> 01:32:20.560 All of his sons became the priesthood. 01:32:20.560 --> 01:32:22.000 He was a great man. 01:32:22.000 --> 01:32:25.600 He died in the Lord, and yet it was immediately the Lord 01:32:25.600 --> 01:32:28.480 who struck him dead for his sin. 01:32:28.480 --> 01:32:34.720 The consequences of Moses and Aaron sinning, and you know, again, Aaron's 01:32:34.720 --> 01:32:38.560 sin was lesser, certainly lesser than Moses's, and yet Aaron died first. 01:32:39.040 --> 01:32:40.720 God killed him almost immediately. 01:32:40.720 --> 01:32:42.400 Said, Go up on the hill, take off your clothes, give them 01:32:42.400 --> 01:32:44.000 to your son, and you die. 01:32:44.000 --> 01:32:45.760 And that's exactly what happened. 01:32:45.760 --> 01:32:48.240 That was temporal consequences for sin. 01:32:48.240 --> 01:32:49.840 This is our God. 01:32:49.840 --> 01:32:53.280 And one of the overarching problems that we have, one of the 01:32:53.280 --> 01:32:55.520 reasons the stone choir exists, one of the reasons we're doing the 01:32:55.520 --> 01:33:02.880 Septuagint series at all, is that because post-Reformation certainly this reframing 01:33:02.880 --> 01:33:07.520 of the Jews as being central to everything, as being the key 01:33:07.520 --> 01:33:10.640 that unlocks all of human history, certainly. 01:33:10.640 --> 01:33:12.080 Adam was a Jew, right? 01:33:12.080 --> 01:33:12.720 Had to be. 01:33:12.720 --> 01:33:14.000 Noah was a Jew, right? 01:33:14.000 --> 01:33:16.800 Because that was just, you know, they have the lineage and they 01:33:16.800 --> 01:33:19.440 can they can name them, so obviously they're all Jews. 01:33:19.440 --> 01:33:22.800 We've demonstrated the absurdity of that in the Hebrews Israelite and Jews 01:33:22.800 --> 01:33:29.280 episode. But these notions have become pervasive, particularly in American Protestantism today, 01:33:29.280 --> 01:33:34.400 and they have suffused every aspect of how we view everything, such 01:33:34.400 --> 01:33:38.160 that when you see things like God striking Aaron dead for his 01:33:38.160 --> 01:33:42.640 sin, for Moses' sin and his participation in it, as a lesser 01:33:42.640 --> 01:33:46.160 participant, we don't see anything at all. 01:33:46.160 --> 01:33:48.400 Because what's numbers 20 to us? 01:33:48.400 --> 01:33:52.240 If we have a Jew focused view of the Old Testament, well, 01:33:52.240 --> 01:33:54.960 you know, it's just it's a story about what the Hebrews are 01:33:54.960 --> 01:33:57.280 doing out in the desert and it's got nothing to do with 01:33:57.280 --> 01:34:00.000 us. There's no moral conclusion to be drawn is there? 01:34:00.000 --> 01:34:03.840 Whereas if you look at Aaron being a Christian, being a believer 01:34:03.840 --> 01:34:07.600 who died in the Lord, and God killing him for his sin, 01:34:07.600 --> 01:34:12.000 it can be unambiguous that there are temporal consequences for sin even 01:34:12.000 --> 01:34:14.960 when that sin is forgiven in eternity. 01:34:14.960 --> 01:34:18.880 It's not the subject of today's episode, but it's an ongoing battle 01:34:18.880 --> 01:34:23.760 in the church in what is lost by despising what's actually in 01:34:23.760 --> 01:34:28.400 the old testament, is the fact that God is not the God 01:34:28.400 --> 01:34:30.480 that we're often told he is. 01:34:30.480 --> 01:34:32.960 God killed Aaron on the spot for what he did. 01:34:32.960 --> 01:34:35.600 So that's an aside, but it's a crucial one because this is 01:34:35.600 --> 01:34:36.800 a live issue. 01:34:36.800 --> 01:34:40.800 The whole reason we're spending all this time talking about some translation 01:34:41.120 --> 01:34:44.320 is not because it's a fiddly detail of history. 01:34:44.320 --> 01:34:46.320 This is not textual criticism. 01:34:46.320 --> 01:34:48.720 This is about whether or not we believe God in everything that 01:34:48.720 --> 01:34:51.200 He says and take it seriously and act like it. 01:34:51.200 --> 01:34:53.520 And right now we're not doing a very good job of that 01:34:53.520 --> 01:34:54.800 at all. 01:34:54.800 --> 01:34:57.360 In the middle paragraph where it says that the king of Edom 01:34:57.600 --> 01:35:02.320 refused entry, when you read Edom, you think, oh man, those Edomites, 01:35:02.320 --> 01:35:03.120 they were terrible. 01:35:03.120 --> 01:35:04.880 Later on, they absolutely were. 01:35:04.880 --> 01:35:09.920 They were malicious, they were despicable, they were truly wicked people. 01:35:09.920 --> 01:35:13.840 They were not those wicked Edomites in this day. 01:35:14.160 --> 01:35:17.280 They were, in fact, God fearers. 01:35:17.280 --> 01:35:20.800 Now, here's where the timeline comes in. 01:35:20.800 --> 01:35:23.680 And these are some numbers that I produced myself. 01:35:23.680 --> 01:35:27.280 I'm not going to publish them certainly at this time, because I'm 01:35:27.200 --> 01:35:30.720 not the guy I'm not I'm not fiddly or patient enough to 01:35:30.720 --> 01:35:33.360 try to line up every single thing to make sure that it 01:35:33.360 --> 01:35:35.280 precisely works. 01:35:35.280 --> 01:35:38.560 But I'm gonna give you a timeline here that's going to be 01:35:38.560 --> 01:35:42.560 anchored with Abraham's birth basically at year one, just like we have 01:35:42.560 --> 01:35:47.600 AD year of our Lord one with Jesus' birth ostensibly, AD, you 01:35:47.600 --> 01:35:51.840 know, birth of Abraham year one here for this timeline. 01:35:51.840 --> 01:35:54.320 These numbers are absolutely internally consistent. 01:35:55.360 --> 01:35:59.600 Abraham is born 75 years later, he's given the promise, and he 01:35:59.600 --> 01:36:01.280 enters into Canaan. 01:36:01.280 --> 01:36:03.920 At 100, Isaac is born. 01:36:03.920 --> 01:36:09.840 At 160 years at years after Abraham's birth, Esau and Jacob are 01:36:09.840 --> 01:36:12.800 born. And we often say Jacob and Esau, but Esau was the 01:36:12.800 --> 01:36:16.400 firstborn. So again, don't freak out when the second born has a 01:36:16.400 --> 01:36:17.440 greater blessing. 01:36:17.440 --> 01:36:19.520 That's something God likes to do. 01:36:19.520 --> 01:36:21.280 But it's always in punishment. 01:36:21.280 --> 01:36:24.160 It's always because something has happened. 01:36:24.160 --> 01:36:27.360 And then fifteen years after the birth of Esau and Jacob, Abraham 01:36:27.360 --> 01:36:29.680 dies at age one hundred and seventy five. 01:36:29.680 --> 01:36:33.120 Seventy six years after Abraham dies, Joseph is born. 01:36:33.120 --> 01:36:36.400 So we're now a year two hundred fifty one on our timeline. 01:36:36.400 --> 01:36:40.320 Joseph is born at two hundred fifty one, Joseph is appointed overseer 01:36:40.320 --> 01:36:43.360 in Egypt about two hundred eighty one, and that's the beginning of 01:36:43.360 --> 01:36:45.280 the years of plenty. 01:36:45.280 --> 01:36:48.320 And then the famine begins in about two hundred and eighty-eight years 01:36:48.320 --> 01:36:50.560 after Abraham's birth. 01:36:50.560 --> 01:36:52.720 We get to about three hundred years. 01:36:52.720 --> 01:36:55.680 I'm gonna round a little bit here because it's it's not crucial 01:36:55.680 --> 01:36:56.720 to get fiddly. 01:36:56.720 --> 01:37:01.680 About three hundred years after Abraham's birth, Kohath is born. 01:37:01.680 --> 01:37:04.720 Kohath is the father of Amram. 01:37:04.720 --> 01:37:07.520 Amram is the father of Job. 01:37:07.520 --> 01:37:09.840 So the reason that I've included these additional 01:37:10.720 --> 01:37:16.080 names after Jacob is that with the birth of Kohath, the birth 01:37:16.080 --> 01:37:21.360 of Amram, and then the birth of Moses, we've established typical generational 01:37:21.360 --> 01:37:25.200 intervals at that time in that place for those for those sons. 01:37:25.200 --> 01:37:27.840 Just like we were talking about the Genesis 5 and the Genesis 01:37:27.920 --> 01:37:30.800 11 intervals, they were all quite consistent. 01:37:30.800 --> 01:37:33.920 Now, we don't know to what degree that was typical at the 01:37:33.920 --> 01:37:37.600 time or to what degree God supernaturally intervened. 01:37:37.600 --> 01:37:41.920 There's no reason to believe it wasn't typical, but the particulars of 01:37:41.920 --> 01:37:46.000 any given man you can't extrapolate, but you can average. 01:37:46.000 --> 01:37:48.320 On average it was about one hundred and thirty years in the 01:37:48.320 --> 01:37:50.560 Genesis eleven chronologies. 01:37:50.560 --> 01:37:52.800 That's perfectly fine. 01:37:52.800 --> 01:37:56.240 So since we know for a fact from the genealogies, they give 01:37:56.320 --> 01:38:02.880 specific begetting dates, exactly how much time passed from Jacob through Moses, 01:38:02.880 --> 01:38:08.880 we can assume that other men would have had similar generational intervals. 01:38:08.880 --> 01:38:12.400 Not identical, but similar, certainly in the ballpark. 01:38:12.400 --> 01:38:15.600 So what I have done privately, and I'm not going to publish 01:38:15.600 --> 01:38:18.400 this, but I'm just making the case for why these numbers I 01:38:18.400 --> 01:38:21.360 think are absolutely plausible. 01:38:21.360 --> 01:38:25.760 And in fact, they're so plausible that concluding that this is not 01:38:25.760 --> 01:38:27.200 true becomes implausible. 01:38:27.200 --> 01:38:30.720 You'd have to shift the timelines radically to dismiss what I'm saying 01:38:30.720 --> 01:38:35.200 here. Assuming and this is the one big assumption in all of 01:38:35.200 --> 01:38:38.240 this, this is the one thing that is not established in scripture. 01:38:38.240 --> 01:38:43.040 We're not given the begetting dates of Esau's sons, certainly through Job. 01:38:43.040 --> 01:38:46.560 We're not told in Job forty-two or in Genesis thirty-six what the 01:38:46.560 --> 01:38:47.920 intervals were. 01:38:47.920 --> 01:38:53.360 But if we assume that they're comparable to the generations through Moses, 01:38:53.360 --> 01:39:00.240 then we would have Job being born in Edom 352 years after 01:39:00.240 --> 01:39:01.920 Abraham's death. 01:39:01.920 --> 01:39:05.680 That is the same year as Amaram is born, which is the 01:39:05.680 --> 01:39:09.600 assumption. So again, that's where the generational intervals are the same. 01:39:09.600 --> 01:39:13.200 That's a complete assumption, but it's gonna be within a few years. 01:39:13.200 --> 01:39:15.600 You know, even if it's off by ten years, it doesn't change 01:39:15.600 --> 01:39:18.560 the conclusion of the argument they'll be making here. 01:39:18.560 --> 01:39:22.000 But I'm acknowledging this is the one place where we don't know. 01:39:22.000 --> 01:39:26.160 This is the one place where we cannot say this is accurate. 01:39:26.160 --> 01:39:29.680 But everything predicated on the assumption is going to be precise because 01:39:29.680 --> 01:39:32.080 we have all the rest of the dates in scripture. 01:39:32.160 --> 01:39:36.160 So if we assume that the intervals were the same for Job, 01:39:36.160 --> 01:39:40.800 then and this is also using the sixth generation timeline for Job 01:39:40.960 --> 01:39:41.840 not the five. 01:39:42.080 --> 01:39:46.640 As I mentioned a minute ago, I think that the telescoping past 01:39:46.960 --> 01:39:52.000 Ragul we have to treat as something that's being alighted, but that 01:39:52.000 --> 01:39:56.160 man also existed, and therefore would have a similar generational interval. 01:39:56.160 --> 01:39:58.800 So I'm using the six generations and not the five that are 01:39:58.800 --> 01:40:01.760 five that are attested to in Job forty two. 01:40:01.760 --> 01:40:05.600 But I re-ran the numbers both ways and they work out pretty 01:40:05.600 --> 01:40:06.720 much either way. 01:40:06.720 --> 01:40:11.440 Assuming that there were six generations, which is from scripture with a 01:40:11.440 --> 01:40:17.920 minor caveat and assuming that the generations through Job from Esau were 01:40:17.920 --> 01:40:21.520 about the same, he's being born about the same time as Amram, 01:40:21.520 --> 01:40:25.200 which means that Job was born just before Joseph dies. 01:40:25.200 --> 01:40:27.040 This would put Job's trials beginning 01:40:28.160 --> 01:40:31.120 almost the same year that Moses is born. 01:40:31.120 --> 01:40:37.360 Assuming identical durations for Job and Amram, Job's trials would begin four 01:40:37.360 --> 01:40:41.120 hundred and twenty-two years after Abraham, and Moses is born four hundred 01:40:41.120 --> 01:40:42.640 and twenty-five years after Abraham. 01:40:42.640 --> 01:40:44.160 So virtually the same time. 01:40:44.160 --> 01:40:49.360 So when Job's trials begin, he has been king for some time, 01:40:49.360 --> 01:40:52.480 like all this wealth, he's the king, his friends are kings. 01:40:52.480 --> 01:40:54.320 He's not a prince at this point. 01:40:54.320 --> 01:40:56.240 He's been in charge of Edom. 01:40:56.240 --> 01:40:58.640 He's been the king of Edom for some time. 01:40:58.640 --> 01:41:02.720 And remember the context from the beginning of Job, the discourse that 01:41:03.120 --> 01:41:07.680 occurs in the heavenly council, God holds Job forth as one of 01:41:07.680 --> 01:41:09.600 the most faithful men on the planet. 01:41:09.600 --> 01:41:11.840 He says there's none like him. 01:41:11.840 --> 01:41:15.360 And Job lived at the same time as Moses. 01:41:15.360 --> 01:41:19.920 While Moses was doing his thing in Egypt in slavery, along with 01:41:19.920 --> 01:41:24.080 all of the Hebrews, while they were all beleaguered and being beaten, 01:41:24.080 --> 01:41:28.400 and forced to do manual labor and killed unjustly and cruelly by 01:41:28.400 --> 01:41:29.680 the Egyptians? 01:41:29.680 --> 01:41:35.520 Job Job was blessed immeasurably by God, and Job was the subject 01:41:35.520 --> 01:41:39.360 of discussion, where the devil said, Well, of course he gives you 01:41:39.360 --> 01:41:43.520 glory. You've erected a hedge around him, nothing bad happens to him. 01:41:43.840 --> 01:41:44.720 This is the consequence. 01:41:45.360 --> 01:41:46.800 This is what matters. 01:41:46.800 --> 01:41:50.400 Even if we're off by a few years of Job's birth, because 01:41:50.560 --> 01:41:54.240 Job was a great grandson of Esau, he lived about the same 01:41:54.240 --> 01:41:57.440 time. He lived, you know, couple countries over. 01:41:57.440 --> 01:42:00.480 Edom wasn't far away from Egypt at that time. 01:42:00.480 --> 01:42:04.000 They're not exactly neighbors, but it's not distant. 01:42:04.000 --> 01:42:06.720 Job was blessed, Joe is a powerful king. 01:42:06.720 --> 01:42:08.880 The Hebrews are in captivity. 01:42:08.880 --> 01:42:13.200 They are being tormented, they're being abused, they're being killed unjustly. 01:42:13.200 --> 01:42:17.280 That's a problem if you have a Jewish centric view of the 01:42:17.280 --> 01:42:18.640 Old Testament. 01:42:18.640 --> 01:42:23.120 The deletion of Job existing at this time made it possible for 01:42:23.120 --> 01:42:25.840 us to forget that not only was Job a king, he was 01:42:25.840 --> 01:42:29.040 a specific king, he was a king of Edom, but when did 01:42:29.040 --> 01:42:29.520 he live? 01:42:29.520 --> 01:42:34.000 He lived at the same time as the Hebrews were being tormented. 01:42:34.000 --> 01:42:38.240 So moving ahead in this timeline that relates to Job, this is 01:42:38.240 --> 01:42:41.920 an absolute fact borne out from scripture to zero speculation here. 01:42:41.920 --> 01:42:47.360 Excess began 505 years after Abraham's birth. 01:42:47.360 --> 01:42:47.840 And then 01:42:48.880 --> 01:42:54.720 Israel attempts to pass through Edom, remember in Numbers twenty and Deuteronomy 01:42:54.880 --> 01:42:58.400 two, about thirty-nine to forty years later. 01:42:58.400 --> 01:43:01.360 Not sure precisely, I don't think, but it's at the very end 01:43:01.360 --> 01:43:02.800 of the Exodus. 01:43:02.800 --> 01:43:05.760 So this would be either be 544 or 545. 01:43:05.760 --> 01:43:09.120 We'll call 545 for the sake of roundness. 01:43:09.120 --> 01:43:13.600 So five hundred forty five years after Abraham is born, in the 01:43:13.600 --> 01:43:19.280 year of Abraham, we have Moses going to the king of Edom, 01:43:19.280 --> 01:43:25.120 unnamed in both the Septuagint and the Rabbinic text. 01:43:25.120 --> 01:43:27.920 We have the King of Edom saying, You're not coming in. 01:43:27.920 --> 01:43:30.960 If you try, we're gonna kill you. 01:43:30.960 --> 01:43:33.280 And it's described in a couple different ways. 01:43:33.280 --> 01:43:37.760 I gave the paraphrase the numbers 20 description of the event. 01:43:37.760 --> 01:43:42.240 And I'm gonna read you the paragraph from Deuteronomy two. 01:43:42.240 --> 01:43:45.120 And we turned and departed into the wilderness by the way of 01:43:45.120 --> 01:43:47.760 the Red Sea as the Lord spoke to me, and we compassed 01:43:47.760 --> 01:43:49.440 Mount Seir many days. 01:43:49.440 --> 01:43:51.840 And the Lord said to me, You have compassed this mount long 01:43:51.840 --> 01:43:56.320 enough, turn therefore toward the north, and charge the people, saying, You 01:43:56.320 --> 01:43:59.520 are going through the borders of your brothers, the children of Esau, 01:43:59.520 --> 01:44:03.440 who dwell in Seir, and they shall fear you and dread you 01:44:03.440 --> 01:44:07.680 greatly. Do not engage in war against them, for I will not 01:44:07.680 --> 01:44:11.600 give you of their land even to set your foot upon, for 01:44:11.600 --> 01:44:14.960 I have given Mount Seir to the children of Esau as an 01:44:14.960 --> 01:44:19.680 inheritance. So this is a small bit of context that's missing from 01:44:19.680 --> 01:44:21.360 Numbers 20, but it's crucial. 01:44:21.360 --> 01:44:24.160 One, God said go over there. 01:44:24.160 --> 01:44:29.440 And God said chronologically go over there right after Moses struck the 01:44:29.440 --> 01:44:33.120 rock. So, you know, Moses leaves us out of the retelling in 01:44:33.120 --> 01:44:34.800 Deuteronomy 2. 01:44:34.800 --> 01:44:38.640 But he does say God says go through there, go over there, 01:44:38.640 --> 01:44:43.440 and he says something that needs to be treated carefully because the 01:44:43.440 --> 01:44:47.040 text is obvious, but only if you're not being nitpicky. 01:44:47.040 --> 01:44:51.600 God says you are going through the borders of your brothers, the 01:44:51.600 --> 01:44:55.680 children of Esau, which to us sounds like okay, going through the 01:44:55.680 --> 01:44:59.680 borders, I mean you're crossing the border, you're entering the country. 01:44:59.680 --> 01:45:04.720 In the original Greek text that's being translated by Brenton as through, 01:45:04.720 --> 01:45:08.480 that could just as easily say you are passing by, you are 01:45:08.480 --> 01:45:13.040 going alongside, or you are skirting the borders of your brothers. 01:45:13.040 --> 01:45:17.120 Any of those would be accurate, and true is also fine as 01:45:17.120 --> 01:45:21.360 long as you understand what's said just I think two verses later. 01:45:21.360 --> 01:45:24.720 I will not give you of their land even enough to set 01:45:24.720 --> 01:45:26.480 your foot upon. 01:45:26.480 --> 01:45:26.800 So 01:45:27.680 --> 01:45:30.880 again, the text itself makes clear that they didn't go into the 01:45:30.880 --> 01:45:34.480 land of Edom, but you just can't be lazy with the through 01:45:34.480 --> 01:45:36.160 the borders and think, well, they entered into it 01:45:37.040 --> 01:45:40.240 because Numbers twenty says the same thing it says they didn't go 01:45:40.240 --> 01:45:44.320 in because the army was amassed, and Deuteronomy two says 'cause they 01:45:44.320 --> 01:45:45.280 were terrified. 01:45:45.280 --> 01:45:49.040 Edom was terrified of this giant mass of, you know, probably a 01:45:49.040 --> 01:45:52.960 couple million people, 'cause remember six hundred thousand men had of households, 01:45:52.960 --> 01:45:56.000 that's women and children and slaves, whatever they brought with them. 01:45:56.000 --> 01:45:58.240 Probably a couple million people came out of Egypt. 01:45:58.240 --> 01:46:01.040 That's a lot of people in any place at any time. 01:46:01.040 --> 01:46:05.040 Certainly no small matter in this time, especially when these people are 01:46:05.040 --> 01:46:10.960 desperate. And particularly when Job undoubtedly was familiar with what was going 01:46:10.960 --> 01:46:14.640 on among the Hebrews when they were in Egypt. 01:46:14.640 --> 01:46:18.960 So, as I said, Scripture does not say that the king of 01:46:18.960 --> 01:46:24.320 Edom, who denies the Israelites' entry into Edom, doesn't say he's Job. 01:46:24.320 --> 01:46:28.480 But the Septuagint, which was deleted from the rabbinic text, says Job 01:46:28.480 --> 01:46:29.200 is a king of Edom 01:46:30.160 --> 01:46:32.000 at about this time. 01:46:32.000 --> 01:46:34.720 So the reason that I did all that timeline work that I'm 01:46:34.640 --> 01:46:40.160 I'm describing here is that assuming the generations of Job were similar 01:46:40.160 --> 01:46:46.480 to those of Moses, Job died nearly forty years after this. 01:46:46.480 --> 01:46:51.440 So it's basically impossible for the things to move around far enough, 01:46:51.440 --> 01:46:55.840 even assuming that my assumptions are not accurate, that I don't have 01:46:55.840 --> 01:46:58.080 the date pinpointed precisely. 01:46:58.080 --> 01:47:00.800 They would have to move so far in terms of generations by 01:47:00.800 --> 01:47:05.360 decades that it would cease to be plausible relative to the consistency 01:47:05.360 --> 01:47:08.400 that we've seen in the other places where we are given generational 01:47:08.880 --> 01:47:14.080 intervals. Remember the Genesis 11 intervals were very consistently 130 years. 01:47:14.080 --> 01:47:16.560 And that's not to say the interval I'm using here is not 01:47:16.560 --> 01:47:17.840 exactly 130 years. 01:47:17.840 --> 01:47:21.440 The interval I'm using is approximately the same that he was through 01:47:21.520 --> 01:47:22.480 of Moses. 01:47:22.480 --> 01:47:25.360 So why would they edit Job? 01:47:25.360 --> 01:47:27.680 Why would they remove these small details? 01:47:28.000 --> 01:47:31.520 On top of all the massive changes that Corey mentioned earlier, the 01:47:31.520 --> 01:47:34.800 small detail of all his friends being kings, of him being a 01:47:34.800 --> 01:47:39.760 king, because if he's a king of Edom and he is descended 01:47:39.760 --> 01:47:42.640 from Esau, which you'd expect as a king of Edom, like Edomites, 01:47:42.640 --> 01:47:44.880 those are the Esau's grandkids. 01:47:44.880 --> 01:47:47.840 So that's a foregone conclusion. 01:47:48.000 --> 01:47:52.560 But Job being a believer, being the most blessed man on the 01:47:52.560 --> 01:47:58.480 planet, above every living Hebrew, above Moses himself, above Moses and Aaron, 01:47:58.480 --> 01:48:02.480 whom God struck dead because of their disobedience, Job was not struck 01:48:02.480 --> 01:48:06.080 dead. He was given a double portion of what he had lost, 01:48:06.080 --> 01:48:10.560 including as many children again, because in the resurrection, he would have 01:48:10.560 --> 01:48:12.080 double the number of children. 01:48:12.080 --> 01:48:15.520 But livestock and all the things that aren't promised to be resurrected, 01:48:15.520 --> 01:48:16.480 it was doubled. 01:48:16.480 --> 01:48:21.760 He became twice as wealthy after his trials as before, because he 01:48:21.760 --> 01:48:25.760 was blessed by God because he was I don't think it's unreasonable 01:48:25.760 --> 01:48:28.400 to say uniquely faithful. 01:48:28.400 --> 01:48:33.520 This was occurring while the Hebrews were slaves to the Egyptians. 01:48:33.520 --> 01:48:37.440 If you were a god hating rabbi, is this something you might 01:48:37.440 --> 01:48:43.360 omit? To make a non Hebrew look better than you, more blessings, 01:48:43.360 --> 01:48:48.560 more wealth, greater accolades from God in the very moment of their 01:48:48.560 --> 01:48:51.360 destitution and their humiliation. 01:48:51.360 --> 01:48:53.520 This is not a small matter. 01:48:53.520 --> 01:48:56.000 And so as I said, I'm not publishing the chart that I 01:48:56.000 --> 01:48:58.400 came up with because I don't stand by it a hundred percent 01:48:58.560 --> 01:49:00.480 in terms of its accuracy. 01:49:00.480 --> 01:49:02.480 It could be off by a few years. 01:49:02.480 --> 01:49:06.480 I absolutely stand by the precision of the internal workings. 01:49:06.480 --> 01:49:11.840 You'd have to come up with a preposterous interval for Job's generations 01:49:12.000 --> 01:49:15.360 after Esau for him not to be this king. 01:49:15.360 --> 01:49:17.120 In fact, I actually ran the numbers twice. 01:49:17.760 --> 01:49:22.240 I also ran them with the five generation interval where you have 01:49:22.240 --> 01:49:26.880 Job forty two saying the was five from Abram. 01:49:26.880 --> 01:49:30.160 Even though I don't believe that that is precise 'cause I think 01:49:30.160 --> 01:49:33.920 that that's skipping Ragul, and I think that's a very Christian conclusion 01:49:33.920 --> 01:49:35.120 to reach. 01:49:35.120 --> 01:49:37.520 Even if we assume for the sake of argument that it's not 01:49:37.520 --> 01:49:40.640 six it's actually five, how do the numbers work out? 01:49:40.640 --> 01:49:46.640 Assuming identical generations, Job would be dying just three years before the 01:49:46.640 --> 01:49:48.320 end of the Exodus. 01:49:48.320 --> 01:49:55.280 So assuming exactly the same years between multiple generations of grandfathers, Job 01:49:55.280 --> 01:49:58.880 would have been just shortly dead, which I think makes it entirely 01:49:58.880 --> 01:50:01.920 believable that even in that scenario, which I don't agree with, I 01:50:01.920 --> 01:50:04.720 don't think it's realistic to delete Ragul. 01:50:04.720 --> 01:50:08.640 Even in that scenario, if you move the generations by just one 01:50:08.640 --> 01:50:11.360 year each, Job is the king again. 01:50:11.360 --> 01:50:13.760 That's how much of a margin of error there is for the 01:50:13.760 --> 01:50:15.040 assumptions I'm making. 01:50:15.440 --> 01:50:18.560 I'm not publishing it 'cause I don't think it's accurate, but it's 01:50:18.560 --> 01:50:20.400 probably pretty close. 01:50:20.400 --> 01:50:24.720 And I do believe that there is no other reasonable conclusion. 01:50:24.720 --> 01:50:28.800 It's an inference, but I think it's a conclusion that any rational 01:50:29.120 --> 01:50:33.280 Christian who reads and can do math would reach the same conclusion. 01:50:33.280 --> 01:50:37.520 That Job was alive during the Exodus, he was alive during most 01:50:37.520 --> 01:50:40.480 of Moses' life, fact all of Moses' life. 01:50:40.480 --> 01:50:43.920 He lived longer, he was born before, and he died after. 01:50:43.920 --> 01:50:46.960 So his life entirely compassed Moses' life. 01:50:46.960 --> 01:50:47.760 He was more blessed. 01:50:47.760 --> 01:50:51.200 He was a more holy man, and he was not a descendant 01:50:51.360 --> 01:50:54.400 of Jacob, which means he wasn't an Israelite. 01:50:54.400 --> 01:50:58.240 This is a big problem if you have a Jewish supremacist view 01:50:58.240 --> 01:51:01.360 of the Old Testament, which is part of what dies when we 01:51:01.760 --> 01:51:06.320 readopt the Septuagint, as the early church held. 01:51:06.320 --> 01:51:11.600 Another small detail, but I think one that's potentially interesting. 01:51:11.600 --> 01:51:17.280 Because of Moses' position in Egypt being very high up, and because 01:51:17.280 --> 01:51:20.880 Job was a neighboring king, this is complete speculation. 01:51:20.880 --> 01:51:22.480 This may not be true at all. 01:51:22.480 --> 01:51:26.720 But it's entirely reasonable to speculate that Moses and Job may have 01:51:26.720 --> 01:51:28.000 met politically. 01:51:28.000 --> 01:51:30.000 It may well have been the case that they would have been 01:51:30.000 --> 01:51:33.920 in the same place at the same time, probably Moses being sent 01:51:33.920 --> 01:51:36.480 to Job being sent to Edom as an emissary. 01:51:36.480 --> 01:51:41.280 That's completely speculative, but given the overlap of their lives, it's entirely 01:51:41.280 --> 01:51:43.520 possible it happened for political reasons. 01:51:43.520 --> 01:51:47.680 Totally unrelated to anything in scripture, but just because of Moses' placement 01:51:47.680 --> 01:51:51.120 in Egyptian life, it could have been the case. 01:51:51.360 --> 01:51:53.440 That is how much overlap there is. 01:51:53.440 --> 01:51:56.320 So please don't quote me on that because that's it may or 01:51:56.320 --> 01:51:56.960 may not be true. 01:51:56.960 --> 01:51:59.200 We have no possible way to know. 01:51:59.200 --> 01:52:04.080 But they certainly lived at the same time and they absolutely lived 01:52:04.080 --> 01:52:04.720 at the same time. 01:52:04.960 --> 01:52:06.960 That's beyond any shadow of a doubt. 01:52:06.960 --> 01:52:12.000 And it's almost certain that Job had to be the king in 01:52:12.000 --> 01:52:14.880 Numbers twenty and in Deuteronomy two. 01:52:14.880 --> 01:52:18.720 That is a radical retelling of those stories of the omission that 01:52:18.720 --> 01:52:21.120 was made from the Greek. 01:52:21.120 --> 01:52:25.120 So this is the reason we're including this in the timeline episode 01:52:25.120 --> 01:52:30.160 here. Think about how wild that is to have this man suddenly 01:52:30.160 --> 01:52:34.000 have a place and a purpose, and have land given to him. 01:52:34.000 --> 01:52:36.400 This is last thing that I'll draw from this text I don't 01:52:36.400 --> 01:52:39.600 think we've really ever taken seriously before. 01:52:39.600 --> 01:52:44.560 Listen again to what God said of Job of the Edomites in 01:52:44.560 --> 01:52:45.840 Deuteronomy two. 01:52:45.840 --> 01:52:48.560 Do not engage in war against them, for I will not give 01:52:48.560 --> 01:52:52.000 you of their land, even to set your foot upon, for I 01:52:52.000 --> 01:52:56.320 have given Mount Seir to the children of Esau as an inheritance. 01:52:56.320 --> 01:53:00.800 And then in verse nine, shortly thereafter, God says again, do not 01:53:00.800 --> 01:53:03.920 quarrel with the Moabites, and do not engage with in war with 01:53:03.920 --> 01:53:06.640 them, for I will not give you of their land for an 01:53:06.640 --> 01:53:10.480 inheritance, for I have given Error to the children of Lot to 01:53:10.480 --> 01:53:17.600 inherit. The reason that these two throwaway verses matter so much is 01:53:17.600 --> 01:53:20.880 that this is exactly what Acts seventeen twenty six says. 01:53:20.880 --> 01:53:25.520 How often in Corrie and I have we mentioned where God says 01:53:25.760 --> 01:53:29.200 and he made from one man every nation of mankind to live 01:53:29.200 --> 01:53:33.040 on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and 01:53:33.040 --> 01:53:36.880 the boundaries of their dwelling place that they should seek God and 01:53:36.880 --> 01:53:40.080 perhaps feel their way towards him and find him. 01:53:40.080 --> 01:53:42.560 God gave the Moabites their land. 01:53:42.560 --> 01:53:45.280 God gave the Edomites their land. 01:53:45.280 --> 01:53:47.520 God spoke to Job. 01:53:47.520 --> 01:53:49.120 Job was a Christian. 01:53:49.120 --> 01:53:52.880 And given the conduct of Job's friends, the kings of the neighboring 01:53:52.880 --> 01:53:56.640 countries, we have every reason to believe that they were Christians too. 01:53:56.640 --> 01:53:59.680 They were poor, certainly theologically. 01:53:59.680 --> 01:54:05.280 The conclusion of Job is that God required a sacrifice and prayer 01:54:05.280 --> 01:54:08.560 from Job so that he would not kill his friends because of 01:54:08.560 --> 01:54:10.400 their sin against him. 01:54:10.400 --> 01:54:15.040 But while they were speaking, they were not speaking pagan blasphemies against 01:54:15.040 --> 01:54:18.160 God. They were spouting bad theology. 01:54:18.160 --> 01:54:22.320 Better theology than most of our pastors to day, less blasphemous things 01:54:22.320 --> 01:54:26.800 than you hear from most pulpits today, nevertheless warranting death from God. 01:54:26.800 --> 01:54:30.400 Yet for the sake of Job's prayer, God forgave them. 01:54:30.560 --> 01:54:33.600 That means that all those neighboring countries were Christian too for a 01:54:33.600 --> 01:54:35.120 time. It was all lost. 01:54:35.120 --> 01:54:38.080 All those countries eventually apostatized. 01:54:38.080 --> 01:54:42.320 Edom, certainly, if not chiefly, as bad as any, because what we 01:54:42.320 --> 01:54:45.040 see from Edom later by the time the first time they had 01:54:45.040 --> 01:54:50.160 malicious conflict is in the days of the kings of Israel. 01:54:50.160 --> 01:54:53.840 By then, the Edomites were truly wicked and depraved. 01:54:53.840 --> 01:54:58.160 They had lost the faith of their fathers, but crucially, their fathers 01:54:58.160 --> 01:54:59.680 had the faith of Abraham. 01:54:59.680 --> 01:55:02.160 Their fathers had the Christian faith. 01:55:02.160 --> 01:55:04.560 Job's in heaven 'cause he's a Christian. 01:55:04.560 --> 01:55:09.360 Job was never a Jew. 01:55:09.360 --> 01:55:09.520 As 01:55:09.520 --> 01:55:14.240 we've been going through these different sections of the Old Testament, you 01:55:14.240 --> 01:55:18.080 may have noticed that there is a theme to some of the 01:55:18.080 --> 01:55:21.440 edits that the rabbis made to the text, and I will get 01:55:21.440 --> 01:55:26.320 into this more with three main types of edits they made, changes 01:55:26.320 --> 01:55:29.120 they made to the text, and my conclusion. 01:55:29.120 --> 01:55:32.480 There's one salient one here in Job that I want to cover 01:55:32.480 --> 01:55:34.960 before we move on to Esther. 01:55:34.960 --> 01:55:38.640 And that is from back in Job chapter two, verse three. 01:55:38.640 --> 01:55:43.840 I'll read first from the Masoretic text and then from the Septuagint. 01:55:43.840 --> 01:55:47.760 And the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job, 01:55:47.760 --> 01:55:50.560 that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and 01:55:50.560 --> 01:55:54.240 upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil? 01:55:54.240 --> 01:55:59.120 He still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him 01:55:59.280 --> 01:56:02.160 to destroy him without reason. 01:56:02.160 --> 01:56:04.640 And then from the Septuagint. 01:56:04.640 --> 01:56:07.840 And the Lord said to the devil, Have you given heed then 01:56:07.920 --> 01:56:10.800 to my servant Job, that there is no one like him upon 01:56:10.800 --> 01:56:16.000 the earth, a man who is innocent, truthful, blameless, God fearing, keeping 01:56:16.000 --> 01:56:20.240 far from every evil, and still he has his integrity, though you 01:56:20.240 --> 01:56:23.840 sought to destroy his possessions to no purpose. 01:56:25.280 --> 01:56:28.560 This is one of the changes, one of the types of changes 01:56:28.560 --> 01:56:33.040 we see so often in the Masoretic text, in the rabbinic text. 01:56:33.040 --> 01:56:36.480 They diminish the role of God, and even go so far as 01:56:36.480 --> 01:56:39.440 to make God seem capricious. 01:56:39.440 --> 01:56:42.880 You may remember some instances of that from the episode we did 01:56:42.880 --> 01:56:44.640 on the wisdom literature. 01:56:44.640 --> 01:56:46.240 This is just another one of those. 01:56:46.240 --> 01:56:51.520 There is a difference between God saying that Satan sought to destroy 01:56:51.520 --> 01:56:54.960 Job, and of course God permitted it, we don't deny that, because 01:56:54.960 --> 01:56:58.720 everything is in God's hands, and any evil that occurs God has 01:56:58.960 --> 01:57:01.200 permitted it by not stopping it. 01:57:01.200 --> 01:57:07.040 But there is a difference between that and saying, you incited me. 01:57:07.040 --> 01:57:12.080 The rabbinic text gives to Satan a power he does not have, 01:57:12.080 --> 01:57:15.520 and diminishes God in a way that is utterly impermissible. 01:57:15.520 --> 01:57:19.200 This is one of those verses that causes many Christians to struggle 01:57:19.280 --> 01:57:25.680 because it seems like Satan almost manipulated God into doing something. 01:57:25.680 --> 01:57:30.720 That problem simply evaporates when you read the actual text of Job, 01:57:30.720 --> 01:57:31.520 because it's not there. 01:57:31.520 --> 01:57:38.800 It's something that was added impermissibly, wickedly by the rabbis. 01:57:38.800 --> 01:57:42.560 And so for the final section of this episode, we will be 01:57:42.560 --> 01:57:43.760 going Be going over 01:57:44.640 --> 01:57:47.920 in fairly large part, actually, the Book of Esther. 01:57:47.920 --> 01:57:50.720 This episode, as you may have guessed, or if you actually looked 01:57:50.720 --> 01:57:54.560 at the runtime, is going to be a little bit long, perhaps 01:57:54.560 --> 01:57:58.720 making up for some past episodes we skipped, but this is just 01:57:58.720 --> 01:58:01.760 one of those episodes where there's a great deal to cover, and 01:58:02.000 --> 01:58:04.880 I can already say that what we're going to cover in Esther 01:58:05.360 --> 01:58:09.920 is not trivial, either in terms of the content or in terms 01:58:09.920 --> 01:58:12.160 of the volume of it. 01:58:12.160 --> 01:58:17.440 Because the Book of Esther, as it is in the Masoretic text, 01:58:17.440 --> 01:58:21.760 is simply a fundamentally different work from the Book of Esther in 01:58:22.480 --> 01:58:25.120 the actual Old Testament. 01:58:25.120 --> 01:58:29.200 The Book of Esther in the Masoretic Text is a book that 01:58:29.200 --> 01:58:35.200 has caused many Christians to wrestle, to struggle down through the centuries. 01:58:35.200 --> 01:58:38.800 Luther did not like the Book of Esther. 01:58:38.800 --> 01:58:43.280 Now it's worth noting that some of the quotes attributed to Luther 01:58:43.280 --> 01:58:46.960 come from his table talks, those are unreliable, and there are others 01:58:47.520 --> 01:58:53.680 where Latin translators confuse the book Esdras with the book Esther, which 01:58:53.680 --> 01:58:55.520 is scripture. 01:58:55.520 --> 01:59:00.240 But even setting those aside, Luther was not fond of Esther. 01:59:00.240 --> 01:59:03.280 The great The great irony is that Luther was right and wrong 01:59:03.280 --> 01:59:09.600 simultaneously. He was right because he was reading the rabbinic text, and 01:59:09.600 --> 01:59:14.000 he couldn't find God because the rabbis removed God 01:59:15.120 --> 01:59:19.200 and But he also could have just read the Greek. 01:59:19.200 --> 01:59:22.320 He could have read the Septuagint, and then all of those problems 01:59:22.320 --> 01:59:23.920 would have been resolved. 01:59:23.920 --> 01:59:28.880 Because in the Septuagint, the book of Esther is a thoroughly Christian 01:59:28.880 --> 01:59:33.040 book. And as we'll mention, one of the great ironies is that 01:59:33.040 --> 01:59:36.400 the Jews actually look pretty good in the book of Esther. 01:59:36.400 --> 01:59:39.440 They don't look so good in the Rabbinic text because the Rabbinic 01:59:39.440 --> 01:59:42.720 text is basically a revenge fantasy of the Jews. 01:59:42.720 --> 01:59:43.360 That's what they did. 01:59:43.360 --> 01:59:48.160 They took scripture and turned it into a revenge fantasy. 01:59:48.160 --> 01:59:51.760 Even the best construction of Esther in the Masoretic text. 01:59:51.760 --> 01:59:53.600 It is a secular book. 01:59:53.600 --> 01:59:56.800 It is a book about court intrigue, it is a book about 01:59:56.800 --> 02:00:02.480 international, incidentally politics, slightly less international than in the correct reading in 02:00:02.480 --> 02:00:04.080 the Septuagint. 02:00:04.080 --> 02:00:05.040 We'll get into that. 02:00:05.600 --> 02:00:06.960 But it is a different thing. 02:00:06.960 --> 02:00:09.520 It is not a spiritual book. 02:00:09.520 --> 02:00:11.440 It is not a Christian book. 02:00:11.440 --> 02:00:16.240 And so our ancestors, back through the ages in the church, were 02:00:16.240 --> 02:00:18.720 right to question why is this in scripture? 02:00:19.280 --> 02:00:20.960 Should this be in Scripture? 02:00:20.960 --> 02:00:23.280 Is this Scripture? 02:00:23.280 --> 02:00:30.480 The answer is assuredly yes, when you actually read the text of 02:00:30.480 --> 02:00:34.480 Scripture, when you pay attention to what God has actually preserved in 02:00:34.480 --> 02:00:39.120 his Word, instead of what the rabbis edited and handed to us. 02:00:39.120 --> 02:00:42.720 Because God is all over the Septuagint version. 02:00:42.720 --> 02:00:45.840 There are prayers to God, the name of God is there, which 02:00:45.840 --> 02:00:49.440 is something that is notably absent from the Masoretic text. 02:00:49.440 --> 02:00:54.240 There are explanations of what's going on in this book, the letters 02:00:54.240 --> 02:00:57.920 that are referenced in certain places in the Masoretic text are actually 02:00:57.920 --> 02:01:02.720 present, preserved for us, in the Greek text. 02:01:02.720 --> 02:01:06.160 This is a fundamentally different book. 02:01:06.160 --> 02:01:08.000 They are not comparable between the two. 02:01:08.320 --> 02:01:12.960 There are places in the Old Testament and elsewhere where the differences 02:01:12.960 --> 02:01:14.080 aren't that great. 02:01:14.080 --> 02:01:15.680 There are some places where 02:01:16.560 --> 02:01:20.880 the rabbinic text and the Greek text are identical. 02:01:20.880 --> 02:01:24.240 Just different languages, and you know you have to read the rabbinic 02:01:24.320 --> 02:01:28.080 text in the right way, add in those vowels. 02:01:28.080 --> 02:01:30.320 This is not one of those. 02:01:30.320 --> 02:01:36.160 This is again a wholly different book in the Greek versus the 02:01:36.160 --> 02:01:38.000 so-called Hebrew. 02:01:38.000 --> 02:01:42.800 And we are poorer in the church for the fact that we 02:01:42.800 --> 02:01:47.920 have been using the edited to be charitable rabbinic text for so 02:01:47.920 --> 02:01:49.120 long. 02:01:50.960 --> 02:01:55.120 There are a number of main differences, which is to say there 02:01:55.120 --> 02:01:57.200 are sections which the rabbis just deleted. 02:01:57.200 --> 02:02:00.640 This is one of the cases in which they were certainly a 02:02:00.640 --> 02:02:05.280 little bit more blunt with their use of their instruments. 02:02:05.280 --> 02:02:09.680 Because there are six sections that are simply absent. 02:02:09.680 --> 02:02:13.760 They deleted them wholesale from the Greek when they were creating the 02:02:13.760 --> 02:02:15.360 Rubinic text. 02:02:15.360 --> 02:02:17.040 We will go over those in part. 02:02:17.040 --> 02:02:19.840 We're not going to read them in whole because we'd basically be 02:02:19.840 --> 02:02:23.280 reading almost the entire book of Esther if we did that. 02:02:24.560 --> 02:02:24.880 As 02:02:24.880 --> 02:02:28.000 Cory mentioned about Luther and I mentioned in I think the last 02:02:28.000 --> 02:02:31.440 episode, one of the recent episodes, I made a comment that I 02:02:31.440 --> 02:02:32.800 want to withdraw. 02:02:32.800 --> 02:02:35.760 I said that Luther did not want to translate it at all 02:02:35.760 --> 02:02:39.680 because he didn't believe that it should be in the Bible He 02:02:39.680 --> 02:02:43.600 was not a fan, but the thing that I said is a 02:02:43.600 --> 02:02:46.960 story that I've heard my whole life, you know, well before the 02:02:46.960 --> 02:02:50.640 internet. But as I was doing some more research, I found a 02:02:50.640 --> 02:02:54.720 page. There's a guy, his blog is called Beggars All Reformation. 02:02:54.720 --> 02:02:59.280 He's some reformed guy that for whatever reason has been meticulously documenting 02:02:59.520 --> 02:03:02.400 stuff said about Luther for decades now. 02:03:02.400 --> 02:03:06.880 And he's very good at digging up original sources, finding the genealogies 02:03:06.880 --> 02:03:09.520 of every single claim that have ever been made about Luther and 02:03:09.520 --> 02:03:10.880 a number of other guys. 02:03:10.880 --> 02:03:15.040 He goes into great detail in the origins of the story of 02:03:15.040 --> 02:03:18.160 the claim that Luther wanted to remove Esther from the Bible. 02:03:18.160 --> 02:03:21.520 I don't remember the specifics of how far back it went, but 02:03:21.520 --> 02:03:24.160 what he wrote changed my mind to the point I can't say 02:03:24.160 --> 02:03:26.400 confidently what I said previously. 02:03:26.400 --> 02:03:29.920 So consider this a retraction of my claim, I don't want someone 02:03:30.000 --> 02:03:32.080 to go around repeating it because of what I said. 02:03:32.080 --> 02:03:35.440 I it could still be right, and maybe this blogger is wrong, 02:03:35.440 --> 02:03:37.680 but he's very good at looking this stuff up. 02:03:37.680 --> 02:03:42.800 I can't cite it truthfully anymore, even if it is still accurate. 02:03:42.800 --> 02:03:46.640 I think it's important to note that even if it's fake, even 02:03:46.640 --> 02:03:49.840 if that's an apocryphal story, which it may or may not be, 02:03:49.840 --> 02:03:54.400 it's entirely believable because Esther is so bad. 02:03:54.400 --> 02:03:57.760 There is not a single mention of God in the entire book. 02:03:58.560 --> 02:04:02.000 It is literally a godless book in our Bibles. 02:04:02.000 --> 02:04:04.000 So this has long been observed. 02:04:04.000 --> 02:04:08.800 And that was part of the perhaps, perhaps not apocryphal claims about 02:04:08.800 --> 02:04:11.120 Luther's view of it. 02:04:11.120 --> 02:04:15.200 But But I think the fact that there is such a radical 02:04:15.200 --> 02:04:20.000 difference between the Septuagint and what the rabbis did to Aster, that 02:04:20.160 --> 02:04:24.080 the fact that such a claim is believable is a big part 02:04:24.080 --> 02:04:25.040 of the story. 02:04:25.040 --> 02:04:28.240 If Luther said and did that, he would have been entirely justified 02:04:28.240 --> 02:04:29.440 in doing so. 02:04:29.440 --> 02:04:32.640 But I can't stand by the claim that that w occurred. 02:04:32.640 --> 02:04:34.320 So maybe it did, maybe it doesn't. 02:04:34.320 --> 02:04:36.800 We'll put a link in the show notes to that so you 02:04:36.800 --> 02:04:38.720 can have that referred to as well. 02:04:38.720 --> 02:04:41.600 One other thing that I'll note before we get into the textual 02:04:41.600 --> 02:04:43.200 differences themselves. 02:04:43.200 --> 02:04:47.200 The three great once that we've talked about earlier, the Greek codices 02:04:47.360 --> 02:04:49.440 of the entire Bible. 02:04:49.440 --> 02:04:51.520 The so-called B-text. 02:04:51.520 --> 02:04:54.080 They call it the B-text because they think it's probably a little 02:04:54.080 --> 02:04:58.720 bit newer in terms of when it was actually recorded physically. 02:04:58.720 --> 02:05:02.160 Those are Cyanaticus and Vaticanus. 02:05:02.160 --> 02:05:07.680 The B-text of Esther, which also includes Papyrus nine sixty seven, which 02:05:07.680 --> 02:05:11.120 is dates from the late second century, so a couple of years 02:05:11.120 --> 02:05:13.200 older than the Ansials. 02:05:13.200 --> 02:05:15.600 And then we have the so called A Text, which is now 02:05:15.600 --> 02:05:20.560 Xandrinus, that's slightly shorter, but not remotely to the same degree as 02:05:20.560 --> 02:05:22.080 the rabbinic changes. 02:05:22.080 --> 02:05:26.560 It has the same content that we're going to talk about here. 02:05:26.560 --> 02:05:31.120 So in effect, all three, actually four versions of the Greek text 02:05:31.200 --> 02:05:35.360 that we can refer to have what we're talking about here. 02:05:35.360 --> 02:05:38.960 They are attested to for 1800 years. 02:05:38.960 --> 02:05:44.320 Esther, interestingly, if you care about the Qumran Caves, which we said 02:05:44.320 --> 02:05:48.720 previously you shouldn't, but it's notable that Esther's not in there at 02:05:48.720 --> 02:05:49.760 all, one way or another. 02:05:49.760 --> 02:05:51.920 The book literally isn't present. 02:05:51.920 --> 02:05:59.120 Both Josephus and Jerome attest to the rabbinic form of Esther. 02:05:59.120 --> 02:06:04.000 So what we find in the Masoretic text in 1000 AD was 02:06:04.000 --> 02:06:06.080 not brand new a thousand years ago. 02:06:06.080 --> 02:06:09.760 It was in use at the time of Josephus soap two thousand 02:06:09.760 --> 02:06:11.440 years ago. 02:06:11.440 --> 02:06:16.080 What is interesting about Jerome is that despite how much he despised 02:06:16.080 --> 02:06:19.760 the Septuagint, enough to go all this extra work to learn Hebrew 02:06:19.760 --> 02:06:23.440 and doctor Abbis 'cause I already knew Greek, to do all this 02:06:23.440 --> 02:06:29.280 extra work just to throw out the Greek, he still was basically 02:06:29.280 --> 02:06:35.520 forced to include these so called additions to Esther in the Vulgate. 02:06:35.760 --> 02:06:40.480 Now what Jerome did that's been repeated since Jerome by some but 02:06:40.480 --> 02:06:44.640 not all Roman Catholic Bibles was what we're going to talk about 02:06:44.640 --> 02:06:48.560 here, the so-called additions, appear at the end. 02:06:48.720 --> 02:06:52.800 If you're looking at one of the Roman Catholic Bibles in English 02:06:52.800 --> 02:06:57.280 that are based on the Vulgate and preserve Jerome's ordering, what you 02:06:57.280 --> 02:07:01.920 will find is the Protestant rabbinic version of Esther that we're familiar 02:07:01.920 --> 02:07:04.080 with, it's totally godless. 02:07:04.080 --> 02:07:08.000 And then at the end of it, just tacked on to a 02:07:08.000 --> 02:07:13.280 very short chapter, otherwise incidentally, the so called editions are just stuck 02:07:13.280 --> 02:07:14.480 there at the end. 02:07:14.480 --> 02:07:18.480 Where they make no sense chronologically, like bits of the story appearing 02:07:18.480 --> 02:07:23.280 at the end as an appendix in narrative wise is totally nonsensical. 02:07:23.280 --> 02:07:27.280 But many Roman Catholic churches preserve what Jerome did, but even Jerome 02:07:27.280 --> 02:07:28.000 included them. 02:07:28.000 --> 02:07:31.280 Jerome did not delete them, even though the rabbis deleted them. 02:07:31.280 --> 02:07:33.840 He basically his hand was forced and he put him in there, 02:07:33.840 --> 02:07:35.280 but he stuck him at the end. 02:07:35.280 --> 02:07:40.080 There are actually, thankfully, some Roman Catholic Bibles that not only include 02:07:40.400 --> 02:07:43.760 the full text of Esther, but they put it in the correct 02:07:43.760 --> 02:07:45.280 places in the story. 02:07:45.280 --> 02:07:51.760 Because chapter one verse one is something that is only present in 02:07:51.760 --> 02:07:52.640 the Greek. 02:07:52.640 --> 02:07:55.920 Where Esther begins in our Bibles, if you're Protestants, is not where 02:07:55.920 --> 02:07:56.720 Esther begins. 02:07:56.720 --> 02:07:58.480 There's a bunch of stuff before that. 02:07:58.480 --> 02:08:00.480 Just like in Job, there's a bunch of stuff at the end 02:08:00.480 --> 02:08:02.320 that got chopped off. 02:08:02.320 --> 02:08:05.680 So Esther, I think, is a particularly interesting case. 02:08:05.680 --> 02:08:08.400 I'll pop top all the changes we're going to get into for 02:08:08.400 --> 02:08:14.240 the fact that Protestantism is uniquely positioned as rejecting entirely what is 02:08:14.240 --> 02:08:16.960 scriptural. We screwed up badly. 02:08:17.920 --> 02:08:20.960 We listened to rabbis when we should have listened to God. 02:08:20.960 --> 02:08:23.120 And as a result, we ended up with a totally godless book 02:08:23.120 --> 02:08:24.160 in our Bibles. 02:08:24.160 --> 02:08:26.400 We'll put a link in a show notes to a yet another 02:08:26.400 --> 02:08:26.880 blog post. 02:08:26.880 --> 02:08:29.440 This is probably gonna have more show notes than a lot lately. 02:08:29.840 --> 02:08:32.880 A page dedicated to Esther that also goes through this stuff kind 02:08:32.880 --> 02:08:36.160 of line by line showing you where stuff was removed and added 02:08:36.160 --> 02:08:37.520 with some commentaries. 02:08:37.520 --> 02:08:39.760 That'll be very helpful as you're trying to get your bearings. 02:08:39.760 --> 02:08:42.000 It's a link I've shared on X a number of times. 02:08:42.000 --> 02:08:43.280 And it's mind blowing. 02:08:43.280 --> 02:08:46.960 Like what we're gonna talk about here next is absolutely mind blowing 02:08:47.200 --> 02:08:49.280 how it's not the same book. 02:08:49.280 --> 02:08:51.840 It's not the same book, it's not the same story. 02:08:52.080 --> 02:08:55.600 There's nothing about what we know about Esther that's true. 02:08:55.600 --> 02:08:59.440 Even some of the specific details were changed where the text is 02:08:59.440 --> 02:09:00.240 the same. 02:09:00.240 --> 02:09:04.400 There are changes made to the details that render it worse, less 02:09:04.400 --> 02:09:09.120 Christian. The way you will hear these things referred to in scholarship, 02:09:09.120 --> 02:09:10.960 and we're going to mention it just so if you want to 02:09:10.960 --> 02:09:14.880 go Google this stuff, you can follow along with us, is a 02:09:14.880 --> 02:09:16.720 problem of framing. 02:09:16.720 --> 02:09:20.320 There are six so-called additions to Esther. 02:09:20.320 --> 02:09:22.560 There's additions A through F. 02:09:22.560 --> 02:09:26.000 These additions are present in the Septuagint, they're not present in the 02:09:26.000 --> 02:09:27.120 rabbinic text. 02:09:27.120 --> 02:09:30.400 Now, of course, it's begging the question to call them additions because 02:09:30.400 --> 02:09:33.840 that assumes that they were added in the Greek and not that 02:09:33.840 --> 02:09:39.520 they were subtracted from the rabbinic text, which is blatantly the case. 02:09:39.520 --> 02:09:42.400 Like the story changes, it finally makes sense. 02:09:42.400 --> 02:09:44.640 It's finally a godly Christian book. 02:09:44.640 --> 02:09:48.000 Once you see the intact Greek text translated in English. 02:09:48.000 --> 02:09:49.840 Like yeah, this is a great book. 02:09:49.840 --> 02:09:53.040 As we said, it actually makes the Jews look really good. 02:09:53.040 --> 02:09:55.840 If all we were trying to do is make Jews look bad, 02:09:55.840 --> 02:09:58.880 we would keep the version of Esther that they sold us. 02:09:58.880 --> 02:10:00.480 It's not a good book. 02:10:00.480 --> 02:10:06.240 And unfortunately for five centuries, because Protestants listen to the rabbis' lies, 02:10:06.240 --> 02:10:10.720 they have been coming up with excuses for how vile Esther is. 02:10:10.720 --> 02:10:13.360 It's always rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, not everybody. 02:10:13.360 --> 02:10:14.640 Some people, oh, it's I love it. 02:10:14.800 --> 02:10:15.840 it's it's so great. 02:10:15.840 --> 02:10:17.440 It's totally godless and full of murder. 02:10:17.440 --> 02:10:18.320 It's great. 02:10:18.960 --> 02:10:19.600 That is 02:10:20.480 --> 02:10:22.960 Jews terraforming our souls. 02:10:22.960 --> 02:10:27.440 So contending with this is going to be contending with five centuries 02:10:27.440 --> 02:10:33.280 of Protestant theologians not listening to the voice of God and making 02:10:33.280 --> 02:10:34.880 profound errors downstream. 02:10:34.880 --> 02:10:39.120 They're gonna make arguments that say things that were convincing and Enough 02:10:39.120 --> 02:10:42.640 for people that Esther was left in our Bibles to this day. 02:10:42.640 --> 02:10:46.400 Esther has a rifle and high place in the Old Testament. 02:10:46.400 --> 02:10:50.000 And when it's intact, it's right where it should be. 02:10:50.160 --> 02:10:52.720 Just want you to remember, we'll probably call these additions throughout. 02:10:52.720 --> 02:10:56.080 I will try to call them subtractions because that's what they are. 02:10:56.080 --> 02:10:58.400 These are deletions from God's Word. 02:10:58.400 --> 02:11:02.880 These are deletions that will incur the wrath of Revelation twenty two. 02:11:02.880 --> 02:11:06.160 But when we refer to addition A through F, just know that 02:11:06.160 --> 02:11:07.280 that's what's going on. 02:11:07.280 --> 02:11:08.240 They're chunks. 02:11:08.240 --> 02:11:10.000 Entire chunks are just deleted. 02:11:10.000 --> 02:11:11.120 Pages gone. 02:11:11.120 --> 02:11:13.120 Not like a couple sentences. 02:11:13.120 --> 02:11:16.480 Entire chapters effectively have been deleted from Esther. 02:11:17.200 --> 02:11:17.440 So 02:11:17.440 --> 02:11:21.600 So the what are usually called additions, but and should in fact 02:11:21.760 --> 02:11:25.200 be called subtractions, there are six of them A through F is 02:11:25.200 --> 02:11:30.400 how they are typically labeled in the Bibles that include them. 02:11:30.400 --> 02:11:34.960 A is A is Mordecai's dream, which is a foretelling of things 02:11:34.960 --> 02:11:35.600 to come. 02:11:35.600 --> 02:11:38.640 He doesn't necessarily understand all of it at the time, but he 02:11:38.640 --> 02:11:43.440 understands it later, which comes into a later subtraction. 02:11:43.440 --> 02:11:47.600 B is the full text of the King's decree pursuant to the 02:11:47.600 --> 02:11:50.560 request of Haman, Haman, however you want to pronounce his name, it 02:11:50.560 --> 02:11:53.520 hardly matters. 02:11:53.520 --> 02:11:56.800 Section C contains prayers. 02:11:56.960 --> 02:12:00.960 And this is a very key difference, a rather important difference between 02:12:00.960 --> 02:12:06.000 the Masoretic text and the Septuagint, because of course, there's no real 02:12:06.000 --> 02:12:10.720 prayer of any kind in the Masoretic text, in the Rabbinic text. 02:12:10.720 --> 02:12:14.480 It's just fasting and it's a focus on this scheming and the 02:12:14.480 --> 02:12:15.760 court intrigue. 02:12:15.760 --> 02:12:19.680 But here you have Mordecai and Esther both calling on God. 02:12:19.680 --> 02:12:24.160 A fundamentally different thing from the rabbinic text. 02:12:24.160 --> 02:12:28.480 Then you have a description in D of Esther's approach to the 02:12:28.480 --> 02:12:31.680 king, and you have the behavior of the king. 02:12:31.680 --> 02:12:35.200 These things are different from how they are portrayed in the Masoretic 02:12:35.200 --> 02:12:39.280 text, because of course the rabbis wanted to minimize the role of 02:12:39.280 --> 02:12:42.960 the king and also the piousness, the piety of the king. 02:12:42.960 --> 02:12:47.760 They wanted to make him seem like some foreign tyrant instead. 02:12:47.760 --> 02:12:51.040 And then in E, you have the full text of the second 02:12:51.600 --> 02:12:56.720 decree, which is overturning the one from Haman, and that is the 02:12:56.720 --> 02:12:59.200 one that goes out to all of the provinces, the leaders in 02:12:59.200 --> 02:12:59.840 the provinces. 02:12:59.840 --> 02:13:02.000 You have the full text of that in the Septuagint. 02:13:02.160 --> 02:13:06.000 The Masoretic text just says that it exists, basically, summarizes it instead 02:13:06.000 --> 02:13:07.440 of getting the text of it. 02:13:07.440 --> 02:13:12.480 And then the final subtraction is Mordecai's interpretation. 02:13:12.480 --> 02:13:16.320 This is sort of the conclusion to the book labeled F, attributing 02:13:16.880 --> 02:13:19.920 these things to God, praising God for what he has done, and 02:13:19.920 --> 02:13:23.760 again interpreting that dream that we see in A, which is a 02:13:23.760 --> 02:13:28.560 vision from God, Mordecai is essentially a very minor prophet in this 02:13:28.560 --> 02:13:34.960 sense. So those are the changes Changes between the actual Word of 02:13:34.960 --> 02:13:39.120 God, the Septuagint, the Greek of Esther, and the Masoretic text. 02:13:39.120 --> 02:13:41.040 These are the six things that they deleted. 02:13:41.040 --> 02:13:44.080 There are other changes as well, of course, because they couldn't help 02:13:44.320 --> 02:13:47.760 themselves, they made pervasive little changes to the text, but these are 02:13:47.760 --> 02:13:50.560 the big ones. 02:13:50.560 --> 02:13:54.000 Like I said before, we are not going to read all of 02:13:54.000 --> 02:13:56.800 these in their fullness because it would basically be reading the entire 02:13:56.800 --> 02:13:58.160 book of Esther to you. 02:13:58.160 --> 02:14:00.960 We will include links to these, and of course you can find 02:14:00.960 --> 02:14:04.240 them in any Bible that includes the full book of Esther, which 02:14:04.240 --> 02:14:07.840 would mean any translation of the Septuagint, a number of Roman Catholic 02:14:07.840 --> 02:14:12.320 Bibles, and some others as well, because there are some Protestant Bibles 02:14:12.480 --> 02:14:15.120 to there's no such thing really as a Roman Catholic versus the 02:14:15.120 --> 02:14:19.440 Protestant Bible, but there are some Protestant Bibles that do include these 02:14:19.760 --> 02:14:23.600 subtractions, these things that should be there. 02:14:23.600 --> 02:14:27.280 But as I said, A is basically just his dream, his vision 02:14:27.280 --> 02:14:31.760 of what is going to come, and it sets up what actually 02:14:31.760 --> 02:14:34.000 happens in the book of Esther. 02:14:34.000 --> 02:14:36.000 It helps to explain some of these things. 02:14:36.000 --> 02:14:40.320 And it also helps to place this firmly within Scripture and under 02:14:40.640 --> 02:14:41.680 God's guidance. 02:14:41.680 --> 02:14:46.240 God is the one who is organizing, guiding the action in this 02:14:46.240 --> 02:14:49.680 book, just as He is down through the pages of history, and 02:14:49.680 --> 02:14:51.360 in all the other books of Scripture. 02:14:51.360 --> 02:14:55.280 We just don't have that in the Masoretic text because the rabbis 02:14:55.280 --> 02:14:57.760 decided they wanted to make it into something else, and as Woe 02:14:57.920 --> 02:15:02.640 said, with great irony, made themselves look worse in the process. 02:15:02.640 --> 02:15:06.240 But beginning then with chapter one, I will read a couple of 02:15:06.240 --> 02:15:08.640 verses. I'm just going to read them from the Septuagint. 02:15:08.640 --> 02:15:11.120 I'm not going to bother with the Masoretic version. 02:15:11.120 --> 02:15:14.080 I will compare it in my commentary instead. 02:15:14.080 --> 02:15:16.480 And so starting with verse seventeen. 02:15:16.480 --> 02:15:19.600 In fact he detailed for them the words of the queen and 02:15:19.600 --> 02:15:21.520 how she had opposed the king. 02:15:21.520 --> 02:15:25.120 Therefore as she had opposed King Asweris, so today the rest of 02:15:25.120 --> 02:15:28.160 the princesses are the rulers of the Persians and the Medes, having 02:15:28.160 --> 02:15:31.440 heard the things that were said by her before the king, will 02:15:31.440 --> 02:15:34.720 dare likewise to dishonor their husbands. 02:15:34.720 --> 02:15:37.760 Of course this is subsequent to if you're familiar with the book 02:15:37.760 --> 02:15:41.600 of Esther you'll know immediately, but this is subsequent to the king 02:15:41.760 --> 02:15:46.320 during his great feast, his great banquet, requesting that Queen Vashti come 02:15:46.480 --> 02:15:50.720 and basically present herself before the nobles, and she refuses him, and 02:15:50.720 --> 02:15:52.560 she actually denigrates the king. 02:15:52.560 --> 02:15:56.080 So it goes above and beyond what is contained in the Masoretic. 02:15:56.080 --> 02:15:59.760 Because the Masoretic basically just says that she snubbed him. 02:15:59.760 --> 02:16:03.600 Here she actually does things that are completely impermissible. 02:16:03.600 --> 02:16:07.520 Obviously, in this cultural context and almost any cultural context with regard 02:16:07.520 --> 02:16:09.040 to a king. 02:16:09.040 --> 02:16:12.240 But the reason for that removal from because she is, of course, 02:16:12.240 --> 02:16:15.200 removed as the queen, that's how Esther winds up being the queen. 02:16:15.200 --> 02:16:18.640 The reason for the removal isn't given in the Masoretic text. 02:16:18.640 --> 02:16:22.240 You just sort of have this summary description of affairs, and then 02:16:22.400 --> 02:16:25.280 suddenly the king is looking for a new queen. 02:16:25.280 --> 02:16:29.040 In the Septuagint, it gives us the reason that Vashti is removed 02:16:29.120 --> 02:16:31.520 because she snubs and insults the king. 02:16:31.520 --> 02:16:33.280 She's basically inviting this. 02:16:33.280 --> 02:16:36.320 It's essentially treason, and in some ancient cultures it would in fact 02:16:36.320 --> 02:16:38.560 be treason. 02:16:38.560 --> 02:16:43.040 The concern here in the Septuagint, the way that this is worded, 02:16:43.040 --> 02:16:47.040 is it primarily about rulers and their wives, because the queen will 02:16:47.040 --> 02:16:50.240 be seen as an example for other wives to rebel? 02:16:50.240 --> 02:16:54.240 The Masoretic Text changes this and makes it so that it's with 02:16:54.240 --> 02:16:56.880 regard to all women and their husbands. 02:16:56.880 --> 02:17:00.320 For the queen's behavior will be made known to all women, causing 02:17:00.320 --> 02:17:03.360 them to look at their husbands with contempt is how that's worded 02:17:03.360 --> 02:17:05.200 in the rabbinic text. 02:17:05.200 --> 02:17:08.640 Now notably this is of course expanded later in the same chapter 02:17:08.720 --> 02:17:11.920 in verse twenty, because in the Septuagint it says all the women 02:17:11.920 --> 02:17:13.120 will show honor to their men. 02:17:13.120 --> 02:17:15.440 So there is that concern there as well. 02:17:15.440 --> 02:17:18.880 But this is just another case where the rabbis have made a 02:17:18.880 --> 02:17:21.840 tweak to the text, in addition to all those subtractions we already 02:17:21.840 --> 02:17:23.440 mentioned. 02:17:24.800 --> 02:17:24.960 So 02:17:25.120 --> 02:17:29.040 for me, subtraction A is really a big deal because it completely 02:17:29.040 --> 02:17:33.200 frames in a Christian way what book we're dealing with here. 02:17:33.440 --> 02:17:38.000 Uh the book opens with a dream of Mardecaus or Mordecai in 02:17:38.000 --> 02:17:39.680 the second year of the king. 02:17:39.680 --> 02:17:41.440 I'm gonna say Artaxerxes. 02:17:41.440 --> 02:17:44.560 Yeah. I'm gonna say Artaxerxes because I can't pronounce the other one, 02:17:44.560 --> 02:17:47.440 even though it's like it's important because there is actually a king 02:17:47.440 --> 02:17:53.040 Artaxerxes and we're not going to get into the historical context of 02:17:53.040 --> 02:17:57.680 whether it's Xerxes or Artaxerxes, because it sort of changes what else 02:17:57.680 --> 02:18:00.560 is going on in the world when this specifically is happening. 02:18:00.640 --> 02:18:02.080 But it is material. 02:18:02.080 --> 02:18:05.760 That's like you said, this could be a six-hour episode by itself. 02:18:05.760 --> 02:18:10.800 The dream that Mardecaeus has includes two great dragons emerging and their 02:18:10.800 --> 02:18:14.960 cries summoning nations for battle against the nation of righteousness. 02:18:15.360 --> 02:18:18.800 So this nation cries out to God and is saved by a 02:18:18.800 --> 02:18:21.680 small spring that becomes a great river. 02:18:21.680 --> 02:18:25.200 The subtraction here also places Mardecaus in the king's court from the 02:18:25.200 --> 02:18:28.320 beginning and has him uncover a plot against the king by the 02:18:28.320 --> 02:18:31.120 two eunuchs before Esther becomes queen. 02:18:31.120 --> 02:18:35.200 This is crucial because this is part of Amon's motive against the 02:18:35.200 --> 02:18:38.800 Jews. When you look at the rabbinic text later on, when Amon 02:18:38.880 --> 02:18:41.600 comes after them, he seems to just be really mean and spiteful 02:18:41.840 --> 02:18:45.360 and he wants to kill them, but there's not a clear motive, 02:18:45.360 --> 02:18:47.680 apart from him just being terrible. 02:18:47.680 --> 02:18:53.760 What is made clear by the subtraction A is the Mordecaius interrupted 02:18:53.760 --> 02:18:58.400 by God's vision, a plot that Amon had against Arta Xerxes. 02:18:58.400 --> 02:19:01.600 So Corey said, like there's a lot of political intrigue here, but 02:19:01.600 --> 02:19:03.280 it's not the main story. 02:19:03.280 --> 02:19:04.480 It's the framework. 02:19:04.800 --> 02:19:09.440 And the crucial thing about subtraction A is that with this vision 02:19:09.680 --> 02:19:13.360 in these events, it reframes the entire story as being part of 02:19:13.360 --> 02:19:17.520 a fulfillment of divine prophecy, which is incidentally where it ends up. 02:19:17.520 --> 02:19:23.840 The book The book ends with a subtraction of Mardecaus' prayer describing 02:19:23.840 --> 02:19:24.880 what happened. 02:19:24.880 --> 02:19:28.800 Once we know what has happened, it bookends perfectly that God was 02:19:28.800 --> 02:19:30.160 in control the whole time. 02:19:30.160 --> 02:19:33.040 So we go from a book where God is not mentioned once, 02:19:33.040 --> 02:19:38.880 where there's not a single prayer, to God's direct intervention, incidentally in 02:19:39.040 --> 02:19:41.040 what we're told as a pagan kingdom. 02:19:41.040 --> 02:19:44.800 Arta Xerxes undoubtedly had idolatry and all sorts of things going on, 02:19:45.280 --> 02:19:49.840 just as incidentally King Josiah did when he was a godly king. 02:19:49.840 --> 02:19:54.720 That sort of syncretism and polytheism is not uncommon. 02:19:54.720 --> 02:19:56.080 This doesn't justify me. 02:19:56.000 --> 02:19:59.760 I'm not by any stretch saying it's okay to be a polytheist. 02:19:59.760 --> 02:20:02.000 Anyone who doesn't hate me knows that. 02:20:02.000 --> 02:20:06.080 But when we look at the actual text of Esther, what we 02:20:06.080 --> 02:20:08.960 find is that our deserts he says a whole bunch of stuff 02:20:08.960 --> 02:20:09.680 that's Christian. 02:20:10.400 --> 02:20:14.320 Now I don't know if that means he's in heaven, but in 02:20:14.320 --> 02:20:18.480 this moment in this story in contact with God's people, and these 02:20:18.480 --> 02:20:21.520 were a called Jews at this time, the word that's used in 02:20:21.520 --> 02:20:23.600 the Greek text calls them Jews. 02:20:23.600 --> 02:20:25.520 They were godly people. 02:20:25.520 --> 02:20:26.640 They look good. 02:20:26.640 --> 02:20:28.080 They were blameless. 02:20:28.080 --> 02:20:30.800 We as Christians have to love and embrace that. 02:20:30.800 --> 02:20:33.760 So the fact that it's totally gutted is I mean it's darkly 02:20:33.760 --> 02:20:36.800 ironic, and it's evil because they're messing with scripture. 02:20:36.800 --> 02:20:41.360 But when you're dealing with these subjects where they're accusations of racism 02:20:41.360 --> 02:20:44.320 and all this stuff, well, let's just let God talk. 02:20:44.320 --> 02:20:46.880 If God says something good about some people, it's true. 02:20:46.880 --> 02:20:48.800 If he says something bad, it's true. 02:20:48.800 --> 02:20:53.200 In this case, from the very beginning, God is in control, protecting 02:20:53.200 --> 02:20:58.080 his people while also working with whom we're told are pagans, as 02:20:58.080 --> 02:21:01.120 we're you know told Job should have been a pagan, his friends 02:21:01.040 --> 02:21:03.440 should have been pagans, except somehow they knew God. 02:21:03.440 --> 02:21:06.160 Well, turns out that they knew God because they spoke to 02:21:06.160 --> 02:21:07.120 him. 02:21:07.680 --> 02:21:11.360 It's worth making a minor note here. 02:21:11.360 --> 02:21:14.000 The word that is used in the Greek is the one that 02:21:14.000 --> 02:21:18.160 we've of course been using all along for Judean, it can rightly 02:21:18.320 --> 02:21:20.880 be translated Jew as well, as we went over in the episode 02:21:20.880 --> 02:21:22.800 on that specific issue. 02:21:22.800 --> 02:21:25.840 But of course, part of the reason for this is because of 02:21:25.840 --> 02:21:30.320 the timeline and where we're dealing with expulsions and dispersions of the 02:21:30.320 --> 02:21:32.320 northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. 02:21:32.320 --> 02:21:35.680 And so of course here we're dealing with those who were taken 02:21:35.680 --> 02:21:38.080 from the southern kingdom of Judah. 02:21:38.080 --> 02:21:40.800 That's why they're present in this court. 02:21:40.800 --> 02:21:43.920 Because they've been expelled from the land because of the wickedness of 02:21:43.920 --> 02:21:45.600 their forefathers. 02:21:45.600 --> 02:21:50.640 The next example, then, of some changes here, I'll skip over two 02:21:50.880 --> 02:21:54.560 five because that's the one that essentially highlights the difference here between 02:21:54.560 --> 02:21:58.400 the ESV and others which always translate this as Jew and the 02:21:58.400 --> 02:22:03.600 literal word in the Greek which perhaps could more properly be Judean. 02:22:03.600 --> 02:22:07.920 But moving on to verse seven of still chapter two. 02:22:07.920 --> 02:22:11.280 And he had a foster child, the daughter of Abbail, the brother 02:22:11.280 --> 02:22:13.600 of his father, and her name was Esther. 02:22:13.600 --> 02:22:16.720 Now when her parents died he raised her for himself as a 02:22:16.720 --> 02:22:18.800 wife, and the maiden was beautiful. 02:22:19.680 --> 02:22:23.840 This one's perhaps somewhat of an odd change the rabbis decided to 02:22:23.840 --> 02:22:27.920 make, but the fact that Esther is being raised by Mordecai to 02:22:27.920 --> 02:22:33.760 be his wife is simply dropped from the rabbinic text Which isn't 02:22:33.680 --> 02:22:36.960 necessarily a major change, but it certainly is a change in the 02:22:36.960 --> 02:22:39.600 nuance and the nature of the story. 02:22:39.600 --> 02:22:45.360 Because Mordecai, who is raising Esther to be his future wife, gives 02:22:45.360 --> 02:22:48.320 her up to the king to be his wife. 02:22:48.320 --> 02:22:50.160 That changes the story to some degree. 02:22:50.160 --> 02:22:54.000 Again, not a major change, but it is a change the rabbis 02:22:54.000 --> 02:22:54.640 decided to make. 02:22:54.640 --> 02:22:58.320 And as we said earlier in the episode, just because something is 02:22:58.320 --> 02:23:02.560 not a major change, or doesn't seem like a major change, doesn't 02:23:02.480 --> 02:23:05.520 mean that it is something we can just accept. 02:23:05.520 --> 02:23:09.680 The next example is verse 20 from still in chapter 2. 02:23:09.680 --> 02:23:13.840 This is a great example, another great example of the Jews, the 02:23:13.840 --> 02:23:17.440 rabbis simply removing God from the book of Esther. 02:23:17.440 --> 02:23:21.440 And so I will read first from the rabbinic text in this 02:23:21.440 --> 02:23:23.760 case, and then second from the Septuagint. 02:23:23.760 --> 02:23:27.520 Esther had not made known her kindred or her people as Mordecai 02:23:27.520 --> 02:23:31.280 had commanded her, for Esther obeyed Mordecai just as when she was 02:23:31.280 --> 02:23:32.560 brought up by him. 02:23:32.560 --> 02:23:36.640 And now from the Septuagint, and Esther had not revealed her country, 02:23:36.640 --> 02:23:39.840 for Mordecai had commanded her to fear God and to keep his 02:23:39.920 --> 02:23:43.840 commandments, as when she was with him, and Esther did not change 02:23:43.840 --> 02:23:46.800 her way of life. 02:23:46.800 --> 02:23:51.600 Esther and Mordecai are both shown here to be righteous, to be 02:23:51.600 --> 02:23:55.280 pious. They fear God and keep his commandments. 02:23:55.280 --> 02:23:58.960 Mordecai teaches her to do that, she continues to do that despite 02:23:59.120 --> 02:24:01.840 now being in the king's harem. 02:24:01.840 --> 02:24:02.960 That's simply removed. 02:24:03.280 --> 02:24:07.920 The rabbis just removed the fact that both of these key players 02:24:07.920 --> 02:24:10.000 in this story are faithful. 02:24:10.000 --> 02:24:11.760 They're both Christians. 02:24:11.760 --> 02:24:15.440 This is one of those cases where the rabbis made themselves look 02:24:15.440 --> 02:24:16.800 worse, made the Jews look worse 02:24:17.680 --> 02:24:22.560 by removing this, because ultimately their goal wasn't necessarily to make the 02:24:22.560 --> 02:24:24.560 Jews look good. 02:24:24.560 --> 02:24:27.680 They were doing something fundamentally different with this book. 02:24:27.680 --> 02:24:30.480 Again, part of it is they just wanted to make this into 02:24:30.480 --> 02:24:32.320 a revenge fantasy. 02:24:32.320 --> 02:24:35.280 The Jews get to destroy those who don't like them. 02:24:35.280 --> 02:24:36.960 Which you may have noticed. 02:24:36.960 --> 02:24:40.800 One of the things that they removed is there's some irony here, 02:24:40.800 --> 02:24:43.200 of course, because of the way that the characters work in this 02:24:43.200 --> 02:24:49.040 particular story, but they remove the reason that Haman hates them. 02:24:49.040 --> 02:24:53.040 You may be thinking of a Russian proverb right now. 02:24:53.040 --> 02:24:55.120 I don't even Don't even need to say it, and if you 02:24:55.120 --> 02:24:56.560 don't know what it is, you can go and look it up 02:24:56.720 --> 02:25:00.240 a little Easter egg hunt for some of you, but that's exactly 02:25:00.240 --> 02:25:01.520 what's happening here. 02:25:01.520 --> 02:25:04.640 The Jews have removed the reason this man does not like them. 02:25:04.640 --> 02:25:07.440 Now it happens to be in this case, he hates them for 02:25:07.440 --> 02:25:10.560 a reason that is a bad reason. 02:25:10.560 --> 02:25:12.960 But they did the same thing that they do in so many 02:25:12.960 --> 02:25:13.600 other cases. 02:25:13.600 --> 02:25:15.840 It's almost as if they can't help themselves. 02:25:15.840 --> 02:25:18.080 They are compelled to do it. 02:25:18.080 --> 02:25:22.000 Despite the fact that in this case, it makes them look worse. 02:25:22.000 --> 02:25:26.320 Because the reason that he hated them was because Mordecai had done 02:25:26.320 --> 02:25:28.240 something good. 02:25:28.240 --> 02:25:31.040 Mordecai had been faithful to his king. 02:25:31.040 --> 02:25:35.360 He had actually been a faithful advisor, a faithful member of the 02:25:35.360 --> 02:25:36.560 king's court. 02:25:36.560 --> 02:25:40.800 They still removed that in order to make it seem like Haman 02:25:40.800 --> 02:25:44.960 just hated them because they were Judeans, because they were Israelites, and 02:25:44.960 --> 02:25:47.520 so he wanted to destroy them because of that. 02:25:47.520 --> 02:25:50.160 And of course we all recognize the reason they would want to 02:25:50.160 --> 02:25:51.440 make that edit. 02:25:51.440 --> 02:25:54.320 Because then they can say look at this, all these non Jews 02:25:54.320 --> 02:25:57.680 have always hated us and wanted to destroy us simply because we're 02:25:57.680 --> 02:26:02.160 Jews. In this case, if they just left in the reason, everyone 02:26:02.160 --> 02:26:04.400 would say, yeah, of course, that's that's a bad thing they want 02:26:04.400 --> 02:26:05.440 to destroy you. 02:26:05.440 --> 02:26:10.160 But it would be because they were Christian, because they were faithful, 02:26:10.160 --> 02:26:13.360 not because they were Jews. 02:26:13.360 --> 02:26:17.440 And crucially, because God gave a vision to Mardecaeus in order to 02:26:17.440 --> 02:26:19.040 protect Artaxerxes. 02:26:19.040 --> 02:26:22.800 Remember, this was a coup against Artaxerxes that was deleted from the 02:26:22.800 --> 02:26:28.880 beginning. God protected this pagan king through Mardecaus. 02:26:28.880 --> 02:26:30.960 That's, I think, the real reason. 02:26:30.960 --> 02:26:34.320 It wasn't simply that he was doing something good and godly, is 02:26:34.320 --> 02:26:36.880 that God was intervening in this other kingdom. 02:26:36.880 --> 02:26:40.480 God intervenes in the kingdoms of the world. 02:26:40.480 --> 02:26:43.120 They're not always going to be the ones that we think of 02:26:43.120 --> 02:26:44.480 as being believers. 02:26:44.480 --> 02:26:48.960 And for whatever reason, we don't have to introspect God's reasons to 02:26:48.960 --> 02:26:53.760 believe the fact that heath said to Mardecaius, here's a vision, you're 02:26:53.760 --> 02:26:57.520 going to protect this king for his purposes, for God's purposes. 02:26:57.520 --> 02:27:00.000 That was too much for them to bear. 02:27:00.000 --> 02:27:06.160 In subtraction B, which is after the rabbinic chapter three, verse thirteen. 02:27:06.160 --> 02:27:09.360 This section provides the full text of the royal edict that Arta 02:27:09.520 --> 02:27:13.120 Xerxes sent out commanding the destruction of the Jews. 02:27:13.120 --> 02:27:16.960 Now in the Rabbinic text, this letter which was drafted by Amon 02:27:17.280 --> 02:27:22.720 is described, and yet in the Septuagint, the letter is quoted in 02:27:22.720 --> 02:27:25.920 full. We're not going to read the whole thing for time, but 02:27:25.920 --> 02:27:28.880 I want to read an excerpt from the middle of it because 02:27:28.880 --> 02:27:31.520 it slapped me in the face when I read it, particularly for 02:27:31.520 --> 02:27:33.600 its deletion. 02:27:33.600 --> 02:27:37.120 This was a letter written by Artaxerxes the King, sent out to 02:27:37.120 --> 02:27:40.080 all hundred twenty seven satraps and whatever. 02:27:40.080 --> 02:27:43.360 Amon who excels in soundness of judgment among us and has been 02:27:43.360 --> 02:27:47.760 manifestly fully well inclined without wavering and with unshaken fidelity, and has 02:27:47.760 --> 02:27:51.280 obtained a second post in the kingdom, informed us that a certain 02:27:51.280 --> 02:27:55.840 ill-disposed people is mixed up with all the tribes throughout the world, 02:27:55.840 --> 02:28:00.000 opposed in their law to every other nation, and continually neglecting the 02:28:00.000 --> 02:28:04.320 commands of the king, so that the united government blamelessly administered by 02:28:04.320 --> 02:28:06.800 us is not quietly established. 02:28:06.800 --> 02:28:10.560 Having then conceived that this nation alone of all others is continually 02:28:11.280 --> 02:28:15.200 set in opposition to every man, introducing as a change a foreign 02:28:15.200 --> 02:28:19.040 code of laws in injuriously plotting to accomplish the worst of evils 02:28:19.040 --> 02:28:23.200 against our interests, and against the happy establishment of the monarchy. 02:28:23.360 --> 02:28:26.400 That's right in the middle, but it's a portion that's specifically describing 02:28:26.400 --> 02:28:28.880 the nature and the conduct of the Jews. 02:28:28.880 --> 02:28:31.760 Now I highlight this for a couple reasons. 02:28:31.760 --> 02:28:34.800 One, at the end of the section that was deleted by the 02:28:35.200 --> 02:28:39.200 rabbis, Mardecaus cries out with a loud voice A nation that has 02:28:39.200 --> 02:28:41.840 done no wrong is going to be destroyed. 02:28:41.840 --> 02:28:46.480 So it is scriptural that the accusations of Amon or Haman against 02:28:46.480 --> 02:28:52.080 the Jews were categorically false in this place and time. 02:28:52.080 --> 02:28:54.240 So isn't it weird that that would be deleted? 02:28:54.240 --> 02:28:57.360 If Marde Caius is telling the truth that a nation that has 02:28:57.360 --> 02:29:00.240 done no wrong is going to be destroyed, well, I mean that's 02:29:00.240 --> 02:29:03.040 consistent with the text we were left with. 02:29:03.040 --> 02:29:06.240 So why not leave in all these terrible things that Amon said 02:29:06.240 --> 02:29:10.400 about them that Artaxerxes sent out because he believed what his advisor 02:29:10.400 --> 02:29:14.880 said? Well, remember what's said in first Thessalonians two? 02:29:14.880 --> 02:29:18.320 For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen, as they 02:29:18.320 --> 02:29:21.360 did from the Jews who killed both the Lord Jesus Christ and 02:29:21.360 --> 02:29:25.200 the prophets and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all 02:29:25.200 --> 02:29:29.280 mankind by hindering us from speaking to the nations so that they 02:29:29.280 --> 02:29:30.720 might be saved. 02:29:30.720 --> 02:29:34.000 That's not an exact parallel, but it immediately came to mind. 02:29:34.000 --> 02:29:38.080 Because what Amon describes is what the Jews do almost everywhere. 02:29:38.080 --> 02:29:40.800 It's certainly what they've been doing for the last two thousand years. 02:29:40.800 --> 02:29:45.440 In every country they've gone to, Amon's description of them was absolutely 02:29:45.440 --> 02:29:50.320 true. So I think that's a probably the reason that the rabbis 02:29:50.320 --> 02:29:54.880 deleted it, even though Mardecaus said we're not guilty of anything, and 02:29:54.880 --> 02:29:58.080 I believe that as a Christian completely, they were not guilty of 02:29:58.080 --> 02:30:00.800 undermining King Artaxerxes. 02:30:00.800 --> 02:30:05.680 Which tells us something also about the kingdom in which they lived. 02:30:05.680 --> 02:30:10.160 If If God was commending them for upholding that nation rather than 02:30:10.160 --> 02:30:13.920 subverting it, that tells us something about their hosts. 02:30:13.920 --> 02:30:16.880 They weren't quite as awful as we're told they were. 02:30:16.880 --> 02:30:18.240 And not as awful. 02:30:18.240 --> 02:30:20.480 Again, I'm not blessing him and saying the entire country is Christian 02:30:20.960 --> 02:30:21.840 at this point. 02:30:21.840 --> 02:30:24.800 I'm simply saying that if you look at the rabbinic text of 02:30:24.800 --> 02:30:26.560 Esther, you think those were monsters. 02:30:26.560 --> 02:30:29.280 As Artaxerx is a complete jerk. 02:30:29.280 --> 02:30:30.640 Just murdering everyone. 02:30:30.640 --> 02:30:33.120 Jews had to were all on their own. 02:30:33.120 --> 02:30:38.160 When the reality is that I think what Amon said of them 02:30:38.400 --> 02:30:42.080 was well known, I don't think he was lying, except in this 02:30:42.080 --> 02:30:45.440 moment. I think we have every reason to believe, based on the 02:30:45.440 --> 02:30:49.920 entirety of human history, that the description of Amon here that was 02:30:49.920 --> 02:30:53.280 deleted is true, except for this one time. 02:30:53.280 --> 02:30:56.320 In this place, they were not doing these things. 02:30:56.320 --> 02:30:58.800 And so their murder was in fact murder. 02:30:58.800 --> 02:31:01.280 It wasn't just killing of rebels. 02:31:01.280 --> 02:31:05.360 It was unjust killing of God's people who were blameless. 02:31:05.360 --> 02:31:08.560 This of all the deletions, I think, probably struck me the most 02:31:08.720 --> 02:31:10.080 simply for that. 02:31:10.240 --> 02:31:13.840 the the one time that something terrible is said about them that 02:31:13.840 --> 02:31:16.320 isn't true, they couldn't bear to leave it in. 02:31:16.320 --> 02:31:19.120 Because at any other point in human history, if you read that, 02:31:19.120 --> 02:31:22.640 if it had been read later on, when they deleted, 'cause remember, 02:31:22.640 --> 02:31:25.280 we only have this preserved because it's in the Septuagint. 02:31:25.280 --> 02:31:28.000 The rabbis had to come along later and delete it. 02:31:28.000 --> 02:31:29.600 When would they have deleted it? 02:31:29.600 --> 02:31:32.560 When their people were doing these very things in other nations? 02:31:32.560 --> 02:31:35.760 It would have been a double indictment of them to read Amon's 02:31:35.760 --> 02:31:39.600 words, and not only would it throw into question the god, the 02:31:39.600 --> 02:31:43.600 true god of Esther, but it would be a reminder that yeah, 02:31:43.600 --> 02:31:46.240 these people are up to no good in all times and all 02:31:46.240 --> 02:31:48.160 places. Except for this once. 02:31:48.160 --> 02:31:51.760 Esther's a beautiful book because the Jews were actually doing good things. 02:31:51.760 --> 02:31:55.680 I agree with Cory, like the word is fraught, but Jews, Judeans, 02:31:55.680 --> 02:31:59.040 these were God's people, they're Israelites, they're part of Israel at this 02:31:59.040 --> 02:32:01.840 point, they're part of the Hebrew lineage. 02:32:01.840 --> 02:32:04.640 I think it's fine to call 'em Jews, particularly in this case 02:32:04.640 --> 02:32:09.360 where they were in captivity, which was their state for the rest 02:32:09.360 --> 02:32:10.560 of time. 02:32:10.560 --> 02:32:14.080 Okay, that if they did something good, we give them credit for 02:32:14.080 --> 02:32:18.560 it, and yet the rabbis deprived us of that opportunity because in 02:32:18.560 --> 02:32:22.640 every other place and time Amon's words were true. 02:32:23.040 --> 02:32:23.840 There is an 02:32:23.840 --> 02:32:30.960 interesting linguistic note in the Greek of verse three eight chapter 02:32:30.960 --> 02:32:32.480 three verse eight. 02:32:32.480 --> 02:32:35.760 The word that is used there in the Greek that is generally 02:32:35.760 --> 02:32:41.520 translated scattered abroad or dispersed something like that, could actually be translated 02:32:41.680 --> 02:32:48.160 diasporod, because the word there is diaspiro, which is the source from 02:32:48.160 --> 02:32:50.880 which we get diaspora. 02:32:50.880 --> 02:32:55.440 It is a description of the punishment the Jews have received for 02:32:55.440 --> 02:32:57.280 their faithlessness. 02:32:57.280 --> 02:33:00.720 The rabbis changed that in their version, and the word that they 02:33:00.720 --> 02:33:02.560 use is just scattered or dispersed. 02:33:02.560 --> 02:33:04.560 It is not diasporate. 02:33:04.560 --> 02:33:07.360 It does not have that full sense that we have retained in 02:33:07.360 --> 02:33:08.400 the Greek. 02:33:08.560 --> 02:33:12.480 It makes some sense why they'd want to change that one. 02:33:12.480 --> 02:33:16.240 The next example is just another one of those examples where the 02:33:16.240 --> 02:33:19.040 rabbis simply deleted God. 02:33:19.040 --> 02:33:24.400 This is chapter four, verse eight, read first from the Rabbinic text. 02:33:24.400 --> 02:33:27.680 Mordecai also gave him a copy of the written decree issued in 02:33:27.680 --> 02:33:31.520 Susa for their destruction, that he might show it to Esther and 02:33:31.520 --> 02:33:34.320 explain it to her, and command her to go to the king 02:33:34.320 --> 02:33:37.680 to beg his favour, and plead with him on behalf of her 02:33:37.680 --> 02:33:40.560 people. And now from the Septuagint. 02:33:40.560 --> 02:33:42.880 He also gave him the copy of the letter that had been 02:33:42.880 --> 02:33:46.720 published in Susa concerning their destruction to show to Esther, and he 02:33:46.720 --> 02:33:50.000 told him to command her to go in and entreat the king. 02:33:50.000 --> 02:33:54.160 Beg him for our people, remember your days of low estate, how 02:33:54.160 --> 02:33:57.920 you were sustained by my hand because Haman, who is second to 02:33:57.920 --> 02:34:00.400 the king, has spoken against us for death. 02:34:00.400 --> 02:34:04.000 Call upon the Lord and speak to the king for us, to 02:34:04.000 --> 02:34:06.320 deliver us from death. 02:34:06.320 --> 02:34:11.280 The rabbinic text simply deletes God and the Septuagint includes it, in 02:34:11.280 --> 02:34:15.120 keeping with the fact that Mordecai is a righteous man, he instructs 02:34:15.520 --> 02:34:19.440 Esther to call upon the Lord, because he believes firmly that the 02:34:19.440 --> 02:34:23.200 deliverance for his people if it should come will be from the 02:34:23.200 --> 02:34:24.160 Lord. 02:34:25.040 --> 02:34:29.600 This section, this subtraction C is one of the most religious sections 02:34:30.160 --> 02:34:31.920 of what they deleted. 02:34:32.240 --> 02:34:36.320 Marques' prayer, he explains his refusal to bow to Amon. 02:34:36.320 --> 02:34:39.040 It was not out of arrogance, it was because he wouldn't give 02:34:38.960 --> 02:34:42.240 glory to God due to God to any mortal. 02:34:42.240 --> 02:34:46.960 So Mardecus prayed for God to remember God's covenant and to save 02:34:46.960 --> 02:34:48.080 his people. 02:34:48.080 --> 02:34:50.240 That's a Christian prayer. 02:34:50.240 --> 02:34:53.840 Remember they were carrying the promise of the Christ. 02:34:53.840 --> 02:34:56.880 That was the point of the bloodline, that was the point of 02:34:56.880 --> 02:35:00.880 the preservation of Scripture, was the promise made to Abraham was going 02:35:00.880 --> 02:35:02.800 to be fulfilled in the future. 02:35:02.800 --> 02:35:06.080 And so Marticas' prayers for the sake of the promise you made 02:35:06.240 --> 02:35:08.400 Abraham, preserve your people now. 02:35:08.400 --> 02:35:11.920 Because if you know, in effect if we're finished off, then it 02:35:11.920 --> 02:35:13.760 means you haven't kept your promise. 02:35:13.760 --> 02:35:16.080 Do it because you're God. 02:35:16.080 --> 02:35:21.040 And I think Esther's prayer here in Subtraction C dramatically alters her 02:35:21.040 --> 02:35:24.880 character. She expresses deep distress at her situation. 02:35:24.880 --> 02:35:29.200 She says she detests the bed of the uncircumcised, and abores the 02:35:29.200 --> 02:35:32.800 sign of her high rank, that is her crown, which she wears 02:35:32.800 --> 02:35:34.480 only when necessary. 02:35:34.480 --> 02:35:37.840 She affirms her adherence to Jewish law, that is not eating at 02:35:37.840 --> 02:35:41.120 Aamon's table, and she pleads with God to give her courage to 02:35:41.120 --> 02:35:42.480 save her people. 02:35:42.480 --> 02:35:45.840 And And part of this prayer I think is crucial and probably 02:35:45.840 --> 02:35:48.880 one of the most important reasons why this whole thing was deleted. 02:35:48.880 --> 02:35:53.360 Esther prays in part, and now we have sinned before you and 02:35:53.360 --> 02:35:56.640 you have delivered us into the hands of our enemies, because we 02:35:56.640 --> 02:35:58.240 honored their gods. 02:35:58.240 --> 02:36:00.400 You are righteous, O Lord. 02:36:00.400 --> 02:36:02.000 And so what just happened? 02:36:02.000 --> 02:36:04.560 Esther's admitting that they were idolaters. 02:36:04.560 --> 02:36:08.640 Which is why I said earlier there's undoubtedly polytheism going on with 02:36:08.800 --> 02:36:12.960 Artaxerxes lands, then go figure, no surprise at all. 02:36:12.960 --> 02:36:15.120 The problem is that the Jews were participants. 02:36:15.120 --> 02:36:19.920 They were worshiping foreign gods here while they were ruled by Artaxerxes. 02:36:19.920 --> 02:36:22.080 They were adopting the customs of the people there. 02:36:22.080 --> 02:36:23.920 Does this surprise any Christian? 02:36:23.920 --> 02:36:26.640 No. They did this every time they went anywhere. 02:36:26.640 --> 02:36:31.680 They adopted the demon gods of the local lands, they infuriated God, 02:36:31.680 --> 02:36:34.000 which here is why they're in captivity in the first place. 02:36:34.000 --> 02:36:37.120 They wouldn't captivity if they'd still been obeying God. 02:36:37.120 --> 02:36:38.640 That never happened. 02:36:38.640 --> 02:36:44.880 The chastisement, the temporal punishment for the wickedness of apostasy shows up 02:36:44.880 --> 02:36:48.640 physically. They get carted off, they get sent to other lands, and 02:36:48.640 --> 02:36:51.360 yet even here God is still looking after them. 02:36:51.360 --> 02:36:54.160 But Esther acknowledges their idolatry. 02:36:54.160 --> 02:36:56.960 She acknowledges they've been worshiping foreign gods. 02:36:56.960 --> 02:36:58.320 They've been worshiping demons. 02:36:58.320 --> 02:37:00.240 The Jews were worshiping demons. 02:37:00.240 --> 02:37:03.040 So I say they look good, I don't mean they look perfect, 02:37:03.040 --> 02:37:04.880 but what's the problem here? 02:37:04.880 --> 02:37:07.200 This makes our Xerxes look bad, doesn't it? 02:37:07.200 --> 02:37:09.200 Like this is what I'm trying to highlight, like who looks good 02:37:09.200 --> 02:37:10.480 and who looks bad. 02:37:10.480 --> 02:37:13.840 When you change the content, when you change the text of a 02:37:13.840 --> 02:37:17.600 story, what could What conclusions are altered? 02:37:17.600 --> 02:37:23.760 Artaxerxes is overseeing a land that has pagans and has God's people. 02:37:23.760 --> 02:37:27.360 And God's people are saying, yeah, we stopped worshiping you, or we 02:37:27.360 --> 02:37:30.960 didn't exclusively worship you, God, which is effectively the same thing. 02:37:30.960 --> 02:37:37.520 And for that confession to come from Esther shapes the whole thing. 02:37:37.520 --> 02:37:37.760 And 02:37:37.760 --> 02:37:43.520 then subtraction D even doubles down as it were on Esther's faithfulness 02:37:43.520 --> 02:37:47.120 in this, because that one starts with Then it happened on the 02:37:47.120 --> 02:37:50.240 third day when she had ceased praying, she took off the garments 02:37:50.240 --> 02:37:53.760 of her service and put on her glorious clothes, and having become 02:37:53.760 --> 02:37:58.560 resplendent, after she had called upon God, the overseer and Saviour of 02:37:58.560 --> 02:38:02.400 all, she took her two devoted slaves, and she leaned upon one, 02:38:02.400 --> 02:38:05.600 as though she were delicate, and the other one followed bearing her 02:38:05.600 --> 02:38:10.880 train. We go from a book that in the rabbinic text doesn't 02:38:10.800 --> 02:38:16.400 even mention God, to a book where we have the words she 02:38:16.640 --> 02:38:22.240 called upon God the overseer and saviour of all. 02:38:22.240 --> 02:38:28.080 This is a thoroughly Christian book in the Septuagint, whereas again it 02:38:28.080 --> 02:38:34.000 is just some sort of political revenge fantasy in the Masoretic text. 02:38:34.000 --> 02:38:39.600 You also have a change in sort of if not necessarily the 02:38:39.600 --> 02:38:45.280 nature, then the overall character of the king in this case. 02:38:45.280 --> 02:38:49.440 And I would just recommend that you actually read the entirety of 02:38:49.440 --> 02:38:49.840 this book. 02:38:49.840 --> 02:38:52.160 Again, it will be linked in the show notes. 02:38:52.160 --> 02:38:55.520 You should read this and notice the difference in how the king 02:38:55.520 --> 02:39:01.120 is portrayed in the actual book versus what the rabbis did to 02:39:01.120 --> 02:39:05.040 his character, and how he is portrayed and even slandered in the 02:39:05.040 --> 02:39:08.560 Masoretic text. 02:39:08.720 --> 02:39:11.920 There's one crucial detail that we do need to highlight. 02:39:11.920 --> 02:39:15.440 In the rabbinic text, Esther is just standing, she stands in the 02:39:15.440 --> 02:39:18.320 court, she finds favor, and the king extends a scepter. 02:39:18.320 --> 02:39:19.840 It's much shorter. 02:39:19.840 --> 02:39:22.640 What we find in the Septuagint is that when she's accompanied by 02:39:22.640 --> 02:39:25.360 her By her two maids, she's overcome with terror, she sees the 02:39:25.360 --> 02:39:29.200 king and is intimidating royal splendor, and she faints. 02:39:29.200 --> 02:39:33.840 Arta Xerxes is initially enraged, and then this is a quote But 02:39:34.000 --> 02:39:38.160 God changed the spirit of the king to gentleness, and an intense 02:39:38.160 --> 02:39:41.680 feeling he sprang from off his throne and took her into his 02:39:41.680 --> 02:39:44.080 arms until she recovered. 02:39:44.080 --> 02:39:50.240 God caused Artaxerxes' heart to soften in engendered love for his queen 02:39:50.640 --> 02:39:55.280 in the moment when he'd been infuriated at her behavior, fainting, whatever. 02:39:55.280 --> 02:40:00.000 He was angry, she was terrified, and when he saw her swoon, 02:40:00.000 --> 02:40:04.480 he rushed to her, embraced her and basically nursed her back to 02:40:04.480 --> 02:40:07.360 consciousness, to having her wits about her. 02:40:07.360 --> 02:40:10.320 And God moved him to do that. 02:40:10.960 --> 02:40:14.080 What does it say about our Xerxes if God is moving his 02:40:14.080 --> 02:40:16.640 heart to have love for Esther. 02:40:16.640 --> 02:40:19.360 Do you understand now why these things might be deleted by the 02:40:19.360 --> 02:40:23.840 rabbis? It fundamentally changes the nature of what's going on. 02:40:23.840 --> 02:40:27.920 If God is working to protect Artaxerxes in his kingdom, if God 02:40:27.920 --> 02:40:29.200 is working in his heart, 02:40:30.080 --> 02:40:33.600 that says something about the man and about his kingdom and about 02:40:33.600 --> 02:40:35.520 his nation. 02:40:35.520 --> 02:40:39.520 And just as we continue with the vision at the beginning that 02:40:39.520 --> 02:40:46.640 they deleted, God's divine intervention is direct and explicit throughout this entire 02:40:46.640 --> 02:40:49.040 book. 02:40:49.040 --> 02:40:49.280 The 02:40:49.280 --> 02:40:53.600 next example we have is from chapter seven, this is verse nine, 02:40:53.600 --> 02:40:58.960 and I will just read that from the Septuagint. 02:40:58.960 --> 02:41:03.360 Then Bugatha, one of the eunuchs of the king, said, Behold, Haman 02:41:03.360 --> 02:41:07.040 prepared a pole for Mordecai, who spoke on behalf of the king, 02:41:07.040 --> 02:41:10.080 and a pole fifty cubits high has been set up at the 02:41:10.080 --> 02:41:14.960 house of Haman, and the king said, Let Haman be crucified upon 02:41:14.960 --> 02:41:20.400 it. This is an interesting note because if you are familiar with 02:41:20.400 --> 02:41:24.080 Esther in the Rabbinic text, you will note there's a pretty significant 02:41:24.080 --> 02:41:26.560 change in verb here. 02:41:26.560 --> 02:41:32.640 The verb that is present in the rabbinic text is hanged. 02:41:32.640 --> 02:41:37.680 Let Haman be hanged on this gallows that he has constructed. 02:41:37.680 --> 02:41:40.640 Here in the Greek it says crucified, and this is in fact 02:41:40.640 --> 02:41:44.320 a punishment that was practiced by these people. 02:41:44.320 --> 02:41:47.360 It very clearly it is the verb crucify, it is literally the 02:41:47.360 --> 02:41:48.400 verb for crucify. 02:41:48.400 --> 02:41:52.560 It's not an interpretation decision, it's not how we decide to exegete 02:41:52.560 --> 02:41:55.600 this. That is simply what it says. 02:41:55.600 --> 02:42:00.000 It is curious that the rabbis would go ahead and remove a 02:42:00.000 --> 02:42:01.760 reference to that. 02:42:01.760 --> 02:42:07.440 Now, perhaps it's not anything that's explicitly Christological here because you're crucifying 02:42:07.440 --> 02:42:10.800 a wicked man, and the righteous man escapes in this case, which 02:42:10.880 --> 02:42:13.600 of course is the opposite of what happens in the case of 02:42:13.600 --> 02:42:18.560 Christ, because the murderer is let free and Christ is crucified, but 02:42:18.880 --> 02:42:23.840 the rabbis still felt compelled to remove this reference to a punishment 02:42:24.400 --> 02:42:30.800 that they knew had taken place, something that they had explicitly called 02:42:30.800 --> 02:42:34.400 for, and then called down the curse of that righteous man's blood 02:42:34.400 --> 02:42:35.680 on their heads. 02:42:35.680 --> 02:42:41.840 Just an interesting grammatical point that they changed this one verb. 02:42:41.840 --> 02:42:48.000 The next subtraction is subtraction E we mentioned is the second decree 02:42:48.000 --> 02:42:50.240 from the king dealing with Haman's wickedness 02:42:51.200 --> 02:42:54.880 and the actions that flowed from that, I'll read the first part 02:42:54.880 --> 02:42:58.080 of that because it contains a key point here. 02:42:58.080 --> 02:43:01.920 For when Haman the son of Hamadatha, a Macedonian, who was in 02:43:01.920 --> 02:43:05.920 truth a foreigner to Persian blood, and standing far apart from our 02:43:05.920 --> 02:43:10.560 kindness, though having been hospitable to us, obtained the benevolence that we 02:43:10.560 --> 02:43:14.320 hold for every nation to such degree, that he was publicly proclaimed 02:43:14.320 --> 02:43:17.920 as our father, and continuing as the second face from the royal 02:43:17.920 --> 02:43:20.400 throne. He was worshipped by all. 02:43:20.400 --> 02:43:23.840 It goes on and so forth and explains his wickedness and his 02:43:23.840 --> 02:43:26.880 subversion and what he was attempting to do. 02:43:26.880 --> 02:43:31.280 And then that he asks with ingenious deceptions of stratagems he asks 02:43:31.360 --> 02:43:35.600 for the destruction of the Jews in order to transfer the dominion 02:43:35.600 --> 02:43:39.760 of the Persians to the Macedonians. 02:43:39.760 --> 02:43:45.120 This is fundamentally different from what we have in the rabbinic text, 02:43:45.120 --> 02:43:50.800 because in the rabbinic text they call Haman an agagite. 02:43:50.800 --> 02:43:55.360 And you may wonder what on earth is an agagite. 02:43:55.360 --> 02:44:01.120 Well, Agag is one of the kings mentioned in the Old Testament, 02:44:01.120 --> 02:44:04.720 one of the kings that initially the people of Israel failed to 02:44:04.720 --> 02:44:09.600 destroy. And then later on, they go ahead and destroy him under 02:44:09.600 --> 02:44:14.880 Saul. It's actually Samuel who kills him, but nonetheless, that's under King 02:44:14.880 --> 02:44:20.320 Saul. Part of the reason that this is relevant is because the 02:44:20.640 --> 02:44:25.600 Jews still view this today as their conflict. 02:44:25.600 --> 02:44:32.640 They view themselves as attempting to destroy certain Old Testament figures and 02:44:32.640 --> 02:44:39.280 they link those Old Testament figures figures usually to Christendom, usually explicitly 02:44:39.280 --> 02:44:43.360 to the Christian, the white Christian West. 02:44:43.360 --> 02:44:46.720 And this is one of those cases because this is a king 02:44:46.720 --> 02:44:50.400 of those people that they view still today as their enemies. 02:44:50.400 --> 02:44:54.800 And so they changed what is very clearly calling this man a 02:44:54.800 --> 02:44:58.640 Macedonian, which is to say he's a Greek, attempting to transfer the 02:44:58.640 --> 02:45:02.080 kingdom of the Persians to the Greeks, which of course later happens 02:45:02.080 --> 02:45:03.920 under Alexander. 02:45:03.920 --> 02:45:06.000 This is before that. 02:45:06.000 --> 02:45:07.440 So it doesn't occur here. 02:45:07.440 --> 02:45:10.240 They're trying to take this kingdom by deception that they will later 02:45:10.240 --> 02:45:11.760 take by force. 02:45:11.760 --> 02:45:15.840 They change the geopolitics of this in order to make it into 02:45:16.400 --> 02:45:21.680 their own sort of political diatribe against their enemies. 02:45:21.680 --> 02:45:25.120 And so they change him from a Macedonian to an Agagite. 02:45:25.120 --> 02:45:29.600 In order to tie him into these people that they have sort 02:45:29.600 --> 02:45:33.920 of mythologized and turned into their enemies for all time. 02:45:33.920 --> 02:45:38.400 Despite the fact that again Agag and his people are destroyed under 02:45:38.400 --> 02:45:41.680 King Saul, Samuel being the one who actually takes the sword and 02:45:41.680 --> 02:45:45.280 kills Agag because he was taken prisoner, instead of being devoted to 02:45:45.280 --> 02:45:48.720 destruction as Saul was commanded by God. 02:45:48.720 --> 02:45:53.040 They still view this as their battle to be waged. 02:45:53.040 --> 02:45:56.960 And in many of their writings, particularly Rabbinic writings, some things in 02:45:56.960 --> 02:46:02.800 the Talmud, they do not believe that their Messiah will appear, and 02:46:02.800 --> 02:46:05.280 they will take possession of the world, because of course that's what 02:46:05.280 --> 02:46:09.600 they view as being the role of the Messiah in their religion. 02:46:09.600 --> 02:46:15.280 They don't believe that will happen until Christendom is destroyed, until Europe 02:46:15.520 --> 02:46:20.160 is destroyed, until basically all of the sons of Japheth are destroyed. 02:46:20.480 --> 02:46:21.920 is why they made this edit. 02:46:21.920 --> 02:46:26.000 That is what they are pushing here, because that is their worldview. 02:46:26.000 --> 02:46:29.680 That is their religion. 02:46:29.760 --> 02:46:34.000 And yet again we find that God has directly intervened to preserve 02:46:34.000 --> 02:46:36.240 the Persian kingdom and their rule. 02:46:36.240 --> 02:46:43.360 Artaxerxes rule was preserved first by Mardeus and then by Esther's actions. 02:46:43.360 --> 02:46:48.560 And Amon was executed, was crucified, as punishment for that plotting on 02:46:48.560 --> 02:46:50.160 behalf of Macedonia. 02:46:50.160 --> 02:46:54.800 I want to read just two more brief snippets from Artaxerxes letter. 02:46:54.800 --> 02:46:57.280 Again, this letter went out to uh all one hundred and twenty 02:46:57.280 --> 02:47:03.760 seven provinces, every corner of Persia received their king, whom they viewed 02:47:03.760 --> 02:47:06.560 as a god, saying this. 02:47:06.560 --> 02:47:09.360 But we find that the Jews who have been consigned to destruction 02:47:09.920 --> 02:47:14.960 by the most abominable of men are not malefactors, but living according 02:47:14.960 --> 02:47:19.200 to the justest laws, and being sons of the living God, the 02:47:19.200 --> 02:47:22.960 most high and mighty, who maintains the kingdom to us as well 02:47:22.960 --> 02:47:27.920 as to our forefathers, in the most excellent order? 02:47:27.920 --> 02:47:31.120 And then he concludes near the end, for in the place of 02:47:31.120 --> 02:47:34.720 the destruction of the chosen race almighty God has granted them this 02:47:34.720 --> 02:47:37.120 time of gladness. 02:47:37.120 --> 02:47:41.360 This is a profoundly Christian confession. 02:47:41.360 --> 02:47:43.760 I don't know if our deserts is in heaven, I have no 02:47:43.760 --> 02:47:45.680 idea, and I'm not making that claim. 02:47:45.760 --> 02:47:50.720 'Cause undoubtedly there was other idolatry and wickedness going on, But in 02:47:50.720 --> 02:47:54.560 this moment, his confession, the the Jews are the sons of the 02:47:54.560 --> 02:47:58.080 living God and the most high and mighty, who maintains his kingdom 02:47:58.400 --> 02:48:02.240 and all of his forefathers, he's saying that there is a king 02:48:02.240 --> 02:48:04.880 of kings, and it is not Arta Xerxes. 02:48:04.880 --> 02:48:08.080 He's saying that he has a head in heaven, and he's confessing 02:48:08.080 --> 02:48:12.160 the true God who came to Martius in a vision, and who 02:48:12.800 --> 02:48:15.040 worked through Astra to preserve his kingdom. 02:48:15.040 --> 02:48:17.920 He's giving God the glory, our God. 02:48:17.920 --> 02:48:20.160 You can see why they had to delete this. 02:48:20.160 --> 02:48:22.080 Like I said at the beginning, and I've been saying for a 02:48:22.080 --> 02:48:25.360 while elsewhere, Esther's not remotely the same book. 02:48:25.360 --> 02:48:29.600 You cannot possibly read what's in the Septuagint and have any of 02:48:29.600 --> 02:48:32.800 the same conclusions that you get from the version that you've read 02:48:32.800 --> 02:48:34.240 previously. 02:48:35.440 --> 02:48:35.680 I 02:48:35.680 --> 02:48:40.000 should add to my previous comments about Macedonian versus Agag and 02:48:41.200 --> 02:48:45.520 all of these various things, you've probably heard the Jews speak of 02:48:45.520 --> 02:48:51.120 Amalek. That is what they mean when these things are referenced, because 02:48:51.120 --> 02:48:53.840 Agag was of course a king of the Amalekites. 02:48:53.840 --> 02:48:56.800 So when they speak of Amalek, they're talking about Christendom. 02:48:56.800 --> 02:48:58.160 They're talking about you. 02:48:58.160 --> 02:49:01.440 They're talking about your people, they're talking about Europe. 02:49:01.440 --> 02:49:04.880 And they believe that they are supposed to have perpetual war with 02:49:04.880 --> 02:49:10.160 Amalek until they have destroyed every single person connected to him. 02:49:10.160 --> 02:49:14.480 Now of course they're entirely wrong about the genealogy because Amalek, of 02:49:14.480 --> 02:49:17.760 course, is not a son of Japheth, but it doesn't matter because 02:49:17.760 --> 02:49:21.920 this is their religion, that's what they actually believe. 02:49:21.920 --> 02:49:28.720 The final section, then, the final subtraction, is section F. 02:49:28.720 --> 02:49:33.680 This is sort of the true conclusion to the Book of Esther. 02:49:33.680 --> 02:49:39.440 It is Mordecai explaining what happened and interpreting the dream that he 02:49:39.440 --> 02:49:42.400 had earlier in light of everything that followed from it, the dream, 02:49:42.400 --> 02:49:44.320 of course, being a prophetic vision. 02:49:44.320 --> 02:49:49.440 And so I will simply read the entirety of this particular subtraction. 02:49:49.440 --> 02:49:54.320 And Mordecai said, These things have come from God, for I remembered 02:49:54.320 --> 02:49:58.000 about the dream that I saw concerning these things, for no item 02:49:58.000 --> 02:49:59.360 of them failed. 02:49:59.360 --> 02:50:02.800 There was the small fountain that became a river, and there was 02:50:02.800 --> 02:50:05.280 light, and the sun and much water. 02:50:05.280 --> 02:50:08.720 Esther is the river whom the king married, and he made her 02:50:08.720 --> 02:50:13.040 queen. In the two dragons are I myself in Haman, and the 02:50:13.040 --> 02:50:16.160 nations are those that have been gathered together to destroy the name 02:50:16.160 --> 02:50:17.600 of the Judeans. 02:50:17.600 --> 02:50:21.520 But my nation, this is Israel, the people who cried to God, 02:50:21.520 --> 02:50:25.280 and we were saved, and the Lord saved his people, and the 02:50:25.280 --> 02:50:29.280 Lord rescued us out of all these afflictions, and God performed signs 02:50:29.280 --> 02:50:33.040 and wonders, great things that have not been done among the nations. 02:50:33.040 --> 02:50:36.640 Therefore he made two lots, one for the people of God, and 02:50:36.640 --> 02:50:40.320 one for all the nations, and these two lots came for a 02:50:40.320 --> 02:50:44.160 season and a time, and for a day of judgment before God, 02:50:44.160 --> 02:50:48.560 and for all the nations, and God remembered his people, and justified 02:50:48.560 --> 02:50:52.480 his own inheritance, and these days in the month of Adar, the 02:50:52.480 --> 02:50:55.920 fourteenth and the fifteenth of the same month, shall be for them 02:50:55.920 --> 02:51:00.240 days with a gathering and joy and merriment before God, throughout the 02:51:00.240 --> 02:51:04.800 generations, for eternity among his people Israel. 02:51:04.800 --> 02:51:09.520 In the fourth year, when Ptolemaus and Cleopatra were reigning, Dosithius, who 02:51:09.520 --> 02:51:12.960 said he was a priest and a Levite, and Ptolemy his son, 02:51:12.960 --> 02:51:16.880 brought into Egypt the preceding letter concerning Pyrim Theorem, which they had 02:51:16.880 --> 02:51:21.200 affirmed had been translated by Lysimachus, the son of Ptolemaeus, one of 02:51:21.200 --> 02:51:22.800 those in Jerusalem. 02:51:22.800 --> 02:51:25.840 So we also happened to get in this particular book a sort 02:51:25.840 --> 02:51:30.000 of colophon telling us the translation history of this, and how we 02:51:30.000 --> 02:51:33.600 came into possession of the book of Esther. 02:51:34.880 --> 02:51:35.120 So 02:51:35.200 --> 02:51:37.440 just briefly, as I said earlier, we'll have a link. 02:51:37.520 --> 02:51:39.840 The there's a webpage that lays all this stuff out and you 02:51:39.840 --> 02:51:41.440 should just go read for yourself. 02:51:41.360 --> 02:51:44.160 Pick whatever Septuagint translation you want. 02:51:44.400 --> 02:51:46.800 I should actually warn you that this is one of the places 02:51:46.800 --> 02:51:48.960 where Bretton's falls down. 02:51:48.960 --> 02:51:52.160 It is not a faithful translation of the Septuagint. 02:51:52.160 --> 02:51:54.720 It just kind of mashes everything together. 02:51:54.720 --> 02:51:57.920 This is true, I think, more so in Job than in Aster, 02:51:57.920 --> 02:52:00.720 but you have to keep continuously checking it. 02:52:00.880 --> 02:52:04.320 Lexum may be better in some regard there, but as we said 02:52:04.320 --> 02:52:08.240 earlier, there's no full solution to I want to read this eptuagint 02:52:08.240 --> 02:52:10.160 in English because it doesn't exist yet. 02:52:10.560 --> 02:52:15.200 Every single option you can put forward has serious deficiencies. 02:52:15.200 --> 02:52:16.640 It's worth trying. 02:52:16.640 --> 02:52:19.200 But just be aware that you're still going to have to muddle 02:52:19.360 --> 02:52:22.400 through and There are going to be things that you're going to 02:52:22.400 --> 02:52:24.480 have to get cleaned up later. 02:52:24.480 --> 02:52:28.800 I think it's important just to summarize what has happened in Esther. 02:52:28.800 --> 02:52:33.040 In the rabbinic text, the deliverance comes through the courage of Esther, 02:52:33.040 --> 02:52:38.320 the political maneuvering of Mordecai, there's a series of convenient coincidences. 02:52:38.320 --> 02:52:43.440 Basically the king's insomnia, Haman's ill timed arrival, etc., are the only 02:52:43.440 --> 02:52:45.120 reason that everything worked out. 02:52:45.120 --> 02:52:47.840 Whereas in the Septuagint, God's a primary actor. 02:52:48.320 --> 02:52:52.720 God sends Mardius a prophetic dream, God changes the king's heart, in 02:52:52.720 --> 02:52:54.080 subtraction D. 02:52:54.080 --> 02:52:58.000 Esther and Marticus attribute all the success to God through prayer, in 02:52:58.000 --> 02:52:59.520 subtraction C. 02:52:59.520 --> 02:53:03.520 In the salvation of the Judeans is not a happy accident at 02:53:03.520 --> 02:53:05.360 all. It's a divine act. 02:53:05.360 --> 02:53:11.200 God acted through them to preserve both the Judeans, the Jewish bloodline, 02:53:11.200 --> 02:53:14.960 and it preserved Artaxerxes' kingdom. 02:53:14.960 --> 02:53:17.920 Artaxerxes remained king because God intervened. 02:53:17.920 --> 02:53:22.160 The Macedonians did not overthrow the Persians at this time, because God 02:53:22.160 --> 02:53:23.600 did not permit it. 02:53:23.600 --> 02:53:25.360 Later on he did permit it. 02:53:25.360 --> 02:53:29.760 Now Now, we don't know to what extent Arta Xerxes preserved his 02:53:29.760 --> 02:53:30.800 confession here. 02:53:30.800 --> 02:53:34.480 I don't think there's any archaeological record for it, so probably not 02:53:34.480 --> 02:53:36.640 a great personal track record for him. 02:53:36.640 --> 02:53:38.720 On the other hand, that would be the sort of thing that 02:53:38.720 --> 02:53:40.240 would get deleted. 02:53:40.240 --> 02:53:43.280 Yeah, there are often cases I'm not making the claim that this 02:53:43.280 --> 02:53:48.880 happened here, but you will find cases where entire portions of a 02:53:48.880 --> 02:53:53.520 dynasty get deleted because they crossed Some future leader. 02:53:53.520 --> 02:53:57.040 So the absence of evidence isn't evidence either way. 02:53:57.040 --> 02:54:00.640 We don't know, and I certainly wouldn't either. 02:54:00.640 --> 02:54:04.720 But Arta Xerxes had a Christian confession at times. 02:54:04.720 --> 02:54:07.920 And I think that when you think back to that verse in 02:54:07.920 --> 02:54:12.960 First Thessalonians 2 that I quoted earlier, God desires all mankind to 02:54:12.960 --> 02:54:18.320 come to him, every nation, not individuals, nations, kings on down. 02:54:18.320 --> 02:54:20.560 There's no such thing as individuals. 02:54:20.560 --> 02:54:23.680 When a king is good, his people are good. 02:54:23.680 --> 02:54:28.160 When Job was king over Edom, Edom was a Christian land. 02:54:28.160 --> 02:54:30.480 They were a land of God fearers. 02:54:30.480 --> 02:54:32.720 Do you think that this king who is so blessed by God 02:54:32.720 --> 02:54:34.880 and who was held up as blameless? 02:54:34.880 --> 02:54:38.160 Do you think that he had people committing idolatry the way the 02:54:38.160 --> 02:54:40.640 Jews are committing idolatry left and right? 02:54:40.640 --> 02:54:42.000 Absolutely not. 02:54:42.000 --> 02:54:44.560 God would not have called him blameless as a king because he 02:54:44.560 --> 02:54:45.520 would have been responsible. 02:54:46.160 --> 02:54:49.200 When you have a good ruler, you have good people. 02:54:49.200 --> 02:54:51.360 When you have a good husband, you have a good wife, you 02:54:51.360 --> 02:54:52.800 have good children. 02:54:52.800 --> 02:54:57.760 Now, it's imperfect when humans are doing this, but the influence of 02:54:57.760 --> 02:55:01.920 the man who's at the top shapes everything else. 02:55:01.920 --> 02:55:07.600 Every time Israel had a bad ruler, they fell away and God 02:55:07.600 --> 02:55:09.200 crushed them again. 02:55:09.200 --> 02:55:13.440 Repeatedly they were punished, thrown into chains as they have been again 02:55:13.440 --> 02:55:16.160 here in Esther, for punishment. 02:55:16.160 --> 02:55:18.960 Esther confessed that in her prayer, they deserved it 'cause they were 02:55:18.960 --> 02:55:24.960 idolatrous. And Mardecaus cried out to God, remember your covenant with your 02:55:24.960 --> 02:55:30.240 people. Remember the promise you made to Abraham, because we're a part 02:55:30.240 --> 02:55:30.960 of it. 02:55:30.960 --> 02:55:34.480 For his sake, for your sake, keep your promise, and it's gonna 02:55:34.480 --> 02:55:36.560 save us and the process. 02:55:36.560 --> 02:55:40.720 The Christian conduct here is falls to almost everybody except for Amon 02:55:40.800 --> 02:55:44.640 himself. It's a remarkable difference in books. 02:55:44.640 --> 02:55:46.000 And so it's well worth reading. 02:55:46.000 --> 02:55:47.680 Like Hester's a great book. 02:55:47.680 --> 02:55:48.800 I really like it now. 02:55:48.960 --> 02:55:51.920 I never I did not like it at all. 02:55:51.920 --> 02:55:55.520 For the historical reasons I've been told because it just it did 02:55:55.520 --> 02:55:57.840 not have the voice of God in it. 02:55:57.840 --> 02:56:00.880 As we've said before, a lot of guys, random people, I don't 02:56:00.800 --> 02:56:05.120 know them, have said when I started reading the Septuagint, it had 02:56:05.120 --> 02:56:08.800 the same voice as the New Testament, and that is absolutely true. 02:56:08.800 --> 02:56:12.480 God promises that his sheep will recognize his voice, and that's what 02:56:12.480 --> 02:56:14.240 we have here in the Septuagint. 02:56:14.240 --> 02:56:17.680 Certainly what we have here in Aster. 02:56:17.680 --> 02:56:21.680 And so this is the end of our Old Testament section of 02:56:21.680 --> 02:56:24.320 the ongoing Septuagint series. 02:56:24.320 --> 02:56:26.640 We will be doing two, we believe. 02:56:26.960 --> 02:56:29.600 There's always that possibility of a third, but we believe we can 02:56:29.600 --> 02:56:30.640 do it in two. 02:56:30.640 --> 02:56:33.600 We will be doing two episodes in the New Testament and then 02:56:33.600 --> 02:56:37.360 the final episode on where do we go from here? 02:56:37.360 --> 02:56:42.640 But by way of sort of a section conclusion, I want to 02:56:42.640 --> 02:56:46.400 go over a few miscellaneous things that I just happen to have 02:56:46.400 --> 02:56:51.920 noticed, as it were, in my own reading, and then sort of 02:56:51.920 --> 02:56:56.080 close out this section of the Septuagint series. 02:56:56.080 --> 02:56:59.280 But in the book of First Samuel, and it happens to be 02:56:59.280 --> 02:57:02.160 the example because it is the book through which I am reading 02:57:02.160 --> 02:57:05.040 right now for the daily devotions, and I've been looking at the 02:57:05.040 --> 02:57:07.680 footnotes as I've gone along. 02:57:07.680 --> 02:57:11.760 And in chapter 20, which I read recently, one of the footnotes 02:57:11.760 --> 02:57:13.360 stood out to me, footnote six. 02:57:13.360 --> 02:57:17.520 These are going to all be footnotes from the ESV, and I'm 02:57:17.520 --> 02:57:22.320 making a point that Woe made earlier on, but I want you 02:57:22.320 --> 02:57:25.760 to pay close attention to some of these footnotes and something that 02:57:25.760 --> 02:57:27.520 you will hear consistently. 02:57:27.520 --> 02:57:33.120 And so footnote six, which is in chapter twenty, verse starting with 02:57:33.920 --> 02:57:36.080 forty, I'll read forty and forty one. 02:57:36.080 --> 02:57:39.280 And Jonathan gave his weapons to his boy and said to him, 02:57:39.280 --> 02:57:41.040 Go and carry them to the city. 02:57:41.040 --> 02:57:43.600 And as soon as the boy had gone, David rose from beside 02:57:43.600 --> 02:57:46.080 the stone heap and fell on his face to the ground and 02:57:46.080 --> 02:57:48.160 bowed three times. 02:57:48.160 --> 02:57:52.320 When you read that verse, you think that you're reading the Rabbinic 02:57:52.320 --> 02:57:56.320 Text, because supposedly the ESV Old Testament is based on the Rabbinic 02:57:56.320 --> 02:58:02.320 Text. But if you look at Footnote 6, it says Septuagint, Hebrew, 02:58:02.320 --> 02:58:04.640 from beside the south. 02:58:04.640 --> 02:58:08.080 And so if we were to read this in the Hebrew instead 02:58:08.080 --> 02:58:10.400 of in the Greek, it would say, and as soon as the 02:58:10.400 --> 02:58:14.640 boy had gone, David rose from beside the south and fell on 02:58:14.640 --> 02:58:16.320 his face. 02:58:16.320 --> 02:58:20.400 This is one of those instances where they have used the Greek 02:58:20.400 --> 02:58:24.480 to correct the Hebrew, because the Hebrew is incoherent. 02:58:25.280 --> 02:58:29.280 Now I'm just going to read straight through just the footnotes, not 02:58:29.280 --> 02:58:35.360 the accompanying verses Footnotes one through six in Samuel chapter twelve. 02:58:35.840 --> 02:58:38.080 one Septuagint. 02:58:38.080 --> 02:58:40.640 Hebrew lax testify against me. 02:58:40.640 --> 02:58:41.520 Number two. 02:58:41.520 --> 02:58:45.120 Septuagint. Hebrew lax is witness. 02:58:45.120 --> 02:58:46.000 Number three. 02:58:46.000 --> 02:58:50.080 Septuagint. Hebrew lacks and the Egyptians oppress them. 02:58:50.480 --> 02:58:54.320 four. Septuagent the army of Jabin, King of Hazor. 02:58:54.720 --> 02:58:57.440 five. Septuagent, Syriac. 02:58:57.440 --> 02:59:00.000 Hebrew has instead Badan. 02:59:00.400 --> 02:59:02.240 six. Septuagint. 02:59:02.240 --> 02:59:04.800 Hebrew has Fathers. 02:59:04.800 --> 02:59:08.880 In this one chapter, there are five instances. 02:59:08.880 --> 02:59:12.000 In the sixth one they decided not this is not the sixth, 02:59:12.000 --> 02:59:13.840 but in Footnote 4. 02:59:13.840 --> 02:59:17.760 They decided not to include what is in the Septuagint, but in 02:59:17.760 --> 02:59:22.400 each of the other cases, they included the language from the Septuagint 02:59:22.640 --> 02:59:24.800 in preference to the Hebrew. 02:59:24.800 --> 02:59:27.840 And so when Woe said earlier in the episode that when you 02:59:27.840 --> 02:59:30.880 read the Old Testament, in many places you are in fact reading 02:59:30.880 --> 02:59:32.480 the Septuagint. 02:59:32.480 --> 02:59:34.000 That's very true. 02:59:34.000 --> 02:59:38.640 Because there are many places where the translators have decided to clarify, 02:59:38.640 --> 02:59:44.320 to add to, to correct the Hebrew Using the Greek. 02:59:44.320 --> 02:59:47.280 I will get back to that in a moment, but I want 02:59:47.280 --> 02:59:50.560 to go over a few footnotes from chapter thirteen, just to sort 02:59:50.560 --> 02:59:53.200 of drive home this point. 02:59:53.200 --> 02:59:58.240 In verse one, chapter thirteen, you have Saul lived for one year 02:59:58.400 --> 03:00:01.280 and then became king, and when he had reigned for two years 03:00:01.280 --> 03:00:04.800 over Israel, Saul chose three thousand men of Israel, and then it 03:00:04.800 --> 03:00:07.760 keeps going on, but there's a footnote there on Israel. 03:00:07.760 --> 03:00:13.040 That footnote one says Hebrew Saul was one year old when he 03:00:13.040 --> 03:00:17.840 became king, and he reigned two years over Israel. 03:00:17.840 --> 03:00:23.040 They use the Septuagint because the Hebrew is simply wrong. 03:00:23.040 --> 03:00:27.040 Because Saul is, of course, not one year old at this point, 03:00:27.040 --> 03:00:30.480 and Saul did not become king when he was one year old. 03:00:30.480 --> 03:00:32.320 Because he was anointed. 03:00:32.720 --> 03:00:36.400 when he was already a full grown man. 03:00:36.400 --> 03:00:39.840 And so this is another case where the Greek has been used 03:00:39.840 --> 03:00:45.200 not simply to add to the Hebrew, but to correct an error 03:00:45.200 --> 03:00:47.040 in the Hebrew. 03:00:47.520 --> 03:00:51.200 And then we have later on in verse fifteen, and Samuel arose 03:00:51.280 --> 03:00:53.120 and went up from Gilgal. 03:00:53.440 --> 03:00:56.720 rest of the people went up after Saul to meet the army. 03:00:56.720 --> 03:00:59.840 They went up from Gilgal to Gibeah of Benjamin. 03:00:59.840 --> 03:01:05.200 Well the footnote says, Septuagint, Hebrew lacks, the rest of the people, 03:01:05.200 --> 03:01:07.040 from Gilgal. 03:01:07.040 --> 03:01:10.880 We're just missing a bunch of that verse in the Rabbinic text. 03:01:11.120 --> 03:01:15.040 and they used the Greek to correct it. 03:01:15.040 --> 03:01:16.400 Footnote four. 03:01:16.400 --> 03:01:21.600 This one simply says Septuagint Hebrew ploughshare, because the Hebrew repeats a 03:01:21.600 --> 03:01:25.360 word from earlier in the verse, they use the Septuagint to correct 03:01:25.360 --> 03:01:29.600 that. And then the final example, Footnote seven. 03:01:29.600 --> 03:01:34.320 Footnote seven, which is to chapter twenty one, simply says The meaning 03:01:34.320 --> 03:01:36.800 of the Hebrew verse is uncertain. 03:01:36.800 --> 03:01:38.560 We don't know what it means. 03:01:38.560 --> 03:01:43.040 We just use the septuagent to try to fix it. 03:01:43.040 --> 03:01:46.720 Now, if you're dealing with a human contract, there is going to 03:01:46.720 --> 03:01:50.320 be an official version of that contract. 03:01:50.320 --> 03:01:53.840 The official version is the version that is theoretically read by all 03:01:53.840 --> 03:01:58.320 parties. It is then signed by the relevant parties, usually certified in 03:01:58.320 --> 03:02:02.560 some way, maybe stamped, maybe you have a notary there. 03:02:02.560 --> 03:02:06.000 It is the official version of the document. 03:02:06.000 --> 03:02:09.680 It is, in fact, the only binding version of the document. 03:02:09.680 --> 03:02:14.080 Now you can make conformed or certified copies, which are simply copies, 03:02:14.080 --> 03:02:17.760 exact copies, in the case of certified, of the of the original, 03:02:17.760 --> 03:02:20.800 but the original is binding because it is the original. 03:02:20.800 --> 03:02:23.920 It is the agreement of the parties. 03:02:23.920 --> 03:02:28.000 We have something similar when it comes to literature, and I will 03:02:28.000 --> 03:02:30.240 get to scripture in a minute here, because scripture is a type 03:02:30.240 --> 03:02:33.600 of literature, but there's a key difference. 03:02:33.600 --> 03:02:38.880 If you have fragments of some historical piece of literature, and say 03:02:38.880 --> 03:02:43.440 you're missing part of it, you can go to foreign language translations 03:02:43.440 --> 03:02:46.480 of it in order to fix what is missing. 03:02:46.480 --> 03:02:48.320 Now is it going to be perfect? 03:02:48.320 --> 03:02:50.400 Probably not. 03:02:50.400 --> 03:02:53.680 But is it going to be good enough for a secular work? 03:02:53.680 --> 03:02:55.840 The answer is of course it is. 03:02:55.840 --> 03:02:58.720 Because you are going to be able to restore what was lost, 03:02:58.720 --> 03:03:03.280 corrupted, bugs ate it, the ink smeared, whatever it happens to be, 03:03:03.280 --> 03:03:07.360 many things happened to documents down through the centuries. 03:03:07.360 --> 03:03:08.400 Is that acceptable 03:03:09.520 --> 03:03:12.080 when it comes to the Word of God? 03:03:12.560 --> 03:03:17.040 The answer is no, because God, of course, says, neither jot nor 03:03:17.040 --> 03:03:20.400 tittle. And for those who don't know, a jot and a tittle, 03:03:20.400 --> 03:03:23.360 look at the letter I, the line is a jot, the dot 03:03:23.360 --> 03:03:24.480 is a tittle. 03:03:24.480 --> 03:03:26.080 That's the English example. 03:03:26.080 --> 03:03:29.920 Neither jot nor tittle will pass away. 03:03:29.920 --> 03:03:31.920 The way that we have treated 03:03:32.960 --> 03:03:39.680 as the Christian Church, the Old Testament, God's Word, is utterly unacceptable. 03:03:39.680 --> 03:03:44.720 We have made this hodgepodge by using the text that the rabbis 03:03:44.720 --> 03:03:48.320 gave us and then fixing it with the Greek as best we 03:03:48.320 --> 03:03:53.440 can in places where it's broken or incomprehensible or missing, whatever it 03:03:53.440 --> 03:03:55.040 happens to be. 03:03:55.040 --> 03:03:59.920 But to return to the example of the contract, you can't fix 03:03:59.920 --> 03:04:03.200 the lesser unless you have the greater. 03:04:03.200 --> 03:04:05.280 And you can't fix the greater with the lesser. 03:04:05.280 --> 03:04:09.280 So for instance, if you have a corrupted copy of something, you 03:04:09.280 --> 03:04:12.880 can't use that to fix that which is superior. 03:04:12.880 --> 03:04:16.960 What I'm saying more plainly is that we already admit the Greek 03:04:16.960 --> 03:04:18.720 is the Word of God. 03:04:18.720 --> 03:04:23.680 Because if you are using the Greek to correct the Hebrew, you 03:04:23.680 --> 03:04:26.560 are saying the Greek is correct. 03:04:26.560 --> 03:04:30.400 The Greek is the word of God, because otherwise you couldn't do 03:04:30.400 --> 03:04:34.080 that. If the Hebrew were the word of God, you could not 03:04:34.080 --> 03:04:35.840 use the Greek to correct it. 03:04:35.840 --> 03:04:39.200 You would have to be content with whatever the Hebrew has. 03:04:39.200 --> 03:04:40.400 Well we haven't done that. 03:04:40.400 --> 03:04:45.200 We've already tacitly admitted that we believe the Greek is superior. 03:04:45.200 --> 03:04:48.880 What we're simply saying is we should go ahead and go forward 03:04:48.880 --> 03:04:49.840 with the Greek. 03:04:49.840 --> 03:04:52.160 There are other reasons for that, of course, and we'll make the 03:04:52.160 --> 03:04:55.760 full conclusion to the argument after the New Testament episodes at the 03:04:55.760 --> 03:04:57.200 end of the second one. 03:04:57.200 --> 03:05:01.840 But we can already see here very plainly, we should simply be 03:05:01.840 --> 03:05:04.400 using the Greek, and we're already doing it just in a hand 03:05:04.400 --> 03:05:09.040 Just in a haphazard fashion, instead of in a consistent fashion that 03:05:09.040 --> 03:05:13.920 honors God and properly pays attention to His word and gives it 03:05:13.920 --> 03:05:16.080 its rightful place. 03:05:16.080 --> 03:05:20.640 Instead of simply turning to the Septuagint and using it to plug 03:05:20.640 --> 03:05:24.160 holes in the Hebrew, we should just use the Septuagint. 03:05:24.160 --> 03:05:27.760 It is the scripture of the ancient church. 03:05:27.760 --> 03:05:33.360 It is God's preserved word It is completely absurd that we have 03:05:33.360 --> 03:05:35.360 just accepted this state of affairs. 03:05:35.360 --> 03:05:37.840 We've just been fine with the way things have been done. 03:05:37.840 --> 03:05:41.120 Translation committees pick from here and there to plug holes and change 03:05:41.120 --> 03:05:44.240 things and interpret and deal with vague passages. 03:05:44.480 --> 03:05:49.440 We wouldn't even accept that with a translation of Shakespeare into French. 03:05:49.440 --> 03:05:51.440 And yet we accept it with the Word of God. 03:05:51.440 --> 03:05:54.960 It's completely and utterly ridiculous. 03:05:54.960 --> 03:05:58.480 It's worth repeating the quote from Eusebius that I quoted earlier. 03:05:58.480 --> 03:06:02.560 Therefore, we suspect that this was something which the Jews did. 03:06:02.560 --> 03:06:05.760 Or we could turn to Justin Martyr, who says that the Jews 03:06:05.760 --> 03:06:08.960 expunged messianic passages from their text. 03:06:09.200 --> 03:06:13.600 We could heap up examples from the church fathers saying these things. 03:06:13.600 --> 03:06:17.760 We have known all along what the Jews did to the text 03:06:17.760 --> 03:06:22.960 of Scripture, and yet we accepted the rabbinic text from their hands. 03:06:22.960 --> 03:06:26.640 And it's worth highlighting what the Jews actually believe. 03:06:26.640 --> 03:06:30.240 We've done this in previous episodes, we've done it in episodes outside 03:06:30.240 --> 03:06:34.320 this series, but it is worth repeating because it is vitally important 03:06:34.320 --> 03:06:36.960 to understanding what has happened and why. 03:06:37.120 --> 03:06:39.680 The Jews do not believe in scripture. 03:06:39.680 --> 03:06:42.320 That is the fundamental point. 03:06:42.320 --> 03:06:46.480 That is why we brought up the saying, what Torah forbids, Talmud 03:06:46.480 --> 03:06:49.200 permits. But even the Talmud they reinterpret. 03:06:49.200 --> 03:06:53.360 They don't even hold their own interpretation to be binding, and that 03:06:53.360 --> 03:06:57.200 is their own interpretation that reverses what scripture says. 03:06:57.200 --> 03:07:00.640 Because their real religion is their race. 03:07:00.640 --> 03:07:03.920 And when I say their real religion is their race, I mean 03:07:03.920 --> 03:07:06.880 that in part as a condemnation of those who would try to 03:07:06.880 --> 03:07:13.200 stand up neo-paganism as an alternative for Christians, as an alternative for 03:07:13.200 --> 03:07:16.720 the white Western world, for Europeans. 03:07:16.720 --> 03:07:19.200 Because that's a race religion. 03:07:19.200 --> 03:07:22.560 It's not quite the same of a race religion as what the 03:07:22.560 --> 03:07:25.600 Jews have built, but it's still turning into that. 03:07:25.600 --> 03:07:26.960 It's completely absurd. 03:07:26.960 --> 03:07:27.680 We don't want to be 03:07:28.560 --> 03:07:32.960 what they have become, what they have made themselves over many centuries 03:07:32.960 --> 03:07:36.960 of extreme wickedness. 03:07:36.960 --> 03:07:38.880 And so the question is 03:07:40.000 --> 03:07:45.200 why? Why would the Jews make these edits? 03:07:45.200 --> 03:07:49.520 I went over one of the reasons earlier in the episode. 03:07:49.520 --> 03:07:56.160 In addressing the prophecies about the Christ, their own personal interpretation of 03:07:56.160 --> 03:08:00.000 them, they had for a long time held that the Christ would 03:08:00.000 --> 03:08:04.000 appear at the end of or during the sixth age, and for 03:08:04.000 --> 03:08:06.720 them an age was basically a thousand years. 03:08:06.720 --> 03:08:10.960 The problem, of course, is as I highlighted earlier with the genealogies, 03:08:11.280 --> 03:08:17.040 if you tabulate those genealogies, well oops, Christ was born in about 03:08:17.040 --> 03:08:19.040 the year 5500. 03:08:19.040 --> 03:08:20.880 Exactly when they thought he would be born. 03:08:20.880 --> 03:08:24.560 Now we could say maybe their interpretation of whatever they were reading 03:08:24.560 --> 03:08:29.360 was right, or maybe it's incidentally right, or my personal preference, I 03:08:29.360 --> 03:08:32.240 think God was playing a little joke on them. 03:08:32.240 --> 03:08:34.000 But they couldn't have that. 03:08:34.000 --> 03:08:38.880 So they went back in and edited the genealogies, to remove somewhere 03:08:38.880 --> 03:08:42.400 between a thousand and fifteen hundred years, right around there. 03:08:42.400 --> 03:08:46.800 Because now, in their reckoning, Christ is born in the year four 03:08:46.800 --> 03:08:50.640 thousand. Well he can't possibly be the Messiah. 03:08:50.640 --> 03:08:52.960 He's not born in the sixth age. 03:08:54.320 --> 03:08:56.720 Well, think about that for a minute. 03:08:57.040 --> 03:09:01.920 According to the Jewish reckoning, in what age are we currently? 03:09:01.920 --> 03:09:04.560 We're in the sixth age. 03:09:04.560 --> 03:09:08.880 That is why they are getting so amped up about their plans 03:09:08.880 --> 03:09:14.240 to build the temple, about their Messiah appearing, which if anyone like 03:09:14.240 --> 03:09:18.480 that appears, it is most certainly the Antichrist. 03:09:18.480 --> 03:09:23.680 But they have changed it so that their interpretations will match the 03:09:23.680 --> 03:09:28.480 tabulation and their Messiah should appear pretty much any day now. 03:09:28.480 --> 03:09:29.520 That's what they believe. 03:09:29.520 --> 03:09:31.600 That's why they made those changes. 03:09:31.600 --> 03:09:36.480 It's similar to that reinterpretation of Amalek as Europe and Christendom. 03:09:36.480 --> 03:09:41.200 Because if you read scripture and simply believe what Scripture says, Amalek 03:09:41.360 --> 03:09:43.280 doesn't descend from Japheth. 03:09:43.280 --> 03:09:45.680 Europeans descend from Japheth. 03:09:45.680 --> 03:09:49.280 We can't be Amalek because we're not related to him. 03:09:49.280 --> 03:09:52.800 They are more closely related to Amalek than we are. 03:09:52.800 --> 03:09:57.840 But of course, they've reinterpreted that, because it is only their interpretation 03:09:57.840 --> 03:10:02.400 of whatever document that serves their racial ends as the Jewish people 03:10:02.560 --> 03:10:04.560 that is their true religion. 03:10:04.560 --> 03:10:08.560 And so that's why they changed Haman from a Macedonian to an 03:10:08.560 --> 03:10:13.040 Agagite, to make him an Amalekite, to make the narrative in Esther 03:10:13.280 --> 03:10:15.760 match their revenge fantasy. 03:10:17.440 --> 03:10:21.360 I said earlier that I would talk about three types of edits 03:10:21.600 --> 03:10:24.320 that the rabbis made to scripture. 03:10:24.320 --> 03:10:26.480 And so I want to go over those now. 03:10:26.480 --> 03:10:30.080 I think these are probably the three sorts of things you want 03:10:30.080 --> 03:10:33.920 to look for if you're reading through and trying to compare. 03:10:33.920 --> 03:10:36.960 Now I would say, and Woe would also say just read the 03:10:36.960 --> 03:10:40.000 Septuagint. You don't need to spend a bunch of time going back 03:10:40.000 --> 03:10:41.680 and forth and comparing one to the other. 03:10:41.680 --> 03:10:44.800 If you're so inclined though, here are the three types of changes 03:10:44.800 --> 03:10:45.920 you're going to see. 03:10:45.920 --> 03:10:49.680 And even if you're just familiar with scripture and you're reading the 03:10:49.680 --> 03:10:54.240 Septuagint, you will still notice these changes because you'll have that knowledge 03:10:54.720 --> 03:10:59.200 Of the rabbinic text, of course, modulo the changes they've made by 03:10:59.200 --> 03:11:01.600 importing the Septuagint. 03:11:01.600 --> 03:11:06.160 But the three main kinds of changes they've made are a reduction 03:11:06.400 --> 03:11:11.520 in God's role, the concealing or removing of Christ, and the elevation 03:11:11.520 --> 03:11:13.120 of the Jews. 03:11:13.120 --> 03:11:17.200 You see all of this in Esther, incidentally, you certainly see that 03:11:17.200 --> 03:11:23.120 reduction in God's role in Esther, because God's just completely absent in 03:11:23.120 --> 03:11:25.200 the rabbi's version of Esther. 03:11:25.200 --> 03:11:28.000 He's certainly not in the Septuagint, he's from the beginning to the 03:11:28.000 --> 03:11:30.960 end, the alpha and the omega as it were. 03:11:30.960 --> 03:11:33.680 The elevation of the Jews, of course, is also there in Esther 03:11:33.760 --> 03:11:38.320 because they turned it into this revenge fantasy that is purely a 03:11:38.320 --> 03:11:42.560 racial matter, God's not really involved, it's just the Jews getting revenge 03:11:42.560 --> 03:11:45.520 on people who don't like them for no reason whatsoever. 03:11:45.520 --> 03:11:49.920 Ironically again, removing the bad reason they weren't liked at this particular 03:11:49.920 --> 03:11:53.120 point in history, probably the only time. 03:11:53.120 --> 03:11:55.840 And then concealing or removing Christ. 03:11:55.840 --> 03:11:59.520 There are many prophecies, we went over those in an earlier episode, 03:11:59.520 --> 03:12:04.480 but there's one that's perhaps worth going into a little bit more. 03:12:04.480 --> 03:12:09.520 It's worth noting that a virgin birth isn't technically impossible. 03:12:09.520 --> 03:12:13.280 And so if all you have is that, that's not an impossibility 03:12:13.360 --> 03:12:18.240 because technically speaking, a human being being a mammal, mammals can do 03:12:18.240 --> 03:12:21.120 this, a woman can give birth to her own clone. 03:12:21.120 --> 03:12:26.080 The virgin birth is a miracle because Christ is male. 03:12:26.080 --> 03:12:29.120 And clone of a woman is in fact not a man, as 03:12:29.120 --> 03:12:31.440 you might have noticed. 03:12:31.440 --> 03:12:36.240 The fundamental baseline takeaway is that they truly are of their father 03:12:36.240 --> 03:12:37.440 the devil. 03:12:37.440 --> 03:12:40.800 He's a liar and a murderer from the beginning, in the words 03:12:40.800 --> 03:12:41.760 of Christ. 03:12:41.760 --> 03:12:47.520 They have done everything they can to subvert the church all along. 03:12:47.520 --> 03:12:54.160 Because they hate Christ, they hate his sheep, they hate his church, 03:12:54.160 --> 03:12:57.200 and they want to do everything they can to destroy it. 03:12:57.200 --> 03:12:59.200 That's why they call us Amalek. 03:12:59.200 --> 03:13:01.280 That's why they've made these changes. 03:13:01.280 --> 03:13:04.320 That's why they're willing to go so far as to edit the 03:13:04.320 --> 03:13:06.240 Word of God. 03:13:06.240 --> 03:13:09.200 And Christians have known this for centuries. 03:13:09.520 --> 03:13:12.320 The early church used the Septuagint. 03:13:12.320 --> 03:13:14.320 That was their Bible. 03:13:14.320 --> 03:13:18.400 When you read, many of the church fathers, when they quote scripture, 03:13:18.400 --> 03:13:22.720 they quote the Septuagint, because the Septuagint is Scripture. 03:13:22.720 --> 03:13:23.840 That's what they were reading. 03:13:23.840 --> 03:13:25.760 They were reading it in Greek. 03:13:25.760 --> 03:13:30.240 We have had the Septuagint all along because God did exactly what 03:13:30.240 --> 03:13:31.440 he promised. 03:13:31.440 --> 03:13:34.640 Because God has promised he would preserve his word. 03:13:34.640 --> 03:13:37.040 As we noted, the Hebrew was entirely lost. 03:13:37.040 --> 03:13:39.520 God destroyed it, it's more than lost. 03:13:39.520 --> 03:13:42.000 God destroyed Hebrew. 03:13:42.000 --> 03:13:46.080 And not just the Hebrew of Scripture, He destroyed the Hebrew language. 03:13:46.640 --> 03:13:48.960 He erased it from the earth. 03:13:48.960 --> 03:13:55.680 They resurrected something, they basically practice necromancy, the linguistic equivalent, revived this 03:13:55.680 --> 03:13:59.120 thing and called it Hebrew. 03:13:59.120 --> 03:14:03.920 But that's not scripture, because Scripture is what we've had all along, 03:14:03.920 --> 03:14:07.600 that God preserved for us as He promised He would, in the 03:14:07.600 --> 03:14:09.600 Greek, a language that has never been 03:14:10.720 --> 03:14:15.440 lost. Now some of us in the West certainly forgot how to 03:14:15.440 --> 03:14:19.680 read and write and understand Greek, but the Greek language was never 03:14:19.680 --> 03:14:24.000 lost. We have always had Greek speakers, we have always had the 03:14:24.000 --> 03:14:27.840 resources to learn and use the Greek. 03:14:27.840 --> 03:14:30.800 We basically just sort of lost them in a wall, like the 03:14:30.800 --> 03:14:34.000 Israelites did with scripture at one point. 03:14:34.000 --> 03:14:37.600 In fact, one of the words in Esther, a word that basically 03:14:37.600 --> 03:14:42.880 translates to braggart, traces all the way back to Homeric Greek, is 03:14:42.880 --> 03:14:48.080 a fundamentally different thing from the degenerate Hebrew language that never rose 03:14:48.080 --> 03:14:51.360 to the level of a true and full language, and then God 03:14:51.360 --> 03:14:53.760 killed it and erased it. 03:14:53.760 --> 03:14:57.680 So the fact that we ever accepted anything from the hands of 03:14:57.680 --> 03:15:01.040 the rabbis is completely and utterly ridiculous. 03:15:01.040 --> 03:15:03.680 All we had to do was be faithful to what God gave 03:15:04.320 --> 03:15:08.960 to his church, what God preserved for his church, what the early 03:15:08.960 --> 03:15:11.760 church used as its foundation. 03:15:11.760 --> 03:15:14.880 If we had simply stuck with that, we would have avoided so 03:15:14.880 --> 03:15:17.840 very many problems down through the centuries. 03:15:17.840 --> 03:15:20.880 Now thankfully it has still been preserved, and so all we have 03:15:20.880 --> 03:15:24.960 to do is the relatively minor work of translating from one European 03:15:24.960 --> 03:15:26.640 language to another. 03:15:26.800 --> 03:15:28.240 Very easy to do. 03:15:28.240 --> 03:15:32.560 There's some differences, of course, even translating from German to French or 03:15:32.560 --> 03:15:33.760 French to English. 03:15:33.760 --> 03:15:38.560 Closely related languages, there's still some differences, some difficulties. 03:15:38.560 --> 03:15:43.600 But it's nothing like translating from Hebrew to a proper language. 03:15:43.600 --> 03:15:46.160 It's still the same language family. 03:15:46.160 --> 03:15:50.080 It is not that hard for us to translate Greek into English, 03:15:50.080 --> 03:15:52.480 or for those men who are so inclined to learn Greek and 03:15:52.480 --> 03:15:54.000 read it in the Greek. 03:15:54.000 --> 03:15:56.080 It's not that hard to do. 03:15:56.080 --> 03:15:59.760 And God preserved it for us, and actually He also preserved us 03:15:59.760 --> 03:16:04.160 against ourselves and our own stupidity, which is something that God does 03:16:04.160 --> 03:16:09.200 constantly. God has a sort of special care for fools, as has 03:16:09.200 --> 03:16:12.800 been said many times in many ways down the millennia. 03:16:12.800 --> 03:16:16.720 Thankfully, in this case, we are the recipients of that blessing. 03:16:16.720 --> 03:16:19.440 Whether or not we bear the bulk of the blame or we 03:16:19.440 --> 03:16:23.040 can assign it to our ancestors hardly matters, because of course children 03:16:23.040 --> 03:16:25.680 do suffer for the sins of their fathers. 03:16:26.880 --> 03:16:30.640 In this case, though, we have the great fortune that we have 03:16:30.640 --> 03:16:33.760 not actually lost Actually, lost anything except time. 03:16:33.760 --> 03:16:39.920 Because yes, we have centuries of scholarship unfortunately devoted to the rabbinic 03:16:39.920 --> 03:16:43.600 text. That is time that was largely wasted. 03:16:43.600 --> 03:16:47.600 If it had been devoted, to the Septuagint, to the study of 03:16:47.600 --> 03:16:50.720 God's actual word, we can only imagine the sort of riches we 03:16:50.720 --> 03:16:52.560 would have on hand today. 03:16:52.560 --> 03:16:54.640 But at the same time we have to look at this as 03:16:54.640 --> 03:16:56.080 an opportunity. 03:16:56.080 --> 03:16:59.200 Because we have the Word of God, we know how to read 03:16:59.200 --> 03:17:02.240 the Word of God, it's very easy for us to translate the 03:17:02.240 --> 03:17:06.480 Word of God, and now we get to do centuries of scholarship 03:17:06.480 --> 03:17:11.680 on the Word of God in an actually functional language. 03:17:11.680 --> 03:17:14.800 We don't have to make excuse for things that are missing or 03:17:14.800 --> 03:17:16.800 for things that are incomprehensible. 03:17:16.800 --> 03:17:20.080 We're not going to have eight thousand footnotes in the text when 03:17:20.080 --> 03:17:23.680 we're done saying the wording of this is uncertain, the Hebrew is 03:17:23.680 --> 03:17:24.160 unclear. 03:17:25.360 --> 03:17:27.760 The Hebrew is uncertain. 03:17:27.760 --> 03:17:29.520 We're not going to have that. 03:17:29.520 --> 03:17:31.600 Because that is not the case with Greek. 03:17:31.600 --> 03:17:33.520 Because men can learn and read Greek. 03:17:33.520 --> 03:17:35.040 It's still a living language. 03:17:35.040 --> 03:17:39.280 If you learn it, granted, learn modern pronunciation, not Erasmian, but if 03:17:39.280 --> 03:17:44.560 you learn Greek, you could travel and speak to native speakers, because 03:17:44.560 --> 03:17:46.000 it's a living language. 03:17:46.000 --> 03:17:48.160 The same is not true of Hebrew, and there are those who 03:17:48.160 --> 03:17:49.200 say, what about modern Hebrew? 03:17:49.200 --> 03:17:51.040 It's a fundamentally different language. 03:17:51.040 --> 03:17:52.560 It is not the same thing. 03:17:52.560 --> 03:17:55.680 We went over that in a previous episode. 03:17:55.680 --> 03:18:00.320 And so we do not want you to look at this as 03:18:00.640 --> 03:18:05.760 some sort of horrible disaster, some sort of incurable wrong. 03:18:05.760 --> 03:18:07.680 We don't want you to look at all the Bibles in your 03:18:07.680 --> 03:18:10.960 house and think I have to burn these things. 03:18:10.960 --> 03:18:15.200 Instead we want you to look at this as being proof of 03:18:15.200 --> 03:18:20.080 God's care for his church, of being proof that God does follow 03:18:20.080 --> 03:18:23.200 through with his promises, that not a single word of his ever 03:18:23.200 --> 03:18:24.560 falls to the ground. 03:18:24.560 --> 03:18:28.560 He said he would preserve his word and he did despite All 03:18:28.560 --> 03:18:32.080 of the attacks of the Jews, all of the attacks of Satan, 03:18:32.080 --> 03:18:36.480 and all of the stupidity of Christians down through the centuries. 03:18:36.480 --> 03:18:41.040 Despite all of that, despite the odds, we still have the Word 03:18:41.040 --> 03:18:41.920 of God. 03:18:41.920 --> 03:18:46.480 We still have it in its entirety, in an accessible form. 03:18:46.480 --> 03:18:51.840 All we have to do is read it, translate it, use it, 03:18:51.840 --> 03:18:57.040 and stop relying on the wickedness that is the rabbinic text, this 03:18:57.040 --> 03:19:01.840 thing that was handed to us by the Christ killers, with the 03:19:01.840 --> 03:19:08.320 very obviously explicit goal of subverting the church and destroying the faith. 03:19:08.240 --> 03:19:13.520 It doesn't mean that you can't read your current existing Bible profitably. 03:19:13.520 --> 03:19:17.680 God still preserved a great deal of his word in these texts, 03:19:17.680 --> 03:19:21.680 in these versions edited by the rabbis. 03:19:21.680 --> 03:19:24.960 But it's sorta similar to what we as Lutherans would say about 03:19:24.960 --> 03:19:28.000 the sacraments and things like that. 03:19:28.000 --> 03:19:31.600 There's the fullness of the feast to be had. 03:19:31.600 --> 03:19:34.960 All you have to do is accept it. 03:19:34.960 --> 03:19:39.920 You don't have to settle for stale bread and tepid water. 03:19:39.920 --> 03:19:42.160 God has set out the banquet. 03:19:42.160 --> 03:19:44.640 You should come to the banqueting hall. 03:19:44.640 --> 03:19:48.320 In this case, it is the Septuagint, it is the Greek, it 03:19:48.320 --> 03:19:53.760 is the Word of God, contrary to and over against the thing 03:19:53.760 --> 03:19:56.880 handed to us by the rabbis. 03:19:56.880 --> 03:20:00.720 The Christian Church was founded upon the Word of God. 03:20:00.720 --> 03:20:03.840 The Christian Church will always have the Word of God because God 03:20:03.840 --> 03:20:05.760 has promised to preserve it. 03:20:05.760 --> 03:20:10.080 All we have to do is start using it, instead of leaving 03:20:10.080 --> 03:20:12.880 it in a wall, or in our case, somewhere in the dusty 03:20:13.280 --> 03:20:16.640 archives of the Vatican or whatever museum. 03:20:16.640 --> 03:20:18.240 We have the Septuagint. 03:20:18.240 --> 03:20:19.520 It is the Word of God. 03:20:19.520 --> 03:20:22.480 It's the one used by Christ and the Apostles, it's the one 03:20:22.480 --> 03:20:25.040 used by the Church Fathers, it is the one used by the 03:20:25.040 --> 03:20:28.880 early Church, it is the one we should be using, because it 03:20:28.880 --> 03:20:31.600 is the Word of God.