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 --> 00:00:41.680 Mahler. 00:00:41.680 --> 00:00:43.520 And I'm still Wo. 00:00:43.760 --> 00:00:48.400 Today's Stone Choir is episode two of our Septuagint series. 00:00:48.400 --> 00:00:53.120 Beginning with episode ninety-nine, we did a prequel called Context Window, where 00:00:53.120 --> 00:00:56.560 we discussed kind of the framework that we're using for covering a 00:00:56.560 --> 00:00:58.320 very expansive subject. 00:00:58.320 --> 00:01:01.280 And the point that I made there that I reiterated in the 00:01:01.280 --> 00:01:04.960 first episode of the SEP2AGent series, and I'll reiterate here briefly. 00:01:04.960 --> 00:01:08.880 We're covering so much ground, particularly in this episode, there's no possible 00:01:08.880 --> 00:01:10.880 way for you to keep it all in your head. 00:01:10.880 --> 00:01:14.080 And in the last episode, we covered a lot of time, but 00:01:14.080 --> 00:01:17.600 we focused on a relatively short list of events. 00:01:17.600 --> 00:01:19.760 As I said in that episode, no, none of this is revolutionary, 00:01:19.760 --> 00:01:23.840 none of this is new information, but the way it has been 00:01:23.840 --> 00:01:28.880 framed in the modern world, looking back through history is false. 00:01:28.880 --> 00:01:31.920 So everyone will repeat the same facts, but they'll lie about the 00:01:31.920 --> 00:01:36.560 context. And that's where the confusion has come today about understanding why 00:01:36.560 --> 00:01:38.640 the Septuagint matters or doesn't matter. 00:01:38.800 --> 00:01:40.800 Till a couple of years ago I didn't, you know, I knew 00:01:40.800 --> 00:01:42.160 it was just trivia. 00:01:42.160 --> 00:01:45.360 It was the Greek Old Testament and okay, whatever, it's that's a 00:01:45.360 --> 00:01:46.560 jeopardy answer. 00:01:46.560 --> 00:01:49.360 It wasn't relevant to the church. 00:01:49.360 --> 00:01:54.240 This episode we're going to be covering basically the European portion of 00:01:54.240 --> 00:01:55.360 the history of scripture. 00:01:55.360 --> 00:01:59.200 So in episode one hundred, we went through a couple thousand years, 00:01:59.200 --> 00:02:01.280 it was focused on the Near East. 00:02:01.280 --> 00:02:04.640 And in the context window episode, I mentioned if you hear something 00:02:04.640 --> 00:02:07.200 that you disagree with or you think we're nuts or whatever, we 00:02:07.200 --> 00:02:10.880 begged listeners, if you get mad, write it down, take notes, and 00:02:10.880 --> 00:02:13.840 then try to set it aside, so that we can make the 00:02:13.840 --> 00:02:17.600 case. This episode, I'll repeat that, but I don't think there's probably 00:02:17.600 --> 00:02:20.160 going to be very much the people are going to get mad 00:02:20.160 --> 00:02:23.120 about till we get to the end of this episode, because you're 00:02:23.120 --> 00:02:25.840 probably not going to recognize most of the names that come up 00:02:25.840 --> 00:02:28.560 today. Or you'll know a little bit about them, but they won't 00:02:28.560 --> 00:02:31.120 seem to have anything to do with the Septuagint. 00:02:31.120 --> 00:02:34.160 So while I would encourage you if you do get mad to 00:02:34.160 --> 00:02:37.760 continue taking notes, you probably won't need your notepad much this time. 00:02:37.760 --> 00:02:40.400 I knew a few of these names before we started and you 00:02:40.400 --> 00:02:43.440 know didn't seem to make much difference. 00:02:43.440 --> 00:02:47.360 One of the fascinating things about this subject subject. 00:02:47.360 --> 00:02:51.760 As we look at the European history of the Bible itself, what 00:02:51.760 --> 00:02:56.000 we find is that although this is part two of our Septuagint 00:02:56.160 --> 00:02:59.600 series on the historical aspects of it, and just to recap, part 00:02:59.760 --> 00:03:03.920 three is going to be specifically focused on Old Testament differences and 00:03:03.920 --> 00:03:08.240 then part four will be focused specifically on New Testament quotations of 00:03:08.240 --> 00:03:11.360 the Old Testament, which is when we will finally validate what we've 00:03:11.360 --> 00:03:12.400 been saying all along. 00:03:12.400 --> 00:03:15.680 The Septuagint is the Bible of Jesus and the Apostles in the 00:03:15.680 --> 00:03:16.400 early church. 00:03:16.400 --> 00:03:18.960 We'll prove that in the fourth episode beyond any shadow of a 00:03:18.960 --> 00:03:22.800 doubt. And I kind of waffled about four versus five episodes. 00:03:22.800 --> 00:03:25.280 The fifth episode of the Septuagint series, we're going to do it. 00:03:25.280 --> 00:03:27.200 It's kind of going to be bonus content because we're going to 00:03:27.200 --> 00:03:28.720 talk about how to fix this mess. 00:03:28.720 --> 00:03:30.240 But that's gonna be entirely opinion. 00:03:30.240 --> 00:03:32.800 It's got nothing to do with history or the Bible itself. 00:03:32.800 --> 00:03:34.800 It's just what we think we need to do to solve it. 00:03:34.800 --> 00:03:37.440 So you can take or leave that episode depending on what you 00:03:37.440 --> 00:03:40.720 think of our opinions, but this stuff is just facts. 00:03:40.720 --> 00:03:45.280 In this second historical episode as we're focusing on the European history 00:03:45.280 --> 00:03:48.960 of scripture, the Septuagint never comes up once. 00:03:48.960 --> 00:03:50.800 None of the men that we're going to talk about ever talked 00:03:50.800 --> 00:03:52.000 about the Septuagint. 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:53.520 And that's the reason we're talking about them. 00:03:54.240 --> 00:03:58.400 Because if we're telling the truth about the Septuagint being the Old 00:03:58.400 --> 00:04:03.280 Testament of Jesus and the apostles and the early church, not only, 00:04:03.280 --> 00:04:04.720 hey, where did it go? 00:04:04.720 --> 00:04:07.600 But B, why did no one ever notice? 00:04:07.600 --> 00:04:11.360 And so at every point, we're going to highlight these minor inflection 00:04:11.360 --> 00:04:15.360 points where a decision was made in the church. 00:04:15.360 --> 00:04:16.880 Some decisions were bigger than others. 00:04:17.200 --> 00:04:20.640 Some of these moments that we're going to mention are pretty small. 00:04:20.640 --> 00:04:24.000 None of them by themselves add up to a complete rejection of 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:27.760 the Septuagint, but what they add up to is every time there 00:04:27.760 --> 00:04:30.960 was an opportunity for someone to ask the question, hey, what about 00:04:30.960 --> 00:04:31.680 that old Bible? 00:04:32.080 --> 00:04:35.440 What about those codices that we have that are from the fourth 00:04:35.440 --> 00:04:38.800 century? The Bible of the Council of Nicaea? 00:04:38.800 --> 00:04:40.800 Why don't we look at that? 00:04:40.800 --> 00:04:44.080 There were opportunities for that question to be asked and nobody ever 00:04:44.080 --> 00:04:44.800 asked them. 00:04:44.800 --> 00:04:49.520 And so we're going to highlight 15 or 20 moments in from 00:04:49.520 --> 00:04:52.160 like 400 through Reformation. 00:04:52.160 --> 00:04:55.440 We're basically going to cover Jerome very briefly again, up through the 00:04:55.440 --> 00:04:58.880 Reformation, specifically focusing on Europeans this time. 00:04:58.880 --> 00:05:01.200 No one ever talks about the Septuagint. 00:05:01.200 --> 00:05:03.840 And that's why this is part of our Septuagint series is to 00:05:03.840 --> 00:05:05.200 say, hey, where'd it go? 00:05:05.200 --> 00:05:08.880 Because when we're sitting here in the 21st century asking the question, 00:05:08.880 --> 00:05:11.680 what is this old thing and why is it relevant to us? 00:05:11.920 --> 00:05:16.320 You have to understand all the moments in church history where someone 00:05:16.320 --> 00:05:19.120 could have asked that question and then didn't. 00:05:19.120 --> 00:05:21.760 And so when we lay out the pattern, you're going to see 00:05:21.760 --> 00:05:26.800 that moment after moment, someone who could have asked the question didn't. 00:05:27.040 --> 00:05:29.040 As I was trying to come up with a way of framing 00:05:29.040 --> 00:05:31.760 this to sort of make it more obvious what it is we're 00:05:31.760 --> 00:05:35.360 trying to accomplish, there are a few metaphors that came to mind. 00:05:35.360 --> 00:05:38.080 The first is if you know you listen to classical music in 00:05:38.080 --> 00:05:42.720 particular because it has much more dynamic range than modern music, you'll 00:05:42.720 --> 00:05:47.200 have pianissimo sections which are followed by a crescendo, where it's very 00:05:47.200 --> 00:05:51.200 soft, and then there's this swell of sound as the music fleshes 00:05:51.200 --> 00:05:53.360 out loudly, boldly. 00:05:53.360 --> 00:05:58.400 The function of that pianissimo is to draw attention and build anticipation 00:05:58.400 --> 00:06:01.040 for the loudness that comes next, you know, not loud in an 00:06:01.040 --> 00:06:05.120 abrasive sense, but just way more decibels, way more volume, way more 00:06:05.120 --> 00:06:10.240 intensity. And so the quiet part actually you don't focus necessarily on 00:06:10.240 --> 00:06:13.760 the quiet part when you're listening, other than it makes you anticipate. 00:06:13.760 --> 00:06:18.160 But the loud part, the crescendo that comes after, is accentuated by 00:06:18.160 --> 00:06:20.560 the contrast with the quiet part. 00:06:20.560 --> 00:06:23.760 Another metaphor for kind of what we're dealing with here would be 00:06:23.760 --> 00:06:26.080 a pregnant pause in a conversation. 00:06:26.080 --> 00:06:29.280 I can't really do it here because the audio software I use 00:06:29.280 --> 00:06:31.360 chops out the hesitations. 00:06:31.360 --> 00:06:35.120 But you know, a pregnant pause in a conversation, someone says something, 00:06:35.120 --> 00:06:39.440 maybe something weighty or interesting or whatever, and then there's a pause 00:06:39.440 --> 00:06:42.560 that's too long for the normal flow of conversation. 00:06:42.560 --> 00:06:43.920 It just sits there. 00:06:43.920 --> 00:06:46.400 And then the conversation continues. 00:06:46.400 --> 00:06:48.880 And so what happens with a pregnant pause? 00:06:48.880 --> 00:06:53.360 It accentuates what came before and what came after by silence, by 00:06:53.360 --> 00:06:55.680 the complete absence of anybody talking. 00:06:55.680 --> 00:06:58.720 And so you don't notice the pause, you notice what's on either 00:06:58.720 --> 00:07:02.640 side of it, but what's on either side of it is amplified 00:07:02.880 --> 00:07:05.760 by that absence, by that pause. 00:07:05.760 --> 00:07:08.800 And last metaphor that I think is perhaps the most apt for 00:07:08.800 --> 00:07:12.720 what's going on here is negative space in a visual composition. 00:07:12.960 --> 00:07:16.720 If you're looking at a painting or a photograph, oftentimes someone who 00:07:16.720 --> 00:07:20.400 is skilled and has a particular idea in mind, they're not just 00:07:20.400 --> 00:07:23.280 going to put the subject right in the center. 00:07:23.280 --> 00:07:26.400 The subject may be off to one side, and maybe most of 00:07:26.400 --> 00:07:29.920 the canvas or the photograph is empty space or it's kind of 00:07:29.920 --> 00:07:34.240 neutral, it's not detailed, and then you have something perhaps off to 00:07:34.240 --> 00:07:36.960 one side where your eye is drawn. 00:07:36.960 --> 00:07:41.600 And the function of negative space is the absence of something on 00:07:41.600 --> 00:07:45.840 most of the canvas, most of the picture, forces you naturally to 00:07:45.840 --> 00:07:48.240 focus on wherever there is something. 00:07:48.160 --> 00:07:50.080 So the composition would be completely different. 00:07:50.080 --> 00:07:52.560 It would just crop down to the thing itself. 00:07:52.560 --> 00:07:56.960 And so what we have in each of these cases is the 00:07:56.960 --> 00:08:02.240 absence of something accentuating and making far more important the thing that 00:08:02.240 --> 00:08:03.360 actually happened? 00:08:03.360 --> 00:08:06.240 And so really what we're talking about in this episode is a 00:08:06.240 --> 00:08:09.920 whole bunch of negative space moments where when you look at church 00:08:09.920 --> 00:08:12.640 history, you're not going to look at any of these moments as 00:08:12.720 --> 00:08:14.880 being having anything to do with Septuagint. 00:08:14.880 --> 00:08:17.200 Because I said the Septuagint doesn't come up. 00:08:17.200 --> 00:08:18.560 And that's the point. 00:08:18.560 --> 00:08:22.320 The negative space here is the conversations that did not take place 00:08:22.320 --> 00:08:25.760 when they could have, and we are arguing should have. 00:08:25.760 --> 00:08:29.840 At every one of these points, Christian men should have said, hey, 00:08:29.840 --> 00:08:30.880 what happened? 00:08:30.880 --> 00:08:32.560 Why are we not using that? 00:08:32.560 --> 00:08:37.280 And what we're going to demonstrate by this series of seemingly small, 00:08:37.280 --> 00:08:41.440 for the most part, historical moments is that they were solving an 00:08:41.440 --> 00:08:43.120 immediate problem naturally. 00:08:43.120 --> 00:08:46.480 It's a what problem are you trying to solve situation for almost 00:08:46.480 --> 00:08:47.440 all of these. 00:08:47.440 --> 00:08:50.320 And so they weren't stupid, as we said earlier on, they're not 00:08:50.320 --> 00:08:52.560 faithless men, they weren't dumb. 00:08:52.560 --> 00:08:56.080 They had an immediate problem to solve, and it never occurred to 00:08:56.080 --> 00:08:58.880 anyone that the solution to their problem might have been to use 00:08:58.880 --> 00:09:01.760 the Bible of Jesus and the apostles in the early church. 00:09:01.760 --> 00:09:04.000 The question simply never came up. 00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:09.760 And so these examples, these moments will demonstrate why those decisions were 00:09:09.760 --> 00:09:12.320 made. And in almost every case, what we're going to have is 00:09:12.320 --> 00:09:17.280 fundamentally two false decisions, because they never thought about the third question 00:09:17.280 --> 00:09:18.320 they could have asked. 00:09:18.320 --> 00:09:22.720 They were making a false choice between two options that were both 00:09:22.720 --> 00:09:26.320 bad in some way, never considering the third option of use the 00:09:26.320 --> 00:09:28.480 Bible of Jesus and the Apostles in the early church. 00:09:28.480 --> 00:09:32.320 I keep repeating that phrase because it's true and it's ridiculous that 00:09:32.320 --> 00:09:33.440 it never came up. 00:09:33.440 --> 00:09:37.120 But in the moments when they were dealing with the media problems, 00:09:37.120 --> 00:09:39.120 it simply didn't matter. 00:09:39.120 --> 00:09:42.800 And so to briefly revisit one of the last moments that we 00:09:42.800 --> 00:09:46.320 covered in the previous episode, we have Jerome. 00:09:46.320 --> 00:09:51.120 Jerome was tasked initially by Pope Damascus I, initially just to harmonize 00:09:51.120 --> 00:09:54.720 the four gospels and to get a Latin translation that was good 00:09:55.120 --> 00:09:58.160 and was consistent with the manuscripts that they had in Greek. 00:09:58.160 --> 00:10:02.000 Because already, and we're gonna round numbers here, there's so many more 00:10:02.000 --> 00:10:04.080 names and that we could discuss. 00:10:04.080 --> 00:10:06.240 We don't want to confuse and overwhelm you. 00:10:06.240 --> 00:10:09.360 So we're gonna be a little bit sloppy by omitting names and 00:10:09.360 --> 00:10:12.480 actually generalizing some of the dates so as not to confuse you. 00:10:12.480 --> 00:10:14.560 So I'm just gonna talk about AD four hundred. 00:10:14.560 --> 00:10:18.080 Jerome AD four hundred, the very beginning of the fifth century, is 00:10:18.080 --> 00:10:20.880 tasked with translating Greek into Latin. 00:10:20.880 --> 00:10:23.600 Why? Because Greek was already being lost in the West. 00:10:23.600 --> 00:10:28.160 The Western Roman Empire was losing the ability to read and to 00:10:28.160 --> 00:10:29.040 speak Greek. 00:10:29.040 --> 00:10:30.720 So they needed Latin Bibles. 00:10:30.720 --> 00:10:34.160 There was a proliferation of Latin Bibles, virtually all of them based 00:10:34.480 --> 00:10:38.160 well all of them were based on the Septuagint until Jerome. 00:10:38.160 --> 00:10:42.640 When Jerome was tasked by the church, very sensibly, with coming up 00:10:42.640 --> 00:10:46.240 with a new Latin translation of initially the New Testament, and he 00:10:46.240 --> 00:10:49.840 chose to do the Old Testament as well, it was solving the 00:10:49.840 --> 00:10:53.600 right problem to have a good solid Latin translation in Latin because 00:10:53.600 --> 00:10:54.880 it was the vernacular. 00:10:54.880 --> 00:10:57.920 That was the vulgar language of that day, which is why Jerome's 00:10:57.920 --> 00:11:00.800 Vulgate, his name Vulgate, it was the vulgar language. 00:11:00.800 --> 00:11:02.800 It was the language of everyone. 00:11:02.800 --> 00:11:05.680 Because they were losing Greek, they had to have something they could 00:11:05.680 --> 00:11:08.560 read. That was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. 00:11:08.560 --> 00:11:15.280 Jerome, unilaterally, without permission, without any discussion, without any church council, chose 00:11:15.440 --> 00:11:20.000 chose to use Hebrew as the basis for his Old Testament. 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:23.120 No one had done that in church history previously. 00:11:23.120 --> 00:11:28.240 Now we mentioned that Origin about two centuries before him had compared 00:11:28.240 --> 00:11:31.760 the Hebrew to the four exemplars that they had of different Greek 00:11:31.760 --> 00:11:34.960 manuscripts of the Septuagint versions. 00:11:34.960 --> 00:11:38.000 But he was principally solving the problem of A arguing with the 00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:41.120 Jews and saying, hey look, it's consistent, and B just demonstrating like 00:11:41.200 --> 00:11:43.280 which one is gonna be the best. 00:11:43.280 --> 00:11:48.640 So that was Hebrew scholarship, but it never entered church practice. 00:11:48.640 --> 00:11:51.680 And it was never an argument that we gotta learn Hebrew to 00:11:51.680 --> 00:11:54.640 understand. He was doing something that was very specifically 00:11:55.920 --> 00:12:00.400 academic. He was doing something that was very specifically academic to just 00:12:00.400 --> 00:12:04.000 make sure that the Septuagint was being used consistently. 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:08.000 When Jerome chose to use Hebrew as an entirely different thing. 00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:10.800 And we made the argument last week that what Jerome did in 00:12:10.800 --> 00:12:12.480 that moment was satanic. 00:12:12.480 --> 00:12:16.400 He did something that rejected the scripture that the church had adopted 00:12:16.400 --> 00:12:17.360 to that point. 00:12:17.360 --> 00:12:19.360 But the point of bringing it up again is that no one 00:12:19.360 --> 00:12:20.960 talked about it apart from Augustine. 00:12:20.960 --> 00:12:22.080 Augustine fought it. 00:12:22.080 --> 00:12:23.680 There was some controversy. 00:12:23.680 --> 00:12:27.600 After a couple decades, it died down completely, and the question went 00:12:27.600 --> 00:12:34.080 away. After Jerome translated the New Testament and then the Hebrew into 00:12:34.400 --> 00:12:38.480 Latin, now we just have another Latin Bible floating around. 00:12:38.480 --> 00:12:42.800 And crucially there was no Hebrew scholarship after that point for eight 00:12:42.800 --> 00:12:43.280 hundred years. 00:12:44.400 --> 00:12:50.960 And even Jerome's translation was not automatically dominant, although it had the 00:12:50.960 --> 00:12:54.960 blessing before Pope Damascus died of hey, go do this. 00:12:54.960 --> 00:12:59.120 It was not immediately and universally accepted by everyone else. 00:12:59.120 --> 00:13:01.360 So just keep that in mind at the very beginning of this 00:13:01.360 --> 00:13:04.480 conversation, there was never a discussion about using Hebrew. 00:13:04.480 --> 00:13:06.080 Jerome just went and did it. 00:13:06.080 --> 00:13:08.480 He just decided he wanted to do it. 00:13:08.480 --> 00:13:14.000 And absent a fight, apart from Augustine's quibbles, you know, he fought 00:13:14.000 --> 00:13:16.400 for a little while, but then Augustine basically gave up. 00:13:16.400 --> 00:13:18.080 He just quit fighting. 00:13:18.080 --> 00:13:20.480 After that it was just the Latin Bible. 00:13:20.480 --> 00:13:24.960 And past that point, no one really cared what the underlying text 00:13:24.960 --> 00:13:28.880 was, it was just their Bible in Latin, which incidentally was exactly 00:13:28.880 --> 00:13:31.200 what the Septuagint was to begin with. 00:13:31.200 --> 00:13:33.600 It was just the Bible in Greek, which is what everyone was 00:13:33.600 --> 00:13:35.120 reading and speaking in that day. 00:13:35.120 --> 00:13:39.200 So there was nothing wrong with the project that Jerome undertook, except 00:13:39.200 --> 00:13:42.240 for the fact that he changed the rules without permission, without discussion. 00:13:42.240 --> 00:13:44.400 And then everyone just kind of forgot about it. 00:13:44.400 --> 00:13:47.840 So that's going to be the predicate for this entire episode today. 00:13:47.840 --> 00:13:52.640 One decision by one man to reject the Septuagint never comes up 00:13:52.640 --> 00:13:56.320 again. Augustine fights it, and that's just the end of the discussion. 00:13:56.320 --> 00:13:58.400 By the time we get to the end and we're talking about 00:13:58.400 --> 00:14:03.200 the Reformation, it will come up a little bit, but the intermediary 00:14:03.200 --> 00:14:06.560 events that we're going to discuss have accumulated to the point that 00:14:06.560 --> 00:14:10.720 there is absolutely no possibility that the reformers would ever consider the 00:14:10.720 --> 00:14:14.560 Septuagint. And so this episode is to show all the layers of 00:14:14.560 --> 00:14:18.960 decisions that prevented that question from ever being asked again in church 00:14:18.960 --> 00:14:21.520 history until today. 00:14:21.760 --> 00:14:21.920 So 00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:24.800 for the sake of this episode, we are going to try to 00:14:24.800 --> 00:14:29.760 avoid going down too many tangents or rabbit trails just for the 00:14:29.840 --> 00:14:30.080 sake of 00:14:30.960 --> 00:14:33.520 time and being concise. 00:14:33.520 --> 00:14:36.880 But every so often there are things that are worth mentioning, and 00:14:36.880 --> 00:14:41.120 so here at the outset leading into one of the other individuals 00:14:41.120 --> 00:14:44.240 who plays a part in this narrative, I want to mention what 00:14:44.240 --> 00:14:51.360 is called the quadriga, the traditional fourfold interpretation of scripture, because it 00:14:51.360 --> 00:14:54.960 winds up playing a role in how some of these things play 00:14:54.960 --> 00:14:56.080 out in time. 00:14:56.080 --> 00:15:00.240 And for those who are unfamiliar, the fourfold interpretation is first the 00:15:00.240 --> 00:15:04.720 literal interpretation, second the allegorical, which winds up playing a large role 00:15:04.720 --> 00:15:09.120 in some of this, third the tropological, which could also be called 00:15:09.120 --> 00:15:12.720 the moral, and then fourth the anagogical, which is sort of the 00:15:13.040 --> 00:15:18.160 spiritual, but in the higher sense almost eschatological. 00:15:18.160 --> 00:15:25.440 And these different senses of interpreting scripture become relevant because the focus 00:15:25.440 --> 00:15:30.640 on the allegorical is part of what lays the groundwork for a 00:15:30.640 --> 00:15:34.320 later return to a focus on the literal. 00:15:34.320 --> 00:15:38.080 We're not saying that you cannot have all four of these levels 00:15:38.080 --> 00:15:43.040 of interpretation, because of course, there are certainly passages in Scripture where 00:15:43.040 --> 00:15:45.440 all four of these are in play. 00:15:45.440 --> 00:15:49.360 One of the most commonly used examples would be the Exodus. 00:15:49.360 --> 00:15:51.920 And so, of course, you have the literal sense, which is the 00:15:51.920 --> 00:15:55.040 history. The Exodus literally took place. 00:15:55.040 --> 00:15:58.960 Old Testament Israel literally came out of Egypt. 00:15:58.960 --> 00:16:02.000 There was a literal physical exodus. 00:16:02.000 --> 00:16:05.840 Then of course you have the allegory, you can draw that out 00:16:05.840 --> 00:16:06.160 to 00:16:07.360 --> 00:16:08.800 Christ himself. 00:16:08.800 --> 00:16:12.720 You have the typology there of Christ, who does in fact go 00:16:12.720 --> 00:16:14.480 to Egypt and then return. 00:16:14.480 --> 00:16:18.160 You have the tropological sense of it, you have the moral sense, 00:16:18.160 --> 00:16:22.400 so that could be tied to personal conversion, for instance, and then 00:16:22.400 --> 00:16:27.440 you have the anagogical sense, which would be the eschatological fulfillment of 00:16:27.440 --> 00:16:31.920 God's plan of conversion of his people of the elect. 00:16:31.920 --> 00:16:36.080 And so you can draw that out from different parts of Scripture, 00:16:36.080 --> 00:16:38.640 and there's nothing wrong with doing that. 00:16:38.640 --> 00:16:42.960 When it became a problem was when there was a focus on 00:16:42.960 --> 00:16:46.960 the allegorical at the expense of the literal sense. 00:16:46.960 --> 00:16:51.120 So when you abandon the literal sense of scripture and focus only 00:16:51.120 --> 00:16:56.160 on this spiritualizing away, which is what it became, of the proper 00:16:56.480 --> 00:16:58.720 foundational understanding. 00:16:58.720 --> 00:17:01.520 One of the men who is involved in this is Pope Gregory 00:17:01.520 --> 00:17:03.920 I Gregory I, Pope Gregory the Great. 00:17:03.920 --> 00:17:07.040 He is not the one who introduces this into the church because 00:17:07.040 --> 00:17:10.480 this traces all the way back to the Church Fathers, but he 00:17:10.480 --> 00:17:15.200 sort of formalizes it and entrenches it in the Western Church, because 00:17:15.200 --> 00:17:18.160 he is one of the very early popes, he plays an important 00:17:18.160 --> 00:17:20.800 role. He is a faithful man, that is worth noting. 00:17:20.800 --> 00:17:22.640 He is on our calendar of saints. 00:17:22.640 --> 00:17:24.320 He introduced many good things. 00:17:24.320 --> 00:17:30.000 He did liturgical reform, for instance, he supported a number of churches, 00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:34.480 but he helps to lay the groundwork for this later focus on 00:17:34.480 --> 00:17:39.200 the allegorical which then lays the groundwork for a return to the 00:17:39.200 --> 00:17:40.000 literal 00:17:41.440 --> 00:17:45.440 As we mentioned, as Will mentioned specifically in the opening in the 00:17:45.440 --> 00:17:51.440 introduction there, sometimes some of these decisions don't seem like they cause 00:17:51.440 --> 00:17:53.520 problems until later on. 00:17:53.520 --> 00:17:57.440 Or they may even not be bad decisions in that time, but 00:17:57.440 --> 00:18:03.360 what they did not take into account is the long-term consequences, or 00:18:03.360 --> 00:18:06.800 in many cases, the source of the fruit of the thing that 00:18:06.800 --> 00:18:09.040 they are introducing into the church. 00:18:09.040 --> 00:18:12.640 In the case of the fourfold interpretation, it is not in and 00:18:12.640 --> 00:18:18.240 of itself dangerous, but again it becomes a problem when allegory takes 00:18:18.240 --> 00:18:20.880 over from the literal sense. 00:18:20.880 --> 00:18:24.720 Now, for instance, with Pope Gregory, that was not a problem for 00:18:24.720 --> 00:18:29.440 him, specifically, because for instance, in his comments on the book of 00:18:29.440 --> 00:18:34.560 Job, he says that the literal interpretation must be taken first because 00:18:34.560 --> 00:18:39.200 it lays the foundation for the spiritual interpretation for the other levels. 00:18:39.200 --> 00:18:40.320 That is correct. 00:18:40.320 --> 00:18:44.240 You have to take the literal sense first and foremost. 00:18:44.240 --> 00:18:48.080 But Satan is willing to take something that can be used for 00:18:48.080 --> 00:18:51.440 good and later on use it for wickedness. 00:18:51.440 --> 00:18:54.560 And so we will see that as we proceed through this episode, 00:18:54.560 --> 00:18:58.960 through these individuals, down through these centuries, that this allegorical interpretation 00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:03.680 is part of what Satan then uses in order to 00:19:05.120 --> 00:19:10.080 later on, not according to the allegory, but according to the right 00:19:10.080 --> 00:19:14.160 desire to return to a literal sense Satan uses that as an 00:19:14.160 --> 00:19:16.960 opening, as an opportunity to say, oh, if you want the literal 00:19:16.960 --> 00:19:19.600 sense, well you should go talk to the Jews, you should look 00:19:19.600 --> 00:19:21.440 at the Hebrew. 00:19:21.440 --> 00:19:24.720 And that is going to be a constant refrain here. 00:19:24.720 --> 00:19:29.120 Almost any time you see a decision, a question comes up, a 00:19:29.120 --> 00:19:32.560 decision needs to be made, and the decision winds up being, well, 00:19:32.560 --> 00:19:34.480 we should go talk to the Jews. 00:19:34.480 --> 00:19:37.040 That's where things go off the rails. 00:19:37.040 --> 00:19:39.920 And as Christians, of course, as mentioned in the first episode and 00:19:39.920 --> 00:19:44.560 as we've mentioned elsewhere, you should recognize this as a danger. 00:19:44.560 --> 00:19:48.080 Because as a Christian, you do not go to those who have 00:19:48.080 --> 00:19:52.560 rejected Christ and hate Christ to ask them questions about the Word 00:19:52.560 --> 00:19:55.840 of God, because to them the Word of God is a closed 00:19:55.840 --> 00:19:58.800 book. Moses' veil remains. 00:19:58.800 --> 00:20:02.320 They cannot see the truth, they have nothing to tell you, they 00:20:02.480 --> 00:20:05.120 have nothing that is good to give you. 00:20:05.120 --> 00:20:10.160 But Satan takes as an opportunity to bring back in this Jewish 00:20:10.160 --> 00:20:13.840 influence and to undermine the church, and we will see that as 00:20:13.840 --> 00:20:18.480 we proceed through the episode in some later individuals. 00:20:18.480 --> 00:20:21.440 And this is one of many examples as we're going through these 00:20:21.520 --> 00:20:24.880 where there's a lot of bouncing back and forth from century to 00:20:24.880 --> 00:20:31.360 century. So when Gregory the Great begins to push the allegorical, as 00:20:31.360 --> 00:20:33.280 Corey said, not exclusively. 00:20:33.280 --> 00:20:38.880 He wasn't bad, but his arguments became the basis for later, much 00:20:38.880 --> 00:20:43.280 heavier pushes into very, very heavily allegorical readings. 00:20:43.280 --> 00:20:47.760 And this came up in the previous episode when we mentioned Philo, 00:20:47.760 --> 00:20:51.840 the Jew from Alexandria, who was not a racial Jew, he converted 00:20:51.840 --> 00:20:54.560 into Judaism probably after they murdered Christ. 00:20:54.560 --> 00:20:56.560 He said, Yeah, this is my team. 00:20:56.560 --> 00:21:00.320 One of the things that Philo did was to import this sort 00:21:00.320 --> 00:21:03.120 of allegorical reading from Platonism. 00:21:03.120 --> 00:21:07.840 So it wasn't a typical argument that was made by the Jews 00:21:07.840 --> 00:21:10.720 at that time, unless you're looking at their Kabbalah. 00:21:10.720 --> 00:21:15.680 They have sort of two different tracks where historically the rabbis, when 00:21:15.680 --> 00:21:19.360 they're talking about things, especially when they're talking to Christians, are going 00:21:19.360 --> 00:21:20.800 to focus on the literal. 00:21:20.800 --> 00:21:24.880 If you get them talking about their Babylonian black magic, their Kabbalah, 00:21:24.880 --> 00:21:31.520 then everything gets allegorical, mystical, symbolic, completely departs from the literal reading. 00:21:31.520 --> 00:21:34.480 But ironically, when Philo converted into Judaism, he didn't 00:21:35.360 --> 00:21:38.560 Allegorical read from Kabbalah, he got it from Plato. 00:21:38.560 --> 00:21:41.280 And as we mentioned, Origen picked up on it, he liked it, 00:21:41.280 --> 00:21:43.840 and so some of the early church fathers used it. 00:21:43.840 --> 00:21:49.520 But interestingly, we mentioned this previously, Augustine and Jerome agreed on literalism. 00:21:49.520 --> 00:21:53.840 Augustine because he was a faithful reader of scripture, and Jerome because 00:21:53.840 --> 00:21:56.000 he'd been talking to the rabbis. 00:21:56.000 --> 00:22:02.560 So both of them agreed with literalism over rejecting Origin's allegorical reads. 00:22:02.560 --> 00:22:06.640 Pope Gregory comes along two centuries later, this is around 600 AD, 00:22:06.640 --> 00:22:11.120 so two centuries after Jerome and Augustine had their fight. 00:22:11.120 --> 00:22:13.120 Gregory begins to go in the other direction. 00:22:13.120 --> 00:22:15.360 He begins to make it more allegorical. 00:22:15.360 --> 00:22:17.600 And from this moment on, from about 600 AD 00:22:18.640 --> 00:22:23.440 until about 1200, which we'll talk about later, more and more and 00:22:23.440 --> 00:22:27.280 more of the reading becomes very, very heavily allegorical. 00:22:27.280 --> 00:22:30.320 Basically the pitch was that the literal sense was seen as merely 00:22:30.320 --> 00:22:33.840 a husk that contained the richer spiritual kernel. 00:22:33.840 --> 00:22:37.600 And some of this was actually pushed because when they could make 00:22:37.600 --> 00:22:42.480 allegorical the readings of scripture, they could push some of the monastic 00:22:42.480 --> 00:22:46.400 ideas that were being developed in the West. 00:22:46.640 --> 00:22:50.000 And when you talk about monasticism, everyone wants to talk about the 00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:52.320 doctrine. Maybe you want to talk about the history. 00:22:52.960 --> 00:22:55.280 Nobody ever wants to talk about the money. 00:22:55.280 --> 00:22:59.600 The reason that Rome today is the single largest holder of real 00:22:59.600 --> 00:23:03.200 estate on the planet was monasticism. 00:23:03.200 --> 00:23:05.360 It was a cash grab that specifically targeted 00:23:06.240 --> 00:23:09.680 rich families to make sure that as much as possible the church 00:23:09.680 --> 00:23:12.640 could be the inheritor of those estates. 00:23:12.720 --> 00:23:17.120 A lot of dig like this happened well, well before the Reformation. 00:23:17.120 --> 00:23:22.160 But when you hear these hermeneutic choices, don't always assume that it's 00:23:22.080 --> 00:23:26.640 just specifically someone making a better argument from scripture, a different kind 00:23:26.640 --> 00:23:27.280 of argument. 00:23:27.280 --> 00:23:28.880 Sometimes they're political reasons. 00:23:28.880 --> 00:23:32.560 Now that was not Gregory's reason, but later on, part of the 00:23:32.560 --> 00:23:35.760 reason for pushing it was that it turned scripture into more of 00:23:35.760 --> 00:23:39.360 a wax nose that could sort of justify where the church wanted 00:23:39.360 --> 00:23:40.800 to go anyway. 00:23:41.120 --> 00:23:44.720 One other thing to note, we're already past the fall of the 00:23:45.760 --> 00:23:48.080 Western Roman Empire here. 00:23:48.080 --> 00:23:51.200 And today when we talk about the Western Church, Rome, and the 00:23:51.200 --> 00:23:56.240 Eastern Church, which we just typically call the Orthodox, those are visible 00:23:56.240 --> 00:23:59.280 remnants of the Rome itself. 00:23:59.280 --> 00:24:03.200 The Roman Empire, which was geographically the size of North America. 00:24:03.440 --> 00:24:06.000 It was the entire surrounds of the Mediterranean. 00:24:06.000 --> 00:24:08.000 It was a big place. 00:24:08.000 --> 00:24:14.400 In the early three hundreds, that was divided administratively, and then by 00:24:14.400 --> 00:24:18.160 the end of the fourth century, it was officially divided into the 00:24:18.160 --> 00:24:20.720 Eastern and Western empires. 00:24:20.720 --> 00:24:27.920 And that is when Byzantium was renamed to Constantinople, Constantine City. 00:24:27.920 --> 00:24:32.640 The capital of Rome was moved from the west to the east, 00:24:32.640 --> 00:24:38.000 and not long thereafter the Western Roman Empire essentially collapsed. 00:24:38.000 --> 00:24:39.520 Some call that the Dark Ages. 00:24:39.520 --> 00:24:42.000 Some people get very mad and say it wasn't that dark. 00:24:42.000 --> 00:24:46.480 But there was so much turmoil in the Western Roman Empire, which 00:24:46.480 --> 00:24:48.880 then went away and there was no longer any Roman Empire. 00:24:48.880 --> 00:24:51.920 In the East, the Roman Empire lived on. 00:24:51.920 --> 00:24:56.480 And so today, what we call orthodoxy, historically, you know, ignoring doctrine 00:24:56.480 --> 00:25:01.680 and everything else, there is a degree of continuation right from when 00:25:01.680 --> 00:25:05.600 Constantine was Christianized and he was a Roman Emperor. 00:25:05.760 --> 00:25:11.760 So these divisions of West in one direction with Latin and East 00:25:11.760 --> 00:25:15.840 in the other direction with Greek and maintaining Greek are not only 00:25:16.240 --> 00:25:19.440 theological, but they're political, and they're principally political. 00:25:19.440 --> 00:25:22.160 The theological is really just along for the ride. 00:25:22.160 --> 00:25:25.120 Because ultimately wherever you live on the planet, you're gonna speak the 00:25:25.120 --> 00:25:28.960 local language, you're subject to the local laws, you're stuck with your 00:25:28.960 --> 00:25:31.280 local neighbors for good or ill. 00:25:31.280 --> 00:25:36.400 So it's important when you're looking at historical moments, you know, like 00:25:36.400 --> 00:25:39.920 the fall of the Roman Empire and then what came after. 00:25:39.920 --> 00:25:44.560 If you're trying to focus just on religious things, just be aware 00:25:44.560 --> 00:25:47.600 that you're missing a huge part of the picture because these were 00:25:47.600 --> 00:25:49.440 all political moments too. 00:25:49.440 --> 00:25:51.360 And that's a big part of this. 00:25:51.360 --> 00:25:56.480 Again, small pieces of this thing happen because The West forgot how 00:25:56.480 --> 00:25:57.600 to speak Greek. 00:25:57.600 --> 00:26:02.000 As we mentioned last episode, Greek was the language of the Roman 00:26:02.000 --> 00:26:08.000 Empire. And then over centuries, Latin became predominant and essentially wiped out 00:26:08.000 --> 00:26:10.560 Greek in the West, but not in the East. 00:26:10.560 --> 00:26:14.160 And undoubtedly that was one of the reasons why that empire ended 00:26:14.160 --> 00:26:14.960 up splitting. 00:26:14.960 --> 00:26:19.120 There was just a natural separation because they were being alienated by 00:26:19.120 --> 00:26:21.760 mutually unintelligible languages. 00:26:21.760 --> 00:26:27.440 Another important thing to consider is that when Rome lost Greek and 00:26:27.440 --> 00:26:32.400 transitioned into Latin, this was no different than what we've seen previously, 00:26:32.400 --> 00:26:36.400 where Israel lost Hebrew and switched to Aramaic because they were conquered 00:26:36.400 --> 00:26:40.960 by Babylon, and then they lost Aramaic and switched to Greek because 00:26:40.960 --> 00:26:44.240 they were conquered by Greece and then conquered by Rome. 00:26:44.240 --> 00:26:50.000 Rome lost Greek, gained Latin, developed Latin, and everyone just went along 00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:50.400 with it. 00:26:50.400 --> 00:26:54.800 So as I said, Jerome's translation into Latin was absolutely necessary. 00:26:54.800 --> 00:26:58.080 And this is a speculative claim on my part, but I'm fairly 00:26:58.080 --> 00:27:02.880 confident in saying that I believe if someone other than Jerome had 00:27:02.880 --> 00:27:07.680 done that translation, it would have in effect been an inspired translation 00:27:07.680 --> 00:27:09.120 of Latin. 00:27:09.120 --> 00:27:13.600 Because one of the crucial things that happened when God killed Hebrew 00:27:13.600 --> 00:27:17.040 and replaced it with Greek as the language of Scripture is it 00:27:17.040 --> 00:27:23.200 was put into a proper, fully fleshed out, advanced, modern written language, 00:27:23.200 --> 00:27:27.040 which meant that there was no more need for any oral tradition 00:27:27.040 --> 00:27:32.560 whatsoever. It also meant that among the other European languages, the languages 00:27:32.560 --> 00:27:36.960 of the sons of Japheth, you can take any oral or written 00:27:36.960 --> 00:27:42.880 Greek and translate it into Latin identically, such that there's zero ambiguity. 00:27:42.880 --> 00:27:45.600 They're both rich nuanced languages. 00:27:45.600 --> 00:27:50.080 They have sufficient complex structure for all the various parts of speech 00:27:50.080 --> 00:27:53.680 that are necessary to capture some of the complex thoughts that are 00:27:53.680 --> 00:27:55.600 present in Scripture. 00:27:55.600 --> 00:28:00.000 As we mentioned previously, notably Koina Greek that was used for scripture 00:28:00.240 --> 00:28:02.960 was much less sophisticated than Attic Greek. 00:28:02.960 --> 00:28:05.440 In a in last week's episode or the last episode I called 00:28:05.440 --> 00:28:06.640 it Hillbilly Greek. 00:28:06.640 --> 00:28:10.640 I realized when I re-listened that some Southerners who haven't listened previously 00:28:10.640 --> 00:28:12.080 were probably offended by that. 00:28:12.080 --> 00:28:14.800 Half my family is from the south, they're Tar heels. 00:28:14.800 --> 00:28:17.520 They lived in exactly the spot in western North Carolina that was 00:28:17.520 --> 00:28:22.080 destroyed. I'm a Yankee, I was raised a Yankee, but my kin 00:28:22.320 --> 00:28:25.120 going back over three hundred years are hillbillies. 00:28:25.120 --> 00:28:27.520 So I meant nothing derogatory by that. 00:28:27.520 --> 00:28:31.200 We all know the difference between the King's English and Hillbilly English. 00:28:31.200 --> 00:28:32.960 And that was a distinction I was trying to make. 00:28:32.960 --> 00:28:36.080 So if I offended anybody with that hillbilly comment, I apologize. 00:28:36.080 --> 00:28:39.520 I was trying to distinguish the fact that it was simplified, which 00:28:39.520 --> 00:28:43.200 was necessary, just as Aramaic was a very simple language, it was 00:28:43.200 --> 00:28:44.720 a shemitic language. 00:28:44.720 --> 00:28:49.440 That's why we say Semitism today, because it's the same language group. 00:28:49.440 --> 00:28:52.880 If someone other than Jerome, who had been a faithful Christian, had 00:28:52.880 --> 00:28:57.360 done the translation of Greek into Latin, Latin and had used exclusively 00:28:57.360 --> 00:29:01.520 Greek sources, I think we can have every confidence that that would 00:29:01.520 --> 00:29:04.640 have been an inspired translation. 00:29:04.640 --> 00:29:08.960 Because you can correlate Greek to Latin with no ambiguity. 00:29:08.960 --> 00:29:14.800 So absent someone making some sort of mistake or deliberately manipulating it, 00:29:14.800 --> 00:29:17.760 I think it's reasonable to argue and to assume that God would 00:29:17.760 --> 00:29:21.280 have blessed that translation effort, just as he blessed the much more 00:29:21.280 --> 00:29:26.560 difficult translation effort out of Hebrew into Greek that occurred by numerous 00:29:26.560 --> 00:29:30.640 anonymous scribes prior to the birth of Christ. 00:29:30.640 --> 00:29:33.280 As I said before, and we will make the case extensively in 00:29:33.280 --> 00:29:37.600 the fourth episode, the Septuagint, when it's quoted almost exclusively in the 00:29:37.600 --> 00:29:40.160 New Testament, is not limited to the first five books. 00:29:40.160 --> 00:29:43.840 It's not limited to the Pentateuch, which incidentally is a Greek word. 00:29:43.840 --> 00:29:45.200 It's all of them. 00:29:45.200 --> 00:29:48.000 It's all the books of the Bible that are quoted in the 00:29:48.000 --> 00:29:51.040 New Testament are quoted from the Septuagint. 00:29:51.040 --> 00:29:53.680 So again, there could be no argument that there was even if 00:29:53.680 --> 00:29:58.720 you take the the story, the legend, the factual reporting, depending on 00:29:58.720 --> 00:30:04.880 your perspective, of the seventy-two rabbis, the seventy-two scribes, miraculously translating the 00:30:04.880 --> 00:30:06.160 first five books. 00:30:06.160 --> 00:30:10.800 According to Jesus and the apostles, all the books were miraculously inspired, 00:30:10.800 --> 00:30:14.080 because they quoted them extensively and said this was breathed out by 00:30:14.080 --> 00:30:17.680 God. There's no reason to believe if God did that for Greek 00:30:17.840 --> 00:30:20.640 coming out of Hebrew, that he would not have continued to do 00:30:20.640 --> 00:30:25.760 that into Latin, into German, into French, into English, and subsequent generations 00:30:26.800 --> 00:30:29.520 except that Jerome introduced the Hebrew. 00:30:29.520 --> 00:30:33.120 He departed from the faith by subscribing to something that Jesus and 00:30:33.120 --> 00:30:38.000 the apostles in the early church had expressly abandoned, without a comment. 00:30:38.000 --> 00:30:39.840 They never said we renounced this. 00:30:39.840 --> 00:30:43.520 They just acted like it didn't exist because it didn't. 00:30:43.520 --> 00:30:47.600 And so this history is one of that one decision by one 00:30:47.600 --> 00:30:53.440 jerk that was never evaluated by anyone reverberates without any further conversation 00:30:53.680 --> 00:30:55.280 until today. 00:30:55.280 --> 00:30:59.360 It's perfectly reasonable, in fact it's intended by God, the scripture be 00:30:59.360 --> 00:31:00.320 in the vernacular. 00:31:00.320 --> 00:31:03.200 That's one of the other things that the Septuagint proves. 00:31:03.200 --> 00:31:07.200 There's no magic Bible language of Hebrew in to be explicit. 00:31:07.200 --> 00:31:10.160 We're not saying that Greek is a magic Bible language either. 00:31:10.160 --> 00:31:13.360 The only thing that's special about Greek is that it is the 00:31:13.360 --> 00:31:17.600 sole language with which God chose to transmit his word, the His 00:31:17.440 --> 00:31:21.520 word that he breathed out to the early church and to us. 00:31:21.520 --> 00:31:24.480 That doesn't mean you have to learn Greek, doesn't mean you have 00:31:24.480 --> 00:31:27.200 to be an expert in it by any stretch. 00:31:27.200 --> 00:31:32.880 Anyone who can learn Greek sufficiently to translate into English and produce 00:31:32.880 --> 00:31:36.400 a translation that if it's faithful, you know, there were famous men 00:31:36.400 --> 00:31:39.760 in the past, Luther and German, Tyndale in English, and a number 00:31:39.760 --> 00:31:42.880 of others in various languages, who went to great lengths 00:31:43.920 --> 00:31:46.640 and were blessed by God in the work that they did translating 00:31:46.640 --> 00:31:51.360 into the vernacular so that God's word could be shared locally. 00:31:51.360 --> 00:31:54.640 I think that we have lost sight of the fact that the 00:31:54.640 --> 00:31:59.840 proliferation of all these translations is unhealthy and unnatural, but it's going 00:31:59.840 --> 00:32:04.880 to happen when frankly you don't have someone politically sort of minding 00:32:04.880 --> 00:32:05.920 the store. 00:32:05.920 --> 00:32:08.000 And that's the next thing that comes up here. 00:32:08.000 --> 00:32:10.400 We're going to talk about Alquin of York. 00:32:10.400 --> 00:32:13.120 This is two hundred years after Gregory the Great. 00:32:13.120 --> 00:32:17.680 Alquin was an Englishman, he was an English theologian, who was dispatched 00:32:17.680 --> 00:32:20.320 by his regent to Charlemagne's court. 00:32:20.320 --> 00:32:25.280 This is Charles the Great, Carolus Magnus, the Emperor of France and 00:32:25.280 --> 00:32:27.440 much of Europe at that time. 00:32:27.440 --> 00:32:30.560 Charlemagne assembled quite a court. 00:32:30.560 --> 00:32:34.320 He was a very serious man, he was very learned, and he 00:32:34.320 --> 00:32:35.760 was very devout. 00:32:35.760 --> 00:32:39.360 And one of the purposes of the men that he assembled in 00:32:39.360 --> 00:32:45.360 his court was to reinvigorate learning because this is on the far 00:32:45.360 --> 00:32:47.920 side of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. 00:32:47.920 --> 00:32:49.280 He's trying to rebuild something. 00:32:49.280 --> 00:32:53.520 He's unifying a bunch of disparate much smaller kingdoms. 00:32:53.520 --> 00:32:57.600 I'm descended from Charlemagne like virtually everyone listening because most people listening 00:32:57.600 --> 00:32:58.880 are Western European. 00:32:58.880 --> 00:33:03.600 Virtually everyone descended from Western European stock has Charlemagne as one of 00:33:03.600 --> 00:33:05.200 their ancestors. 00:33:05.200 --> 00:33:07.680 I'm also descended from Pepin the First. 00:33:07.680 --> 00:33:09.920 I don't know if everyone is, but I guess you'd have to 00:33:09.920 --> 00:33:11.200 be if you come through Charlemagne. 00:33:11.200 --> 00:33:11.840 So yeah. 00:33:11.840 --> 00:33:13.920 We're all descended from the King of Paris too, which is a 00:33:13.920 --> 00:33:17.440 cool, pretty cool title, but it's a much smaller domain than the 00:33:17.440 --> 00:33:20.560 extensive empire that Charlemagne had. 00:33:20.560 --> 00:33:25.920 When Alquin of York was dispatched to Charlemagne, he very quickly became 00:33:25.920 --> 00:33:28.800 one of Charlemagne's very favorite men. 00:33:28.800 --> 00:33:34.080 He was learning and he became Charlemagne's personal tutor and the tutor 00:33:34.080 --> 00:33:35.920 for his sons. 00:33:35.920 --> 00:33:38.960 And sorry, Pepin was Charlemagne's son, I can't remember the name. 00:33:38.960 --> 00:33:41.280 Charaber was the the king of Paris. 00:33:41.440 --> 00:33:42.800 Apologize for that. 00:33:42.800 --> 00:33:49.520 When Alkin became Charlemagne's tutor and became his really spiritual guide, his 00:33:49.520 --> 00:33:55.600 spiritual head, even though Charlemagne was his king, they mutually came to 00:33:55.600 --> 00:34:02.720 the conclusion in Charlemagne so ordered that the proliferation of Vulgate versions 00:34:03.040 --> 00:34:06.160 was causing problems in Charlemagne's kingdom. 00:34:06.320 --> 00:34:10.320 800 AD, there were a bunch of different Latin translations floating around, 00:34:10.320 --> 00:34:15.120 incidentally the exact same problem that Pope Damascus I had four hundred 00:34:15.120 --> 00:34:17.920 years previously, that he tasked Jerome with solving. 00:34:17.920 --> 00:34:22.880 The difference is between four hundred and eight hundred, Jerome's Vulgate had 00:34:22.880 --> 00:34:24.400 mostly won over. 00:34:24.400 --> 00:34:28.000 It took many centuries of adoption before it became predominant. 00:34:28.000 --> 00:34:32.080 And by this point, it had mostly won, but not completely. 00:34:32.080 --> 00:34:38.560 And so Alquin and Charlemagne in concert with each other determined that 00:34:38.560 --> 00:34:42.800 they were going to standardize the entire empire on Jerome's Vulgate. 00:34:42.800 --> 00:34:48.480 And so Alquin's task was to derive Jerome's original Vulgate from the 00:34:48.480 --> 00:34:50.480 various manuscripts that were floating around. 00:34:50.480 --> 00:34:53.440 Because what had been happening for four centuries is there were still 00:34:53.440 --> 00:34:57.200 a bunch of Latin translations floating around, some the old Latin, the 00:34:57.200 --> 00:35:01.920 Wetus Latina, that was based on the Septuagint, some based on Jerome, 00:35:01.920 --> 00:35:06.080 and then variations of the manuscripts of Jerome's translation, so they weren't 00:35:06.000 --> 00:35:07.680 all the same. 00:35:07.680 --> 00:35:12.240 Alquin fixed this, he produced a single Bible that was the Latin 00:35:12.240 --> 00:35:16.320 Bible, Charlemagne had many copies of that printed, and we're talking about 00:35:16.320 --> 00:35:20.240 eight hundred AD, so this is printed by hand, dispatched to many 00:35:20.240 --> 00:35:25.440 of the great churches and learning centers throughout his empire, with a 00:35:25.440 --> 00:35:28.240 specific orders that this is the Bible is to be used from 00:35:28.240 --> 00:35:31.680 now on, and crucially, if you're going to copy a new Bible, 00:35:31.680 --> 00:35:33.040 use this as the basis. 00:35:33.040 --> 00:35:36.080 Let's stop copying those older versions that are floating around. 00:35:36.080 --> 00:35:38.640 We have one Bible now, let's standardize on it. 00:35:38.640 --> 00:35:41.680 So this is the very first time that Jerome's Vulgate from 400 00:35:41.680 --> 00:35:45.200 AD, 400 years later, is finally sort of official. 00:35:45.200 --> 00:35:47.920 And even at that, it wasn't completed option in the West, because 00:35:48.000 --> 00:35:51.440 obviously Charlemagne didn't rule all of the West. 00:35:51.440 --> 00:35:56.160 And even within the tradition of drome's translation, you have things like 00:35:56.160 --> 00:35:59.280 the Psalter, where he did his own translation from Hebrew. 00:35:59.280 --> 00:36:02.640 The other Psalter, if you're a music nerd, you're gonna know about 00:36:02.640 --> 00:36:04.000 this better than me. 00:36:04.000 --> 00:36:05.840 The drome Psalter was not typically used. 00:36:06.000 --> 00:36:08.400 There was another one based on the Septuagint that was usually used 00:36:08.480 --> 00:36:11.920 because it was more beautiful and it was a tradition. 00:36:11.920 --> 00:36:14.640 And so you'd have a case where scripture would read one way 00:36:14.800 --> 00:36:17.360 and then the chanting would read another way. 00:36:17.360 --> 00:36:18.480 That was the reason why. 00:36:18.480 --> 00:36:23.040 So even once Jerome's Volgay was blessed, it still didn't become completely 00:36:23.040 --> 00:36:26.720 universalized. A few centuries later it did standardize. 00:36:26.720 --> 00:36:28.720 But crucially, what have we talked about? 00:36:28.720 --> 00:36:30.240 The Septuagint. 00:36:30.240 --> 00:36:34.960 Alquin's choice of adopting the Septuagint and his encouragement of Charlemagne to 00:36:34.960 --> 00:36:39.120 do the same, Hebrew was never in question, because Jerome was the 00:36:39.120 --> 00:36:41.280 last guy in church history to learn Hebrew. 00:36:41.280 --> 00:36:44.240 There were no Jews around to teach it, and no one else 00:36:44.240 --> 00:36:45.040 ever went looking. 00:36:45.440 --> 00:36:49.120 Four centuries later Alquin didn't know Greek, he didn't know Hebrew, he 00:36:49.120 --> 00:36:53.760 knew Latin fluently, and so his translation was just let's fix the 00:36:53.760 --> 00:36:56.480 Latin. He didn't refer to any other languages. 00:36:56.480 --> 00:36:59.440 That's a really important part of the story because you don't hear 00:36:59.440 --> 00:37:00.560 that today. 00:37:00.560 --> 00:37:05.200 You might hear it as a historical aside, but it's never put 00:37:05.200 --> 00:37:08.800 in the context of there's no continuity of Hebrew or frankly Greek 00:37:09.200 --> 00:37:10.800 scholarship in the West. 00:37:10.800 --> 00:37:15.040 That's not how we're told post-Reformation the church is operated. 00:37:15.040 --> 00:37:17.680 We're told that you know every pastor for all times always learn 00:37:17.680 --> 00:37:19.920 Greek and Hebrew, and that's just that's what you do if you're 00:37:19.920 --> 00:37:20.960 a cleric. 00:37:20.960 --> 00:37:24.960 Well, four hundred years after Jerome, no one knew Hebrew, nobody knew 00:37:24.960 --> 00:37:27.120 Greek. All they had was the Latin. 00:37:27.120 --> 00:37:28.560 So what didn't they discuss? 00:37:28.560 --> 00:37:29.840 What's the negative space here? 00:37:29.840 --> 00:37:31.680 Septuagint never came up. 00:37:31.680 --> 00:37:35.360 There was no discussion of the textual source that Jerome used. 00:37:35.360 --> 00:37:36.640 It was simply this is the Bible. 00:37:36.640 --> 00:37:37.760 This is the Latin Bible. 00:37:37.760 --> 00:37:39.760 They respected Jerome's scholarship. 00:37:39.760 --> 00:37:40.560 It was popular. 00:37:40.560 --> 00:37:41.440 Let's use it. 00:37:41.440 --> 00:37:43.360 And that was the extent of the conversation. 00:37:43.360 --> 00:37:45.360 The Septuagint never came 00:37:45.360 --> 00:37:47.040 up. So 00:37:47.120 --> 00:37:51.760 we aren't going to get deeply into the intellectual movements underlying some 00:37:51.760 --> 00:37:55.600 of this here, but just briefly in passing, it's worth noting that 00:37:55.600 --> 00:37:59.600 this is sort of the first renaissance we see happening here in 00:37:59.600 --> 00:38:01.360 the Carolingian court. 00:38:01.360 --> 00:38:05.200 This is what's known as the Carolingian Renaissance, and then what will 00:38:05.200 --> 00:38:08.480 follow on the heels of this sort of there's a little bit 00:38:08.480 --> 00:38:09.920 of time in between. 00:38:09.920 --> 00:38:12.640 By a little bit, I mean a century and a half or 00:38:12.640 --> 00:38:16.720 so. Scholasticism is what follows on that will become relevant for this 00:38:16.720 --> 00:38:20.000 episode and for future episodes as well. 00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:24.160 Then we have humanism, which is relevant for this episode, the Protestant 00:38:24.160 --> 00:38:28.000 Reformation, which is where we will end, and then the Enlightenment. 00:38:28.000 --> 00:38:32.400 And I'm not drawing a direct line between each movement and the 00:38:32.400 --> 00:38:35.760 subsequent one for those who think that I'm saying the Protestant Reformation 00:38:35.760 --> 00:38:36.800 caused the Enlightenment. 00:38:36.800 --> 00:38:38.160 That's not what I'm saying. 00:38:38.400 --> 00:38:43.440 This is similar to how the allegorical interpretation became a tool in 00:38:43.440 --> 00:38:46.800 Satan's handbag later in time. 00:38:46.800 --> 00:38:51.360 Just because something is good does not mean it cannot be used 00:38:51.600 --> 00:38:53.280 for evil. 00:38:53.280 --> 00:38:55.920 That is what we see taking place. 00:38:55.920 --> 00:39:00.720 This renaissance in the Carolingian court is by and large a good 00:39:00.720 --> 00:39:05.440 thing. The problem, of course, is that it is using this already 00:39:05.440 --> 00:39:08.800 corrupted version of the Old Testament. 00:39:08.800 --> 00:39:12.320 Instead of the true version of the Old Testament, which was on 00:39:12.320 --> 00:39:16.240 hand, it was something that was available certainly in Rome, more so 00:39:16.240 --> 00:39:19.680 than some of the outline Outlying parts of Europe, which were very 00:39:19.680 --> 00:39:24.320 quickly becoming not outlying, but the core parts of Europe, because politically 00:39:24.400 --> 00:39:28.640 this is the era where you see the transition, as it were, 00:39:28.640 --> 00:39:32.480 from the Roman Empire and the regions that were part of the 00:39:32.480 --> 00:39:38.720 Roman Empire proper into what will become the Holy Roman Empire, the 00:39:38.720 --> 00:39:42.720 First Reich, as it is typically called in German literature, and then 00:39:43.120 --> 00:39:46.000 subsequent to that the other ones as well. 00:39:46.000 --> 00:39:50.720 And so this is where Northern Europe is starting to become the 00:39:50.720 --> 00:39:56.480 political center, even as some of the religious center of the Western 00:39:56.480 --> 00:40:01.360 Church is still of course located in Rome, because and indeed, by 00:40:01.360 --> 00:40:04.880 and large, the church, because we have not yet had the great 00:40:04.880 --> 00:40:09.200 schism at this point, because that of course happens a little later 00:40:09.200 --> 00:40:10.560 than this. 00:40:10.560 --> 00:40:13.200 And for a number of reasons, many of which are in fact 00:40:13.440 --> 00:40:17.760 political and not theological, but also as Woe already mentioned, some of 00:40:17.760 --> 00:40:21.920 that, of course, was due simply to drifts in culture and particularly 00:40:21.920 --> 00:40:23.600 language over time. 00:40:23.600 --> 00:40:27.680 Because of course the Eastern Roman Empire continued to use Greek. 00:40:27.680 --> 00:40:33.200 The Western Roman Empire basically started using only Latin because of course 00:40:33.280 --> 00:40:37.840 initially Latin Latin was the language of the empire, Greek was the 00:40:37.840 --> 00:40:40.960 language of everyday life, and so they sort of split between the 00:40:40.960 --> 00:40:45.600 two. The Western Roman Empire adopted the imperial language and kept it, 00:40:45.600 --> 00:40:50.560 the Eastern Roman Empire adopted the everyday language and kept it. 00:40:50.560 --> 00:40:56.080 Unsurprisingly, considering that Greece is in the East indeed. 00:40:56.080 --> 00:40:56.400 So 00:40:57.440 --> 00:41:02.640 subsequent to this sort of sort of interest that we have in 00:41:02.640 --> 00:41:09.440 cleaning up the Latin, we see the beginnings of the movement of 00:41:09.760 --> 00:41:15.040 Hebrew influence into various European courts, and particularly into some of the 00:41:15.040 --> 00:41:19.680 schools. Now, as we have already mentioned and gone over a number 00:41:19.680 --> 00:41:25.360 of times, the Hebrew language is still effectively a dead language at 00:41:25.360 --> 00:41:28.880 this time There are no Hebrew speakers. 00:41:28.880 --> 00:41:33.120 You can't just go to someone and learn Hebrew. 00:41:33.120 --> 00:41:36.800 Because it's not a real live language at this time. 00:41:36.800 --> 00:41:41.600 It is, in fact, basically an entirely dead language, as we've mentioned 00:41:41.600 --> 00:41:47.200 previously, not like Latin, where you have always had those who know 00:41:47.200 --> 00:41:52.160 Latin. There have actually always been Latin speakers down through the centuries, 00:41:52.160 --> 00:41:57.120 not many at some points in European history, but Latin never really 00:41:57.360 --> 00:42:00.240 died in the sense of being gone. 00:42:00.240 --> 00:42:05.040 Latin died in the sense of no longer being an everyday language, 00:42:05.040 --> 00:42:10.160 a language of any particular region as the first language, because it 00:42:10.160 --> 00:42:14.720 was a language that was used for communication between academics, for instance, 00:42:14.720 --> 00:42:18.240 because they all learned Latin, so they could all use Latin. 00:42:18.240 --> 00:42:21.040 But Latin wasn't their first language, it wasn't the one that they 00:42:21.040 --> 00:42:22.640 used in their everyday life. 00:42:22.640 --> 00:42:26.080 So if you lived in Germany, or what would become Germany, your 00:42:26.080 --> 00:42:30.320 actual language was German, but as a scholar you used Latin. 00:42:30.320 --> 00:42:32.480 Not the case with Hebrew. 00:42:32.480 --> 00:42:36.800 The rabbis use a little bit of Hebrew in secret at this 00:42:36.800 --> 00:42:39.840 point because they're not pushing Hebrew quite yet. 00:42:39.840 --> 00:42:41.840 That will come a little bit later. 00:42:41.840 --> 00:42:44.640 But by and large, they're still using Aramaic because most of the 00:42:44.880 --> 00:42:46.880 Talmud is indeed in Aramaic. 00:42:46.880 --> 00:42:51.920 Aramaic is a language they've sort of maintained in their own enclaves, 00:42:51.920 --> 00:42:55.680 but they're also using pidgin forms of the local language and so 00:42:55.680 --> 00:43:00.320 the equivalent of what would become Yiddish in German lands, and whatever 00:43:00.320 --> 00:43:03.600 the option is in French speaking lands, etc. 00:43:05.200 --> 00:43:10.560 But you see a sort of revival of an interest in Hebrew, 00:43:10.560 --> 00:43:15.200 because if you're using this version of the Old Testament, the Vulgate, 00:43:15.200 --> 00:43:19.280 which is based on Hebrew of some kind, as we went over 00:43:19.280 --> 00:43:23.680 in the last episode, we don't actually know on which manuscripts Jerome 00:43:23.680 --> 00:43:26.800 based his translation, because we don't have them. 00:43:26.800 --> 00:43:29.680 He didn't give them to Augustine, he did not provide them to 00:43:29.680 --> 00:43:30.880 the Pope. 00:43:30.880 --> 00:43:33.360 We don't know what he received from the rabbis. 00:43:33.360 --> 00:43:37.200 He received something in Hebrew, and then they told him what it 00:43:37.200 --> 00:43:43.280 meant. But we start to see this growing interest in Hebrew in 00:43:43.280 --> 00:43:48.080 Europe, and there are a number of individuals who play an outsized 00:43:48.080 --> 00:43:51.520 role in this revival. 00:43:51.520 --> 00:43:55.840 Part of that is due to a growing access to writings of 00:43:55.840 --> 00:43:59.600 rabbis. Again we see this theme that will recur throughout this entire 00:43:59.600 --> 00:44:05.360 episode and in others as well, you see Christian men who have 00:44:05.360 --> 00:44:10.400 questions, and they go to the rabbis, or they read rabbinic literature. 00:44:10.400 --> 00:44:14.000 They ask the Jews questions despite the fact that the Jews have 00:44:14.000 --> 00:44:20.400 explicitly rejected rejected Christ for over a thousand years at this point. 00:44:20.400 --> 00:44:26.800 Because one of the next relevant individuals is Rabbi Shlomo Yetzaki, however 00:44:26.880 --> 00:44:29.200 you want to pronounce that last name with a sufficient amount of 00:44:29.200 --> 00:44:33.680 phlegm, born shortly after the year 1000. 00:44:33.680 --> 00:44:41.040 So at this point, again, remember, the Jews have been deliberately, openly, 00:44:41.040 --> 00:44:47.600 intentionally apostate for a thousand years, praying multiple times a day, three 00:44:47.600 --> 00:44:53.600 to five times a day, against Christians, cursing Christians, cursing Christian rulers, 00:44:53.680 --> 00:44:59.360 cursing Christ, reading in their Talmud that Christ is boiling an excrement 00:44:59.360 --> 00:45:02.080 for eternity. 00:45:02.080 --> 00:45:06.000 And these are the readings, this is one of the authors, whose 00:45:06.000 --> 00:45:14.320 works Christians start reading in order to understand the Old Testament. 00:45:14.320 --> 00:45:17.840 This is completely and utterly ridiculous. 00:45:17.840 --> 00:45:20.080 I should note that one of the names by which this rabbi 00:45:20.080 --> 00:45:23.280 is most commonly known as Rashi, that's probably the name. 00:45:23.280 --> 00:45:26.080 If you are aware of this individual, you'll know him by that 00:45:26.080 --> 00:45:30.800 name. He was a French rabbi, and he commented on the Torah, 00:45:30.800 --> 00:45:34.080 on the books of Moses, on the Old Testament. 00:45:34.080 --> 00:45:39.120 And so Christians start to read these commentaries. 00:45:39.120 --> 00:45:43.440 There are a number of individuals who really go all in on 00:45:43.440 --> 00:45:49.520 reading the rabbinic commentaries and bringing this stuff into the church. 00:45:49.520 --> 00:45:54.160 And insofar as such a thing existed at this time, Rashi was 00:45:54.160 --> 00:45:58.160 known as a master of the Hebrew language, which basically just means 00:45:58.160 --> 00:46:02.480 that he could, to some degree at least, read the Hebrew portions 00:46:02.480 --> 00:46:04.080 of the Talmud. 00:46:04.080 --> 00:46:06.880 Because that was really the focus of the Jews. 00:46:06.880 --> 00:46:10.000 The Old Testament is not the focus of the Jews ultimately. 00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:13.040 The Talmud is the focus of the Jews in squabbling over the 00:46:13.040 --> 00:46:17.280 Talmud. Because Because again, I will remind you: the most common, most 00:46:17.280 --> 00:46:22.320 well known saying about the Talmud is what Torah forbids, Talmud permits. 00:46:22.320 --> 00:46:27.520 It is essentially a direct inversion of what God has said. 00:46:27.520 --> 00:46:30.960 And so if God has said you cannot do X, the Jewish 00:46:30.960 --> 00:46:35.760 rabbis will do everything they can to explain away that prohibition and 00:46:35.760 --> 00:46:39.200 make it so that in reality you can do X just with 00:46:39.200 --> 00:46:41.120 these caveats. 00:46:41.120 --> 00:46:44.240 One of the best examples we can think of in the modern 00:46:44.240 --> 00:46:48.480 context, of course, is their special little rope that they place around 00:46:48.480 --> 00:46:52.080 certain cities, because then they can declare it to be a home. 00:46:52.320 --> 00:46:55.920 And the reason they do that is because they have created certain 00:46:55.920 --> 00:46:59.680 rules about what you can do on the Sabbath if you are 00:46:59.680 --> 00:47:02.960 in your home versus if you are outside your home. 00:47:02.960 --> 00:47:06.640 Now if you put up the special little rope, then everything inside 00:47:06.640 --> 00:47:11.200 the rope is your home technically, according to their interpretation, and so 00:47:11.200 --> 00:47:14.640 you're permitted to do more things on the Sabbath, because you couldn't 00:47:14.560 --> 00:47:18.080 do them without the rope because then it would be outside your 00:47:18.080 --> 00:47:21.360 home. And they actually get very weird about when there's a break 00:47:21.360 --> 00:47:22.800 in the rope. 00:47:22.800 --> 00:47:29.680 It is completely anti Christ, anti Christian, and anti God. 00:47:29.680 --> 00:47:34.720 You cannot imagine anything more evil than attempting to Jew God. 00:47:34.720 --> 00:47:40.000 Trying to get around God's rules by creating your own interpretations of 00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:41.440 his rules 00:47:42.640 --> 00:47:44.480 is wicked to a point that could probably 00:47:45.760 --> 00:47:47.600 not be overstated. 00:47:47.600 --> 00:47:52.640 And yet these are the men to whom Christian scholars are going 00:47:52.960 --> 00:47:56.880 to learn about, supposedly, the Christian religion 00:47:59.600 --> 00:48:05.600 So Rashi's work was exclusively within the community of Jews that were 00:48:05.680 --> 00:48:06.800 living in Europe. 00:48:06.800 --> 00:48:09.520 He had no contact that I could find with Christians. 00:48:09.520 --> 00:48:14.960 These commentaries that he wrote that are considered to be authoritative until 00:48:14.960 --> 00:48:20.640 today, they were tremendously influential in later Jewish activities, and they were 00:48:20.640 --> 00:48:24.080 immediately recognized as such, which is why he's honored by having that 00:48:24.320 --> 00:48:28.160 acronym Rashi use is his common name today. 00:48:28.160 --> 00:48:31.680 So he wasn't directly interacting with Christians, and no Christians were coming 00:48:31.680 --> 00:48:32.080 to him. 00:48:32.080 --> 00:48:37.200 When Cory described Christians seeking out Jewish teaching, it was not yet. 00:48:37.440 --> 00:48:41.760 The seed was planted by Jerome, but the question was never asked 00:48:42.080 --> 00:48:47.280 because until Jews started moving into Europe, there was nobody to ask. 00:48:47.280 --> 00:48:49.760 It was a dead language, it wasn't a written language at all, 00:48:49.760 --> 00:48:54.320 until incidentally the Mazoretes had just finished their work shortly before Rashi's 00:48:54.320 --> 00:49:01.920 birth. And as we mentioned earlier, crucially, Rashi's commentaries are very literalist. 00:49:01.920 --> 00:49:07.120 So when he's writing about the Old Testament, he's writing literally when 00:49:07.120 --> 00:49:08.960 he's discussing the text. 00:49:08.960 --> 00:49:13.840 That's sitting there in those commentaries until some Christian comes along. 00:49:13.680 --> 00:49:17.920 and what we see next is the door finally being opened by 00:49:17.920 --> 00:49:23.360 Satan for direct interaction for the first time since Jerome between Christians 00:49:23.520 --> 00:49:26.000 and those who pray multiple times a day for every Christian to 00:49:26.000 --> 00:49:27.520 be murdered. 00:49:27.520 --> 00:49:31.200 In Paris, a man named Hugh of Saint Victor. 00:49:31.200 --> 00:49:32.800 He led the school there. 00:49:32.800 --> 00:49:35.360 He died around 1140. 00:49:35.360 --> 00:49:39.760 He was tremendously influential in the Western Church from the time that 00:49:39.760 --> 00:49:40.560 he took over that. 00:49:40.560 --> 00:49:45.520 Over that school, principally because he strongly advocated for the primacy of 00:49:45.520 --> 00:49:47.840 the literal historical sense. 00:49:47.840 --> 00:49:52.240 So in effect, we have a period of time from Pope Gregory 00:49:52.240 --> 00:49:54.720 the Great around six hundred to Hugh of St. 00:49:54.720 --> 00:50:01.200 Victor in Paris around eleven forty, when he died, where allegorical readings 00:50:01.200 --> 00:50:03.440 were predominant in the West. 00:50:03.440 --> 00:50:07.680 Hugh went back to what Jerome and Augustine had argued. 00:50:07.680 --> 00:50:08.880 He wanted literalism. 00:50:09.040 --> 00:50:10.480 He rejected Origin. 00:50:10.480 --> 00:50:12.080 He rejected Gregory. 00:50:12.080 --> 00:50:15.600 You of Saint Victor said, I want literalism, I think it's better. 00:50:15.600 --> 00:50:16.800 He was right. 00:50:16.880 --> 00:50:18.560 That was the Christian read. 00:50:18.560 --> 00:50:21.280 When you look at some of the allegorical readings that came out 00:50:21.280 --> 00:50:23.920 of some of the fathers that went down that path, as I 00:50:23.920 --> 00:50:26.640 said last episode, it gets weird. 00:50:26.640 --> 00:50:29.360 You're reading some of the stuff and it doesn't seem like a 00:50:29.360 --> 00:50:30.800 Christian voice at all. 00:50:30.800 --> 00:50:33.600 Like, not that it's evil necessarily. 00:50:33.600 --> 00:50:35.520 It's just like, why are you talking about this? 00:50:35.520 --> 00:50:37.360 This isn't what the Bible is about. 00:50:37.360 --> 00:50:39.440 It's completely alien to us today. 00:50:39.440 --> 00:50:42.160 And it's alien in large part because Hugh of St. 00:50:42.160 --> 00:50:44.320 Victor rejected it. 00:50:44.320 --> 00:50:45.680 And Hugh of St. 00:50:46.160 --> 00:50:49.920 Victor himself did not interact at all with Jews. 00:50:50.080 --> 00:50:55.760 He didn't know Hebrew, but the emphasis that he replaced on literalism 00:50:56.000 --> 00:51:00.800 shaped Christian church doctrine in the West from that point on. 00:51:00.800 --> 00:51:03.600 One of his pupils was Andrew of St. 00:51:03.600 --> 00:51:06.720 Victor, same place, next generation. 00:51:06.720 --> 00:51:09.920 Andrew is his student, Hugh is his his teacher. 00:51:09.920 --> 00:51:14.400 Andrew basically took over and leading this effort after Hugh of Saint 00:51:14.400 --> 00:51:15.520 Victor died. 00:51:15.520 --> 00:51:21.360 Andrew, Augustinian in Paris, went beyond what Hugh did because of what 00:51:21.360 --> 00:51:22.320 Rashi did. 00:51:22.320 --> 00:51:24.720 So this is why these pieces are present, why they're starting to 00:51:25.120 --> 00:51:28.000 come together to paint this picture. 00:51:28.000 --> 00:51:29.920 Andrew learned Hebrew. 00:51:29.920 --> 00:51:30.720 How'd he learn it? 00:51:30.720 --> 00:51:32.240 He obviously learned it from Jews. 00:51:32.240 --> 00:51:35.360 The only way to learn Hebrew was to go talk to Jews 00:51:35.840 --> 00:51:38.640 who pray to Satan, the Christians die. 00:51:38.640 --> 00:51:43.440 Andrew, following the footsteps of his teacher, his master Hugh, said I 00:51:43.440 --> 00:51:47.040 want literalism too, and he found out, you know who has it? 00:51:47.040 --> 00:51:48.880 The Rashi commentaries. 00:51:48.880 --> 00:51:52.240 These guys who have the Hebrew, these Jews, look how literal their 00:51:52.240 --> 00:51:53.440 interpretations are. 00:51:53.440 --> 00:51:58.240 He's looking at the past you know six, seven centuries of Western 00:51:58.240 --> 00:52:03.200 Christian writing, and he's seeing increasingly strange to his eyes and his 00:52:03.200 --> 00:52:06.800 heart, allegorical readings, and then he looks at what the Jews wrote, 00:52:06.800 --> 00:52:08.880 and it seems pure and clean. 00:52:08.880 --> 00:52:10.560 And so what's just happened? 00:52:10.560 --> 00:52:14.080 No one talked about the Septuagint, no one talked about the Greek. 00:52:14.080 --> 00:52:15.040 What happened? 00:52:15.040 --> 00:52:20.320 You have bait of correct hermeneutic of literal interpretation of what is 00:52:20.320 --> 00:52:25.280 written. The Jews maintained that publicly when they weren't doing Kabbalah against 00:52:25.280 --> 00:52:29.840 again, they get far beyond allegorical when you look into their black 00:52:29.840 --> 00:52:31.200 magic practices. 00:52:31.200 --> 00:52:34.000 But the basic straight readings you're going to get when they're talking 00:52:34.000 --> 00:52:35.840 to Christians, very literal. 00:52:35.840 --> 00:52:37.840 And so it was pleasing to his ears. 00:52:37.840 --> 00:52:40.480 And so what does he naturally conclude? 00:52:40.480 --> 00:52:44.480 I need Hebrew so I can know the Old Testament better. 00:52:44.480 --> 00:52:47.520 I need Hebrew so I can know God better. 00:52:47.520 --> 00:52:50.880 He was one of the first who went back to what Jerome 00:52:50.960 --> 00:52:55.200 had said talking about Hebraic Awaritas, the Hebrew truth, which is completely 00:52:55.600 --> 00:53:01.120 oxymoronic. It was never something that was part of the Christian church 00:53:01.360 --> 00:53:04.320 between Jerome and Andrew of Saint Victor. 00:53:04.320 --> 00:53:09.360 But Andrew learned Hebrew from rabbis, he read Rashi's commentaries. 00:53:09.360 --> 00:53:10.160 He went nuts. 00:53:10.160 --> 00:53:10.960 He loved it. 00:53:10.960 --> 00:53:13.360 Like this is the stuff. 00:53:13.360 --> 00:53:15.520 He preferred Rashi's literalism. 00:53:15.520 --> 00:53:20.080 When we look at the literalism versus allegorical reasons. 00:53:20.080 --> 00:53:25.200 Again, we have Philo of Alexandria, the converted Jew, went allegorical. 00:53:25.200 --> 00:53:28.560 Origin the Christian followed Philo. 00:53:28.560 --> 00:53:31.680 Jerome, Augustine, literalist. 00:53:31.680 --> 00:53:37.360 Then you have Pope Gregory six hundred AD, more allegorical, reshaping the 00:53:37.360 --> 00:53:40.720 church until Hugh of Saint Victor comes along and says no, we 00:53:40.720 --> 00:53:44.560 need to get back to the literal interpretation. 00:53:44.560 --> 00:53:48.800 His pupil comes along, Andrew, learns Hebrew and says, Look, the Jews 00:53:48.800 --> 00:53:49.520 have it. 00:53:49.520 --> 00:53:52.000 And this was one of the key moments. 00:53:52.000 --> 00:53:54.240 Some of these other things could have happened or not. 00:53:54.240 --> 00:53:57.520 Like Alquin of York, it did happen, but it wasn't huge. 00:53:57.520 --> 00:54:02.240 It was a nudge in this direction because it standardized and formalized 00:54:02.400 --> 00:54:06.320 the Vulgate as being the Bible of the entire Western Church, which 00:54:06.320 --> 00:54:08.400 hadn't been the case previously. 00:54:08.400 --> 00:54:11.840 Here in the 1140s, 1175 00:54:12.880 --> 00:54:18.240 is the very first time that Christians are studying Hebrew since Jerome. 00:54:18.400 --> 00:54:19.440 That's crucial. 00:54:19.440 --> 00:54:21.520 That's less than half of church history. 00:54:21.520 --> 00:54:25.920 Has any Christian been studying Hebrew with the exception of Origen and 00:54:25.920 --> 00:54:31.200 Jerome. I found a couple other names of other writers in the 00:54:31.200 --> 00:54:35.520 first millennium who had quoted things in Hebrew, but it's clear that 00:54:35.520 --> 00:54:39.360 they didn't, they were quoting what had been written principally by Jerome. 00:54:39.360 --> 00:54:42.240 So they're basically kind of saying things like Yahweh, which you hear 00:54:42.240 --> 00:54:44.080 today. Sounds more authentic. 00:54:44.080 --> 00:54:45.200 But they didn't know Hebrew. 00:54:45.200 --> 00:54:46.800 They weren't, they never learned it. 00:54:46.800 --> 00:54:51.520 They were using Hebrew phrases occasionally as what they perceived as scholarship, 00:54:51.520 --> 00:54:55.200 but they were not personal participants. 00:54:55.200 --> 00:54:56.080 Andrew of St. 00:54:56.080 --> 00:55:00.400 Victor is the first man after Jerome to actually open the door 00:55:00.560 --> 00:55:04.400 to consulting with with Jews, to learning at the feet of rabbis 00:55:04.800 --> 00:55:08.880 and to saying, yeah, we need Hebrew to have the Bible. 00:55:09.280 --> 00:55:09.520 For 00:55:09.520 --> 00:55:13.360 those of you paying careful attention, some of the comments about the 00:55:13.360 --> 00:55:18.880 Hebrew language may seem confused or confusing and there's a reason for 00:55:18.880 --> 00:55:22.720 that. It's because a lot of this is a mess. 00:55:22.720 --> 00:55:26.320 A giant rat's nest mess. 00:55:26.560 --> 00:55:30.640 When it comes to the Hebrew language, it's important to bear in 00:55:30.640 --> 00:55:35.120 mind that when we say Hebrew, when really anyone says Hebrew, it's 00:55:35.120 --> 00:55:40.720 an umbrella term that is encompassing a number of different languages that 00:55:40.720 --> 00:55:42.560 are related to each other. 00:55:42.560 --> 00:55:47.600 And so you have Biblical Hebrew, or ancient Hebrew, which is the 00:55:47.600 --> 00:55:49.360 lost language. 00:55:49.360 --> 00:55:53.360 That was the one, no continuity, not maintained. 00:55:53.360 --> 00:55:56.880 God caused the Old Testament to be translated into the Greek in 00:55:57.120 --> 00:56:00.960 the In order to preserve it, and then killed the Hebrew language. 00:56:01.120 --> 00:56:06.560 It is dead and gone beyond being able to be resurrected. 00:56:06.560 --> 00:56:10.800 Then you have what is developed by the Masoretes, because they are 00:56:10.800 --> 00:56:16.320 the ones who create the vowel pointing system and interpret what they 00:56:16.320 --> 00:56:21.360 have written down of the older form of Hebrew, but without having 00:56:21.360 --> 00:56:24.720 any continuity to do so reliably. 00:56:24.720 --> 00:56:30.160 Because that inspired oral tradition was dead and gone for centuries at 00:56:30.160 --> 00:56:31.040 this point. 00:56:31.040 --> 00:56:34.960 And so they are attempting to resurrect something that cannot be resurrected. 00:56:36.160 --> 00:56:41.680 You have, in addition to those two, a sort of pidgin form 00:56:41.840 --> 00:56:46.480 of Hebrew, Mishnahic Hebrew, which is used to interpret the portions of 00:56:46.480 --> 00:56:49.360 the Talmud that are in Hebrew. 00:56:49.360 --> 00:56:53.360 This is something over which the rabbis constantly squabble, and in fact 00:56:53.440 --> 00:56:58.720 they fight amongst each other with how to interpret simply the words, 00:56:58.720 --> 00:57:01.920 insofar as they are written, that are written on the page, which 00:57:01.920 --> 00:57:05.760 is to say, the consonants they fight over which vowels to put 00:57:05.760 --> 00:57:07.040 in between them. 00:57:07.040 --> 00:57:12.080 The rabbis don't even agree with how to read their own documents. 00:57:12.080 --> 00:57:18.560 It is a combination of Masoretic and Mishnac Hebrew that winds up 00:57:18.560 --> 00:57:24.880 becoming Medieval Hebrew, which even calling it Medieval Hebrew is somewhat misleading, 00:57:24.880 --> 00:57:30.640 because the Jews in medieval Europe do not have a unified medieval 00:57:30.640 --> 00:57:35.280 Hebrew, because they have regional variants of it because they actually pull 00:57:35.280 --> 00:57:39.360 in bits and pieces of the languages around them when they're interpreting 00:57:40.080 --> 00:57:42.400 this supposed Hebrew language. 00:57:42.400 --> 00:57:46.720 And so you'll have a version of medieval Hebrew in Germany that 00:57:46.720 --> 00:57:51.360 is distinct from medieval Hebrew in Paris in France, that is distinct 00:57:51.840 --> 00:57:56.000 from medieval Hebrew in Rome. 00:57:56.000 --> 00:58:00.560 You have to bear in mind that Hebrew is not a monolithic 00:58:00.560 --> 00:58:05.120 thing. It is this umbrella term for a very complex history and 00:58:05.120 --> 00:58:10.080 a very And a very complex history of deceit, of lies. 00:58:10.080 --> 00:58:14.800 Because what it is used to convey oftentimes, particularly to the modern 00:58:14.800 --> 00:58:19.840 ear, from modern false teachers, is some sort of continuity that was 00:58:19.920 --> 00:58:21.680 That was never there. 00:58:21.680 --> 00:58:27.600 There is no continuity from biblical Hebrew, again, an entirely lost language, 00:58:27.600 --> 00:58:31.840 except for we have the consonants, which aren't useful unless you have 00:58:31.840 --> 00:58:35.600 the ability to interpret them, for which you need the inspired oral 00:58:35.600 --> 00:58:40.960 tradition, which is dead and gone, because God rendered his judgment on 00:58:40.960 --> 00:58:44.480 that, by causing it to go extinct. 00:58:44.480 --> 00:58:48.160 But you have that beginning and then the line through these other 00:58:48.160 --> 00:58:54.800 ones up to modern Hebrew, which is yet another language, another child 00:58:54.960 --> 00:58:57.840 of this Hebrew umbrella if you want to take it in that 00:58:57.840 --> 00:59:02.880 way, that is spoken in modern day Israel, so called. 00:59:02.880 --> 00:59:04.640 Not the same language. 00:59:04.640 --> 00:59:07.040 It is not a direct line from one to the other. 00:59:07.040 --> 00:59:13.200 It is this convoluted rat's nest, this mess of deception and lies. 00:59:13.200 --> 00:59:19.280 Because the Hebrew language dies and is dead for centuries before it 00:59:19.280 --> 00:59:20.320 is resurrected. 00:59:20.320 --> 00:59:22.960 In fact, by the time we get to the resurrection that is 00:59:22.960 --> 00:59:28.560 modern Hebrew, this constructed artificial language, Hebrew had been dead for basically 00:59:28.560 --> 00:59:30.640 two thousand years. 00:59:30.640 --> 00:59:35.920 Because you have these offshoots that are created from this dead branch, 00:59:35.920 --> 00:59:38.240 from this dead root. 00:59:38.240 --> 00:59:41.360 But they are not all the same language. 00:59:41.360 --> 00:59:47.200 They are not like, for instance, Old English, Middle English, Modern English. 00:59:47.200 --> 00:59:49.040 There is a direct line there. 00:59:49.040 --> 00:59:53.360 Each one is essentially a daughter language of the previous one. 00:59:53.360 --> 00:59:56.400 The same thing occurs with every European language. 00:59:56.400 --> 01:00:00.080 You have Old High German, you have modern German, you have some 01:00:00.080 --> 01:00:01.040 different forms of it as well. 01:00:01.040 --> 01:00:04.240 You have Low German, for instance, which is a child language of 01:00:04.240 --> 01:00:06.480 the older version of German. 01:00:06.480 --> 01:00:08.480 That is not the case with Hebrew. 01:00:08.480 --> 01:00:13.520 So bear in mind when speaking of Hebrew, when we say Hebrew, 01:00:13.520 --> 01:00:19.280 it is a shorthand for this complex and complicated underlying and again 01:00:19.440 --> 01:00:21.760 deceptive reality. 01:00:21.760 --> 01:00:26.320 What they are using as medieval Hebrew is this thing that they 01:00:26.320 --> 01:00:28.000 have cobbled together and constructed 01:00:28.880 --> 01:00:32.080 in order to pass it off to Christians? 01:00:32.080 --> 01:00:35.600 Yes, they use it among themselves as well to squabble over their 01:00:35.600 --> 01:00:39.600 text, but by and large, they're having their discussions in Aramaic. 01:00:39.600 --> 01:00:42.640 Because Because Aramaic is still an extant language. 01:00:42.640 --> 01:00:48.080 Aramaic is an actual language, unlike this medieval Hebrew. 01:00:48.080 --> 01:00:51.680 But when Christians come to them, or when they go to Christians, 01:00:51.680 --> 01:00:55.120 they try to pass off this medieval Hebrew as being this is 01:00:55.120 --> 01:00:58.080 the actual language of the Old Testament. 01:00:58.080 --> 01:01:02.720 You need this language, in order to understand what God actually wrote. 01:01:02.720 --> 01:01:05.440 And above and beyond that actually you need more than just the 01:01:05.440 --> 01:01:08.960 language, because well those are only the consonants, you actually have to 01:01:08.960 --> 01:01:10.160 talk to me. 01:01:10.160 --> 01:01:12.080 You have to talk to a rabbi. 01:01:12.080 --> 01:01:15.040 You have to come and talk to the Jews in order to 01:01:15.040 --> 01:01:17.120 understand the Word of God. 01:01:17.120 --> 01:01:21.520 And we see all sorts of wicked fruit down the line from 01:01:21.520 --> 01:01:23.040 this wicked tree. 01:01:23.040 --> 01:01:28.000 This is one of those concepts that we repeat very often. 01:01:28.000 --> 01:01:29.280 And it's important. 01:01:29.280 --> 01:01:32.640 It's one of the reasons it's on the challenge coin. 01:01:32.640 --> 01:01:36.800 Wicked trees produce wicked fruit. 01:01:36.800 --> 01:01:39.920 This is similar to something that we have, in fact, it is 01:01:39.920 --> 01:01:44.400 directly comparable to something that we have in our courts of law. 01:01:44.400 --> 01:01:47.520 In our courts of law we have the concept of the fruit 01:01:47.520 --> 01:01:52.720 of the poisonous tree, which basically means, in I'll give the most 01:01:52.720 --> 01:01:59.680 common concrete example, in a criminal case, if law enforcement violate your 01:01:59.680 --> 01:02:06.640 rights in the law during their investigation, the evidence obtained subsequent to, 01:02:06.640 --> 01:02:12.640 pursuant to that violation, cannot be admitted, typically speaking, because it is 01:02:12.640 --> 01:02:16.560 the fruit of the poisonous tree of that violation of your rights, 01:02:16.560 --> 01:02:19.760 of that transgression of the law. 01:02:19.760 --> 01:02:26.480 And so if they obtain a murder weapon because they illegally searched 01:02:26.480 --> 01:02:31.440 your vehicle, illegally searched your house, it will probably not be admissible 01:02:31.680 --> 01:02:35.120 because it is the fruit of that poisonous tree, unless they can 01:02:35.120 --> 01:02:38.560 say in some other way that they would have necessarily discovered it, 01:02:38.560 --> 01:02:42.160 for instance, but that starts to get complicated legally. 01:02:42.160 --> 01:02:46.080 The point is we have a similar thing here with regard to 01:02:46.080 --> 01:02:49.200 theology, with regard to spiritual matters. 01:02:49.200 --> 01:02:53.600 You do not go to a poisonous tree to get good fruit, 01:02:53.600 --> 01:02:58.480 because you will never find good fruit on that poisonous tree. 01:02:58.480 --> 01:03:01.680 Even if, for instance, in some of these cases you have things 01:03:01.840 --> 01:03:05.040 where Satan has taken something that was good and used it for 01:03:05.040 --> 01:03:09.280 evil, it is never the case that what you have that is 01:03:09.280 --> 01:03:12.080 good came from the poisonous tree. 01:03:12.080 --> 01:03:15.200 It came from something else that was good, it came from a 01:03:15.200 --> 01:03:16.240 good tree. 01:03:16.240 --> 01:03:19.200 Good Good trees produce good fruit. 01:03:19.200 --> 01:03:22.320 Wicked trees produce wicked fruit. 01:03:22.320 --> 01:03:28.240 And this is sort of a constant refrain throughout this entire narrative. 01:03:28.240 --> 01:03:34.480 You will see very few, unfortunately, but a few Christians will recognize 01:03:34.720 --> 01:03:37.040 that's a poisonous tree. 01:03:37.040 --> 01:03:40.400 But usually they will only go so far as to get rid 01:03:40.400 --> 01:03:42.560 of the poisonous fruit that's lying on the ground, and they'll say, 01:03:42.560 --> 01:03:43.600 no, we'll keep the tree around. 01:03:43.600 --> 01:03:45.520 The tree is the tree is okay. 01:03:45.520 --> 01:03:47.200 We'll keep dealing with the tree. 01:03:47.200 --> 01:03:51.040 Pois trees don't ever produce good fruit. 01:03:51.040 --> 01:03:55.520 That is the error that keeps being made by these otherwise Christian 01:03:55.520 --> 01:04:00.000 men because they are not examining the source, which is sort of 01:04:00.000 --> 01:04:03.120 a great irony because one of the cries eventually we will see 01:04:03.120 --> 01:04:08.640 in this narrative becomes adfontes, back to the source, back to the 01:04:08.640 --> 01:04:12.160 spring. And you see that, of course, even with Jerome, who tries 01:04:12.160 --> 01:04:14.560 to argue for going back to the Hebrew, a thing that you 01:04:14.560 --> 01:04:19.280 could not do, a thing that you cannot do. 01:04:19.280 --> 01:04:23.120 You should be wanting to look back at that source. 01:04:23.120 --> 01:04:26.960 You should be wanting to find the tree that produced the fruit. 01:04:26.960 --> 01:04:28.080 They don't do that. 01:04:28.080 --> 01:04:30.400 These men don't actually do that. 01:04:30.400 --> 01:04:33.760 Because what they look at is they say, well, we're going back 01:04:33.760 --> 01:04:36.560 to the source, and then they decide Hebrew's the source. 01:04:36.560 --> 01:04:38.720 They don't look, what is the source of this Hebrew? 01:04:38.720 --> 01:04:43.200 What is this thing that I have been given by the rabbis? 01:04:43.200 --> 01:04:46.080 Don't believe what the rabbis told you. 01:04:46.240 --> 01:04:49.520 The rabbis are going to say, Oh, this is the Old Testament, 01:04:49.520 --> 01:04:51.600 this is the Hebrew, this is the Word of God. 01:04:51.600 --> 01:04:54.880 We have kept this thing for thousands of years. 01:04:54.880 --> 01:04:56.160 We've preserved it faithfully. 01:04:56.160 --> 01:04:57.760 Here you go. 01:04:57.760 --> 01:05:00.800 But if you actually look at what they did, if you look 01:05:00.800 --> 01:05:05.440 at what God did, that thing that they hand to Christians and 01:05:05.440 --> 01:05:09.760 on which they base their various commentaries, and then you have Christians 01:05:10.000 --> 01:05:11.360 like Andrew of St. 01:05:11.360 --> 01:05:15.760 Victor, like Peter Comastor will talk about him next. 01:05:15.760 --> 01:05:20.160 You have these Christians going to these writings based on this false 01:05:20.160 --> 01:05:24.320 version of the Old Testament, this corrupted text that is not God's 01:05:24.320 --> 01:05:25.760 word anymore. 01:05:25.760 --> 01:05:29.120 It is simply something the rabbis have spun out of their own 01:05:29.120 --> 01:05:34.000 minds, in some cases, in many cases, in fact, with demonic influence. 01:05:34.000 --> 01:05:38.800 This is not a valid source for Christians, Because again it is 01:05:38.800 --> 01:05:41.920 poisonous fruit of a poisonous tree. 01:05:41.920 --> 01:05:46.800 And it is particularly damning when we actually have the Old Testament 01:05:46.800 --> 01:05:50.720 as preserved by God in the Septuagint, because the Septuagint at this 01:05:50.720 --> 01:05:54.000 point is sitting in archives, in various places in Europe. 01:05:54.000 --> 01:05:55.120 It exists. 01:05:55.120 --> 01:05:56.640 There's access to it. 01:05:56.640 --> 01:05:58.560 The Greek language isn't dead. 01:05:58.560 --> 01:06:01.200 The Greek language is still spoken in the East. 01:06:01.200 --> 01:06:04.000 It's been lost by and large in the West, but it can 01:06:04.000 --> 01:06:06.000 be relearned. 01:06:06.000 --> 01:06:08.960 Just like today, you could pick up and learn Latin. 01:06:08.960 --> 01:06:11.840 Because Latin is a dead language in the sense that people don't 01:06:11.760 --> 01:06:13.520 use it as an everyday language. 01:06:13.520 --> 01:06:17.440 It's not dead in the sense of being gone and unrecoverable. 01:06:17.440 --> 01:06:21.280 The same was true of Greek in this day and age, of 01:06:21.280 --> 01:06:27.120 which we are speaking right now, in the Western context of Western 01:06:27.120 --> 01:06:30.480 Europe. They could have used Greek, they could have learned Greek, they 01:06:30.480 --> 01:06:33.760 could have gone and looked at the Septuagint, and they didn't do 01:06:33.760 --> 01:06:34.400 so. 01:06:36.160 --> 01:06:40.320 The reason that Peter Comestor, who was one of the contemporaries of 01:06:40.320 --> 01:06:41.040 Andrew of St. 01:06:41.120 --> 01:06:45.120 Victor at the same school, so same place, same time, twelfth century 01:06:45.120 --> 01:06:49.600 Paris. He didn't learn Hebrew, but he was very much in the 01:06:49.600 --> 01:06:54.800 vein of the literalism that Hugh had pushed and that Andrew found 01:06:54.800 --> 01:06:59.760 exemplified in the commentaries that he got from Rashi. 01:06:59.760 --> 01:07:02.960 The reason that Peter Comester is important is that he wrote the 01:07:02.960 --> 01:07:10.240 Historia Scholastica, which was a Bible textbook that was used throughout Christendom. 01:07:10.240 --> 01:07:12.800 Just to give you some idea of how much of an impact 01:07:12.800 --> 01:07:19.440 Peter Comestor's Historia Scholastica had, today, there are over eight hundred extant 01:07:19.440 --> 01:07:23.440 manuscript copies that were produced between his death in eleven seventy five 01:07:23.440 --> 01:07:24.640 and about sixteen hundred. 01:07:24.720 --> 01:07:28.880 eight hundred 800 copies of a manuscript survive. 01:07:28.880 --> 01:07:33.520 So that tells you how prolifically it was copied, how important it 01:07:33.520 --> 01:07:37.040 was, how valued it was, and what did it carry? 01:07:37.040 --> 01:07:39.360 It carried a literalist interpretation of scripture. 01:07:39.840 --> 01:07:41.680 Great. That's my interpretation. 01:07:41.680 --> 01:07:42.960 I agree completely. 01:07:42.960 --> 01:07:45.440 But what did it do as well? 01:07:45.440 --> 01:07:50.160 Which question was imported by that because of the questions they didn't 01:07:50.080 --> 01:07:50.480 ask? 01:07:51.600 --> 01:07:56.160 The question that the literal interpretation that Comestor's book that was standardized 01:07:56.160 --> 01:08:00.560 in the West caused to arise in people's minds was who has 01:08:00.560 --> 01:08:02.640 the best literal interpretation. 01:08:02.640 --> 01:08:06.640 And because of the influence of Pope Gregory the First, Gregory the 01:08:06.640 --> 01:08:09.600 Great, who was a good Christian man, but because of what came 01:08:09.600 --> 01:08:14.480 after him with allegorical readings, you have from sometime after six hundred 01:08:15.360 --> 01:08:22.160 through twelve hundred roughly, almost everyone writing was writing very allegorically, certainly 01:08:22.160 --> 01:08:23.840 more so than after that. 01:08:23.840 --> 01:08:31.040 Enough that when this Paris school basically repristinated the literalist interpretation, it 01:08:31.040 --> 01:08:32.400 was revolutionary. 01:08:32.400 --> 01:08:34.400 It reshaped the Western Church. 01:08:34.400 --> 01:08:35.680 What does that mean? 01:08:35.680 --> 01:08:38.400 It means that from Gregory through Hugh of St. 01:08:38.400 --> 01:08:42.080 Victor, you hardly you hardly have any Christian writers that are going 01:08:42.080 --> 01:08:44.960 to be commenting in the literal interpretation. 01:08:44.960 --> 01:08:47.840 So if you go back and read their writings in this day, 01:08:47.840 --> 01:08:51.600 if you know when you're talking about Andrew and Peter's day, if 01:08:51.600 --> 01:08:54.800 they went and read someone from two or three hundred years previously, 01:08:54.800 --> 01:08:58.000 they're gonna get a whole bunch of allegorical slop that no longer 01:08:58.000 --> 01:09:00.560 seems good to their eyes or their ears. 01:09:00.560 --> 01:09:04.080 That has created a situation where they're now hungry. 01:09:04.080 --> 01:09:06.720 They're desperate for literal interpretations. 01:09:06.720 --> 01:09:07.920 And where do they find it? 01:09:07.920 --> 01:09:10.320 And a rabbi's commentaries. 01:09:10.320 --> 01:09:15.120 Satan planted these seeds all along just to be sitting there waiting 01:09:15.120 --> 01:09:17.920 for someone to get hungry, and the tree would spring up and 01:09:17.920 --> 01:09:21.920 the fruit would come forth, and the Christian who never asked the 01:09:21.920 --> 01:09:24.320 question Who is this from? 01:09:24.320 --> 01:09:25.600 What are they doing? 01:09:25.600 --> 01:09:27.360 How did we get to this point? 01:09:27.360 --> 01:09:30.160 What did we not think about to get here? 01:09:30.160 --> 01:09:32.240 They only ever thought about the question that was right in front 01:09:32.240 --> 01:09:33.760 of 'em, which is how everyone behaves. 01:09:33.760 --> 01:09:35.520 Like that's they weren't stupid. 01:09:35.520 --> 01:09:37.440 That's how normal people behave. 01:09:37.440 --> 01:09:40.480 You don't think in terms of centuries and millennia if you're a 01:09:40.480 --> 01:09:41.520 normal human being. 01:09:41.520 --> 01:09:42.880 It's too much trouble. 01:09:42.880 --> 01:09:45.920 If anything, it's mostly just gonna confuse you, which is why we 01:09:45.920 --> 01:09:48.240 did episode ninety-nine on the context window. 01:09:48.240 --> 01:09:52.240 Because this story that we're telling here could be confusing if you 01:09:52.240 --> 01:09:52.960 want it to be. 01:09:52.960 --> 01:09:56.400 We're trying to make this as straightforward as possible, but it's moving 01:09:56.400 --> 01:09:59.760 pieces going back and forth where you have, you know, Augustine and 01:09:59.760 --> 01:10:01.840 Jerome agree about literalism. 01:10:01.840 --> 01:10:03.840 They disagree about Hebrew. 01:10:03.840 --> 01:10:07.840 Origin and Pope Gregory agree about allegorical readings. 01:10:07.840 --> 01:10:11.120 And then the church rejects that in the twelfth century with you 01:10:11.280 --> 01:10:12.320 and Andrew of St. 01:10:12.320 --> 01:10:17.120 Victor. And then Peter Comester's book is standardized throughout the Western Christian 01:10:17.120 --> 01:10:19.600 world up through the days of the Reformation. 01:10:19.600 --> 01:10:22.960 Everyone who was reading about the Bible, remember, they're not reading about 01:10:22.960 --> 01:10:23.760 Hebrew here. 01:10:23.760 --> 01:10:26.720 They're just reading about how to interpret the Bible, how to understand 01:10:26.720 --> 01:10:28.320 it. What do they find? 01:10:28.320 --> 01:10:33.600 They want they find literal interpretations, a literal approach to the scriptures, 01:10:33.600 --> 01:10:35.040 which we agree with. 01:10:35.040 --> 01:10:38.560 But there was almost no one in church history that had produced 01:10:38.560 --> 01:10:41.760 something that was a pure version of that prior to Hugh of 01:10:41.760 --> 01:10:43.200 St. Victor and Andrew of St. 01:10:43.200 --> 01:10:46.240 Victor, and the men from that school and then what was produced 01:10:46.240 --> 01:10:51.920 afterwards. So right at this moment, the very first Christian since Jerome, 01:10:51.920 --> 01:10:54.720 who learns Hebrew, is the one who says, I want to be 01:10:54.720 --> 01:10:55.920 a literalist. 01:10:55.920 --> 01:10:59.040 This is one of those false choices I mentioned earlier. 01:10:59.040 --> 01:11:04.160 All along Satan has executed this perfectly, where suddenly, right in the 01:11:04.160 --> 01:11:07.200 moment where we fix the hermeneutic, we get rid of the crazy 01:11:07.200 --> 01:11:10.160 allegorical stuff that at some point went off the rails and like 01:11:10.240 --> 01:11:11.520 it's not worth reading. 01:11:11.520 --> 01:11:15.280 These guys came to the same conclusion, rejecting their Christian fathers up 01:11:15.360 --> 01:11:18.720 up to prior to Gregory, but instead of looking at some of 01:11:18.720 --> 01:11:22.000 the earlier church fathers, they said, You want this Rashi commentary is 01:11:22.000 --> 01:11:24.800 amazing. He's got the Old Testament locked down, it's so literal, it's 01:11:24.720 --> 01:11:27.200 great. Everything I could ever want I get from a Jew in 01:11:27.200 --> 01:11:29.920 Hebrew. Elle rejoices. 01:11:30.560 --> 01:11:34.000 What a perfect execution of that plan. 01:11:34.000 --> 01:11:35.200 And no one noticed. 01:11:35.200 --> 01:11:37.040 No one looked because they were just trying to learn. 01:11:37.040 --> 01:11:40.560 There's a bunch of scholars in a school trying to learn more 01:11:40.560 --> 01:11:41.280 about God. 01:11:41.280 --> 01:11:44.480 And if they had asked the one bloody question that Corey just 01:11:44.480 --> 01:11:48.320 raised, why am I talking to a Christ killer who prays multiple 01:11:48.320 --> 01:11:51.680 times a day for my death, who dances in the blood of 01:11:51.680 --> 01:11:54.160 Christ, why am I asking him about God? 01:11:54.160 --> 01:11:57.600 How can he possibly know more about God than the fathers and 01:11:57.600 --> 01:11:58.400 the faith? 01:11:58.400 --> 01:12:02.320 But because of the errors with allegorical reading, because of the abandonment 01:12:02.320 --> 01:12:07.200 of Greek, the loss of Greek entirely in the West, when the 01:12:07.200 --> 01:12:11.680 Paris school begins to pursue some learning of Hebrew. 01:12:11.680 --> 01:12:15.440 And again, Peter the contemporary didn't know Hebrew, but Andrew did. 01:12:15.440 --> 01:12:17.760 Somebody knew, so they could look at the commentary and so you 01:12:18.000 --> 01:12:19.040 have a specialist. 01:12:19.040 --> 01:12:23.280 Later on, it escaped to the realm of specialists to being generally 01:12:23.280 --> 01:12:27.360 used. But even then it wasn't used for the purpose of scholarship. 01:12:28.240 --> 01:12:31.920 As we go through this timeline and these individuals and 01:12:32.880 --> 01:12:38.240 Their decisions, the actions, the undertakings, you can sort of see how 01:12:38.480 --> 01:12:42.480 Satan plans things and then executes on them. 01:12:42.480 --> 01:12:47.840 He places the seeds, or whatever the object happens to be, and 01:12:47.840 --> 01:12:50.480 then he waits for someone to pick it up and look at 01:12:50.480 --> 01:12:56.000 it. That's sort of his MO down through the ages, and particularly 01:12:56.000 --> 01:13:00.800 with regard to the Hebrew language, to this constructed Hebrew language as 01:13:00.800 --> 01:13:03.360 used by the rabbis. 01:13:03.360 --> 01:13:08.560 The next individual is another rabbi, and you'll see that Satan does 01:13:08.560 --> 01:13:09.920 the same thing here. 01:13:09.920 --> 01:13:14.800 This is Rabbi Radak, also known as David Kimhi. 01:13:15.120 --> 01:13:18.560 He writes a number of commentaries. 01:13:18.560 --> 01:13:20.000 He writes also 01:13:20.960 --> 01:13:23.440 a Hebrew grammar. 01:13:23.440 --> 01:13:27.600 This is something that will be used by later scholars because this 01:13:27.600 --> 01:13:32.720 is a man who, insofar as it is possible, of course, extensively 01:13:32.720 --> 01:13:37.440 studies the Hebrew language, the one that the rabbis are busily constructing 01:13:37.600 --> 01:13:42.080 to To use to undermine Christianity. 01:13:42.080 --> 01:13:44.480 Now for some of them that may actually not be the goal 01:13:44.480 --> 01:13:45.920 that they have in mind. 01:13:45.920 --> 01:13:50.320 They may just very well be squabbling over their Talmud and arguing 01:13:50.320 --> 01:13:51.920 with other Jews. 01:13:52.160 --> 01:13:55.200 But Satan has the larger picture in mind. 01:13:55.200 --> 01:13:59.360 That is a vitally important thing to keep in your mind, because 01:13:59.360 --> 01:14:03.920 there are many who will argue this couldn't possibly have happened because 01:14:03.920 --> 01:14:09.200 human beings can't manage this sort of action over this many years, 01:14:09.200 --> 01:14:11.280 and that's very well true. 01:14:11.280 --> 01:14:16.000 Humans are very bad at planning on the scale of centuries and 01:14:16.000 --> 01:14:19.680 certainly bad at planning on the scale of millennia. 01:14:19.680 --> 01:14:21.680 But Satan isn't. 01:14:21.680 --> 01:14:24.400 Satan doesn't sleep. 01:14:24.400 --> 01:14:27.520 Satan is immortal. 01:14:27.520 --> 01:14:32.320 He doesn't have sixty years of productive lifespan, and then outside of 01:14:32.320 --> 01:14:33.840 that he can't do anything. 01:14:33.840 --> 01:14:36.400 Or in some cases even less, because if you're going to be 01:14:36.400 --> 01:14:39.760 a scholar, you may very well be in school for many years 01:14:39.760 --> 01:14:41.920 before you have any real influence. 01:14:42.160 --> 01:14:44.720 Satan doesn't have that problem. 01:14:44.720 --> 01:14:49.040 He can plan on the scale of centuries or on the scale 01:14:49.040 --> 01:14:50.320 of millennia. 01:14:50.320 --> 01:14:53.680 He has a patience that a human being cannot have. 01:14:53.680 --> 01:14:56.880 You can't have the patience to wait for something to happen in 01:14:57.040 --> 01:14:58.400 500 years. 01:14:58.400 --> 01:15:01.680 Because you and I will both be long dead 500 years from 01:15:01.680 --> 01:15:05.840 today. Long before 500 years. 01:15:05.840 --> 01:15:10.320 And so what Satan does with this particular rabbi is he sets 01:15:10.320 --> 01:15:14.720 up something that will be useful in about a century, maybe a 01:15:14.720 --> 01:15:18.240 couple centuries depending on the individuals who pick it up and use 01:15:18.240 --> 01:15:22.160 it. Two of the men who pick up and use the materials 01:15:22.160 --> 01:15:27.760 produced by this rabbi are Nicholas of Lyra and Reuchlin. 01:15:27.760 --> 01:15:32.640 Reuchlin is going to become very relevant in this story because he 01:15:32.640 --> 01:15:36.000 is one of the men who leads into what happens during the 01:15:36.000 --> 01:15:38.800 Reformation. There are a number of other men we'll get to before 01:15:38.800 --> 01:15:42.400 we get to Reuslin, but that is an important name in all 01:15:42.400 --> 01:15:43.600 of this. 01:15:43.600 --> 01:15:46.720 But you have this rabbi who doesn't really personally 01:15:47.600 --> 01:15:49.840 have much contact with Christians. 01:15:49.840 --> 01:15:53.200 Now he's living in a Christian land because he is living in 01:15:53.200 --> 01:15:58.400 France, but by and large he is keeping to his Jewish community, 01:15:58.400 --> 01:16:00.000 his Jewish ghetto. 01:16:00.240 --> 01:16:06.400 But he is producing these Hebrew materials that Satan will use to 01:16:06.400 --> 01:16:08.640 deceive others in the future. 01:16:08.960 --> 01:16:13.360 In fact, he will use them to deceive men, Who are, perhaps 01:16:13.360 --> 01:16:15.760 not so much in the case of Reuchlin, but in the case 01:16:15.760 --> 01:16:19.760 of Nicholas of Lyra, otherwise Christian men. 01:16:19.760 --> 01:16:22.880 Because they didn't ask the important question. 01:16:22.880 --> 01:16:28.400 They didn't wonder about the source, about the About the provenance of 01:16:28.400 --> 01:16:31.040 this material handed to them. 01:16:31.040 --> 01:16:33.440 Or in some cases, they actually knew. 01:16:33.440 --> 01:16:35.840 They just didn't ask the important question. 01:16:35.840 --> 01:16:40.480 Because if you're looking at materials written by a rabbi in the 01:16:40.480 --> 01:16:40.720 year 01:16:41.920 --> 01:16:45.360 1000 or the year eleven hundred, in this case about the middle 01:16:45.360 --> 01:16:51.360 of the eleven hundreds, you don't have any questions about if you 01:16:51.360 --> 01:16:55.680 actually think about it, about the beliefs of this man. 01:16:55.680 --> 01:16:58.640 You know that he is a Jewish rabbi. 01:16:58.640 --> 01:17:01.920 To be a Jew is to reject Christ. 01:17:01.920 --> 01:17:06.160 To be a Jew is to curse Christ and Christians and his 01:17:06.320 --> 01:17:09.200 church and Christian rulers. 01:17:09.200 --> 01:17:12.800 And so if these Christian men who go and pick up these 01:17:12.800 --> 01:17:17.280 materials, a century later, two centuries later, whatever it happens to be, 01:17:17.280 --> 01:17:21.680 had thought about what they were actually doing, they may have realized 01:17:21.840 --> 01:17:24.240 what they were doing was wicked. 01:17:24.240 --> 01:17:28.560 They should never have been taking these materials from a rabbi, and 01:17:28.560 --> 01:17:32.880 yet that's what they do because they don't ask the important questions. 01:17:32.880 --> 01:17:35.760 They don't ask about the Hebrew language. 01:17:35.760 --> 01:17:40.320 They are curious about the Hebrew language because they don't ask what 01:17:40.480 --> 01:17:43.040 did God do historically? 01:17:43.040 --> 01:17:45.440 Has this language been maintained? 01:17:45.440 --> 01:17:50.880 Yes, to some degree, of course, we have the advantage of hindsight. 01:17:50.880 --> 01:17:54.880 We have the advantage of greater access to information than these men 01:17:54.880 --> 01:18:00.960 had. But at the same time, they cannot be fully excused. 01:18:00.960 --> 01:18:03.600 Because they knew the nature of Jews. 01:18:03.600 --> 01:18:06.400 They knew the nature of the Jewish religion. 01:18:06.400 --> 01:18:11.120 They knew they were dealing with men that Christ Himself had called 01:18:11.120 --> 01:18:14.160 children of their father the devil. 01:18:14.160 --> 01:18:17.920 These are the children of the men who called for Christ's blood 01:18:17.920 --> 01:18:21.760 in Pilate's courtyard, who are proud of what their ancestors did or 01:18:21.760 --> 01:18:22.960 they wouldn't be Jews still. 01:18:22.960 --> 01:18:27.280 Still, they would have converted and become Christians, and we'll be talking 01:18:27.280 --> 01:18:31.120 about a man who did that, two men who did that. 01:18:31.120 --> 01:18:35.600 That's two in two thousand years. 01:18:35.600 --> 01:18:38.800 But these men are going to those who are still proud to 01:18:38.800 --> 01:18:44.560 call themselves Jewish rabbis, who are creating these materials that by and 01:18:44.560 --> 01:18:47.840 large they're creating them for their own community. 01:18:47.840 --> 01:18:50.000 But Satan has other plans. 01:18:50.000 --> 01:18:53.520 Satan knows what he is going to do with these materials, how 01:18:53.520 --> 01:18:58.080 he is going to use them, to infiltrate and corrupt the church. 01:18:58.080 --> 01:19:02.400 This is a plan that took him fifteen hundred years to execute. 01:19:03.120 --> 01:19:06.080 Really longer than that, because some of the fruit of it 01:19:07.280 --> 01:19:08.960 really becomes apparent. 01:19:08.960 --> 01:19:13.760 Some of these things come to full fruition in the nineteen hundreds. 01:19:13.760 --> 01:19:18.960 Again, Satan does not have the disadvantage of having a lifespan of 01:19:19.120 --> 01:19:21.120 80 or 85 years. 01:19:21.120 --> 01:19:24.480 And so he can plan on this sort of timescale. 01:19:24.480 --> 01:19:27.360 It's not to say that we have an opponent and he's so 01:19:27.360 --> 01:19:29.120 powerful, what can we possibly do? 01:19:29.120 --> 01:19:30.800 We can never compete with that. 01:19:30.800 --> 01:19:32.880 Because we have God on our side. 01:19:32.880 --> 01:19:34.080 Christ is on our side. 01:19:34.080 --> 01:19:37.120 All we have to do is actually listen to the Word of 01:19:37.120 --> 01:19:40.480 God. Listen to what the Word of God says about the Jews, 01:19:40.480 --> 01:19:44.640 what it says about these wicked men who hate Christians, who hate 01:19:44.640 --> 01:19:50.640 Christ, who seek to destroy and undermine Christ's church, even when they 01:19:50.640 --> 01:19:53.920 aren't actively doing it, because this man when he's creating a Hebrew 01:19:53.920 --> 01:19:58.080 grammar is probably not actively seeking to destroy the church. 01:19:58.080 --> 01:20:00.320 But he's still a son of Satan. 01:20:00.320 --> 01:20:04.480 And Satan is going to use that work product in order to 01:20:04.480 --> 01:20:06.240 cause havoc in the church. 01:20:06.240 --> 01:20:06.720 This is just 01:20:07.840 --> 01:20:12.400 one particular waypoint, one step, one rung on the ladder. 01:20:12.400 --> 01:20:15.680 And one of the points that it's important to grasp is that 01:20:15.680 --> 01:20:19.040 virtually none of these men were essential. 01:20:19.040 --> 01:20:22.000 Satan could have used other men. 01:20:22.000 --> 01:20:26.320 Satan is very good at a bar fight, is an example that 01:20:26.320 --> 01:20:29.280 I used when Woe and I were discussing this before we started 01:20:29.280 --> 01:20:34.800 recording. Satan understands the concept of a bar fight, and in a 01:20:34.800 --> 01:20:40.480 bar fight, the best weapon is the one that is to hand. 01:20:40.480 --> 01:20:44.720 Satan is willing to use whatever man he can use to move 01:20:44.720 --> 01:20:45.840 the ball downfield. 01:20:46.400 --> 01:20:50.080 He's a lot better at politics than most men. 01:20:50.080 --> 01:20:52.320 He understands the nature of the beast. 01:20:52.320 --> 01:20:56.000 He understands that if you are making yards, you're winning. 01:20:56.000 --> 01:20:58.000 He doesn't care who's moving the ball. 01:20:58.000 --> 01:21:02.480 He doesn't really care that much if it is moving quickly or 01:21:02.480 --> 01:21:03.760 if it's not moving quickly. 01:21:03.760 --> 01:21:07.840 If it's moving in his direction, great, he's willing to take it. 01:21:07.840 --> 01:21:13.360 More Christians should understand that concept And so it seems like here, 01:21:13.360 --> 01:21:14.640 not much is being done. 01:21:14.640 --> 01:21:18.960 You have a rabbi who is commenting on the Old Testament for 01:21:18.960 --> 01:21:23.680 other Jews because it's written in a language that no Christian understands, 01:21:23.680 --> 01:21:28.080 and he's writing a grammar, books in order to understand this language 01:21:28.240 --> 01:21:31.280 for his own people in his own community. 01:21:31.280 --> 01:21:36.400 But Satan is going to use that because Christians, because of what 01:21:36.400 --> 01:21:42.080 we've already said about this timeline, this interest in supposed Hebrew scholarship 01:21:42.080 --> 01:21:46.720 has already been introduced, this poison has already infiltrated the church, particularly 01:21:46.720 --> 01:21:49.600 with Jerome as the major starting point. 01:21:49.600 --> 01:21:54.000 And it is going to accelerate, it is going to be exacerbated, 01:21:54.000 --> 01:21:59.200 by the availability of these materials, by the presence of Jews in 01:21:59.200 --> 01:22:04.560 their ghettos, in Europe, who are creating these materials under Christendom. 01:22:05.840 --> 01:22:13.680 This wickedness, this pagan, evil, this deliberately, explicitly, virulently anti-Christian 01:22:13.680 --> 01:22:18.720 religion, because that's all that Judaism is, Judaism is the inverse of 01:22:18.720 --> 01:22:22.240 Christianity because it is hatred of God, and it is hatred of 01:22:22.240 --> 01:22:25.440 his church, and it is hatred of his sheep, and this is 01:22:25.440 --> 01:22:29.920 being tolerated in Christian Europe. 01:22:29.920 --> 01:22:32.880 None of these problems would have occurred. 01:22:32.880 --> 01:22:36.480 None of these problems would have existed if you did not have 01:22:36.480 --> 01:22:40.800 these Jewish communities living in Europe in order to pass off these 01:22:40.800 --> 01:22:43.840 materials to Christian scholars. 01:22:44.000 --> 01:22:46.240 Because the materials would not have been there. 01:22:46.240 --> 01:22:49.440 The materials probably wouldn't have even existed. 01:22:49.440 --> 01:22:53.280 This is an ongoing problem that we see down through the centuries, 01:22:53.280 --> 01:22:57.120 because Christian rulers keep kicking the can down the road. 01:22:57.200 --> 01:23:00.800 And in many cases, they do it because they're worshipping mammon, because 01:23:00.960 --> 01:23:02.960 Jews are allowed to give loans. 01:23:02.960 --> 01:23:07.360 Christians can't, because Scripture is very clear: you can't charge interest. 01:23:07.360 --> 01:23:08.480 That's usury. 01:23:08.480 --> 01:23:09.440 That's wicked. 01:23:09.440 --> 01:23:11.040 That's a sin. 01:23:11.040 --> 01:23:14.400 But the Christian princes in many cases are perfectly willing to let 01:23:14.400 --> 01:23:17.520 Jews do it, because who cares if the Jews are sinning? 01:23:17.520 --> 01:23:22.240 Well the problem is that Christian prince is himself sinning by dealing 01:23:22.240 --> 01:23:23.440 with the Jews. 01:23:23.440 --> 01:23:25.680 He is as guilty of their sins as they are because he 01:23:25.680 --> 01:23:29.920 is the one facilitating it, encouraging it, and benefiting from it. 01:23:29.920 --> 01:23:34.640 To a certain degree, he's also destroying himself and his people ultimately. 01:23:34.640 --> 01:23:37.280 Satan has long-term plans. 01:23:37.280 --> 01:23:41.040 As Christians, we don't have to be so much worried about his 01:23:41.040 --> 01:23:44.400 long-term plans, as we need to recognize that that is a thing 01:23:44.400 --> 01:23:45.600 that occurs. 01:23:45.600 --> 01:23:48.880 We have this enemy, and we should be on guard when he 01:23:48.880 --> 01:23:51.760 is trying to bring things into the church. 01:23:51.760 --> 01:23:54.800 In this case, it should be extremely easy. 01:23:54.800 --> 01:23:57.920 Because he's doing it with Jewish rabbis. 01:23:57.920 --> 01:24:01.600 He's doing it with men who hate Christians. 01:24:01.600 --> 01:24:04.960 This should not have been a difficult question for our ancestors to 01:24:04.960 --> 01:24:06.160 get right. 01:24:06.160 --> 01:24:11.840 But because of all these seemingly minor mistakes down through the centuries, 01:24:11.840 --> 01:24:16.080 the stage was set for what comes next. 01:24:16.080 --> 01:24:17.840 Because that's all Satan is trying to do. 01:24:17.840 --> 01:24:21.200 He's just setting the stage to get another foot, another yard on 01:24:21.200 --> 01:24:23.840 the play, whatever it happens to be. 01:24:23.840 --> 01:24:26.640 And so we see these Jewish rabbis producing these materials 01:24:27.760 --> 01:24:33.360 that Christian scholars will turn to in later centuries to use because 01:24:33.360 --> 01:24:37.760 you have already had the church infiltrated with this corrupted version of 01:24:37.760 --> 01:24:44.480 the Old Testament, which is now in Latin, because Satan conveniently didn't 01:24:44.480 --> 01:24:49.200 preserve this use of supposed Hebrew, because now all you have is 01:24:49.200 --> 01:24:53.920 the Latin Old Testament, which which is based on Hebrew sources to 01:24:53.920 --> 01:24:58.960 which you don't have access, on a language you don't speak, and 01:24:58.960 --> 01:25:01.760 now what do you do if you're a Christian scholar and you 01:25:01.760 --> 01:25:04.080 believe that that is the Old Testament? 01:25:04.400 --> 01:25:06.560 Well you have to go to the Jews. 01:25:06.560 --> 01:25:10.800 And that's exactly what Satan wants. 01:25:11.200 --> 01:25:15.760 So after that very kind series of words about the Jews, we 01:25:15.760 --> 01:25:19.920 come to one of the only two faithful Christians in this entire 01:25:19.920 --> 01:25:22.800 story, and that includes every one of the reformers. 01:25:22.800 --> 01:25:25.680 The only two men who are blameless in this entire story are 01:25:25.680 --> 01:25:26.640 both Jews. 01:25:26.640 --> 01:25:28.960 The first name is Nicholas Donan. 01:25:28.960 --> 01:25:30.800 We've spoken about him previously. 01:25:30.800 --> 01:25:34.000 You can look up the trial of the Talmud or the Disputation 01:25:34.000 --> 01:25:35.200 of Paris. 01:25:35.200 --> 01:25:39.600 He was a Jew who converted to Christianity sometime around twelve thirty, 01:25:39.600 --> 01:25:41.760 roughly, we don't know exactly. 01:25:41.760 --> 01:25:46.000 When he became a Christian, he was horrified at how he had 01:25:46.000 --> 01:25:49.200 been raised, because he had been raised his entire life to do 01:25:49.200 --> 01:25:51.440 all the things that we've just been complaining about. 01:25:51.440 --> 01:25:54.880 He was raised to pray the prayer that we've talked about now 01:25:55.040 --> 01:25:57.040 multiple weeks in a row. 01:25:57.040 --> 01:25:58.400 What did he do? 01:25:58.400 --> 01:26:01.840 He went to Pope Gregory and said, Do you know what these 01:26:01.840 --> 01:26:04.080 Jews are doing in Christian lands? 01:26:04.080 --> 01:26:07.680 And he went in great detail and told the church, he told 01:26:07.680 --> 01:26:12.480 the world, he told the French government, these people are wicked. 01:26:12.480 --> 01:26:14.960 These people call for the death of Christians. 01:26:14.960 --> 01:26:16.960 They blaspheme our God. 01:26:16.960 --> 01:26:19.040 He was a faithful Christian. 01:26:19.040 --> 01:26:20.640 He ceased to be a Jew. 01:26:20.640 --> 01:26:24.080 He repudiated the Jews and he spent the rest of his days 01:26:24.080 --> 01:26:27.120 going to war against them because of their wickedness. 01:26:27.120 --> 01:26:29.600 So all the things that you know you just heard Corey go 01:26:29.600 --> 01:26:31.680 off for a few minutes like that seems really mean. 01:26:31.680 --> 01:26:35.920 A Jew said this same thing and worse when the disputation of 01:26:35.920 --> 01:26:38.720 Paris or the trial of the Talmud took place, he was the 01:26:38.720 --> 01:26:42.880 prosecutor. Nicholas Donan, the converted Jew who ceased to be a Jew, 01:26:42.880 --> 01:26:45.840 which is the only way you know if someone has actually ceased 01:26:45.840 --> 01:26:48.160 to be a Jew, is when they go to war against the 01:26:48.160 --> 01:26:51.200 Jews. Is this man did and as the later man did we'll 01:26:51.200 --> 01:26:52.560 talk about at the end. 01:26:52.560 --> 01:26:56.160 Nicholas Donan went against the Jews in Europe because of their wickedness 01:26:56.320 --> 01:27:00.960 that they concealed in these secret languages that Christians did not know. 01:27:00.960 --> 01:27:05.600 And And what happened was the equivalent of probably billions of dollars 01:27:05.840 --> 01:27:11.600 worth of blasphemous Hebrew and Aramaic scrolls were burned in public. 01:27:11.600 --> 01:27:16.240 They were reviled, and to this day, Jews hate King Louis the 01:27:16.240 --> 01:27:19.280 Ninth, because of this, because of the disputation of Paris. 01:27:19.280 --> 01:27:23.280 Because when the Talmud was put on trial by Nicholas Donan, it 01:27:23.280 --> 01:27:26.800 was burned as many copies they could get their hands on, cartloads 01:27:27.040 --> 01:27:30.800 of Jewish writings were burned in public. 01:27:30.800 --> 01:27:33.360 That's the Christian response. 01:27:33.360 --> 01:27:36.000 That's the response that we find in Acts. 01:27:36.160 --> 01:27:41.200 Remember the story where the Mat and the Magicians became Christian converts 01:27:41.280 --> 01:27:44.720 and they brought out all the things that they had their writings 01:27:44.720 --> 01:27:49.520 with black magic and they burned them in the public square. 01:27:49.520 --> 01:27:51.360 This is the Christian response. 01:27:51.360 --> 01:27:53.680 This is what repentance actually looks like. 01:27:53.680 --> 01:27:56.960 You can tell whether or not a Jew has repented by how 01:27:56.960 --> 01:27:58.560 much he hates the Jews. 01:27:58.560 --> 01:28:01.680 That is the only way to tell that a Jew has repented. 01:28:01.680 --> 01:28:04.080 Because he was guilty of their wickedness. 01:28:04.080 --> 01:28:06.400 He was an active participant his entire life. 01:28:06.400 --> 01:28:10.960 And when he did actually become a Christian, he was horrified, and 01:28:10.960 --> 01:28:16.240 he was filled with righteous anger and hatred at the murderous blasphemy 01:28:16.240 --> 01:28:18.720 taking place by his own blood. 01:28:18.720 --> 01:28:20.720 This is one of those cases where when you look at the 01:28:20.720 --> 01:28:25.120 commandment to honor your father and mother, for someone such as a 01:28:25.120 --> 01:28:29.120 Jew, the only possible obedience to that is to skip over all 01:28:29.120 --> 01:28:31.280 of those who rejected God. 01:28:31.280 --> 01:28:34.880 You cannot honor your father and mother in a godly fashion when 01:28:34.880 --> 01:28:36.080 they're wicked. 01:28:36.080 --> 01:28:40.080 So obedience to God involves the first table of the law. 01:28:40.080 --> 01:28:44.720 To respect God to have God as your only God requires repudiation 01:28:44.720 --> 01:28:47.600 of the evil that your race has participated in. 01:28:47.600 --> 01:28:51.840 Nicholas Stonen and Johannes Pfefferkorn, the other Jew we'll talk about near 01:28:51.840 --> 01:28:54.720 the end, are the only two Christian Jews I'm aware of in 01:28:54.720 --> 01:28:58.560 history. After we get out of the early period where the elect 01:28:58.560 --> 01:29:01.360 were being discovered inside synagogues. 01:29:01.360 --> 01:29:04.320 That was why, as we said in the previous episode, up until 01:29:04.320 --> 01:29:08.000 AD 70, Christians and Jews were still meeting together, and most of 01:29:08.000 --> 01:29:11.680 the Christians were Jews who had converted and ceased to be Jewish. 01:29:11.680 --> 01:29:15.360 But they're still going to where worship was. 01:29:15.360 --> 01:29:20.480 After God destroyed the temple, after God destroyed everything about what they 01:29:20.480 --> 01:29:24.800 pretended was left of their religion, they changed their prayers to call 01:29:24.800 --> 01:29:28.160 for the murder of Christians, to blaspheme God. 01:29:28.160 --> 01:29:31.280 At that point, there were no more Christians, there were only God 01:29:31.280 --> 01:29:33.840 haters and Christ killers inside synagogues. 01:29:33.840 --> 01:29:35.760 All the Christians were chased off. 01:29:35.760 --> 01:29:39.120 And so at that point, either you were a Christian who had 01:29:39.120 --> 01:29:41.280 ceased to be a Jew or you were damned. 01:29:41.280 --> 01:29:44.320 And we see that pattern consistently up until this day. 01:29:44.320 --> 01:29:48.560 People who claim to be Jewish converts have nothing but good things 01:29:48.560 --> 01:29:50.480 to say about Jews except they're really sad that they don't have 01:29:50.960 --> 01:29:54.480 Jesus. And if only we could do more evangelism, then they would 01:29:54.480 --> 01:29:55.200 be better. 01:29:55.200 --> 01:29:57.040 It's absolute wickedness. 01:29:57.040 --> 01:30:00.640 Nicholas Donan was a faithful Christian and I can't wait to meet 01:30:00.640 --> 01:30:01.600 him in the new earth. 01:30:01.600 --> 01:30:03.440 He was born a Jew. 01:30:03.440 --> 01:30:08.320 So for those who think that this is about race over religion, 01:30:08.320 --> 01:30:09.920 you're missing the point. 01:30:09.920 --> 01:30:12.240 The point is faithfulness to God. 01:30:12.240 --> 01:30:17.200 Where we find inexorable wickedness from a race, then we judge the 01:30:17.200 --> 01:30:20.640 race. But in the case where there's an exception, he's an exception. 01:30:20.640 --> 01:30:24.560 I have nothing bad to say about Nicholas Stonen or Johannes Pfefferkorn 01:30:24.640 --> 01:30:26.480 in this entire episode. 01:30:26.480 --> 01:30:28.400 And I can't say that of anyone else. 01:30:28.400 --> 01:30:29.680 I can't say that of Luther. 01:30:29.680 --> 01:30:33.600 Luther is guilty of heinous sins against God for listening to the 01:30:33.600 --> 01:30:36.560 Jews rather than listening to Nicholas Donan. 01:30:36.560 --> 01:30:39.840 Had the church listened to Donan, we wouldn't have any of these 01:30:39.840 --> 01:30:40.400 problems today. 01:30:40.400 --> 01:30:41.360 Stonequire wouldn't exist. 01:30:42.160 --> 01:30:47.200 If Donan had ignited a revolution against the Jews in Christian lands, 01:30:47.200 --> 01:30:50.160 if all of their writings had been destroyed and all of them 01:30:50.160 --> 01:30:53.840 had been driven out of Christian lands, we wouldn't have the problems 01:30:53.840 --> 01:30:54.320 we have today. 01:30:54.320 --> 01:30:57.440 We'd be living in a fundamentally different world. 01:30:57.440 --> 01:31:01.200 So I hope you're noticing that as we're dealing with these historical 01:31:01.200 --> 01:31:03.680 facts, it's not about doctrine. 01:31:03.680 --> 01:31:07.280 This is the fight that everyone post-the Reformation wants to have, fighting 01:31:07.280 --> 01:31:07.440 over 01:31:08.400 --> 01:31:11.840 Protestant versus Roman Catholic doctrine. 01:31:11.840 --> 01:31:14.080 We're not talking about the things that matter. 01:31:14.080 --> 01:31:15.120 Those things do matter. 01:31:15.120 --> 01:31:16.400 Justification matters. 01:31:16.400 --> 01:31:17.840 Indulgences were crap. 01:31:17.840 --> 01:31:19.600 They shouldn't have existed. 01:31:19.600 --> 01:31:22.640 It was a fight that needed to have, that needed to be 01:31:22.640 --> 01:31:27.200 had. But the fact that we ignored the textual basis, and again, 01:31:27.200 --> 01:31:29.120 like the septuagin's just gone. 01:31:29.120 --> 01:31:32.800 Unless we say the word Septuagint, you're not going to find anyone 01:31:32.880 --> 01:31:35.520 bothering to look. 01:31:35.520 --> 01:31:39.200 The things that were burned were all written in Hebrew and Aramaic. 01:31:39.200 --> 01:31:41.520 They were all in the possession of those Jews. 01:31:41.520 --> 01:31:45.120 And on one hand you have Nicholas Donan saying, Hey, we need 01:31:45.120 --> 01:31:48.000 to burn all the Talmuds in virtually everything else. 01:31:48.000 --> 01:31:51.120 There's very little of the Jewish writing that was not destroyed at 01:31:51.120 --> 01:31:53.520 that time, because that was the godly thing to do. 01:31:53.520 --> 01:31:56.720 And as Corey said, even the king wasn't blameless, because he didn't 01:31:56.640 --> 01:31:57.840 destroy everything. 01:31:57.840 --> 01:31:59.600 He left these wicked people around 01:32:00.560 --> 01:32:04.480 because it was beneficial, as it had been for centuries in Christian 01:32:04.480 --> 01:32:07.680 lands to tolerate wicked people doing these wicked things. 01:32:07.680 --> 01:32:09.360 And they all kept the secret. 01:32:09.360 --> 01:32:14.560 Every single Jew for centuries living in Christian lands, kept these secrets 01:32:14.560 --> 01:32:18.960 about cursing Christians praying for our death and the blasphemous things in 01:32:18.960 --> 01:32:21.360 their teachings that they prayed multiple times a day. 01:32:21.360 --> 01:32:23.840 They all were in on it's not a conspiracy. 01:32:23.840 --> 01:32:26.400 It's their religion and it's their race. 01:32:26.400 --> 01:32:31.280 Nicholas Donan converted to Christianity and he despised Jews. 01:32:31.280 --> 01:32:34.720 It's very hard to find an account of either Donan or Pfeffricorn 01:32:34.960 --> 01:32:40.080 that doesn't go insane calling them rabid anti-Semites and they ginned up 01:32:40.080 --> 01:32:44.640 hatred and they engaged in tropes and stereotypes and all the exact 01:32:44.640 --> 01:32:48.160 same crap that's said today was said about them and it has 01:32:48.160 --> 01:32:51.360 been said about them because if you can discredit the man's claims, 01:32:51.360 --> 01:32:52.640 you have to deal with them. 01:32:52.640 --> 01:32:55.840 You don't like the guy, then forget whatever he's talking about. 01:32:55.840 --> 01:33:00.240 That guy just he was excommunicated from his Jewish community and then 01:33:00.240 --> 01:33:02.000 became a Christian and he was bitter. 01:33:02.000 --> 01:33:03.520 That's what they say about donut. 01:33:03.520 --> 01:33:04.160 It was bitterness. 01:33:04.160 --> 01:33:05.440 It was sour grapes. 01:33:05.440 --> 01:33:07.280 Well that was the purpose of the trial. 01:33:07.280 --> 01:33:10.160 Let's see if there's just sour grapes from one Jew who got 01:33:10.160 --> 01:33:13.520 kicked out of his shedl, or is it a Christian who's saying, 01:33:13.520 --> 01:33:18.000 hey, all these Jews are murderers, all these Jews are blasphemers? 01:33:18.000 --> 01:33:21.680 The result of the trial was that the Talmud was burnt. 01:33:21.680 --> 01:33:24.000 That's the Christian response. 01:33:24.000 --> 01:33:28.400 So again, two Christians in this entire story are blameless, and they're 01:33:28.400 --> 01:33:32.400 both Jews, who became Christians and ceased to be Jews. 01:33:32.960 --> 01:33:37.680 You cannot talk about how we talk about these subjects and admit 01:33:37.680 --> 01:33:39.680 that we say such things. 01:33:39.680 --> 01:33:44.000 Because when you faithfully obey God, it's true. 01:33:44.000 --> 01:33:45.200 A Jew can be converted. 01:33:45.200 --> 01:33:46.960 Nicholas Donan is proof. 01:33:46.960 --> 01:33:50.320 And Johannes Pfefferkorn a couple centuries later is the last time we 01:33:50.320 --> 01:33:52.240 have any proof of it happening. 01:33:52.240 --> 01:33:55.040 You don't find other Jews doing what these men did. 01:33:55.040 --> 01:34:00.240 You don't find other Jews converting out of this Christmas Christ-killing, Christian-hating, 01:34:00.240 --> 01:34:05.360 murderous, demonic cult and saying to Christians in their own lands, Do 01:34:05.360 --> 01:34:06.800 you know what these guys are up to? 01:34:06.800 --> 01:34:09.120 Find me a Jew who does that and I'll recognize them as 01:34:09.120 --> 01:34:10.240 a Christian brother. 01:34:10.240 --> 01:34:13.760 Otherwise, what you have is someone who's participating in the same kinds 01:34:13.760 --> 01:34:16.640 of lies have been going on for two thousand years. 01:34:17.680 --> 01:34:17.840 As 01:34:17.840 --> 01:34:20.800 we pointed out a number of times, a lot of the men 01:34:20.800 --> 01:34:23.920 in this narrative are a mixed bag. 01:34:23.920 --> 01:34:27.760 And that shouldn't be surprising to anyone, because basically all men ever 01:34:27.760 --> 01:34:32.400 to live have been mixed bags to various degrees. 01:34:32.400 --> 01:34:35.440 Some of these men were by and large faithful. 01:34:35.440 --> 01:34:38.080 You can go back to one of the first men we've mentioned, 01:34:38.080 --> 01:34:43.680 Pope Gregory the Great was by and large a faithful Christian man. 01:34:43.680 --> 01:34:48.080 He made errors, he made mistakes, he laid the groundwork for some 01:34:48.080 --> 01:34:51.200 of the later problems, and that is the case with many of 01:34:51.200 --> 01:34:53.520 the men on this list. 01:34:53.520 --> 01:34:56.960 And that is certainly the case with basically any of the Reformation 01:34:56.960 --> 01:35:01.600 figures you can name, and that includes those who opposed the Reformation. 01:35:01.600 --> 01:35:08.800 So regardless of what denomination or tradition or whatever it may be, 01:35:08.800 --> 01:35:14.240 the men you like from the Reformation era made these same sort 01:35:14.240 --> 01:35:15.200 of mistakes. 01:35:15.200 --> 01:35:18.960 It doesn't matter if it's Luther, it doesn't matter if it's Melanchthon, 01:35:18.960 --> 01:35:20.400 and we'll get into that. 01:35:20.400 --> 01:35:24.800 It doesn't matter if it's Calvin, or Tshingli, or any of the 01:35:24.800 --> 01:35:28.720 popes, or any of the men at the Council of Trent, all 01:35:28.720 --> 01:35:33.120 of these men made the same errors. 01:35:33.120 --> 01:35:37.040 And the great irony, as Wo just pointed out, is that the 01:35:37.040 --> 01:35:41.440 two most faithful men in this narrative were both were both former 01:35:41.440 --> 01:35:46.240 Jews. But they were former Jews in the fullest sense of that. 01:35:46.240 --> 01:35:53.600 They rejected having been wicked, apostate, demonic Jews, and became 01:35:53.600 --> 01:35:59.920 Christians. We both fully expect to meet Donin and Pfefforn in Paradise, 01:35:59.920 --> 01:36:03.920 and we look forward to that, because they're Christian brothers. 01:36:03.920 --> 01:36:09.600 Yes, they were Hebrew according to their genetic lineage, but they were 01:36:09.600 --> 01:36:15.040 Christians because they rejected what Jews have become as a people. 01:36:15.040 --> 01:36:20.560 Because the entirety of Jewish identity of the Jewish race at this 01:36:20.560 --> 01:36:26.560 point, after two millennia of wickedness, is their rejection of Christ. 01:36:26.560 --> 01:36:28.800 That is what they are in their essence. 01:36:28.800 --> 01:36:31.680 And the way to become a Christian is as Woe said, to 01:36:31.680 --> 01:36:35.040 reject that entirely and to fight against it. 01:36:35.040 --> 01:36:38.240 Because that is what it means to truly repent. 01:36:38.240 --> 01:36:41.520 Because to repent is to turn from your former wickedness. 01:36:41.520 --> 01:36:44.640 And in some cases where that wickedness is of a certain kind 01:36:44.800 --> 01:36:47.760 there needs also to be Public penance. 01:36:47.760 --> 01:36:51.280 This is something they had in the early Christian church. 01:36:51.280 --> 01:36:56.160 Now to be clear, I am certainly not saying that penance saves 01:36:56.160 --> 01:36:59.440 you. What I am saying is the same thing that was said 01:36:59.440 --> 01:37:03.840 by the early writers, by the early theologians of the Christian Church, 01:37:03.840 --> 01:37:07.680 who said of those who fell away, who went back to pagan 01:37:07.680 --> 01:37:12.240 practices under persecution, that in order to truly repent and come back 01:37:12.240 --> 01:37:17.600 to the Christian church, you need to publicly do penance for your 01:37:17.600 --> 01:37:20.000 previous wickedness. 01:37:20.000 --> 01:37:23.520 That is in order to show that the repentance is real. 01:37:23.520 --> 01:37:26.240 It's not just to show the repentance is real to the world, 01:37:26.240 --> 01:37:30.880 but it's to show also that the repentance is real to yourself. 01:37:31.120 --> 01:37:36.240 It is necessary sometimes to repudiate former wickedness publicly. 01:37:36.240 --> 01:37:40.080 Private repentance is not sufficient in certain cases. 01:37:40.080 --> 01:37:43.200 And when it comes to what the Jews have done for two 01:37:43.200 --> 01:37:46.720 thousand years, that repentance needs to be public. 01:37:46.720 --> 01:37:50.320 It needs to be a repudiation of that evil, and it needs 01:37:50.320 --> 01:37:56.720 to be a true turning away from that to the Christian life. 01:37:56.720 --> 01:38:01.440 And the next man in this list, as it were, is Raymond 01:38:01.440 --> 01:38:06.240 Martini. And that's why I started off by speaking of mixed bags. 01:38:06.240 --> 01:38:10.800 Because he is another man who is a Christian man, but he 01:38:10.800 --> 01:38:12.640 gets some things wrong. 01:38:12.640 --> 01:38:14.960 He gets some important things wrong. 01:38:14.960 --> 01:38:20.080 He He actually does go fairly hard against the Talmud, which is 01:38:20.080 --> 01:38:24.480 good, because he agrees with Donin in terms of the Talmud and 01:38:24.480 --> 01:38:25.840 its wickedness. 01:38:25.840 --> 01:38:29.200 And so on that count, he is entirely right. 01:38:29.520 --> 01:38:31.520 Just to give you a little more background of him, he is 01:38:31.520 --> 01:38:34.880 a Spanish Dominican friar and a scholar. 01:38:34.880 --> 01:38:40.480 And so you can think of sort of the historical context of 01:38:40.480 --> 01:38:43.280 what is going on at this time in Spain, because of course 01:38:43.360 --> 01:38:48.000 they are currently having rather a large Muslim problem, which comes with, 01:38:48.000 --> 01:38:52.480 incidentally, and curiously, a large Jewish problem. 01:38:52.480 --> 01:38:56.240 But that's where Martini goes off the rails. 01:38:56.240 --> 01:39:01.200 Because while he recognizes that the Talmud is wicked, which is the 01:39:01.200 --> 01:39:07.760 core document, the core confession of Judaism of the Jewish people, He 01:39:07.760 --> 01:39:11.280 is still willing to converse with Jewish scholars. 01:39:11.280 --> 01:39:13.600 He is still willing to consult them. 01:39:13.600 --> 01:39:18.880 He thinks that their insights, so-called, on scripture, are useful. 01:39:18.880 --> 01:39:21.440 And so he engages with Jewish scholars. 01:39:21.760 --> 01:39:26.640 He engages with these materials that have been produced by rabbis in 01:39:26.800 --> 01:39:31.200 either contemporary times and other places or in previous centuries. 01:39:31.200 --> 01:39:36.240 So he's engaging with these materials, designed despite recognizing it's a wicked 01:39:36.240 --> 01:39:40.640 source. He's a very mixed bag, like so many other men on 01:39:40.640 --> 01:39:43.200 this list. 01:39:43.200 --> 01:39:46.480 It is important to examine your priors. 01:39:46.480 --> 01:39:50.640 In many things in life, certainly it is important to do this 01:39:50.640 --> 01:39:54.320 sort of thing in the Christian church, because if we are simply 01:39:54.320 --> 01:39:59.600 accepting materials blindly, we may very well be accepting materials that have 01:39:59.600 --> 01:40:03.200 come ultimately from Satan himself. 01:40:03.200 --> 01:40:06.720 This isn't something that we necessarily have to worry about all the 01:40:06.720 --> 01:40:09.200 time. I'm not calling for people to be paranoid. 01:40:09.200 --> 01:40:11.280 We would never advocate for that 01:40:12.400 --> 01:40:15.920 But we should know better than to go to those who hate 01:40:15.920 --> 01:40:20.560 Christ and his church and ask them for insight about the Christian 01:40:20.560 --> 01:40:24.160 religion. We have the Word of God. 01:40:24.160 --> 01:40:26.560 It has been faithfully preserved for us. 01:40:26.560 --> 01:40:29.600 Thankfully, we don't have, and this is something that is worth bearing 01:40:29.600 --> 01:40:33.360 in mind throughout this entire series, we don't have these problems with 01:40:33.360 --> 01:40:35.440 the New Testament. 01:40:35.440 --> 01:40:40.640 No one has ever seriously contended that the New Testament is anything 01:40:40.640 --> 01:40:41.520 but Greek. 01:40:41.520 --> 01:40:47.440 I'm of course deliberately leaving aside the insane Judaizing scholars who tried 01:40:47.440 --> 01:40:50.800 to argue that Matthew, for instance, was first written in Hebrew. 01:40:50.800 --> 01:40:55.120 As we proved in the previous episode, that's not only ridiculous but 01:40:55.120 --> 01:40:59.360 impossible. The New Testament has always been Greek. 01:40:59.360 --> 01:41:03.840 The New Testament was faithfully translated into a number of different languages. 01:41:03.840 --> 01:41:04.560 We have faithfully 01:41:05.600 --> 01:41:07.280 translations in Latin. 01:41:07.280 --> 01:41:09.280 We have faithful translations in German. 01:41:09.280 --> 01:41:10.240 We have them in French. 01:41:10.240 --> 01:41:11.440 We have them in English. 01:41:11.440 --> 01:41:14.080 We don't have to worry about these problems. 01:41:14.080 --> 01:41:17.280 There are some minor things here and there with word choices in 01:41:17.280 --> 01:41:20.240 modern English translations, sure. 01:41:20.240 --> 01:41:24.000 I'm not leaving that aside, I'm not ignoring that fact. 01:41:24.000 --> 01:41:28.240 But we have faithful translations upon which we can rely. 01:41:28.240 --> 01:41:32.720 This entire series, this narrative, as should be obvious because it's about 01:41:32.720 --> 01:41:37.600 the Septuagint, is about the Old Testament and the ways in which 01:41:37.600 --> 01:41:41.280 the Jews have corrupted it and then snuck it into the churches 01:41:41.440 --> 01:41:46.800 because Christians have been insufficiently attentive and insufficiently faithful. 01:41:46.800 --> 01:41:51.200 Because to be faithful this man should have recognized. 01:41:51.200 --> 01:41:54.560 Okay, I see that the Jews created the Talmud. 01:41:54.560 --> 01:41:58.000 I see what they say about Christ in the Talmud. 01:41:58.000 --> 01:42:02.160 I should never ask these men any questions about Christ. 01:42:02.160 --> 01:42:06.480 I should advocate for the prince, for the local Christian authority to 01:42:06.480 --> 01:42:11.120 expel them from his lands, because these are wicked men who blaspheme 01:42:11.120 --> 01:42:14.880 God. These are men who are calling down judgment on us by 01:42:14.880 --> 01:42:17.440 existing in our lands. 01:42:17.440 --> 01:42:19.680 Read through the Old Testament. 01:42:19.680 --> 01:42:24.240 Look at what God has done when wicked pagans, when those who 01:42:24.240 --> 01:42:28.960 blaspheme and deny God have been tolerated in otherwise Christian lands. 01:42:28.960 --> 01:42:33.600 Because bear in mind, Old Testament Israel, insofar as it was faithful, 01:42:33.600 --> 01:42:35.440 was indeed Christian. 01:42:35.440 --> 01:42:39.200 But when they tolerated the wicked in their lands, they wound up 01:42:39.200 --> 01:42:41.360 being cursed along with the wicked. 01:42:41.360 --> 01:42:45.200 The same thing has happened to Christians down through the centuries. 01:42:45.200 --> 01:42:46.720 That's what this is. 01:42:46.720 --> 01:42:50.560 Part of being cursed is the natural consequence of permitting this sort 01:42:50.560 --> 01:42:54.160 of evil in your lands, because again, if the Jews had not 01:42:54.160 --> 01:42:58.640 been permitted to come into Christian lands, these problems would never have 01:42:58.640 --> 01:43:02.560 arisen, because no scholar would have ever thought I should go talk 01:43:02.560 --> 01:43:06.000 to the Jews and even if some crazy man somewhere had had 01:43:06.000 --> 01:43:09.360 that thought, it would not have been an option, because there would 01:43:09.360 --> 01:43:13.200 have been no Jews around producing these wicked materials to pass off 01:43:13.200 --> 01:43:16.160 to Christians. 01:43:16.160 --> 01:43:20.480 What we want men to be is truly and fully Christian. 01:43:20.480 --> 01:43:22.400 That is what Donin was. 01:43:22.400 --> 01:43:24.400 That is what Pfeffricorn was. 01:43:24.400 --> 01:43:26.480 That's what it means to be a Christian. 01:43:26.480 --> 01:43:30.720 To be a Christian, you reject the wickedness of those who blaspheme 01:43:30.720 --> 01:43:32.720 and deny Christ. 01:43:32.720 --> 01:43:37.280 And above and beyond all others in history, the Jews are the 01:43:37.280 --> 01:43:38.960 most wicked, the most depraved 01:43:40.240 --> 01:43:44.960 of all blasphemers, of all deniers of Christ, because they are the 01:43:44.960 --> 01:43:48.560 ones who murdered Christ, and they are proud of it to this 01:43:48.560 --> 01:43:51.760 day, and every so often one of them lets the mask slip 01:43:51.760 --> 01:43:56.800 a little bit, and says sometimes on Twitter even, We're proud of 01:43:56.800 --> 01:43:59.840 what we did and we'd do it again. 01:43:59.840 --> 01:44:04.000 Christian men should never go to anyone like that to ask them 01:44:04.000 --> 01:44:05.760 questions about the faith. 01:44:05.760 --> 01:44:09.680 The only Christian response to that sort of wickedness is at a 01:44:09.680 --> 01:44:13.680 bare minimum to banish them from Christian lands, so that they can 01:44:13.680 --> 01:44:18.000 no longer corrupt Christianity, they can no longer corrupt the morals of 01:44:18.000 --> 01:44:21.040 the land, and they can no longer create and pass off these 01:44:21.040 --> 01:44:29.280 wicked materials that undermine Christ's Church, and eventually wind up collapsing Christendom. 01:44:29.440 --> 01:44:33.440 One of the important things about Raymond Martini is the timing. 01:44:33.760 --> 01:44:38.720 One of the famous works that he produced is the Puggio Fidei, 01:44:38.720 --> 01:44:42.240 or the translation of the full title, his dagger of faith against 01:44:42.240 --> 01:44:43.520 the Moors and Jews Jews. 01:44:43.520 --> 01:44:46.560 So as Cory said he was a polemicist, he went hard against 01:44:46.560 --> 01:44:50.400 the Jews in Christian lands in Spain. 01:44:50.400 --> 01:44:55.360 This was forty years after the trial of the Talmud in France. 01:44:55.360 --> 01:44:59.760 So on one hand, in French lands, we have the total destruction 01:44:59.760 --> 01:45:01.280 of Jewish writings. 01:45:01.280 --> 01:45:05.360 In Spanish lands, we have the Dominicans, which was a newly formed 01:45:05.360 --> 01:45:06.560 order in that century. 01:45:06.560 --> 01:45:09.760 The Dominicans and the Franciscans were both mendican orders. 01:45:10.160 --> 01:45:16.080 that were basically created to move monasticism away from the cloistered life, 01:45:16.080 --> 01:45:19.600 to move them back into population centers, to be more focused on 01:45:19.600 --> 01:45:23.040 evangelism, on outreach, on doing more Christian things. 01:45:23.040 --> 01:45:24.960 It was a good idea in principle. 01:45:24.960 --> 01:45:29.600 And so the approach that the Dominicans took in these lands against 01:45:29.600 --> 01:45:34.800 the Jews was polemical and to some degree it was evangelical, in 01:45:34.800 --> 01:45:35.600 a sense. 01:45:35.600 --> 01:45:38.320 The problem The problem was that A, they were engaging with them, 01:45:38.320 --> 01:45:41.280 and B, they were specifically engaging in Hebrew. 01:45:41.280 --> 01:45:41.920 And so 01:45:42.800 --> 01:45:48.880 as part of the Dominican push to engage against the Jews, they 01:45:48.880 --> 01:45:53.040 founded the School of Hebrew Studies in Barcelona in the 13th century. 01:45:53.040 --> 01:45:56.320 This is the very first time that there was institutional teaching of 01:45:56.320 --> 01:45:59.120 Hebrew by any Christian in history. 01:45:59.120 --> 01:46:03.920 We have Jerome, and then in the 12th century, we have another 01:46:03.920 --> 01:46:07.600 man, and then here in Spain the following century, we have a 01:46:07.600 --> 01:46:08.800 school being founded. 01:46:08.800 --> 01:46:10.960 This is the very first time the Hebrew's being taught. 01:46:10.960 --> 01:46:13.200 Now initially it's being taught why? 01:46:13.200 --> 01:46:17.120 For reasons very similar to Origins, when he learned Hebrew was to 01:46:17.120 --> 01:46:19.120 argue with the Jews, and so he could make sure that he 01:46:19.120 --> 01:46:21.120 could vet the Septuagint. 01:46:21.120 --> 01:46:23.360 The Dominicans had the same approach. 01:46:23.360 --> 01:46:26.160 They were learning Hebrew to argue with the Jews and to convert 01:46:26.160 --> 01:46:28.480 them if they could, because they wanted to convert both the Jews 01:46:28.480 --> 01:46:30.400 and the Muslims in their lands. 01:46:30.400 --> 01:46:34.240 That's the reason we spent so much time going over the doctrine 01:46:34.240 --> 01:46:36.720 of shaking the dust off your feet. 01:46:36.720 --> 01:46:40.640 After centuries of murder and warfare at the hands of Jews and 01:46:40.640 --> 01:46:44.320 Muslims, how much more rope do we have to be provided before 01:46:44.320 --> 01:46:46.080 we stop doing this? 01:46:46.080 --> 01:46:49.600 The Dominicans chose to do something that on paper was the right 01:46:49.600 --> 01:46:52.640 thing. The problem was it ignored one of the other questions, two 01:46:52.640 --> 01:46:53.520 of the other questions. 01:46:53.520 --> 01:46:56.320 One, should we still be talking to Jews or Muslims at all? 01:46:57.040 --> 01:46:59.520 Why are we tolerating in our lands? 01:46:59.520 --> 01:47:03.840 And two, again, the fundamental question of this episode, where's the Septuagint? 01:47:03.840 --> 01:47:04.480 It's nowhere. 01:47:04.480 --> 01:47:05.280 There's no Greek. 01:47:05.280 --> 01:47:06.160 There's only Latin. 01:47:06.160 --> 01:47:08.320 And oh, I guess we need Hebrew so we can argue with 01:47:08.320 --> 01:47:08.960 the Jews. 01:47:09.600 --> 01:47:13.280 So as Corey said, like he went hard at Jews, he went 01:47:13.280 --> 01:47:17.120 hard at Muslims, he did the right things, but he did it 01:47:17.120 --> 01:47:18.160 in Hebrew. 01:47:18.160 --> 01:47:21.120 Because at that point they were always begging the question. 01:47:21.680 --> 01:47:25.280 Because remember when we talked about in the previous episode, up until 01:47:25.280 --> 01:47:29.200 the murder of Christ, Greek was the only scripture that they used 01:47:29.200 --> 01:47:30.480 in their teaching. 01:47:30.480 --> 01:47:32.880 They were talking, they were arguing in Greek. 01:47:33.120 --> 01:47:35.760 Sanhedrin is a Greek word. 01:47:36.080 --> 01:47:39.680 I did a thread a while back on all the Greek loanwords 01:47:40.000 --> 01:47:46.320 in our modern lexicon that are considered to be Jewish, like synagogue. 01:47:46.320 --> 01:47:47.120 That's a Greek word. 01:47:47.120 --> 01:47:48.160 It's not Hebrew. 01:47:48.160 --> 01:47:50.480 Every time you say synagogue, you're saying Greek. 01:47:50.480 --> 01:47:55.840 Why is such a fundamentally Greek word a fundamentally intrinsic part of 01:47:55.840 --> 01:48:00.240 the Jewish experience to this day because all they had was Greek. 01:48:00.240 --> 01:48:02.320 All they had was Greek. 01:48:02.320 --> 01:48:05.840 Their daily lives, their preaching, everything was done in Greek. 01:48:05.840 --> 01:48:08.240 All the talk about, oh well maybe it was an air make, 01:48:08.240 --> 01:48:09.200 where's the evidence? 01:48:09.200 --> 01:48:11.760 There's no evidence that any of that survived. 01:48:11.760 --> 01:48:16.080 What we have is Sanhedrin and synagogue and all these other things 01:48:16.080 --> 01:48:18.560 that were Greek, because that's what they had. 01:48:18.560 --> 01:48:23.520 So the repudiation of the Greek by origin, the repudiation of the 01:48:23.520 --> 01:48:27.920 Greek by Raymond Martini, not consciously in the latter case, but simply 01:48:27.920 --> 01:48:30.560 by virtue of why would anyone think about that? 01:48:30.560 --> 01:48:33.520 We have the Bible in Latin, and sure it's based on the 01:48:33.600 --> 01:48:37.520 the Hebrew that like Jerome provided, but that's what it was originally 01:48:37.600 --> 01:48:39.760 anyway, so who sees the problem? 01:48:39.760 --> 01:48:42.880 At no point did anyone ask the question that we're asking here, 01:48:42.880 --> 01:48:44.080 which is why they missed it. 01:48:44.080 --> 01:48:47.520 Had they asked the question, hey, where's the scripture of Jesus and 01:48:47.520 --> 01:48:50.800 the apostles in the early church, many of these errors would have 01:48:50.800 --> 01:48:51.440 been avoided. 01:48:51.760 --> 01:48:54.160 At any point along the way, they could have asked those questions 01:48:54.240 --> 01:48:56.160 and they could have avoided these errors. 01:48:56.160 --> 01:48:59.040 Instead, we have the Dominicans founding the School of Hebrew Studies in 01:48:59.040 --> 01:49:04.080 Barcelona. This was something that later spread throughout Christian lands for similar 01:49:04.080 --> 01:49:09.360 purposes. In fact, Hebrew was studied in Europe for centuries before Greek 01:49:09.360 --> 01:49:14.800 was, because one interesting artifact of the split of the Roman Empire, 01:49:14.800 --> 01:49:21.120 all the councils, all the ecumenical councils, were conducted exclusively in Greek, 01:49:21.120 --> 01:49:25.280 and later on when the emissaries from Rome were there, it had 01:49:25.280 --> 01:49:27.760 to be translated from Greek into Latin. 01:49:27.760 --> 01:49:32.000 All the proceedings were in Greek, and the the Western side had 01:49:32.000 --> 01:49:33.520 to have translators there. 01:49:33.520 --> 01:49:38.560 They were fundamentally alienated by a mutually unintelligible language. 01:49:38.560 --> 01:49:43.600 And so there was simply no Greek scholarship until the 15th century. 01:49:43.600 --> 01:49:47.040 It was not long before the Reformation before we see any concerted 01:49:47.040 --> 01:49:49.120 Greek scholarship whatsoever. 01:49:49.120 --> 01:49:52.160 But we find Hebrew scholarship centuries earlier. 01:49:52.160 --> 01:49:56.400 And again, it was polemical and it was evangelical, but it was 01:49:56.400 --> 01:49:59.520 totally disregarding Christ's command to shake the dust off. 01:49:59.520 --> 01:50:02.480 It's a question that was never asked, just like the question of 01:50:02.480 --> 01:50:04.400 Greek was never asked. 01:50:05.360 --> 01:50:08.880 And so next we have a man who was mentioned earlier in 01:50:08.880 --> 01:50:13.600 connection to the writings of a certain rabbi, because this man winds 01:50:13.600 --> 01:50:16.640 up using them, and that is Nicholas of Lyra, who is a 01:50:16.640 --> 01:50:19.760 French Franciscan friar, he's a biblical scholar. 01:50:19.760 --> 01:50:24.160 He's born in Normandy, winds up studying at the University of Paris, 01:50:24.160 --> 01:50:27.280 you'll see connections to that, particularly if you decide to look into 01:50:27.280 --> 01:50:30.000 this on your own, you'll see a lot of connections to some 01:50:30.240 --> 01:50:32.400 universities in Paris. 01:50:32.400 --> 01:50:36.560 But in his commentaries, we see from Nicholas of Lyra that he 01:50:36.560 --> 01:50:40.800 is familiar with the works of particularly Rashi, and so he is 01:50:40.800 --> 01:50:45.360 using these materials that were produced by Jews 01:50:46.560 --> 01:50:50.880 and using them to attempt to interpret Scripture. 01:50:50.880 --> 01:50:57.360 And at risk of beating the dead horse, the Jews cannot understand 01:50:57.520 --> 01:51:00.560 Scripture. Because Scripture is very clear. 01:51:00.560 --> 01:51:03.280 It is a closed book for those who do not have the 01:51:03.280 --> 01:51:08.240 Spirit, and certainly those who have not only rejected Christ, but in 01:51:08.240 --> 01:51:12.960 fact hate him and curse him and his followers daily, do not 01:51:12.960 --> 01:51:13.520 have the spirit 01:51:14.960 --> 01:51:16.400 That should go without saying. 01:51:16.400 --> 01:51:18.960 It should be very obvious to all Christians. 01:51:18.960 --> 01:51:23.360 And yet here we have a man who is otherwise a Christian, 01:51:23.360 --> 01:51:28.000 using these materials in order to teach Christianity. 01:51:28.000 --> 01:51:31.440 And of course, he has knowledge of the Hebrew language. 01:51:31.440 --> 01:51:35.760 He does indeed learn Hebrew because he believes that he needs it 01:51:35.920 --> 01:51:38.880 in order to read and understand the Old Testament. 01:51:38.880 --> 01:51:41.280 One of the biggest things we want you to take away from 01:51:41.280 --> 01:51:45.120 this entire series is that Hebrew is wicked. 01:51:45.120 --> 01:51:51.760 It was spun up by apostate Jews, pushed by apostate Jews, used 01:51:51.760 --> 01:51:56.640 by apostate Jews, infiltrated into the church in order to bring these 01:51:56.960 --> 01:52:01.680 teachings of the apostate Jews into the church and undermine the church. 01:52:01.680 --> 01:52:06.880 And we already have the Old Testament in a proper European language. 01:52:06.880 --> 01:52:08.720 We have it in Greek. 01:52:08.720 --> 01:52:12.640 And in fact, it's not very difficult to translate Greek into any 01:52:12.640 --> 01:52:16.000 other European language we happen to use, whether it is the English 01:52:16.000 --> 01:52:19.680 we are speaking now, or the German of Luther, or any other 01:52:19.680 --> 01:52:25.680 language. There is no reason to learn Hebrew. 01:52:25.680 --> 01:52:28.880 In fact, learning Hebrew should be seen as a black mark. 01:52:28.880 --> 01:52:33.200 We will get into that more in future episodes, but Hebrew does 01:52:33.200 --> 01:52:36.480 not give you insight into the Old Testament. 01:52:36.480 --> 01:52:39.920 If anything, it denies you certain insights. 01:52:39.920 --> 01:52:44.880 It makes your understanding of the Old Testament worse because you have 01:52:45.280 --> 01:52:51.200 corrupted yourself with this false and wicked interpretation of the Old Testament 01:52:51.200 --> 01:52:55.760 that has been passed off as true by the Jews. 01:52:55.760 --> 01:52:59.360 And that is what we see happening here with Nicholas of Lyra. 01:52:59.360 --> 01:53:03.040 He is one example among many, of course, because this is sort 01:53:03.040 --> 01:53:08.320 of the firm beginning of the use of the Hebrew language, the 01:53:08.320 --> 01:53:12.080 formal teaching and learning of the Hebrew language to use it in 01:53:12.080 --> 01:53:17.840 order to supposedly exegete the Old Testament, and in doing so, they 01:53:17.840 --> 01:53:23.360 inevitably rely on rabbinic works, which its which it's again that question 01:53:23.360 --> 01:53:27.040 that should always worry you, or that answer to a question, depending 01:53:27.040 --> 01:53:28.480 on how it's phrased. 01:53:28.480 --> 01:53:30.080 What do the Jews say? 01:53:30.080 --> 01:53:32.400 We should go ask the Jews. 01:53:32.400 --> 01:53:36.560 No Christian should ever have that thought. 01:53:36.560 --> 01:53:41.120 Certainly no Christian should ever pursue that thought. 01:53:41.120 --> 01:53:44.000 If you look at the Old Testament and wonder, what do the 01:53:44.000 --> 01:53:45.840 Jews say about this passage? 01:53:45.840 --> 01:53:47.680 That is an anti-Christian thought. 01:53:47.680 --> 01:53:48.480 That is not a Christian 01:53:49.440 --> 01:53:52.720 question. And I know there are those who will try to say, 01:53:52.720 --> 01:53:54.800 Well we need to know what the Jews think in order to 01:53:54.800 --> 01:53:59.360 interact with them, as Wo just said and as we've said previously. 01:53:59.360 --> 01:54:03.120 Two thousand years is more than enough time. 01:54:03.120 --> 01:54:07.840 The apostles did not wait two thousand years to shake the dust 01:54:07.840 --> 01:54:10.640 off their sandals. 01:54:10.640 --> 01:54:15.600 We have waited two thousand years, for the Jews to convert, for 01:54:15.600 --> 01:54:19.680 the Jews to hear the voice of God in Scripture, which is 01:54:19.680 --> 01:54:23.520 again in Greek, not in Hebrew, and they have not done so. 01:54:23.520 --> 01:54:26.880 They have instead explicitly rejected it. 01:54:26.880 --> 01:54:31.520 and created their own religion that is an inversion of Christianity, that 01:54:31.520 --> 01:54:36.320 is an opposition to Christianity, that seeks to destroy Christianity, that seeks 01:54:36.320 --> 01:54:41.440 to annihilate Christ's Church, because they are of their Father the devil, 01:54:41.440 --> 01:54:45.040 and he was a murderer from the beginning, and they desire only 01:54:45.040 --> 01:54:46.800 to do his will. 01:54:46.800 --> 01:54:48.640 Those are the words of Christ. 01:54:48.640 --> 01:54:51.280 So if you are concerned about what I just said, if you 01:54:51.280 --> 01:54:54.880 think that it's mean or anti Semitic or anything like that, then 01:54:54.880 --> 01:54:56.960 your problem is with God. 01:54:56.960 --> 01:54:59.440 Because Christ is God in the flesh. 01:54:59.440 --> 01:55:01.920 Your problem is with him, it's not with me. 01:55:01.920 --> 01:55:05.920 You can think of the rebellious Jews, the rebellious Israelites in the 01:55:05.920 --> 01:55:11.120 desert, when they stand up against Moses and Aaron, and Moses said, 01:55:11.120 --> 01:55:15.760 Your quarrel is not with me, your quarrel is with God. 01:55:15.760 --> 01:55:19.600 Because that is ultimately what they were rejecting when they were wandering 01:55:19.600 --> 01:55:24.000 in the desert, wandering in the wilderness, they weren't rejecting Moses, they 01:55:24.160 --> 01:55:25.680 were rejecting God. 01:55:25.680 --> 01:55:28.320 And so those who have a problem with the things that we 01:55:28.320 --> 01:55:33.120 say on this podcast about the Jews, we are simply relaying history 01:55:33.920 --> 01:55:39.520 and Christian teaching, and in many cases simply paraphrasing or quoting scripture. 01:55:39.520 --> 01:55:42.400 So if you have a problem with what we are saying, and 01:55:42.400 --> 01:55:45.040 I am saying this primarily not of course for our audience, but 01:55:45.040 --> 01:55:47.760 for those who are listening to out of spite or malice. 01:55:47.760 --> 01:55:50.560 If you have a problem with the things that we are saying, 01:55:50.560 --> 01:55:52.560 your fight is not with us. 01:55:52.560 --> 01:55:55.120 Your fight is with God. 01:55:55.120 --> 01:55:57.920 And I know that I've mentioned things in this episode and elsewhere 01:55:57.920 --> 01:56:01.360 that makes it seem like Satan is this grand opponent that's powerful 01:56:01.520 --> 01:56:02.880 and we should be concerned. 01:56:02.880 --> 01:56:04.320 Again, God is on our side. 01:56:04.320 --> 01:56:05.920 Laugh at Satan, mock him. 01:56:05.920 --> 01:56:08.240 He hates that. 01:56:08.240 --> 01:56:11.680 We don't have to worry about that sort of enemy. 01:56:11.680 --> 01:56:14.240 Yes, he's out there prowling as a lion seeking whom he may 01:56:14.800 --> 01:56:18.320 devour. But we are on the winning side. 01:56:18.320 --> 01:56:22.400 Our God is more powerful than the false God of the Jews. 01:56:22.400 --> 01:56:24.960 We don't have to fear these people, and we don't have to 01:56:24.960 --> 01:56:26.480 ask them any questions. 01:56:26.880 --> 01:56:30.720 These people are evil, they rejected God, they continue to do it 01:56:30.720 --> 01:56:32.000 to this day. 01:56:32.000 --> 01:56:34.560 And Christians should not be consulting them. 01:56:34.560 --> 01:56:38.320 And so when Nicholas of Lyra decides he has to learn Hebrew 01:56:38.320 --> 01:56:43.200 in order to understand the Old Testament, that was wicked. 01:56:43.200 --> 01:56:46.080 That was an evil thing to do, that was an anti Christian 01:56:46.080 --> 01:56:47.440 thing to do. 01:56:47.440 --> 01:56:51.360 And it is possible, yes, to say that Christians have done anti 01:56:51.600 --> 01:56:55.120 Christian wicked things and yet they were still saved. 01:56:55.120 --> 01:56:58.880 I don't believe that most of the men on this list are 01:56:58.880 --> 01:56:59.920 in hell. 01:56:59.920 --> 01:57:02.800 I believe they were Christians who made errors. 01:57:02.800 --> 01:57:05.360 And so if we get to it in this episode if we 01:57:05.360 --> 01:57:10.560 discuss the Reformation figures, I don't think that Luther's in hell. 01:57:10.560 --> 01:57:14.000 I don't think that Calvin is in hell. 01:57:14.000 --> 01:57:18.720 I believe that those men were Christian men who made mistakes. 01:57:18.720 --> 01:57:22.480 Yes, they made some pretty important ones, but by and large they 01:57:22.480 --> 01:57:26.480 were building on the errors of previous centuries. 01:57:26.480 --> 01:57:29.920 At this point, we've gone through a number of centuries, we've gone 01:57:29.920 --> 01:57:33.520 through five to seven hundred years, give or take. 01:57:33.520 --> 01:57:36.640 Those in the Reformation, by the time they got to the period 01:57:36.640 --> 01:57:40.960 of the Reformation, were building on almost a thousand years of errors. 01:57:41.440 --> 01:57:44.480 They didn't manage to correct everything. 01:57:44.480 --> 01:57:46.640 It's one of the points of this series. 01:57:46.640 --> 01:57:49.920 There is work to be done in correcting this error that has 01:57:49.920 --> 01:57:53.360 been allowed to persist in the churches for far too long. 01:57:53.600 --> 01:57:56.560 It's one of the points we will make in the fifth episode 01:57:56.560 --> 01:57:58.320 in this series. 01:57:58.320 --> 01:58:04.000 This is not something that necessarily endangers your soul if you get 01:58:04.000 --> 01:58:04.640 it wrong. 01:58:04.640 --> 01:58:07.600 There's a little danger there, I won't deny that, but it's not 01:58:07.600 --> 01:58:09.920 something that necessarily does so. 01:58:09.920 --> 01:58:13.680 You can still remain a Christian and make these mistakes. 01:58:13.680 --> 01:58:16.720 But it's the same sort of problem we've brought up in so 01:58:16.720 --> 01:58:19.600 many other areas in so many other episodes. 01:58:19.600 --> 01:58:24.960 You don't make these errors, even if it doesn't damn you, because 01:58:24.960 --> 01:58:28.880 it may do so to your great great great grandchild. 01:58:28.880 --> 01:58:32.480 And as a Christian, that should be a core concern for you. 01:58:32.480 --> 01:58:35.600 One of the greatest concerns of the Christian life is passing on 01:58:35.600 --> 01:58:41.520 the faith undefiled and intact to future generations, to make sure that 01:58:41.520 --> 01:58:43.760 they can also be Christian. 01:58:43.760 --> 01:58:46.720 Because look down through the pages of history. 01:58:46.720 --> 01:58:50.880 It is It is nothing but a constant series of men failing 01:58:50.880 --> 01:58:56.240 to transmit the faith with full fidelity, and so eventually, their great 01:58:56.400 --> 01:59:00.800 great great great however many greats it happens to be grandson no 01:59:00.800 --> 01:59:04.080 longer has the faith. 01:59:04.080 --> 01:59:08.880 When Shem stepped off the ark, he knew the true faith. 01:59:08.880 --> 01:59:13.840 In fact, Noah says that God is the God of Shem, which 01:59:13.840 --> 01:59:16.400 is to say that he has the true faith. 01:59:16.400 --> 01:59:20.480 And yet look at what Abraham is when God calls him. 01:59:20.480 --> 01:59:25.120 He's an idolater, he's a moon worshiper, living in a land of 01:59:25.440 --> 01:59:30.000 idolatrous people who do not have the Lord God as their God. 01:59:30.000 --> 01:59:34.560 When Japheth stepped off the ark, he had the true faith. 01:59:34.560 --> 01:59:38.560 He was a believer, he was a Christian, like Father Noah. 01:59:38.560 --> 01:59:42.320 But at some point along the line, he lost it. 01:59:42.320 --> 01:59:46.080 And our ancestors started worshiping gods who were not gods. 01:59:46.080 --> 01:59:49.600 It is possible to lose the faith, even if it is done 01:59:49.600 --> 01:59:54.800 only incrementally, and the sins of the fathers do wind up burdening 01:59:54.800 --> 01:59:56.480 their sons. 01:59:56.480 --> 02:00:00.640 That is what we want to guard against because the consequences are 02:00:00.640 --> 02:00:06.640 disastrous, particularly if those of us in the West lose the faith. 02:00:06.640 --> 02:00:09.120 Because we're the only church left. 02:00:09.120 --> 02:00:13.920 We're the only church that can preserve the faith over a span 02:00:13.920 --> 02:00:16.400 of centuries across time. 02:00:16.640 --> 02:00:20.800 These are not minor matters, even if they seem like they are 02:00:20.800 --> 02:00:26.320 at the time, even if they are in fact a small step. 02:00:26.320 --> 02:00:30.080 Any deviation from the path is not a small step. 02:00:30.080 --> 02:00:34.640 An example we've used before because it illustrates this perfectly, if you 02:00:34.640 --> 02:00:40.400 launch a rocket from Earth and you're off by a millimeter, you 02:00:40.400 --> 02:00:43.280 are not going to be even in the vicinity of Mars by 02:00:43.280 --> 02:00:44.400 the time you get there. 02:00:44.560 --> 02:00:48.160 You're gonna miss the moon by the time you get there. 02:00:48.160 --> 02:00:50.160 That's why these things matter. 02:00:50.160 --> 02:00:53.600 They matter because of the longitudinal consequences. 02:00:53.600 --> 02:00:56.240 And so when you look at those who bring in, for instance, 02:00:56.240 --> 02:01:01.440 Pope Gregory, starts to emphasize perhaps a little too heavily the allegorical, 02:01:01.440 --> 02:01:03.760 or at least he opens the door to it. 02:01:03.760 --> 02:01:07.280 Perhaps you don't lay the blame at his feet, but then you 02:01:07.280 --> 02:01:10.640 get others on down the line, who focus on that to the 02:01:10.640 --> 02:01:14.240 exclusion of the literal, and then you get those who bring back 02:01:14.240 --> 02:01:16.880 the literal, but they botch it by saying well we should go 02:01:16.880 --> 02:01:18.880 ask the Jews about it. 02:01:18.880 --> 02:01:23.360 These errors compound down through the centuries, if no one goes back 02:01:23.360 --> 02:01:26.480 and looks at it and says that's where we went off the 02:01:26.480 --> 02:01:29.440 rails, we need to correct that. 02:01:29.440 --> 02:01:33.600 And incidentally, because all of this stuff is the fruit of the 02:01:33.600 --> 02:01:37.280 poisonous tree, we need to eject it as well. 02:01:37.280 --> 02:01:41.920 Because again, the goal, the overarching goal, as is always the case, 02:01:41.920 --> 02:01:44.720 is fidelity to God and His Word. 02:01:44.720 --> 02:01:46.560 It's to the truth. 02:01:46.560 --> 02:01:50.640 That is the highest value of the Christian is truth. 02:01:50.640 --> 02:01:53.520 In all of this, the goal is the truth. 02:01:53.520 --> 02:01:56.560 That's the case for every single one of our episodes, and it 02:01:56.560 --> 02:01:58.560 is particularly the case for this series. 02:01:58.560 --> 02:02:01.040 It's why we have said this series is such an important thing 02:02:01.520 --> 02:02:05.040 among all the things that we have done, perhaps among all the 02:02:05.040 --> 02:02:07.680 things we ever will do, and I agree with Wo when he 02:02:07.680 --> 02:02:08.320 says that. 02:02:08.320 --> 02:02:11.600 One of the most important things we'll ever do is this series. 02:02:11.600 --> 02:02:13.040 Because this is a major problem. 02:02:13.040 --> 02:02:15.840 This is something that needs to be addressed, and we'll get into 02:02:15.840 --> 02:02:18.480 that again in the fifth episode. 02:02:19.040 --> 02:02:23.760 Just because it seems like it's minor does not mean that ultimately 02:02:23.760 --> 02:02:26.160 it is a minor thing. 02:02:26.720 --> 02:02:32.640 Tiny errors in your course will leave you miles off after a 02:02:32.640 --> 02:02:33.760 certain time. 02:02:33.760 --> 02:02:35.920 That is what we have here. 02:02:35.920 --> 02:02:41.120 Because this man, Nicholas of Lyra, what he does, doesn't seem in 02:02:41.120 --> 02:02:44.240 his context like that much of a problem. 02:02:44.240 --> 02:02:47.120 Now, if he'd thought about it again, he should know that you 02:02:47.120 --> 02:02:49.760 don't ask the Jews these questions because they aren't Christian, they have 02:02:49.760 --> 02:02:51.200 no insight. 02:02:51.520 --> 02:02:54.320 But he was building on, and he was inheriting 02:02:55.520 --> 02:02:59.920 centuries of this general sentiment that you go to the Jews to 02:02:59.920 --> 02:03:02.960 ask about Hebrew, because you have to know Hebrew to ask about 02:03:02.960 --> 02:03:05.120 the Old Testament. 02:03:05.120 --> 02:03:08.160 It was false then, it's false now. 02:03:08.160 --> 02:03:10.320 It needs to be rejected. 02:03:10.320 --> 02:03:13.360 And as we continue through the rest of this episode, we'll see 02:03:13.360 --> 02:03:18.560 that this problem continues to compound, continues to get worse, because no 02:03:18.560 --> 02:03:25.760 men ask the necessary questions and pinpoint the necessary point in time 02:03:26.160 --> 02:03:30.320 where the error occurred, with the exception with regard to the right 02:03:30.320 --> 02:03:33.440 course of action at least, the two Jewish men in the list, 02:03:33.760 --> 02:03:38.240 formerly Jewish men, now certainly Christian brothers. 02:03:38.320 --> 02:03:41.600 Donin and Pfeffricorn. 02:03:42.000 --> 02:03:45.200 The way that things really went off the rail with Nicholas of 02:03:45.200 --> 02:03:52.080 Lyra was was the degree to which he focused on literalism and 02:03:52.080 --> 02:03:54.800 pointed to the Jews in doing so. 02:03:54.800 --> 02:03:58.960 His magnum opus was the postilla literalis. 02:03:58.960 --> 02:04:06.400 He spent a great deal of time basically recycling Rashi's literalist commentaries 02:04:06.400 --> 02:04:09.200 and laundering them into the Christian church. 02:04:09.200 --> 02:04:12.800 So much so that his nickname was Simeus Solomonus or the ape 02:04:12.800 --> 02:04:14.960 of Solomon Rashi. 02:04:14.960 --> 02:04:19.520 Everyone knew that he was just recycling what this Jew had said 02:04:19.520 --> 02:04:21.920 in his literal commentaries. 02:04:21.920 --> 02:04:26.880 But the impact was that those commentaries are the most widely circulated 02:04:26.880 --> 02:04:28.640 commentaries in that time. 02:04:28.640 --> 02:04:33.280 In fact, today there are probably about a thousand manuscript witnesses to 02:04:33.520 --> 02:04:36.320 Nicholas of Lyra's commentaries. 02:04:36.480 --> 02:04:40.720 they were even more impactful than Comastor's Historia. 02:04:40.720 --> 02:04:46.080 And so what we have here is a man who was aping 02:04:46.080 --> 02:04:50.800 a Jew, was recycling what he said in his literal commentaries. 02:04:50.960 --> 02:04:53.920 Maybe some was right, was Corey layout. 02:04:53.920 --> 02:04:54.800 It doesn't matter. 02:04:54.800 --> 02:04:57.440 It's not a question of who's right, it's where you getting it 02:04:57.440 --> 02:05:00.320 from. If you're getting it from a bad place, don't repeat it, 02:05:00.320 --> 02:05:02.000 even if it's good stuff. 02:05:02.000 --> 02:05:03.360 That's what people say about us. 02:05:03.360 --> 02:05:06.240 If they were right about us being bad, the argument would be 02:05:06.240 --> 02:05:09.120 true. That's why the argument rings true with some people, because it's 02:05:09.120 --> 02:05:10.000 good advice. 02:05:10.000 --> 02:05:14.320 If your kid finds a drug dealer who also happens to repair 02:05:14.320 --> 02:05:16.880 bikes or something, you don't send your kid there to have his 02:05:16.880 --> 02:05:17.840 bike repaired. 02:05:17.840 --> 02:05:19.200 You're going to get into trouble. 02:05:19.200 --> 02:05:23.120 Everyone understands this in everything except for religion, which is why we're 02:05:23.120 --> 02:05:28.320 adamant that you can't dismiss going to rabbis to learn. 02:05:28.320 --> 02:05:33.280 The school, the Nicholas of Lyra was a part of came out 02:05:33.280 --> 02:05:38.240 of the Council of Vienne in thirteen eleven, thirteen twelve, which ordered 02:05:38.240 --> 02:05:43.040 study of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic basically at all the major universities 02:05:43.600 --> 02:05:44.560 in the West. 02:05:44.560 --> 02:05:49.680 So Paris, Oxford, Bologna, Salamanca, and the papal enclave itself. 02:05:49.680 --> 02:05:54.800 So this is the first time that throughout Christian lands, men are 02:05:55.120 --> 02:05:58.240 indirectly consulting with rabbis. 02:05:58.240 --> 02:06:03.840 And that's why the other rabbi who made the he did commentaries, 02:06:03.840 --> 02:06:08.480 but most of his work was on translation, on teaching people Hebrew. 02:06:08.560 --> 02:06:12.160 So when those were produced and those were distributed, it was possible 02:06:12.240 --> 02:06:17.280 finally, because again the Masoretes had finally turned something like Hebrew into 02:06:17.280 --> 02:06:22.240 a fully fleshed out written language, you could actually learn Hebrew without 02:06:22.240 --> 02:06:25.440 talking to a rabbi, but you're only going to be learning the 02:06:25.440 --> 02:06:27.520 oral tradition that was finally written down. 02:06:27.520 --> 02:06:30.640 So it's a level of intermediation that means that you still have 02:06:30.640 --> 02:06:33.200 a rabbi in the loop, but you might not be talking to 02:06:33.200 --> 02:06:36.960 one. And that's why Nicholas of Lyra in particular did so much 02:06:36.960 --> 02:06:41.600 damage, is that he took Rashi's teachings and put them everywhere in 02:06:41.600 --> 02:06:48.640 Christianity, which normalized studying in Hebrew and normalized studying from rabbis, and 02:06:48.640 --> 02:06:50.240 no one was the wiser. 02:06:50.240 --> 02:06:52.160 No one ever asked the question: why are we doing this? 02:06:52.160 --> 02:06:53.600 Should we be doing this? 02:06:53.600 --> 02:06:56.320 And so this is one of those inflection points that while it 02:06:56.320 --> 02:07:01.840 doesn't seem obviously bad, if you consider the alternatives, it can kind 02:07:01.840 --> 02:07:04.000 of become horrifying. 02:07:04.000 --> 02:07:08.240 But again, this was a product of the 13th and 14th centuries 02:07:08.400 --> 02:07:12.560 where they were coexisting with those populations and they were trying to 02:07:12.560 --> 02:07:16.000 evangelize them, which, as we said in the previous episode, and we'll 02:07:15.920 --> 02:07:18.400 say again, on paper, that seems Christian. 02:07:18.400 --> 02:07:22.560 It totally ignores what Christ said and what Paul and Barnabas did, 02:07:22.560 --> 02:07:27.600 but it sounds Christian, and so they ignored the advice I say 02:07:27.600 --> 02:07:31.440 advice, we're talking about God, they ignore the command of God to 02:07:31.440 --> 02:07:35.440 shake the dust off your feet against those who reject Christ. 02:07:35.440 --> 02:07:37.280 They said no, all right, keep trying. 02:07:37.280 --> 02:07:39.360 We're gonna learn in their language and argue with them. 02:07:39.600 --> 02:07:41.120 And the Jews were happy. 02:07:41.120 --> 02:07:47.760 And that set the stage for what flows into the Reformation. 02:07:47.760 --> 02:07:50.880 Now, all of this to this point has been when everything had 02:07:50.880 --> 02:07:52.320 to be written down by hand. 02:07:52.320 --> 02:07:54.960 It was entirely manuscripts. 02:07:54.960 --> 02:07:57.760 So faithful transmission was a big deal. 02:07:57.760 --> 02:07:59.360 It was a very important skill. 02:07:59.360 --> 02:08:01.040 Penmanship mattered a great deal. 02:08:01.040 --> 02:08:05.440 There was the development of certain font styles that were more readable, 02:08:05.440 --> 02:08:06.800 that were more clear. 02:08:06.800 --> 02:08:12.000 There were innovations like putting spaces between words and adding punctuation and 02:08:12.000 --> 02:08:13.360 lowercase letters. 02:08:13.360 --> 02:08:18.880 All those things are later innovations in language, including in European languages. 02:08:18.880 --> 02:08:21.840 By the time we get to 1440, we have a very brief 02:08:21.840 --> 02:08:24.480 moment where the Gutenberg press is invented. 02:08:24.480 --> 02:08:28.240 When a movable type is created, now for the very first time, 02:08:28.240 --> 02:08:34.080 it's possible to produce far more printed material without a huge budget. 02:08:34.080 --> 02:08:39.120 It was still expensive by the standards of those days, but relative 02:08:39.120 --> 02:08:42.320 to the cost of producing what you know, who knows how many 02:08:42.320 --> 02:08:46.240 of those manuscripts of Nicholas of Lyra were produced, for a thousand 02:08:46.240 --> 02:08:50.160 of them to still exist today is it's unbelievable when you consider 02:08:50.160 --> 02:08:51.040 the expense. 02:08:51.040 --> 02:08:54.400 That's why we mentioned the value probably in the billions of dollars 02:08:54.480 --> 02:08:58.000 of all the Talmuds and other Jewish writings that were burned at 02:08:58.000 --> 02:09:03.040 the trial of the Talmud, that stuff was worth a kingdom because 02:09:03.040 --> 02:09:05.840 it was so difficult, because it was manual. 02:09:05.840 --> 02:09:09.200 This changes in the mid fifteenth century, the creation of the Gutenberg 02:09:09.200 --> 02:09:12.560 press sets the stage for everything that happens after. 02:09:12.560 --> 02:09:13.520 Everybody knows that. 02:09:13.520 --> 02:09:15.680 Like it's we're not saying anything new there. 02:09:15.680 --> 02:09:20.160 But particularly when you're talking about the production of Christian or non 02:09:20.320 --> 02:09:24.000 Christian documents, this was an inflection point. 02:09:24.720 --> 02:09:26.480 Previously you had to be rich. 02:09:26.480 --> 02:09:30.320 Like you had to you had to have seriously deep pockets to 02:09:30.320 --> 02:09:32.480 be able to produce written works. 02:09:32.480 --> 02:09:35.520 With the Gutenberg press, suddenly you could have tracts and stuff that 02:09:35.520 --> 02:09:37.360 were produced relatively cheaply. 02:09:37.360 --> 02:09:44.240 They had basically introduced mass production into the realm of literacy, such 02:09:44.240 --> 02:09:48.000 that by the end of the fifteenth century, there were over 20 02:09:48.000 --> 02:09:51.840 million volumes produced and in circulation in Western Europe. 02:09:51.840 --> 02:09:56.800 That's just astonishing to go from everything had to be handwritten to 02:09:56.800 --> 02:09:59.280 twenty million volumes in circulation. 02:09:59.280 --> 02:10:03.760 That shows the impact of what mass production did for writing. 02:10:03.760 --> 02:10:07.520 And while it was frequently used for religious things, it was done 02:10:07.520 --> 02:10:10.720 for political purposes, it was done for other religions. 02:10:10.720 --> 02:10:13.840 Some of the things we're going to talk about next were Jewish 02:10:14.160 --> 02:10:18.640 writings also being mass produced, which never should have been permitted, but 02:10:18.640 --> 02:10:22.080 it was good money, so it happened. 02:10:22.160 --> 02:10:25.920 So as we mentioned earlier, Greek was not used in the West 02:10:25.920 --> 02:10:27.280 at all during this period. 02:10:27.280 --> 02:10:30.400 There were a few guys who popped up occasionally who taught basically 02:10:30.400 --> 02:10:31.920 taught themselves Greek. 02:10:31.920 --> 02:10:35.360 Interestingly, the only ones I could find virtually were in England or 02:10:35.360 --> 02:10:39.120 Ireland. Seemed like only in Great Britain did anyone really engage in 02:10:39.120 --> 02:10:43.280 Hebrew in Christian history after it was lost in the West. 02:10:43.280 --> 02:10:49.120 That changed in the Italian Renaissance in the early 1400s. 02:10:49.120 --> 02:10:53.120 A man named Lorenzo Valla, he was a pivotal figure on on 02:10:53.120 --> 02:10:59.440 reintroducing Greek scholarships specifically for Christian studies. 02:10:59.440 --> 02:11:04.720 So the Renaissance humanist period, a lot of it was focused on 02:11:04.880 --> 02:11:09.360 let's go back to antiquity, but they weren't focused on the Bible. 02:11:09.360 --> 02:11:13.600 They were focused on the other stuff, you know, plays, writings, philosophy, 02:11:13.600 --> 02:11:16.480 all the stuff that's considered to be part of a classical education 02:11:16.480 --> 02:11:19.200 today. That was what they were mostly working on. 02:11:19.200 --> 02:11:24.480 Lorenzo Valla changed things by specifically creating a groundbreaking work that was 02:11:24.480 --> 02:11:28.080 published in fourteen forty four or is written in fourteen forty four, 02:11:28.080 --> 02:11:31.440 but it wasn't until Erasmus published it in fifteen oh five that 02:11:31.440 --> 02:11:34.080 it got that it got significant circulation. 02:11:34.080 --> 02:11:39.200 Lorenzo Valla, he systematically compared the Latin Vulgate against Greek manuscripts and 02:11:39.200 --> 02:11:41.680 he pointed out a number of translation errors. 02:11:41.680 --> 02:11:44.400 And he did pretty good job, but this was one of the 02:11:44.400 --> 02:11:50.240 only times in Christian history that a Western theologian had looked at 02:11:50.240 --> 02:11:52.720 Greek and compared it to the Latin. 02:11:52.720 --> 02:11:55.360 That hadn't been done since it was translated. 02:11:55.360 --> 02:11:59.440 And so this is seminal, and this flows directly into Erasmus' work, 02:11:59.440 --> 02:12:02.800 because you know, remember right now, just before the beginning of the 02:12:02.800 --> 02:12:06.880 Reformation, where that was a big deal, the departure from the Vulgate 02:12:06.960 --> 02:12:11.440 to look back to the original languages, the Greek was a laggard. 02:12:11.440 --> 02:12:14.400 It was Hebrew had been studied for centuries at this point. 02:12:14.400 --> 02:12:17.920 And again, that was mostly focused on polemics and on evangelism. 02:12:17.920 --> 02:12:22.560 It wasn't principally seen as a means of studying scripture. 02:12:22.560 --> 02:12:25.920 You still didn't have pastors learning Hebrew left and right, it really 02:12:25.920 --> 02:12:30.320 wasn't done, but they didn't have to because Rashi's commentaries were translated 02:12:30.320 --> 02:12:33.120 and republished by Nicholas of Lyra, put everywhere. 02:12:33.120 --> 02:12:35.120 So yeah, you don't need to read Hebrew if you could just 02:12:35.120 --> 02:12:38.960 read Rashi and the languages of Nicholas of Lyra stuff was published 02:12:38.960 --> 02:12:44.400 in. So that's why the language story here is so interesting, and 02:12:44.400 --> 02:12:46.240 it's one that's basically untold. 02:12:46.240 --> 02:12:49.280 Because if you listen to guys who've gone to seminary in this 02:12:49.280 --> 02:12:52.880 century, this millennium, now we're in the you know the third millennium 02:12:52.880 --> 02:12:55.840 here of the church age, you would think that everyone is just 02:12:55.840 --> 02:12:57.520 learning Greek and Hebrew all along. 02:12:57.520 --> 02:12:58.800 It's just a fabrication. 02:12:58.800 --> 02:12:59.680 They weren't. 02:12:59.680 --> 02:13:02.560 Only two guys in church history prior to the thirteenth century ever 02:13:02.560 --> 02:13:07.520 learned Hebrew, and fewer than that learned Greek until Lorenzo Valla. 02:13:07.520 --> 02:13:09.520 That's crazy based on what we know today. 02:13:09.520 --> 02:13:13.760 It's just a small historical tidbit, except don't pretend the looking at 02:13:13.760 --> 02:13:17.040 the original language as so-called in the case of Hebrew has been 02:13:17.040 --> 02:13:18.000 the universal practice. 02:13:18.000 --> 02:13:18.800 It wasn't. 02:13:18.800 --> 02:13:21.440 Latin was the only Bible they had, which is one of the 02:13:21.440 --> 02:13:24.320 reasons that Rome was so angry about the Reformation. 02:13:24.320 --> 02:13:25.200 Like, what are you doing? 02:13:25.200 --> 02:13:26.880 This is what the church has always done. 02:13:26.880 --> 02:13:28.000 And they were right about that. 02:13:28.480 --> 02:13:31.120 The problem was that the church shouldn't have done that. 02:13:31.120 --> 02:13:35.040 The church should not have followed in the footsteps of Jerome. 02:13:35.040 --> 02:13:37.440 But as I said at the beginning, no one is asking the 02:13:37.600 --> 02:13:38.880 Septuagint question. 02:13:38.880 --> 02:13:42.080 They're just okay, it's a Latin Bible, and we standardized on it. 02:13:42.080 --> 02:13:43.360 It's good to standardize. 02:13:43.360 --> 02:13:46.080 And it's good to standardize in the language you're using. 02:13:46.080 --> 02:13:49.200 What's not good is when the underlying text was the wrong one. 02:13:49.200 --> 02:13:50.720 So no one ever asked the question. 02:13:50.720 --> 02:13:53.120 And that's how we ended up here today. 02:13:54.800 --> 02:13:55.040 So, 02:13:55.040 --> 02:13:59.360 as Will already mentioned, obviously the printing press plays a role in 02:13:59.360 --> 02:14:02.080 all of this, and we're all familiar with Gutenberg. 02:14:02.080 --> 02:14:03.200 So that's the 02:14:04.160 --> 02:14:09.200 end of the 1300s, early 1400s, you have he's born and then 02:14:09.200 --> 02:14:12.320 he dies fourteen sixty eight. 02:14:12.320 --> 02:14:17.120 But the two men we're going to mention here own printing presses. 02:14:17.120 --> 02:14:20.400 These are men who are involved in the production of these works. 02:14:20.400 --> 02:14:23.120 One is Jewish, one is not. 02:14:23.120 --> 02:14:27.760 The first, the Jewish man is Gershom Sonsino, he's a Jewish printer 02:14:27.760 --> 02:14:28.960 and publisher. 02:14:28.960 --> 02:14:32.720 He works at publishing a lot of Hebrew writings. 02:14:32.720 --> 02:14:37.440 And he's named Suncino because he was born in Suncino in Italy. 02:14:37.440 --> 02:14:39.760 He later did move to Spain though. 02:14:39.760 --> 02:14:43.360 But he is printing primarily works that are in Hebrew. 02:14:43.360 --> 02:14:48.000 So this is where you see the beginning of the mass availability 02:14:48.000 --> 02:14:51.440 of these works because as Woe mentioned, as we mentioned a number 02:14:51.440 --> 02:14:55.280 of times, it's very expensive to produce things when you have to 02:14:55.280 --> 02:14:57.600 reproduce them by hand. 02:14:57.600 --> 02:15:01.200 It is much, much cheaper when you can do it with a 02:15:01.200 --> 02:15:02.320 printing press. 02:15:02.320 --> 02:15:06.080 Still not as cheap as today, but you can produce tens of 02:15:06.080 --> 02:15:10.320 thousands of copies of something, whereas it would take much longer to 02:15:10.320 --> 02:15:17.280 produce a single copy prior to the invention of the printing press. 02:15:17.280 --> 02:15:22.240 The other man is Daniel Bomberg, which he plays perhaps an even 02:15:22.240 --> 02:15:25.600 larger role for a number of reasons. 02:15:25.600 --> 02:15:30.960 Partly is politics, which inevitably politics is going to be involved down 02:15:30.960 --> 02:15:32.800 through this entire narrative. 02:15:32.800 --> 02:15:35.920 We're dealing with popes in some cases, we're dealing with wealthy men 02:15:35.920 --> 02:15:39.520 in others, we're dealing with the courts of emperors and kings. 02:15:39.520 --> 02:15:44.880 Daniel Bomberg has connections to the papacy, and this is a pope 02:15:44.880 --> 02:15:47.520 many of you will know if you have studied Reformation history at 02:15:47.520 --> 02:15:54.400 all, Pope Leo X 10th gives Bomberg a multi-year monopoly on the 02:15:54.400 --> 02:15:56.960 printing of works in Hebrew. 02:15:56.960 --> 02:16:01.360 One of the things that he produces is the first complete printing 02:16:01.360 --> 02:16:03.280 of the Talmud. 02:16:03.280 --> 02:16:04.240 This is the first time 02:16:05.280 --> 02:16:10.000 that a printed as opposed to a copied or transcribed in the 02:16:10.000 --> 02:16:15.760 sense of literally scribed by a scribe, printed versions of the Talmud 02:16:15.760 --> 02:16:17.360 are available. 02:16:17.360 --> 02:16:21.680 It can be produced far faster than before, far more cheaply. 02:16:21.680 --> 02:16:26.320 So now many Jews who otherwise could not have access to this 02:16:26.320 --> 02:16:30.000 material personally, because it would have only been in the homes of 02:16:30.000 --> 02:16:33.760 the wealthiest of rabbis, well now they can afford this. 02:16:33.760 --> 02:16:38.400 And so the Talmud spreads far and wide whereas it could not 02:16:38.400 --> 02:16:42.000 have done so without the advent of the printing press and this 02:16:42.000 --> 02:16:42.560 support for the 02:16:43.680 --> 02:16:48.400 Pope. And not by just the Pope, incidentally, his nephew also provided 02:16:48.400 --> 02:16:50.080 financial support. 02:16:50.080 --> 02:16:54.000 This Pope, worth noting, was a Medici, and so of course his 02:16:54.000 --> 02:16:56.160 nephew, also a Medici. 02:16:56.560 --> 02:17:01.520 But Bomberg advocates for the importance of Hebrew materials. 02:17:01.520 --> 02:17:05.120 He advocates, of course, to the Pope and to others, partly because 02:17:05.120 --> 02:17:07.520 he has this economic interest. 02:17:07.520 --> 02:17:09.520 This is making him a lot of money. 02:17:09.520 --> 02:17:12.720 There are many Jews who are willing to pay him a lot 02:17:12.720 --> 02:17:13.680 of money. 02:17:13.680 --> 02:17:19.040 Relatively speaking, obviously again, the hand printed version, the hand transcribed version 02:17:19.120 --> 02:17:22.880 is worth a lot more, but it's much cheaper to produce these 02:17:22.880 --> 02:17:26.800 mass produced versions of the Talmud with the printing press. 02:17:26.800 --> 02:17:31.920 And so he's making a great deal of money producing these resources. 02:17:31.920 --> 02:17:35.360 The sort of thing that no Christian should ever produce. 02:17:35.520 --> 02:17:39.600 There are some things that are, just as an example, sort of, 02:17:39.600 --> 02:17:43.600 quoted in the Book of Concord, and they're quoted in Latin, and 02:17:43.600 --> 02:17:47.440 it actually says it is something so wicked that Christians should hesitate 02:17:47.440 --> 02:17:48.720 to translate them. 02:17:48.720 --> 02:17:51.600 They are left in the Latin, in the German version, and in 02:17:51.600 --> 02:17:53.440 the Old English versions. 02:17:53.440 --> 02:17:56.880 This is the sort of thing that Christians should not be producing 02:17:56.880 --> 02:17:59.600 and disseminating. 02:17:59.600 --> 02:18:06.480 Things that are outright blasphemous and heretical, like the Talmud, a Christian 02:18:06.480 --> 02:18:10.000 printer should not be producing, though certainly not with the approval of 02:18:10.000 --> 02:18:13.520 the Pope, and making money off doing so. 02:18:13.760 --> 02:18:18.160 But that is the sort of wickedness that we see leading up 02:18:18.160 --> 02:18:21.920 here to the eve of the Reformation, because the Reformation, the very 02:18:21.920 --> 02:18:26.800 beginnings of it, sort of 1517 with the ninety-five theses, overlaps the 02:18:26.800 --> 02:18:30.400 lifespan of both of these men, both the Jewish owner of a 02:18:30.400 --> 02:18:31.920 printing press and this 02:18:32.960 --> 02:18:36.880 Christian, otherwise supposedly Christian man who owned a printing press. 02:18:36.880 --> 02:18:41.920 But again, where there's money to be made, some men will compromise 02:18:41.920 --> 02:18:43.520 their principles. 02:18:44.880 --> 02:18:49.600 One of the greatest reasons why Suncino and Bomberg are important to 02:18:49.600 --> 02:18:55.600 our story of the Septuagint is that in 1494 Sonsino published the 02:18:55.600 --> 02:19:00.640 Bresica Hebrew Old Testament, which was most likely the Old Testament that 02:19:00.640 --> 02:19:03.760 Luther used for his initial translation work. 02:19:03.760 --> 02:19:07.680 When he translated the first five books, the other Bible I'm about 02:19:07.760 --> 02:19:09.600 to mention didn't exist yet. 02:19:09.600 --> 02:19:13.440 And given the volume of production and the quality, it's most likely 02:19:13.440 --> 02:19:17.680 that Sansino's Bresca Hebrew was Luther's basis. 02:19:17.680 --> 02:19:21.760 The other book that was produced, Daniel Bombard, produced a couple rabbinic 02:19:21.760 --> 02:19:22.960 Old Testaments. 02:19:22.960 --> 02:19:26.560 The first came out in fifteen sixteen seventeen, and the second came 02:19:26.560 --> 02:19:29.120 out in fifteen twenty-four or twenty-five. 02:19:29.120 --> 02:19:34.320 The second rabbinic, so-called Bible, Old Testament, would have been the one 02:19:34.320 --> 02:19:38.720 that we know Luther used for all of his subsequent translation work, 02:19:38.720 --> 02:19:40.560 because it was more complete. 02:19:40.560 --> 02:19:43.360 So yeah, it's a small part of the story, but it's important 02:19:43.360 --> 02:19:49.040 to know that prior to this ready availability, not being able to 02:19:49.040 --> 02:19:55.120 learn the Hebrew language and not having access to readily available inexpensive 02:19:55.120 --> 02:19:59.040 sources, Would have made it simply impossible to do fresh translations from 02:19:59.040 --> 02:20:03.360 Hebrew. That hadn't been done since Jerome. 02:20:03.360 --> 02:20:06.800 And that's a point that kind of gets lost here with all 02:20:06.800 --> 02:20:08.080 these names floating around. 02:20:08.080 --> 02:20:10.000 But another thing to keep in mind. 02:20:10.640 --> 02:20:15.920 The version of the Hebrew that's being published by Sonsino and Bomberg 02:20:16.240 --> 02:20:22.400 is downstream from the Masoretic text from 1008 AD. 02:20:22.400 --> 02:20:25.440 So when we think, oh Hebrew Old Testament, it's you know that's 02:20:25.440 --> 02:20:28.080 two thousand twenty five hundred years old at this point, right? 02:20:28.080 --> 02:20:30.960 No. It was five hundred years old at this point. 02:20:30.960 --> 02:20:32.560 That was what they were publishing. 02:20:32.560 --> 02:20:35.040 They're publishing a five hundred year old version. 02:20:35.040 --> 02:20:38.320 And crucially, we know that for a fact because it had the 02:20:38.320 --> 02:20:39.200 vowel pointers. 02:20:39.200 --> 02:20:42.320 It had enough that you could sit down with the Old Testament 02:20:42.320 --> 02:20:45.360 in Hebrew, and if you knew Hebrew, you could read it with 02:20:45.360 --> 02:20:47.440 no oral tradition whatsoever. 02:20:47.440 --> 02:20:50.480 That was made possible in part by the fact that Sonsino also 02:20:50.480 --> 02:20:54.880 published the grammatical works by Radak that we talked about earlier. 02:20:54.880 --> 02:20:59.760 So see that's why that Radak's commentary's not so important, but his 02:20:59.760 --> 02:21:04.720 grammatical work crucial because once Sonsino shows up publishing it, so it 02:21:04.720 --> 02:21:08.720 was freely well not freely, but it was widely available in Europe, 02:21:08.720 --> 02:21:11.280 suddenly you could learn Hebrew, you didn't have to have a rabbi 02:21:11.280 --> 02:21:14.320 in the loop anymore, which is why it became easier and easier 02:21:14.320 --> 02:21:17.920 and easier for Christians to think that they weren't doing anything wicked 02:21:17.920 --> 02:21:21.440 when they engaged with this Hebrew language. 02:21:21.440 --> 02:21:24.080 They were just you know learning an old language and they were 02:21:24.080 --> 02:21:27.040 reading God's word, so obviously, it was fine. 02:21:27.280 --> 02:21:30.800 No one ever asked the important questions, which is how we end 02:21:30.800 --> 02:21:32.000 up in this place. 02:21:32.000 --> 02:21:36.640 The reason for presenting this swath of history is that no one 02:21:36.640 --> 02:21:38.640 ever talked about the Greek. 02:21:38.640 --> 02:21:41.440 The only time the Greek comes up when we're looking here is 02:21:41.440 --> 02:21:42.880 looking to the New Testament. 02:21:42.880 --> 02:21:45.840 Because why would I want to look at the Greek Old Testament? 02:21:45.840 --> 02:21:46.800 That's just trivia. 02:21:46.800 --> 02:21:50.800 At this point, it's a jeopardy answer or jeopardy question. 02:21:50.800 --> 02:21:58.320 Everyone in the Renaissance in the humanist vein subscribed to Jerome's comment 02:21:58.320 --> 02:22:00.720 about the pure spring and the muddy stream. 02:22:00.720 --> 02:22:01.600 All of them. 02:22:01.600 --> 02:22:03.360 That was universalized. 02:22:03.360 --> 02:22:05.120 It became a mantra. 02:22:05.280 --> 02:22:10.720 Yeah, we talk about things like the sola, sola scriptura, sola fide. 02:22:10.720 --> 02:22:15.520 Jerome's comment about pure springs was one of those for all of 02:22:15.520 --> 02:22:18.240 these men, because they believed if they went to the Hebrew, they 02:22:18.240 --> 02:22:19.520 were going to get something more pure. 02:22:19.840 --> 02:22:21.680 They didn't look at his genealogy. 02:22:21.680 --> 02:22:23.040 They didn't origins. 02:22:23.040 --> 02:22:24.080 What do they look at? 02:22:24.080 --> 02:22:27.200 They looked at the fact that a few centuries earlier, as soon 02:22:27.200 --> 02:22:31.520 as we started talking to rabbis again, looking at Rashi's commentary, we 02:22:31.520 --> 02:22:33.680 get really good literal commentaries. 02:22:33.680 --> 02:22:37.520 We get things that sound Christian when you're superficially looking at the 02:22:37.520 --> 02:22:38.720 arguments from scripture. 02:22:38.720 --> 02:22:39.920 It's like great. 02:22:39.920 --> 02:22:42.400 That was how the discontinuity occurred. 02:22:42.400 --> 02:22:45.600 Jerome legitimized, well, we're going to use Hebrew. 02:22:45.600 --> 02:22:47.360 Augustine lost the fight. 02:22:47.360 --> 02:22:51.120 Everyone forgot Greek and Hebrew, so all they had was Latin. 02:22:51.120 --> 02:22:54.240 And then eight hundred years later, when they start looking at these 02:22:54.240 --> 02:22:59.440 old languages again, it's rejecting the hermeneutic, not talking about languages at 02:22:59.440 --> 02:23:04.160 all, but rejecting the notion of allegorical readings versus literal readings. 02:23:04.160 --> 02:23:08.800 And tada, we have these Jews with their literal readings and their 02:23:08.800 --> 02:23:14.000 literal interpretations Conveniently explaining the Old Testament better than we had in 02:23:14.000 --> 02:23:15.840 the church for centuries. 02:23:15.840 --> 02:23:19.760 Satan laid the table perfectly, and when the reformers showed up, they 02:23:19.760 --> 02:23:23.120 just gobbled it up because everything that they wanted was right there. 02:23:23.120 --> 02:23:27.520 They had the old language, they had literal interpretations, they had the 02:23:27.520 --> 02:23:31.600 ability to engage in the language themselves without talking to any rabbis 02:23:31.600 --> 02:23:32.960 who didn't want to. 02:23:32.960 --> 02:23:36.000 And so game set match. 02:23:36.000 --> 02:23:39.120 All these moving parts that seem to be disconnected are part of 02:23:39.120 --> 02:23:41.680 an infernal machine conceived in hell. 02:23:41.680 --> 02:23:44.320 Satan knew what he was doing with all these moving parts. 02:23:44.320 --> 02:23:46.960 You know, we did episode ninety nine about the context window. 02:23:46.960 --> 02:23:49.760 Look how much crap I've put on the table for you to 02:23:49.760 --> 02:23:52.240 have to understand what's going on here. 02:23:52.240 --> 02:23:55.680 That's why we keep repeating certain elements because once you see how 02:23:55.680 --> 02:23:58.960 one part plays into another, like, well, yeah, that makes sense. 02:23:58.960 --> 02:24:00.640 No one's ever looked at this before. 02:24:00.640 --> 02:24:02.560 They didn't look at it in the Reformation. 02:24:02.560 --> 02:24:03.680 They didn't look at it before. 02:24:03.680 --> 02:24:04.720 Like why would they? 02:24:04.720 --> 02:24:07.040 They were solving the problem right in front of them. 02:24:07.040 --> 02:24:09.440 And the problem that Luther and the other reformers had right in 02:24:09.440 --> 02:24:13.040 front of them was they wanted to get a cleaner version of 02:24:13.040 --> 02:24:14.720 the Bible than the Vulgate. 02:24:14.720 --> 02:24:17.360 You asked the wrong question, you get the wrong answer. 02:24:17.360 --> 02:24:20.480 They didn't ask the right form of the question, and so they 02:24:20.480 --> 02:24:22.080 looked in the wrong place. 02:24:22.080 --> 02:24:24.880 That's why it's you know, so many of our previous episodes we 02:24:24.880 --> 02:24:27.600 spent a lot of time defining terms and sort of making sure 02:24:27.600 --> 02:24:30.560 we're going down the right path at the beginning because if you 02:24:30.560 --> 02:24:34.400 go off just course just slightly, as Corey said, you're gonna blow 02:24:34.400 --> 02:24:36.720 a thousand miles past your target. 02:24:36.720 --> 02:24:40.640 If you're on a long enough timeline, on a long enough distance, 02:24:40.640 --> 02:24:44.320 a small area at the beginning can be catastrophic by the time 02:24:44.320 --> 02:24:47.200 you would be at your target if you had not made that 02:24:47.200 --> 02:24:49.360 minor error at the beginning. 02:24:50.480 --> 02:24:55.120 So the next prominent figure in all of this is Cardinal Francisco 02:24:55.680 --> 02:24:59.840 Cisneros is a longer full name in Spanish, but that's sufficient for 02:24:59.840 --> 02:25:01.280 our purposes here. 02:25:01.280 --> 02:25:06.240 Of course, as mentioned, he is Spanish, and so those of you 02:25:06.240 --> 02:25:11.520 who are more familiar with this particular point point in time, this 02:25:11.520 --> 02:25:16.000 particular span of years in history, will recognize that we are now 02:25:16.000 --> 02:25:21.520 coming close to the Spanish Golden Age, which occurred subsequent to the 02:25:21.520 --> 02:25:25.920 expulsion of the Jews, which took place in fourteen ninety two. 02:25:25.920 --> 02:25:30.240 This man is alive during that time and in fact does advocate 02:25:30.240 --> 02:25:33.920 for the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. 02:25:34.160 --> 02:25:39.040 However, he is again a mixed bag because he does not advocate 02:25:39.040 --> 02:25:44.960 for the destruction of the Hebrew materials or using the Greek, certainly 02:25:45.040 --> 02:25:48.960 he doesn't go that far, but he does view Hebrew as a 02:25:48.960 --> 02:25:50.960 tool for converting the Jews. 02:25:50.960 --> 02:25:53.920 This is one of those refrains we've mentioned a number of times. 02:25:53.920 --> 02:25:55.440 You see this down through history. 02:25:55.440 --> 02:25:56.960 You even see it today. 02:25:56.960 --> 02:26:01.040 You see those who will learn Hebrew, modern Hebrew in this case, 02:26:01.040 --> 02:26:04.000 of course, and then go over to Israel to try to use 02:26:04.000 --> 02:26:06.400 it to convert the Jews. 02:26:06.400 --> 02:26:09.360 Well the problem, as we've mentioned a number of times, is one, 02:26:09.360 --> 02:26:12.480 it's being unfaithful to Christ's command to shake the dust off your 02:26:12.480 --> 02:26:17.120 feet, but two, the Jews just enjoy arguing with you. 02:26:17.120 --> 02:26:21.760 If you learn Hebrew to argue with a rabbi, you've already lost. 02:26:21.760 --> 02:26:25.760 Because what you've done is in no way ever going to be 02:26:25.760 --> 02:26:31.920 productive. If the rabbi had a real interest in Christianity, if he 02:26:31.920 --> 02:26:37.920 had any inclination whatsoever to consider what you are trying to tell 02:26:37.920 --> 02:26:41.360 him, he wouldn't be using Hebrew with you. 02:26:41.360 --> 02:26:44.000 He would use whatever other language it happened to be. 02:26:44.000 --> 02:26:46.560 So in this case, they would have used Spanish. 02:26:46.560 --> 02:26:49.520 In the case of those in German lands, they would have used 02:26:49.520 --> 02:26:54.800 German. Because bear in mind, again, the first language of any of 02:26:54.800 --> 02:26:57.600 these men was not Hebrew. 02:26:57.600 --> 02:26:59.600 It was always something else. 02:26:59.600 --> 02:27:06.000 And so Cisneros, while he does advocate for the Christian thing in 02:27:06.000 --> 02:27:09.360 expelling the Jews from Spain, which does, of course, happen as we 02:27:09.360 --> 02:27:14.480 know historically, expelled again in fourteen ninety two, he does not recognize 02:27:14.480 --> 02:27:20.160 the danger posed by Hebrew and so he thinks still that learning 02:27:20.160 --> 02:27:24.160 the Hebrew language is useful in order to attempt to convert Jews 02:27:24.160 --> 02:27:26.400 to Christianity. 02:27:26.400 --> 02:27:29.280 This is again one of those men who should have known better, 02:27:29.280 --> 02:27:29.600 because 02:27:30.560 --> 02:27:34.800 historically, the reason one of the reasons the Jews were expelled is 02:27:34.800 --> 02:27:39.200 because the Jews had collaborated with the Muslims during the conquest of 02:27:39.200 --> 02:27:43.200 Spain, and then had collaborated with the Muslims again when the Spanish 02:27:43.200 --> 02:27:47.600 were expelling the Muslims from Spain, this is something that is ongoing 02:27:47.600 --> 02:27:49.680 at this time. 02:27:49.680 --> 02:27:53.040 And yet he still doesn't recognize as a Christian man having dealt 02:27:53.040 --> 02:27:56.720 with all of these issues, that the problem is the Jews are 02:27:56.720 --> 02:27:59.760 present and producing these materials. 02:27:59.760 --> 02:28:01.760 He recognizes half of it. 02:28:01.760 --> 02:28:05.120 He recognizes the presence as a problem, and so he advocates for 02:28:05.120 --> 02:28:06.640 their expulsion. 02:28:06.640 --> 02:28:11.920 But he doesn't recognize that that poisonous fruit produced by that poisonous 02:28:11.920 --> 02:28:15.840 tree is also part of the problem, and part of that poisonous 02:28:15.840 --> 02:28:19.280 fruit is Hebrew and the materials produced in it. 02:28:19.280 --> 02:28:24.000 Satan is using the Hebrew language to undermine the Christian church. 02:28:24.000 --> 02:28:27.680 And one of the reasons that we've picked individuals from various different 02:28:27.680 --> 02:28:31.920 places in Europe is we're showing that Satan was doing the same 02:28:31.920 --> 02:28:36.080 thing across basically all of Europe, everywhere that he had the possibility 02:28:36.480 --> 02:28:39.280 to do so, which is to say everywhere that he had managed 02:28:39.280 --> 02:28:41.040 to plant a Jewish community. 02:28:41.040 --> 02:28:44.560 This is happening in Spain, it's happening in Germany, it's happening in 02:28:44.560 --> 02:28:46.880 France, it's happening in Italy. 02:28:47.040 --> 02:28:51.680 This is not isolated to any particular place in Europe. 02:28:51.680 --> 02:28:56.240 This is happening everywhere almost at the same time. 02:28:56.240 --> 02:29:00.480 Because Satan has already set the stage and now he is springing 02:29:00.480 --> 02:29:02.480 all of his traps into action. 02:29:02.480 --> 02:29:06.400 And it just so happens that some things played out rather perfectly, 02:29:06.400 --> 02:29:10.560 so for instance with technological development, that printing press came along at 02:29:10.560 --> 02:29:14.960 exactly the right time, yes, for the Reformation, but also for Satan's 02:29:14.960 --> 02:29:19.280 plans with regard to Hebrew, because as Woe mentioned, it wasn't just 02:29:19.280 --> 02:29:23.760 the printing of this Hebrew Old Testament given to Christians by the 02:29:23.760 --> 02:29:28.560 Jews, it was also the printing of the materials created in Hebrew 02:29:28.560 --> 02:29:33.760 by rabbis necessary to read that Hebrew Old Testament. 02:29:33.760 --> 02:29:36.640 And so you can feel like there's no rabbi involved. 02:29:36.640 --> 02:29:40.000 What I'm doing obviously is fine, there's no rab Yeah, the rabbi 02:29:40.000 --> 02:29:42.400 created all of the materials you're using. 02:29:42.400 --> 02:29:46.400 The wickedness is already baked into the cake, and now you're eating 02:29:46.400 --> 02:29:50.960 it. Perhaps in clean conscience, believing that what you're doing is Christian, 02:29:50.960 --> 02:29:52.800 and it's not. 02:29:52.800 --> 02:29:55.760 As we see in so many cases the issue is the half 02:29:55.760 --> 02:29:59.040 measures. He expels the Jews, he at least advocates for expelling the 02:29:59.040 --> 02:30:01.840 Jews, of course it is the king and the queen who ultimately 02:30:01.840 --> 02:30:05.920 expel the Jews, but he advocates for expelling them from Christian lands. 02:30:05.920 --> 02:30:09.600 That gets done, but he doesn't get rid of the poison that's 02:30:09.600 --> 02:30:10.960 left behind. 02:30:13.280 --> 02:30:16.560 So one of the important things that came out of Cisneros was 02:30:16.560 --> 02:30:23.680 the production of the Complutensian polyglot bible, which similar to Origins Hexapla 02:30:24.160 --> 02:30:29.120 contained usually both Old and the New Testament in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, 02:30:29.120 --> 02:30:30.400 and Latin. 02:30:30.400 --> 02:30:32.800 This was a very large multi-volume set. 02:30:32.800 --> 02:30:33.920 It was very expensive. 02:30:33.920 --> 02:30:36.240 There were 600 copies made. 02:30:36.240 --> 02:30:40.560 And so obviously, this had a scholarly audience exclusively. 02:30:40.560 --> 02:30:44.400 And the timing was perfect because this was right when we have 02:30:44.400 --> 02:30:48.640 all the reformers looking at producing their own translations. 02:30:48.640 --> 02:30:52.000 And crucially, because it was a polyglot Bible, it put side by 02:30:52.000 --> 02:30:55.200 side. As I said, you have Hebrew and Aramaic, Greek and Latin. 02:30:55.200 --> 02:30:59.360 And so those can all be put in chronological order of 02:31:00.320 --> 02:31:05.120 when we think they entered Christian lands, which is going to be 02:31:05.120 --> 02:31:07.840 inverted because Hebrew in that list is the newest of all of 02:31:07.840 --> 02:31:10.000 them. It's the newest language on the list. 02:31:10.320 --> 02:31:13.040 But at the time of the Reformation, that's not how they were 02:31:13.040 --> 02:31:14.800 looking at this polycopel. 02:31:14.800 --> 02:31:16.880 They were looking at it and thinking, well, the Hebrew is the 02:31:16.880 --> 02:31:20.000 oldest, and then we have this weird Septuagint thing that was a 02:31:20.080 --> 02:31:25.040 you know interesting, maybe it has some some different translations we consider, 02:31:25.040 --> 02:31:28.160 but you have the Latin translation and then you have the Aramaic 02:31:28.240 --> 02:31:32.240 is kind of the least important, but at least it's the oldest. 02:31:32.240 --> 02:31:36.320 Putting those side by side is useful for scholars, but what it 02:31:36.320 --> 02:31:39.200 did in practice was on one hand, you know, this is the 02:31:39.200 --> 02:31:42.400 first time the Septuagint actually shows up, but it's really as a 02:31:42.400 --> 02:31:45.360 footnote. It's like, oh, well, here's this interesting thing. 02:31:45.360 --> 02:31:49.840 You know, having the Aramaic and the Greek side by side really 02:31:49.840 --> 02:31:52.800 kind of hammers home that it was only the Hebrew and the 02:31:52.800 --> 02:31:54.800 Latin that they were actually engaging in. 02:31:54.800 --> 02:31:58.240 And obviously if you're a reformer, the Latin is the one that, 02:31:58.240 --> 02:32:01.200 you know, you're being critical of, and then the Hebrew is the 02:32:01.200 --> 02:32:02.960 one you're going to rely on. 02:32:02.960 --> 02:32:09.680 So between Sansino, Bomberg, and the Complutensian Polygot Bible, you have multiple 02:32:09.680 --> 02:32:14.080 avenues for the reformers at the beginning of the Reformation to go 02:32:14.080 --> 02:32:19.280 consult, to learn Hebrew, to do their translations, and to never even 02:32:19.280 --> 02:32:21.600 think about the question of whether or not that was the Bible 02:32:21.600 --> 02:32:25.600 of Jesus and the apostles in the early church. 02:32:26.320 --> 02:32:26.480 So 02:32:26.560 --> 02:32:31.200 before we come to Reuchlin, whom we've mentioned a number of times 02:32:31.200 --> 02:32:35.520 as one of the more important figures in this, sort of because 02:32:35.520 --> 02:32:41.680 he is essentially a spider who has his strands of his web 02:32:41.680 --> 02:32:42.480 all over the place. 02:32:42.480 --> 02:32:43.920 He's involved in many things. 02:32:43.920 --> 02:32:49.600 He, for instance, corresponded with Cisneros, he's involved in many other things. 02:32:49.600 --> 02:32:55.360 But before we come to him, we have Jacob Ben Yehil Loans. 02:32:55.360 --> 02:32:58.960 He is a Jewish scholar and rabbi, as you might have guessed 02:32:58.960 --> 02:33:00.080 from the name. 02:33:00.080 --> 02:33:04.320 Lives in Italy during the end of the fifteenth and beginning of 02:33:04.320 --> 02:33:06.160 the sixteenth century. 02:33:06.560 --> 02:33:10.480 He's a prominent figure in the Jewish community. 02:33:10.480 --> 02:33:16.000 He is a teacher of Hebrew, which is a vitally important fact 02:33:16.000 --> 02:33:20.000 here. He is one of those who helps to spread the Hebrew 02:33:20.000 --> 02:33:20.320 language 02:33:21.200 --> 02:33:26.960 to various other individuals, most notably Reuchlin. 02:33:26.960 --> 02:33:30.880 He is the one who teaches Reuchlin his Hebrew. 02:33:30.880 --> 02:33:36.320 And so he becomes prominent both both in his own advocacy for 02:33:36.320 --> 02:33:41.440 the Hebrew language, and in the advocacy for Hebrew that he bestows 02:33:41.440 --> 02:33:42.320 on his students. 02:33:42.320 --> 02:33:44.400 His students carry this forward. 02:33:44.400 --> 02:33:47.440 Reuchlin again is the most prominent of these, but there are a 02:33:47.440 --> 02:33:50.640 number of others as well. 02:33:50.880 --> 02:33:54.400 So one of the reasons that loans was so important was the 02:33:54.400 --> 02:33:58.560 use of personal physician to Frederick III, the Holy Roman Emperor. 02:33:58.560 --> 02:34:03.600 Not to be confused with the later Frederick III in German lands. 02:34:03.600 --> 02:34:10.800 When loans taught Reueschlin Hebrew just before fifteen hundred, they formed 02:34:10.800 --> 02:34:12.800 a very close personal bond. 02:34:12.800 --> 02:34:15.840 We will put a link in the show notes to a paper 02:34:15.840 --> 02:34:20.240 that's titled A Unique Phylosemitic Public Intellectual. 02:34:20.240 --> 02:34:25.120 It's a glowing review of Reuchlin, basically calling him the first phylosemite 02:34:25.120 --> 02:34:26.080 in history. 02:34:26.080 --> 02:34:30.080 And that's based upon in large part his relationship with Loans, which 02:34:30.080 --> 02:34:32.400 is why Lones is coming up here. 02:34:32.400 --> 02:34:35.520 I'm gonna read you an excerpt from that paper, just so that 02:34:35.600 --> 02:34:38.800 because it has some of Reuchlin's own words to give you an 02:34:38.800 --> 02:34:44.320 idea of how important loans this rabbi, this physician to Frederick III 02:34:44.640 --> 02:34:46.240 was. Quote. 02:34:46.240 --> 02:34:50.480 In his letter he addresses loans as follows My Lord, dear master 02:34:50.960 --> 02:34:54.880 Jacob, my companion and my good friend, with deep longing I wish 02:34:54.880 --> 02:34:58.000 to see your blessed face, to delight in the radiance of your 02:34:58.000 --> 02:35:02.240 bright countenance by hearing your most pure doctrine. 02:35:02.240 --> 02:35:05.040 And now I have written this scroll to you after I left 02:35:05.040 --> 02:35:08.880 you. I succeeded in my studies and made a great achievement. 02:35:08.880 --> 02:35:11.600 I know that you will be pleased and rejoice. 02:35:11.600 --> 02:35:15.360 Several years later, Reuslin published this letter in a book that included 02:35:15.360 --> 02:35:20.960 his correspondence with eminent Christian scholars such as Erasmus and Perkheimer. 02:35:20.960 --> 02:35:26.880 This letter triggered harsh attacks from Johann Pfefferkorn, an anti Judaic convert 02:35:26.880 --> 02:35:31.520 from Judaism to Christianity, who described it as an unbearable demonstration of 02:35:31.520 --> 02:35:34.320 Reuchlin's love for Jews and Judaism? 02:35:34.320 --> 02:35:38.480 In his Rudiments of the Hebrew Language, Reuchland praised My teacher and 02:35:38.480 --> 02:35:43.040 my opinion, the powerfully learned Jacob loans a Jew, and my most 02:35:43.440 --> 02:35:46.160 humane teacher, the excellent doctor. 02:35:46.160 --> 02:35:52.240 So this introduces us to sort of the political situation just before 02:35:52.240 --> 02:35:54.320 Luther comes up. 02:35:54.320 --> 02:35:57.040 You have loans, very closely connected. 02:35:57.040 --> 02:36:01.040 He's a court Jew in the Holy Roman Empire. 02:36:01.040 --> 02:36:08.480 He teaches Reuchlin, and Reuchlin describes him as teaching most pure doctrine. 02:36:08.480 --> 02:36:13.600 Now Now, we've gone overboard talking about how despicable it is to 02:36:13.600 --> 02:36:17.760 go to Jews to learn doctrine, but think about that sort of 02:36:17.760 --> 02:36:20.080 comment from an alleged Christian. 02:36:20.080 --> 02:36:23.600 Because yo Johannes Reuchlin was ostensibly a Christian. 02:36:23.600 --> 02:36:26.320 That's why he had access to these places. 02:36:26.320 --> 02:36:31.600 When he says that loans, the rabbi has pure doctrine, what are 02:36:31.600 --> 02:36:34.000 we as Christians to make of that? 02:36:34.000 --> 02:36:36.480 Well, maybe you don't know what to think. 02:36:36.480 --> 02:36:39.920 I will tell you because another link that we're going to have 02:36:39.920 --> 02:36:46.960 is going to be one that shows Reuchlin's extensive habilistic treatment. 02:36:46.960 --> 02:36:53.680 The incredible achievement that he mentions in his letter was a Kabbalistic 02:36:53.680 --> 02:36:56.880 work. The one of the first things that Loans did when he 02:36:56.880 --> 02:37:00.560 taught Roychl in Hebrew was also to teach him Kabbalah. 02:37:00.560 --> 02:37:05.200 And Reuschlin was invigorated by learning about Kabbalah. 02:37:05.200 --> 02:37:08.560 He felt that this unlocked the secrets of Christianity. 02:37:08.560 --> 02:37:10.320 And so one of the first things that he did in this 02:37:10.320 --> 02:37:13.920 glorious achievement that he knew that his teacher of pure doctrine was 02:37:13.920 --> 02:37:18.240 going to be delighted in, was Reuchlin's Kabbalistic tome, where he tried 02:37:18.240 --> 02:37:22.480 to synthesize Kabbalah, Christianity, and Philosophy. 02:37:22.480 --> 02:37:25.280 Thankfully, the church rejected that. 02:37:25.280 --> 02:37:29.680 Unfortunately, Reuchlin was not burned at the stake as the heretic that 02:37:29.680 --> 02:37:30.560 he was. 02:37:30.560 --> 02:37:34.560 A Christian ruler, a truly Christian ruler, would have ended Reuchlin's life 02:37:34.560 --> 02:37:36.960 on the spot for publishing that. 02:37:36.960 --> 02:37:38.720 But he was a nerd. 02:37:38.720 --> 02:37:42.640 He was an intellectual, he was just publishing really interesting stuff that 02:37:42.640 --> 02:37:44.720 he was excited about and thought it was cool. 02:37:44.720 --> 02:37:46.480 So they let it slide. 02:37:46.480 --> 02:37:52.080 And everything that happens afterwards, just remember Reuchlin saying saying the pure 02:37:52.080 --> 02:37:56.560 doctrine is coming from a rabbi, is publishing the Kabbalah, is trying 02:37:56.560 --> 02:38:02.480 to import Jewish Babylonian black magic mysticism into the Christian faith. 02:38:02.480 --> 02:38:06.240 He's the man who teaches our next appearance? 02:38:06.240 --> 02:38:12.480 Hebrew. What we see in Reuchlin's presence here in the Holy Roman 02:38:12.480 --> 02:38:17.920 Emperor's Council, by having access, he wasn't a direct participant, but again, 02:38:17.920 --> 02:38:21.120 he was close friends with a member of the court. 02:38:21.120 --> 02:38:23.040 He was very well connected politically. 02:38:23.040 --> 02:38:25.440 And that mattered a great deal because it meant you can get 02:38:25.440 --> 02:38:26.560 away with more things. 02:38:26.560 --> 02:38:29.120 You know, it's kind of like you know, the president's son who 02:38:29.120 --> 02:38:32.640 gets caught doing stuff probably gonna get treated differently than you or 02:38:32.640 --> 02:38:36.320 me. Another thing that was mentioned in that letter was that Roischlin 02:38:36.560 --> 02:38:40.320 had a dispute with a man named Johannes Pfefferkorn. 02:38:40.320 --> 02:38:43.200 As we mentioned earlier, there are only two good guys in this 02:38:43.200 --> 02:38:44.960 entire story of this episode. 02:38:45.280 --> 02:38:47.680 or the previous episode, really. 02:38:47.680 --> 02:38:51.600 One was Nicholas Donan, the Jew who became a Christian in France 02:38:51.680 --> 02:38:53.120 in the thirteenth century. 02:38:53.120 --> 02:38:56.720 The other is Johannes Pfeffricorn, who is a Jew who became a 02:38:56.720 --> 02:38:59.840 Christian at this time in these lands? 02:38:59.840 --> 02:39:04.960 Pfeffricorn, when he saw what Reuslin, the ostensible Christian, was saying about 02:39:04.960 --> 02:39:07.680 Jewish teachings, was horrified rightly. 02:39:08.240 --> 02:39:09.520 This is despicable. 02:39:09.520 --> 02:39:15.120 And so Pfeffricorn did exactly the same thing that the other honest 02:39:15.120 --> 02:39:17.440 convert did centuries earlier. 02:39:17.440 --> 02:39:23.360 Pfeffricorn campaigned with the support of the Dominicans to confiscate and destroy 02:39:23.360 --> 02:39:25.680 Jewish books, particularly the Talmud. 02:39:25.680 --> 02:39:27.840 And this is based on an imperial mandate. 02:39:27.840 --> 02:39:30.320 And initially he did have approval to do it. 02:39:30.320 --> 02:39:36.080 Reuchlin, the ostensible Christian, swooped into the defense of the Jews. 02:39:36.080 --> 02:39:39.360 So again we have these inversions that have happened over and over 02:39:39.360 --> 02:39:40.640 again in the story. 02:39:40.640 --> 02:39:43.360 This is really them coming to a complete head. 02:39:43.360 --> 02:39:47.120 On one hand you have the man born a Jew, Fephricorn, becomes 02:39:47.120 --> 02:39:50.320 a Christian, and is opposed to the wickedness of the Talmud. 02:39:50.320 --> 02:39:54.080 On the other hand, you have an ostensible Christian named Roichlin, who 02:39:54.080 --> 02:40:00.160 learns Hebrew, instantly gloms onto the Kabbalah, instantly gloms onto wickedness of 02:40:00.160 --> 02:40:05.920 the lowest degree, the most perverted stuff imaginable, coming from ancient Babylon, 02:40:05.920 --> 02:40:09.920 truly demonic stuff we're never gonna remotely touch, and you shouldn't either. 02:40:09.920 --> 02:40:13.920 We're gonna link to a demonic page that talks about how excited 02:40:13.920 --> 02:40:16.000 they were about Roischlin. 02:40:16.000 --> 02:40:18.720 I trust that you'll have the sense to read the bits about 02:40:18.720 --> 02:40:22.160 Reuchlin, and I'll go exploring on the rest of that page. 02:40:22.160 --> 02:40:23.200 You're grown up. 02:40:23.200 --> 02:40:26.560 I don't need to sanitize things for your protection, but please just 02:40:26.560 --> 02:40:31.520 understand. Some of the wickedest people imaginable love Roychlin and they hate 02:40:31.520 --> 02:40:35.600 Pfeffercorn. They love the Christian, the wicked men love the Christian, and 02:40:35.600 --> 02:40:39.680 they hate the Jew who became a Christian Pfefforn because of this. 02:40:39.680 --> 02:40:42.880 Because when a Jew converts he ceases to be a Jew and 02:40:42.880 --> 02:40:47.920 he despises the Talmud, he despises Jewish teaching, and he knows that 02:40:47.920 --> 02:40:51.520 no Christian should be going near a rabbi to learn pure doctrine. 02:40:51.520 --> 02:40:53.280 That's why he was horrified. 02:40:53.280 --> 02:40:56.240 Pfeffercorn was as horrified as I was when I learned that. 02:40:56.240 --> 02:40:59.760 I didn't know of Roichlin's name before I began this investigation over 02:40:59.760 --> 02:41:00.640 a year ago. 02:41:00.640 --> 02:41:04.240 When I discovered this it was like the lights came on, and 02:41:04.240 --> 02:41:06.160 suddenly it became clear that this moment 02:41:07.520 --> 02:41:12.160 began with Jerome and ends with Roychlin entering. 02:41:12.160 --> 02:41:15.600 These were the two moments in this entire story where men were 02:41:15.600 --> 02:41:22.160 linchpins. They were absolutely pivotal in Satan's plan because without Jerome going 02:41:22.160 --> 02:41:26.880 to rabbis, consulting with them, falling under their spells, importing their stuff, 02:41:26.880 --> 02:41:29.840 and then burying it in Latin so no one ever noticed. 02:41:29.840 --> 02:41:34.400 At the other end, 11th centuries later, we have Roischlin going to 02:41:34.400 --> 02:41:39.440 another rabbi, learning Kabbalah, learning black magic, bringing it into the church, 02:41:39.440 --> 02:41:42.720 saying, Look at this amazing stuff, I I know so much more 02:41:42.720 --> 02:41:45.440 about God now that I've studied Kabbalah. 02:41:45.440 --> 02:41:49.040 He was excited to teach Hebrew to as many people as possible. 02:41:49.040 --> 02:41:54.080 As Cory said, Loans had numerous Hebrew students, but Reuchlin was as 02:41:54.080 --> 02:41:58.560 most prolific because of the access and the influence that he had 02:41:58.560 --> 02:42:00.480 on the Reformation itself. 02:42:00.640 --> 02:42:04.000 That's why I've said for a while, this episode in this series 02:42:04.000 --> 02:42:06.800 is going to upset absolutely everyone. 02:42:06.800 --> 02:42:10.240 Because what we are saying in no uncertain terms is this where 02:42:10.400 --> 02:42:14.640 there was a direct demonic influence on the men who shaped the 02:42:14.640 --> 02:42:17.760 Reformation? Does that mean that the Reformation shouldn't have happened? 02:42:17.760 --> 02:42:21.360 No. It was obvious that they were solving the right problem. 02:42:21.360 --> 02:42:24.720 And that's why the context window episode was done. 02:42:24.720 --> 02:42:28.000 That's why we say that this stuff is not cut and dried. 02:42:28.000 --> 02:42:30.480 There are no complete bad guys here. 02:42:30.480 --> 02:42:33.840 Even Jerome was not a complete bad guy, even though he was 02:42:33.840 --> 02:42:36.480 profoundly wicked in many of the things that he did. 02:42:36.800 --> 02:42:38.880 Racial Reuchlin, I would say I I take that back. 02:42:38.880 --> 02:42:41.360 Reuchlin absolutely burning in hell. 02:42:41.360 --> 02:42:45.120 He was demonic beyond compare, because he was a Jew. 02:42:45.120 --> 02:42:47.920 Whether he was one by blood or not, he became a Jew 02:42:47.920 --> 02:42:51.200 the second he learned Hebrew, which incidentally is something we see left 02:42:51.520 --> 02:42:53.520 and right to this day. 02:42:53.520 --> 02:42:59.360 The problem is that when Reuchlin consulted with Loans, learned Hebrew, and 02:42:59.360 --> 02:43:02.480 then he took it into the Reformation, which is what we're about 02:43:02.480 --> 02:43:05.680 to get to, it shaped everything that came after. 02:43:05.680 --> 02:43:08.400 The Septuagint was out of everyone's mind. 02:43:08.400 --> 02:43:09.920 They were excited about Hebrew. 02:43:09.920 --> 02:43:11.120 They wanted to learn it. 02:43:11.120 --> 02:43:13.520 They wanted to go back to that pure spring. 02:43:13.520 --> 02:43:17.280 For centuries that lie had been told over and over again. 02:43:17.280 --> 02:43:19.280 Not that the idea is wrong, as I said in the last 02:43:19.280 --> 02:43:22.720 episode, of course, this is exactly what we are saying here, return 02:43:22.720 --> 02:43:24.960 to the pure spring of the Septuagint. 02:43:24.960 --> 02:43:28.960 It's begging the question to assume that the Hebrew is older. 02:43:28.960 --> 02:43:29.680 It's not. 02:43:29.680 --> 02:43:32.000 It was five hundred years old at this time, and it was 02:43:32.640 --> 02:43:37.200 used under demonic influence of rabbis through Roychl and the Kabalist, such 02:43:37.200 --> 02:43:41.760 that the Reformation was poisoned at its very inception by the Hebrew 02:43:41.760 --> 02:43:43.920 language and by the men who practiced it. 02:43:43.920 --> 02:43:45.920 They never stood a chance. 02:43:45.920 --> 02:43:48.080 Now, what are we not talking about here? 02:43:48.080 --> 02:43:49.840 We're not talking about doctrine. 02:43:49.840 --> 02:43:53.120 We're saying that you don't go to a poisonous well for any 02:43:53.120 --> 02:43:54.960 purpose. You don't hang around it. 02:43:54.960 --> 02:43:57.280 It doesn't matter if you're drinking from it or not, you don't 02:43:57.200 --> 02:43:58.160 go near it. 02:43:58.160 --> 02:44:01.520 This is precisely and what people say about Stone Choir. 02:44:01.520 --> 02:44:03.840 The people who hate us agree completely. 02:44:03.840 --> 02:44:06.000 You don't go anywhere and you're evil men. 02:44:06.000 --> 02:44:09.120 It doesn't matter what they get right, you don't listen to anything, 02:44:09.120 --> 02:44:12.400 because their designs are always turned in evil directions. 02:44:12.400 --> 02:44:14.480 I agree with that completely. 02:44:14.480 --> 02:44:17.920 That assessment is one hundred percent true, which I said earlier is 02:44:17.920 --> 02:44:19.520 why it rings true with people. 02:44:19.520 --> 02:44:21.280 Don't go near that guy, he's evil. 02:44:21.280 --> 02:44:22.880 I don't care if what he gets right. 02:44:22.880 --> 02:44:26.480 We're saying this of loans, the physician, the rabbi. 02:44:26.560 --> 02:44:29.040 Reuchlands would never have gone near him. 02:44:29.040 --> 02:44:32.400 Frederick III should never have permitted a Jew in his court, but 02:44:32.400 --> 02:44:33.840 of course that was common at that point. 02:44:33.840 --> 02:44:36.880 It was basically stylish to have court Jews. 02:44:36.880 --> 02:44:38.880 That's a term of art, the court Jew. 02:44:38.880 --> 02:44:39.680 It's a thing you do. 02:44:39.680 --> 02:44:41.520 It shows that you're serious. 02:44:41.520 --> 02:44:44.800 How far did Christendom fall that we got to that? 02:44:44.800 --> 02:44:48.880 At one point we have Louis IX incinerating Talmuds in the public 02:44:48.880 --> 02:44:52.960 square, and Jews lined up shrieking about it, and then we have 02:44:52.960 --> 02:44:57.360 the Holy Roman Emperor celebrating them and passing off Hebrew as scholarship. 02:44:57.360 --> 02:44:59.200 That's how quickly things went wrong. 02:44:59.200 --> 02:45:02.640 Now, quickly in the sense of the story, but we're talking about 02:45:02.640 --> 02:45:05.840 centuries. This was Satan's long game. 02:45:05.840 --> 02:45:09.440 He put these pieces in play, he made these moves so that 02:45:09.440 --> 02:45:13.920 right at the very beginning of the Reformation you have a demon 02:45:14.160 --> 02:45:19.680 Kabbalist teaching Hebrew to the fathers of the Reformation. 02:45:19.760 --> 02:45:19.920 And 02:45:19.920 --> 02:45:24.480 to give you an idea of how connected these individuals were to 02:45:24.480 --> 02:45:27.120 each other and also politically. 02:45:27.120 --> 02:45:33.120 Loans convinced the Holy Roman Emperor to gift to Reuchlin his first 02:45:33.120 --> 02:45:36.080 personal copy of the Hebrew Bible. 02:45:36.080 --> 02:45:39.760 So he received that as a gift from the Holy Roman Emperor 02:45:40.080 --> 02:45:44.160 because his court Jew told him he should do so. 02:45:44.160 --> 02:45:49.440 And Reuchlin is indeed very connected to the Reformation. 02:45:49.440 --> 02:45:52.640 And the reason that he's connected to the Reformation is not just 02:45:53.440 --> 02:45:58.880 because of materials that he produces and indeed Jewish materials, Hebrew materials 02:45:59.040 --> 02:46:04.080 that he protects, but also because he is actually related to to 02:46:04.080 --> 02:46:06.560 Philip Melanchthon. 02:46:06.560 --> 02:46:14.240 And so that relationship is used by Reuchlin to convince Philip Melancthan 02:46:14.560 --> 02:46:16.320 to learn Hebrew. 02:46:16.320 --> 02:46:19.680 Not just to learn Hebrew, but he is the one who gets 02:46:19.680 --> 02:46:23.600 him his first position in a university to teach. 02:46:23.600 --> 02:46:27.920 Incidentally, he starts off teaching Greek, but he does end up teaching 02:46:27.920 --> 02:46:31.440 Hebrew and other things as well, and Melanchthon, of course for those 02:46:31.440 --> 02:46:36.160 who don't know, close confidant of Martin Luther, wrote some of the 02:46:36.160 --> 02:46:42.640 confessional documents in the Book of Concord, prolific writer, reformed the educational 02:46:42.640 --> 02:46:44.400 system in Germany. 02:46:44.880 --> 02:46:47.760 By and large a faithful and good man 02:46:48.720 --> 02:46:53.040 except for this influence from Reuchlin, except for the fact that he 02:46:53.040 --> 02:46:57.920 believed that Hebrew was necessary in order to truly understand the Old 02:46:57.920 --> 02:47:02.080 Testament. It's that same poison that we see down through the centuries 02:47:02.080 --> 02:47:03.840 in this narrative. 02:47:03.840 --> 02:47:08.800 Reuchlin, because of how well placed he is, and because of everything 02:47:08.800 --> 02:47:13.840 that came before him, leading him to have this viewpoint that it 02:47:13.840 --> 02:47:17.360 is okay to go and talk to rabbis about Christianity. 02:47:17.360 --> 02:47:20.800 Reuchlin loses his soul in this bargain. 02:47:20.800 --> 02:47:24.320 Because he goes and talks to Lones, and as Woe said, Loans 02:47:24.480 --> 02:47:28.080 doesn't just tell him Here's Hebrew, I'll teach you Hebrew. 02:47:28.080 --> 02:47:31.120 You can learn this, and then you can really understand Scripture. 02:47:31.120 --> 02:47:34.720 He goes further, and he does exactly what Jews do given enough 02:47:34.720 --> 02:47:38.000 time. What he does is he tells him, Well you have the 02:47:38.000 --> 02:47:41.840 scriptures, but here's the real religion. 02:47:41.840 --> 02:47:43.520 Here's the real truth. 02:47:43.520 --> 02:47:45.840 Here is how you actually understand 02:47:46.720 --> 02:47:52.000 what's written in this book by interpreting it in this way with 02:47:52.000 --> 02:47:56.400 these other materials, that may sound familiar to you, because it's similar 02:47:56.400 --> 02:48:00.240 to what was done with the allegorical interpretation of Scripture when it 02:48:00.240 --> 02:48:01.680 was taken too far. 02:48:01.920 --> 02:48:06.960 When you take the allegory and disconnect it, untether it from the 02:48:06.960 --> 02:48:11.280 literal reading, from the actual meaning of scripture, you wind up with 02:48:11.280 --> 02:48:12.880 a new religion. 02:48:12.880 --> 02:48:15.440 It's the same thing we see the Jews doing here. 02:48:15.440 --> 02:48:18.800 It doesn't matter what is actually written in that Old Testament that 02:48:18.800 --> 02:48:21.040 he gives to Reuchlin. 02:48:21.040 --> 02:48:24.000 Because ultimately what he gives Reuchlin is Kabbalah. 02:48:24.000 --> 02:48:25.760 That's his religion. 02:48:25.760 --> 02:48:30.160 It's the wickedness, it's the black magic that came from Babylon and 02:48:30.160 --> 02:48:32.160 probably also Egypt to some degree. 02:48:32.160 --> 02:48:37.120 It's this chained down through history of a demonic religion passed from 02:48:37.120 --> 02:48:42.320 Jew to Jew to Jew, and sometimes pawned off on non Jews. 02:48:42.320 --> 02:48:44.480 In this case Reutschlin. 02:48:44.480 --> 02:48:48.880 Now, if you go and examine his family history, you'll probably find 02:48:48.880 --> 02:48:52.800 some things that point to a possibility of Jewish heritage. 02:48:52.800 --> 02:48:56.720 However, it wasn't raised by those who attacked him at the time 02:48:56.720 --> 02:48:59.600 for what he was doing, which was open Judaizing. 02:48:59.600 --> 02:49:02.800 It was not brought up by Pfeffricorn, for instance. 02:49:02.800 --> 02:49:06.960 So, by and large, it seems like he was probably actually originally 02:49:06.960 --> 02:49:12.560 a Christian, not a Jewish convert to Christianity, a Christian who essentially 02:49:12.560 --> 02:49:15.520 converted to Judaism. 02:49:15.520 --> 02:49:20.720 And then goes to work poisoning the well of the Reformation. 02:49:20.720 --> 02:49:23.920 Not in the sense again, as Wo said, not in the sense 02:49:23.920 --> 02:49:27.840 of doctrine, but in the sense of this belief that you need 02:49:27.840 --> 02:49:32.160 to go to the Hebrew, which isn't even a thing, but you 02:49:32.160 --> 02:49:35.280 need to go to this thing that was created by the rabbis 02:49:35.280 --> 02:49:38.720 and passed off as the Hebrew in order to understand the Word 02:49:38.720 --> 02:49:39.520 of God. 02:49:39.520 --> 02:49:42.800 Don't go to the Septuagint, don't go to the Greek, don't go 02:49:42.800 --> 02:49:48.080 to the actual foundation of the church used for centuries by Christians 02:49:48.400 --> 02:49:53.360 who had zero access to Hebrew because Hebrew was dead and gone. 02:49:53.360 --> 02:49:55.200 Don't go to that. 02:49:55.200 --> 02:49:59.440 Take this thing that was given to us by rabbis who were 02:49:59.520 --> 02:50:01.920 Who worship Satan? 02:50:01.920 --> 02:50:06.640 And that's where we start off unfortunately in the Reformation. 02:50:06.640 --> 02:50:08.480 But again it is worth remembering. 02:50:08.480 --> 02:50:11.360 This is both sides of the Reformation, it is not just the 02:50:11.360 --> 02:50:17.200 Protestants. Yes, you have this direct connection between Reuchlin and Melanchthon. 02:50:17.200 --> 02:50:21.280 But Trent also affirms for the Roman Catholic position the use of 02:50:21.280 --> 02:50:23.280 the Hebrew in the Old Testament. 02:50:24.160 --> 02:50:27.760 This is an error that is made by all Christians at this 02:50:27.760 --> 02:50:31.120 time. Again, the only two men who stand up in this narrative 02:50:31.120 --> 02:50:33.760 and say, No, you need to destroy these materials. 02:50:33.760 --> 02:50:35.120 These materials are wicked. 02:50:35.120 --> 02:50:37.600 You cannot use them as a Christian are the two men who 02:50:38.080 --> 02:50:43.600 actually converted from Judaism to Christianity and repudiated their former wickedness. 02:50:43.600 --> 02:50:48.320 Because Pfeffrovorn, just like Donin before him, says, you have to destroy 02:50:48.320 --> 02:50:49.520 these materials. 02:50:49.520 --> 02:50:53.120 It is not sufficient not to use them, they have to be 02:50:53.120 --> 02:50:54.880 destroyed, because they're wicked. 02:50:54.880 --> 02:50:59.680 What they contain is blasphemy, it is heresy, it is anti Christian. 02:50:59.680 --> 02:51:04.080 Using them, simply permitting them to continue to exist is wicked. 02:51:04.080 --> 02:51:06.240 That's the Christian response. 02:51:06.240 --> 02:51:08.640 And the only two men again who do it are the two 02:51:08.640 --> 02:51:09.760 men who used to be Jews. 02:51:09.760 --> 02:51:13.440 All the Christians in this narrative are quite happy to use the 02:51:13.440 --> 02:51:14.640 Hebrew materials. 02:51:14.640 --> 02:51:17.680 They're quite happy to go and talk to rabbis, even though they 02:51:17.680 --> 02:51:19.680 should know better. 02:51:19.680 --> 02:51:24.560 But that sets the stage for what happens from that point forward. 02:51:24.560 --> 02:51:26.560 And it's what we're dealing with today. 02:51:26.560 --> 02:51:30.080 It's the same sort of problems we have now because all the 02:51:30.080 --> 02:51:33.760 way back with Jerome is when things went off the rails. 02:51:33.760 --> 02:51:37.360 And Christians have just been doubling down on it since despite the 02:51:37.360 --> 02:51:40.880 fact that there have been dozens of times in history to turn 02:51:40.880 --> 02:51:44.960 from the wickedness, they have not done so, because they have always 02:51:44.960 --> 02:51:50.000 fallen for this trap of believing the Hebrew is older or the 02:51:50.000 --> 02:51:54.480 Hebrew is necessary to understand Scripture, as we demonstrated in the previous 02:51:54.480 --> 02:51:56.240 episode, it's not older. 02:51:56.240 --> 02:51:59.280 It's not necessary to understand Scripture. 02:51:59.280 --> 02:52:04.160 God gave us an inspired Old Testament in Greek, which we have 02:52:04.160 --> 02:52:05.520 had all along. 02:52:05.520 --> 02:52:08.240 All of these men could have learned Greek, and they could have 02:52:08.240 --> 02:52:11.280 gone and found a copy of the Septuagint and used it. 02:52:11.280 --> 02:52:14.160 Not one of them did so. 02:52:15.120 --> 02:52:15.360 I 02:52:15.360 --> 02:52:19.840 want to impress upon our listeners just how connected Roychlin was to 02:52:19.840 --> 02:52:28.320 Philip Melancthan's life Johannes Roychlin was Philip Melancthan's great uncle. 02:52:28.320 --> 02:52:33.520 At age eleven, Melancthan's father and grandfather died within two weeks of 02:52:33.520 --> 02:52:37.840 each other as well As a result, Philip immediately moved in with 02:52:37.840 --> 02:52:41.200 his great aunt, who was Roischland's sister. 02:52:41.200 --> 02:52:45.680 Put them in the same place at the same time. 02:52:45.680 --> 02:52:48.960 Philip Melanchthon's original name was not Melanchthon. 02:52:49.200 --> 02:52:52.720 Philip was born Schwartz. 02:52:52.720 --> 02:52:54.880 Guess who named him Melanchthon? 02:52:54.880 --> 02:52:56.320 It was Reuchlin. 02:52:56.320 --> 02:52:58.960 Reuslin literally gave Melanchthon his name 02:52:59.840 --> 02:53:02.880 at this time when he was eleven or twelve years old, because 02:53:02.880 --> 02:53:04.960 Philip was a brilliant young man. 02:53:04.960 --> 02:53:07.040 He was absolutely brilliant. 02:53:07.040 --> 02:53:09.600 He was a precocious student. 02:53:09.600 --> 02:53:13.920 He earned his Bachelor of Arts from Heidelberg at age fourteen, just 02:53:13.920 --> 02:53:16.960 two years later, and he finished his BA in two years. 02:53:16.960 --> 02:53:21.200 He wasn't going to Heidelberg yet when he met Reuchlin, or when 02:53:21.200 --> 02:53:24.160 he spent time with him, I'm sure he'd met him before. 02:53:24.160 --> 02:53:27.200 But when he moved in with his great aunt, he was suddenly 02:53:27.200 --> 02:53:31.600 very near to Reuchlin, his great uncle, who took him very much 02:53:31.600 --> 02:53:37.120 under his wing, tutored him, taught him languages, taught him classical renaissance 02:53:37.120 --> 02:53:41.600 humanism, everything that he needed to be a scholar. 02:53:41.600 --> 02:53:43.040 Reuchlin did that. 02:53:43.040 --> 02:53:50.000 Reuchlin was positioned to do that when Philip's father and grandfather died 02:53:50.160 --> 02:53:51.760 at almost the same time. 02:53:51.760 --> 02:53:55.520 So Philip gets his BA at fourteen, two years later he gets 02:53:55.520 --> 02:53:58.080 his master's degree in Tubigan. 02:53:58.080 --> 02:54:02.480 Within five years of that, he gets a professorship, but within five 02:54:02.480 --> 02:54:06.880 years he's appointed professor of Greek, as Corey said, in Wittenberg. 02:54:06.880 --> 02:54:10.400 And this was with Reuchlin's direct orchestration. 02:54:10.400 --> 02:54:14.960 So fifteen eighteen, just a year after the ninety five theses are 02:54:14.960 --> 02:54:17.200 posted, less than years I think it was August, yeah. 02:54:17.200 --> 02:54:20.720 August when he shows up in Wittenberg. 02:54:20.720 --> 02:54:26.480 One year after the ninety five theses are posted, Luther's gone gangbusters, 02:54:26.480 --> 02:54:30.960 there is an introduction of Luther to Melanchthon, and this is effectively 02:54:30.960 --> 02:54:31.680 how they met. 02:54:31.680 --> 02:54:36.080 I'm just gonna read a summary here and because it does a 02:54:36.080 --> 02:54:38.880 really good job of capturing everything that was going on at this 02:54:38.880 --> 02:54:44.000 moment. Four days after Melanchthon arrived in Wittenberg, he delivered his inaugural 02:54:44.400 --> 02:54:48.000 lecture which was titled On Improving the Studies of Youth. 02:54:48.000 --> 02:54:52.960 In elegant Latin, Melanchthon laid out a program for educational reform grounded 02:54:52.960 --> 02:54:54.320 in humanist principles. 02:54:54.320 --> 02:54:58.400 He strongly advocated in returning to the classical sources at Fontes and 02:54:58.400 --> 02:55:03.280 emphasized the critical importance of studying Greek and Hebrew, not just for 02:55:03.280 --> 02:55:08.640 appreciating classical literature, but specifically for understanding the original text of scripture 02:55:08.640 --> 02:55:14.960 accurately. He critiqued the dry logic chopping methods of late medieval scholasticism 02:55:14.960 --> 02:55:17.840 that dominated university theology. 02:55:17.840 --> 02:55:20.640 Luther was present and was electrified by the speech. 02:55:20.560 --> 02:55:24.480 Any initial skepticism that he had of this very young slight man 02:55:24.480 --> 02:55:30.400 vanished. He immediately recognized the profound significance of Melanchthon's vision and skills 02:55:30.400 --> 02:55:32.960 for his own burgeoning theological reformation. 02:55:32.960 --> 02:55:37.440 Melanchthon wasn't just a classicist, he was advocating for the very linguistic 02:55:37.440 --> 02:55:43.440 tools necessary to bypass centuries of potentially flawed interpretations and engage directly 02:55:43.440 --> 02:55:45.760 with the Bible's original languages. 02:55:45.760 --> 02:55:51.840 Luther saw Melanchthon's program as perfectly complementary to his own theological aims. 02:55:51.840 --> 02:55:56.000 Luther was deeply impressed by the young scholar's intellect as eloquence in 02:55:56.000 --> 02:55:57.760 substance of his argument. 02:55:57.760 --> 02:56:02.320 Luther wrote enthusiastically about Melancthan almost as Almost immediately in a letter 02:56:02.320 --> 02:56:06.880 to Georg Splatten, who was Elector Frederick's secretary. 02:56:06.880 --> 02:56:10.800 This was just a couple days after the speech that Melanchthon gave. 02:56:10.800 --> 02:56:15.520 Luther lavished praise on the inaugural address of Melanchthon himself, dismissing any 02:56:15.520 --> 02:56:20.160 concerns about his slight physical stature compared to his immense intellectual gifts, 02:56:20.160 --> 02:56:23.920 Luther saw Melanchthon not merely as a language teacher, but as a 02:56:23.920 --> 02:56:29.360 powerful ally whose humanism could serve the cause of theological truth. 02:56:29.600 --> 02:56:35.040 So where did Melanchthon get his love of Hebrew and Greek? 02:56:35.040 --> 02:56:37.280 He got it from Roychlin. 02:56:37.280 --> 02:56:41.520 His notion of adfontes is Jerome. 02:56:41.520 --> 02:56:45.920 We have eleven hundred years lining up perfectly so that this precocious 02:56:46.000 --> 02:56:49.040 young man, this brilliant young man, who's going to go on to 02:56:49.040 --> 02:56:54.480 become a prolific scholar, at the seminal moment in his life, when 02:56:54.480 --> 02:56:57.360 his father and grandfather struck down so that there's no one else 02:56:57.360 --> 02:56:59.760 to take care of, and there's no man in his life any 02:56:59.840 --> 02:57:01.600 more, except for Roychlin. 02:57:01.600 --> 02:57:07.440 His great uncle in effect became kind of his custodial father, certainly 02:57:07.520 --> 02:57:10.720 by virtue of the influence that he had, to the point that 02:57:10.720 --> 02:57:13.280 he literally renamed him, which was common at that time. 02:57:13.280 --> 02:57:16.400 It was typical for them to take on a name that indicated 02:57:16.400 --> 02:57:19.520 their proficiency as a scholar. 02:57:19.520 --> 02:57:23.360 But But for Reuchlin to be the one naming Melanchthon, Melanchthon is 02:57:23.360 --> 02:57:24.560 still a pretty big deal. 02:57:24.560 --> 02:57:26.720 That shows you how much influence the guy has. 02:57:26.720 --> 02:57:29.920 Imagine you're eleven years old, your father and your grandfather die, and 02:57:30.080 --> 02:57:35.280 some incredible scholar with all these worldly connections and this amazing secret 02:57:35.280 --> 02:57:37.600 knowledge, of course you're going to be thrilled. 02:57:37.600 --> 02:57:40.320 What young man, no matter how brilliant he was, isn't going to 02:57:40.320 --> 02:57:41.600 get excited about that? 02:57:41.600 --> 02:57:44.320 The smarter the kid is, the more exciting that's going to be. 02:57:44.320 --> 02:57:49.040 Particularly in the dire circumstance of almost becoming well, he effectively was 02:57:49.040 --> 02:57:53.520 an orphan, so he's living with his great aunt. 02:57:53.520 --> 02:57:53.840 This 02:57:54.800 --> 02:58:00.160 is nothing short of Satan's plan snapping into frame. 02:58:00.160 --> 02:58:03.520 Everything lined up for this moment. 02:58:03.520 --> 02:58:10.400 Not because Luther's theology was demonic, but because this moment with Reuchlin 02:58:10.560 --> 02:58:15.920 taking Melanchthon under his belt, and then Luther glomming onto the much 02:58:15.920 --> 02:58:21.680 younger Melanchthon's astute scholastic abilities, ensured that no one was ever going 02:58:21.680 --> 02:58:23.440 to look at the Hebrew. 02:58:23.440 --> 02:58:28.000 So we see later on when Luther is translating Esther, he doesn't 02:58:27.920 --> 02:58:28.560 want to do it. 02:58:28.560 --> 02:58:29.600 He despises it. 02:58:29.600 --> 02:58:32.800 He doesn't want to include Esther in the Bible because it doesn't 02:58:32.720 --> 02:58:34.560 include a single mention of God. 02:58:34.560 --> 02:58:37.680 He can say it to be a godless wicked book is not 02:58:37.680 --> 02:58:39.520 really a great story. 02:58:39.520 --> 02:58:40.800 There's no mention of God. 02:58:40.800 --> 02:58:42.640 It was he didn't want it in the Bible. 02:58:42.640 --> 02:58:45.520 He wanted to go down to sixty-five books. 02:58:45.520 --> 02:58:48.560 The tragedy of that was that Luther was well aware of the 02:58:48.560 --> 02:58:52.640 Septuagint. He was aware of the so-called additions to Esther and the 02:58:52.640 --> 02:58:56.640 Septuagint. And we'll put a link in the show notes to in 02:58:56.640 --> 02:58:59.920 a couple weeks, well next week we'll include in the show notes, 02:58:59.920 --> 02:59:04.480 an article that lays out the many differences between Esther and Septuagint 02:59:04.880 --> 02:59:07.040 and Esther in the Masoretic text. 02:59:07.040 --> 02:59:09.200 It's a completely different book. 02:59:09.200 --> 02:59:13.680 Luther knew that the Septuagint version talked about God, and yet because 02:59:13.680 --> 02:59:18.800 of the blinders that Satan brought Roychlin with Melanchthon into Luther's life, 02:59:18.800 --> 02:59:20.480 he wouldn't even consider it. 02:59:20.480 --> 02:59:24.480 Because for his mind to open to the even the possibility that 02:59:24.480 --> 02:59:29.280 maybe there was something worthwhile in the Septuagint would have raised too 02:59:29.280 --> 02:59:30.240 many questions. 02:59:30.240 --> 02:59:34.880 He couldn't Luther in his own mind couldn't risk asking the question. 02:59:34.880 --> 02:59:39.520 If he had translated Esther from Greek instead of from Hebrew, he 02:59:39.520 --> 02:59:40.320 would have loved it. 02:59:40.320 --> 02:59:41.280 It's a great book. 02:59:41.280 --> 02:59:42.720 He was great about it? 02:59:42.720 --> 02:59:44.240 The king is a Christian. 02:59:44.240 --> 02:59:46.560 The non-Jewish King is a Christian. 02:59:46.560 --> 02:59:47.840 Very clearly. 02:59:47.840 --> 02:59:52.000 It's a very Christian and very God-fearing book. 02:59:52.000 --> 02:59:54.240 So guess why it got censored? 02:59:54.240 --> 02:59:57.680 The Masoretic version of Esther is demonic. 02:59:57.680 --> 02:59:59.200 The every copy should be burned. 02:59:59.200 --> 03:00:00.000 It should not exist. 03:00:00.000 --> 03:00:01.120 It is a wicked book. 03:00:01.120 --> 03:00:02.640 Luther was right about that. 03:00:02.640 --> 03:00:05.280 The Holy Ghost was warning him when he looked at Esther. 03:00:05.280 --> 03:00:05.920 This is crap. 03:00:05.920 --> 03:00:10.560 So we'll detail that next week, but just remember, this precise moment 03:00:10.560 --> 03:00:16.320 in history, Reuchlin, the Kabbalist, takes Melanchthon under his wing, teaches him 03:00:16.320 --> 03:00:18.080 Hebrew, makes him love Hebrew. 03:00:18.080 --> 03:00:20.720 Of course Luther, who is not nearly as good at this point 03:00:20.720 --> 03:00:23.840 at Hebrew as Melanchthon, is going to be like great, this guy 03:00:23.840 --> 03:00:25.840 can solve my problems. 03:00:25.840 --> 03:00:27.440 It was the perfect setup. 03:00:27.440 --> 03:00:31.520 It ensured that godly men like Melanchthon and Luther, who were asking 03:00:31.520 --> 03:00:35.360 the right questions, would never ask the one that mattered most. 03:00:35.360 --> 03:00:39.680 They were tackling justification, they were tackling big ticket items, they were 03:00:39.760 --> 03:00:42.800 tackling all the things that we're told are the most important things 03:00:42.800 --> 03:00:44.400 about the Reformation. 03:00:44.400 --> 03:00:49.040 The single most important question the Reformation was never asked. 03:00:49.040 --> 03:00:52.960 The question was what is the textual source for the Old Testament? 03:00:52.960 --> 03:00:56.480 From Jerome to that day, everyone just assumed that it was gonna 03:00:56.480 --> 03:00:57.280 be Hebrew. 03:00:57.280 --> 03:00:59.360 There was no fight after Augustine. 03:00:59.360 --> 03:01:00.640 No one put up a fight. 03:01:00.640 --> 03:01:02.800 No one pointed to the Septuagint. 03:01:02.800 --> 03:01:04.480 No one cared about Greek at all. 03:01:04.480 --> 03:01:07.360 And as soon as they do start caring about Greek again, you 03:01:07.360 --> 03:01:11.440 know, less than fifty years later, it's only for the New Testament, 03:01:11.440 --> 03:01:12.080 which was fine. 03:01:12.240 --> 03:01:13.040 That was a good thing. 03:01:13.040 --> 03:01:14.560 That was important too. 03:01:14.560 --> 03:01:17.440 But the Latin New Testament's not in bad shape. 03:01:17.440 --> 03:01:20.320 It's the Latin Old Testament that had a problem, because it was 03:01:20.320 --> 03:01:21.520 not based on Scripture. 03:01:21.520 --> 03:01:23.600 It was based on Hebrew. 03:01:23.600 --> 03:01:28.480 So as I said before and for over a year now, the 03:01:28.480 --> 03:01:33.760 conclusions of what we must face when we're looking at evaluating the 03:01:33.760 --> 03:01:37.120 church history with regard to the Septuagint on our dyer, it puts 03:01:37.120 --> 03:01:38.480 us in an impossible situation. 03:01:38.480 --> 03:01:42.480 It puts us in the same situation that Luther found himself in 03:01:42.800 --> 03:01:44.560 five hundred years ago. 03:01:44.560 --> 03:01:46.720 He was in a situation where it turned out that there was 03:01:46.720 --> 03:01:50.720 an accumulation of errors for centuries, and facing those errors, he had 03:01:50.720 --> 03:01:51.440 to do something. 03:01:52.320 --> 03:01:56.080 And those changes ended up having to be radical because when you 03:01:56.080 --> 03:02:00.240 unwind the errors, you have to do things that maybe were accepted 03:02:00.240 --> 03:02:01.120 for centuries. 03:02:01.120 --> 03:02:05.520 And that's why the Reformation was such a ultimately violent and terrible 03:02:05.520 --> 03:02:10.240 split in the Western Church, because you have centuries of tradition and 03:02:10.240 --> 03:02:14.160 teaching and doctrine that had to be excised. 03:02:14.160 --> 03:02:18.560 The church went in two different directions, and that's always going to 03:02:18.560 --> 03:02:19.920 be painful and ugly. 03:02:19.920 --> 03:02:24.240 What Satan did with Jerome and Roychlin as the two pivot points 03:02:24.240 --> 03:02:27.120 of this entire story was to ensure that no matter what happened 03:02:27.120 --> 03:02:30.320 in the Reformation, no one was going to look at the Septuagint. 03:02:30.320 --> 03:02:31.680 It never happened. 03:02:31.680 --> 03:02:35.600 The engagement that they occurred with the Septuagint was trivial. 03:02:35.600 --> 03:02:37.600 It was, you know, like, okay, let's look. 03:02:37.600 --> 03:02:40.720 It's incidental, but it was genuinely trivia. 03:02:40.720 --> 03:02:42.160 It was not important. 03:02:42.160 --> 03:02:45.440 It was certainly not seen as the Bible of Jesus and the 03:02:45.440 --> 03:02:47.040 apostles in the early church. 03:02:47.040 --> 03:02:50.960 They just ignored that entirely because they bought the lie that Jerome 03:02:50.960 --> 03:02:54.320 told. Satan put a couple men on the board and then filled 03:02:54.320 --> 03:02:57.120 out the rest of it with It with filler, like we said, 03:02:57.120 --> 03:02:58.800 most of these people are kind of filler. 03:02:58.800 --> 03:03:01.760 They could have come and gone and it wouldn't make much difference. 03:03:01.760 --> 03:03:07.280 With Jerome and Roischland on the board, Satan ensured that there was 03:03:07.280 --> 03:03:10.080 never going to be any consideration of Greek after the after the 03:03:10.080 --> 03:03:14.000 Reformation. And so here we are over five centuries later. 03:03:14.000 --> 03:03:16.400 And we'll see if there's any consideration. 03:03:16.400 --> 03:03:18.480 We'll see if the question is finally asked. 03:03:18.480 --> 03:03:19.680 We're raising it. 03:03:19.680 --> 03:03:22.400 And we're raising it with full knowledge that this is the most 03:03:22.400 --> 03:03:26.720 disruptive thing that's happened in many centuries in the church history. 03:03:26.720 --> 03:03:29.600 Because if you honestly take a look at what the New Testament 03:03:29.600 --> 03:03:34.160 says about the Septuagint, you can't follow the path of these people. 03:03:34.160 --> 03:03:36.800 And And the reason that's such a winding path is that there 03:03:36.800 --> 03:03:39.520 are so many false choices put in front of men. 03:03:39.520 --> 03:03:43.520 You have arguments over allegory versus literalism. 03:03:43.520 --> 03:03:47.520 And then the argument is, okay, well, literalism comes from the Jews. 03:03:47.520 --> 03:03:49.040 We need more Hebrew. 03:03:49.040 --> 03:03:52.160 It was always a series of wrong choices, and in every step 03:03:52.240 --> 03:03:54.480 the choice was let's get more Jews in here. 03:03:54.480 --> 03:03:57.760 We see that just taking off like a rocket today. 03:03:57.760 --> 03:04:01.040 The reason that we have Seder meals in churches in the 21st 03:04:01.040 --> 03:04:03.120 century is a Masoretic text. 03:04:03.120 --> 03:04:08.000 It's because the Septuagint was rejected by the church falsely under demonic 03:04:08.000 --> 03:04:12.320 oppression, under the direct involvement with Satan, ensuring that the question would 03:04:12.320 --> 03:04:13.360 never be asked. 03:04:13.360 --> 03:04:14.880 It's a simple question. 03:04:14.880 --> 03:04:19.680 And, you know, as we're raising it, it's with full knowledge that 03:04:19.680 --> 03:04:22.960 if they had asked the question genuinely as we're asking it, they 03:04:22.960 --> 03:04:25.040 would have arrived at the same answers. 03:04:25.040 --> 03:04:28.880 The only reason that they didn't use the Septuagint in the Reformation, 03:04:28.880 --> 03:04:31.760 or at any point previous, is no one asked the question. 03:04:31.760 --> 03:04:34.880 That's why it's humorous at this second, even longer episode about the 03:04:34.880 --> 03:04:37.760 Septuagint, none of the guys ever talk about it. 03:04:37.760 --> 03:04:41.040 Until that polyglot Bible, it doesn't show up once. 03:04:41.040 --> 03:04:41.760 Why would it? 03:04:41.760 --> 03:04:44.720 No one could in the West could even read Greek until the 03:04:44.720 --> 03:04:48.960 mid-1400s. The Septuagint was never even possible. 03:04:48.960 --> 03:04:52.240 And then at the very moment when you have reformers doing true 03:04:52.240 --> 03:04:56.240 reform to the church as was necessary because of the false doctrine 03:04:56.240 --> 03:05:00.640 that it accumulated, and they were looking at the textual sources, Reuslin 03:05:00.960 --> 03:05:05.200 relamed Philip Melancthan, put him in front of Luther and guaranteed that 03:05:05.200 --> 03:05:07.440 question would never be asked. 03:05:07.440 --> 03:05:11.840 Had Luther lived longer, had Reuchlin not lived at all, we would 03:05:11.840 --> 03:05:13.760 have seen some very different answers. 03:05:13.760 --> 03:05:17.520 Now that's it's a counterfactual to history that can't be proven, but 03:05:17.920 --> 03:05:21.120 when you look at the end of Luther's life historically, the trajectory 03:05:21.120 --> 03:05:23.920 he was on, he probably would have started asking some of these 03:05:23.920 --> 03:05:26.880 questions, even though it would have proven him a fool at certain 03:05:26.880 --> 03:05:30.480 points. Because he became a lover of Hebrew. 03:05:30.480 --> 03:05:31.680 He spent time on it. 03:05:31.680 --> 03:05:32.400 We see that today. 03:05:32.640 --> 03:05:36.000 The guys who spend a lot of time learning Hebrew love it. 03:05:36.000 --> 03:05:39.360 They think that it's so alien and foreign and it has richness 03:05:39.600 --> 03:05:43.440 and it's just it's defining for them that they've learned this because 03:05:43.440 --> 03:05:45.520 they were told that it was the original language. 03:05:45.520 --> 03:05:47.280 They should have just learned Greek. 03:05:47.280 --> 03:05:48.800 It was wasted time. 03:05:48.800 --> 03:05:50.560 Every one of them wasted time. 03:05:50.560 --> 03:05:53.840 But crucially as part of this story, it wasn't until the thirteenth 03:05:53.840 --> 03:05:56.160 century that anyone was learning Hebrew. 03:05:56.160 --> 03:05:57.520 It's a joke. 03:05:57.520 --> 03:06:01.120 The way that pastors are raised up today and trained is an 03:06:01.120 --> 03:06:02.240 ahistoric joke. 03:06:02.240 --> 03:06:04.320 It has no basis in the history of the church. 03:06:04.320 --> 03:06:07.520 And at every point, the wrong question was asked and the wrong 03:06:07.520 --> 03:06:10.640 path was taken because they were trying to solve the small problem, 03:06:10.640 --> 03:06:11.840 not the great 03:06:11.840 --> 03:06:12.800 one. 03:06:13.520 --> 03:06:18.080 At this point we are about halfway through this series because in 03:06:18.080 --> 03:06:22.800 reality it has four core episodes we'll be doing the episodes actually 03:06:22.800 --> 03:06:26.320 properly comparing the text in the next two weeks. 03:06:26.320 --> 03:06:29.360 Well, not the next two weeks, but the next two episodes. 03:06:29.360 --> 03:06:33.760 And then we had the introductory episode and then sort of the 03:06:33.760 --> 03:06:38.000 hanger on episode where we will be discussing what needs to be 03:06:38.000 --> 03:06:39.120 done in our opinion. 03:06:39.120 --> 03:06:41.760 Again, we won't be the ones doing this. 03:06:41.760 --> 03:06:43.600 This is a task for other Christian men. 03:06:43.600 --> 03:06:45.520 This is not a task for us. 03:06:45.520 --> 03:06:48.400 And so we are not going to be the ones doing 03:06:49.360 --> 03:06:53.520 the new translations, creating what needs to be created for the sake 03:06:53.520 --> 03:06:57.520 of the Christian Church, for the sake of a future Christendom, for 03:06:57.520 --> 03:07:00.240 the sake of restoring the things that have been lost down through 03:07:00.240 --> 03:07:01.040 these centuries. 03:07:01.280 --> 03:07:07.200 of men failing to do what it was their duty to do. 03:07:07.200 --> 03:07:11.520 But I'd like to echo what Woe said and perhaps emphasize it 03:07:11.520 --> 03:07:12.320 a little bit. 03:07:12.320 --> 03:07:14.960 I do firmly believe that if God had given Luther another ten 03:07:15.360 --> 03:07:19.840 twenty years of life, he would certainly have figured out his error 03:07:19.840 --> 03:07:22.160 on this particular question. 03:07:22.160 --> 03:07:25.600 Because he died in fifteen forty six, but in fifteen forty three 03:07:25.680 --> 03:07:28.320 you have on the Jews and their lives and their lies, and 03:07:28.320 --> 03:07:33.680 then his final sermon, in fact, before dying, that he preached the 03:07:33.680 --> 03:07:37.520 night before he had his final health issues and then wound up 03:07:37.520 --> 03:07:42.640 dying sometime in the night, he preached against the Jews, he preached 03:07:42.640 --> 03:07:46.480 against their wickedness, he preached against the synagogue, and the evil that 03:07:46.480 --> 03:07:49.840 it had brought into Germany and into Christian lands. 03:07:49.840 --> 03:07:53.840 And there are those who like to condemn Luther for seemingly they 03:07:53.840 --> 03:07:56.320 think they think, going overboard. 03:07:56.320 --> 03:08:00.400 Given what we've laid out in this episode and the previous one, 03:08:00.400 --> 03:08:03.840 and in our series on the Jews, I hardly think that a 03:08:03.840 --> 03:08:08.080 Christian could consider anything that Luther did or said to have been 03:08:08.080 --> 03:08:11.360 overboard with regard to the Jews. 03:08:11.360 --> 03:08:15.120 And for those who think that when Luther describes the synagogue as 03:08:15.120 --> 03:08:19.680 an incorrigible whore in an evil slut, if you think that that 03:08:19.680 --> 03:08:25.840 language is inappropriate or overboard or unbecoming of a Christian, I would 03:08:25.840 --> 03:08:30.960 point out that realistically he is simply paraphrasing Chrysostom, because Christom in 03:08:30.960 --> 03:08:35.520 his homilies against the Jews caused calls the synagogue a brothel and 03:08:35.520 --> 03:08:39.040 a theatre, and in fact he says it is the domicile of 03:08:39.040 --> 03:08:41.520 the devil, a place of idolatry. 03:08:41.520 --> 03:08:44.160 The synagogue is worse than a brothel. 03:08:44.160 --> 03:08:49.200 It is a den of robbers, a hideout for wild beasts. 03:08:49.200 --> 03:08:55.360 Christom, of course, was preaching back before Hebrew became a problem. 03:08:55.360 --> 03:09:00.800 He was preaching from the Old Testament, in the inspired Greek. 03:09:00.800 --> 03:09:02.880 That's the Christian position. 03:09:02.880 --> 03:09:08.000 That is what true Christian teachers have taught down through the centuries. 03:09:08.000 --> 03:09:12.400 Unfortunately, for a period of time we simply forgot that we had 03:09:12.400 --> 03:09:14.560 the Septuagint. 03:09:14.560 --> 03:09:18.160 Some of you will have undoubtedly have already connected these two events 03:09:18.160 --> 03:09:21.200 together, but I would remind you of something we have mentioned in 03:09:21.200 --> 03:09:22.720 a number of episodes. 03:09:22.720 --> 03:09:28.240 For a period of time, Old Testament Israel lost lost the Bible, 03:09:28.240 --> 03:09:32.320 what portion they had of it, in a wall, in the rubble, 03:09:32.320 --> 03:09:33.760 in the temple. 03:09:33.760 --> 03:09:36.160 They totally forgot they had it. 03:09:36.160 --> 03:09:40.480 We did the exact same thing with the Septuagint, except we forgot 03:09:40.480 --> 03:09:43.760 it was in the archives at the Vatican and wherever else copies 03:09:43.760 --> 03:09:47.120 were stored over the centuries. 03:09:47.120 --> 03:09:50.000 We had the Old Testament in Greek the entire time. 03:09:50.400 --> 03:09:56.240 at any point in this span of fifteen hundred years at this 03:09:56.240 --> 03:10:02.160 point longer, someone could have gone, taken that, learned Greek, and translated 03:10:02.160 --> 03:10:04.960 it into languages that were then in use. 03:10:05.200 --> 03:10:08.480 That was always on the table, that was always an option. 03:10:08.480 --> 03:10:13.120 God preserved his word faithfully as he promised he would do. 03:10:13.120 --> 03:10:15.040 We never lost the Greek. 03:10:15.040 --> 03:10:18.640 We misplaced it for a period of time, stupidly. 03:10:18.640 --> 03:10:21.760 Not even truly misplaced it, we knew it was there. 03:10:21.760 --> 03:10:25.440 The Jews had totally forgotten and didn't even know where it was. 03:10:25.440 --> 03:10:26.880 We still knew that we had it. 03:10:26.880 --> 03:10:30.480 Some of these scholars were aware of the existence of the Septuagint, 03:10:30.480 --> 03:10:34.160 they had to be, because the church fathers wrote about it. 03:10:34.160 --> 03:10:39.280 They just never managed to connect together we have the Greek, we 03:10:39.280 --> 03:10:42.320 have the Old Testament as God preserved it for us. 03:10:42.320 --> 03:10:45.440 We should be using that. 03:10:45.440 --> 03:10:49.360 There's this sort of spell that falls over most men when it 03:10:49.360 --> 03:10:51.760 comes to foreign languages. 03:10:51.760 --> 03:10:54.720 If you use a foreign language, people assume that you must be 03:10:54.720 --> 03:10:57.360 highly educated and highly intelligent. 03:10:57.760 --> 03:11:04.400 Peasants living in Palestine in Christ's Day knew two or three languages. 03:11:04.400 --> 03:11:10.080 Men who were otherwise uneducated, generally couldn't even read, but they knew 03:11:10.080 --> 03:11:11.600 three languages. 03:11:11.680 --> 03:11:16.320 There are many today who have virtually no education and speak two 03:11:16.320 --> 03:11:17.920 or three languages. 03:11:17.920 --> 03:11:22.880 Knowing a second or a third language should not particularly impress you. 03:11:22.880 --> 03:11:25.680 Yes, to some degree, depending on when you learn it, it is 03:11:25.680 --> 03:11:29.920 an intellectual or an academic achievement, but it's not a particularly great 03:11:29.920 --> 03:11:34.080 one. And so this sense that we have of being wildly impressed 03:11:34.240 --> 03:11:37.360 because someone managed to learn Hebrew, how great is that you learned 03:11:37.360 --> 03:11:39.840 this foreign language. 03:11:39.840 --> 03:11:42.880 You should not have that reaction to it. 03:11:42.880 --> 03:11:45.200 Think of it in the same way that you'd think of someone 03:11:45.200 --> 03:11:48.240 who becomes obsessed with Japanese culture learning Japanese. 03:11:48.240 --> 03:11:51.280 Okay great, I know some tidbit about your life you have a 03:11:51.280 --> 03:11:52.320 weird hobby. 03:11:52.320 --> 03:11:55.680 Except in the case of Hebrew the language itself is evil because 03:11:55.680 --> 03:11:57.840 it came from the pits of hell. 03:11:57.840 --> 03:12:01.040 Learning Japanese isn't going to endanger your soul. 03:12:01.040 --> 03:12:04.880 What we have seen down through the centuries and even today, particularly 03:12:04.960 --> 03:12:10.240 today, and particularly in response to this episode, Hebrew endangers the soul 03:12:10.240 --> 03:12:12.240 of the men who learn it. 03:12:12.240 --> 03:12:17.360 Because it was created for wicked purposes, by a wicked people, inspired 03:12:17.360 --> 03:12:18.960 by Satan himself. 03:12:18.960 --> 03:12:22.800 That may seem like it's an extreme statement, but look at the 03:12:22.800 --> 03:12:24.560 fruit of this tree. 03:12:24.560 --> 03:12:26.400 We went up to the Reformation. 03:12:26.400 --> 03:12:28.400 We didn't even go beyond that. 03:12:28.400 --> 03:12:31.840 To some degree and in some ways it gets worse after that, 03:12:32.000 --> 03:12:36.080 because dispensationalism is fruit of this tree. 03:12:36.080 --> 03:12:39.920 Judaizing in the modern form is fruit of this tree. 03:12:39.920 --> 03:12:44.320 The modern nation state of Israel, so called, is fruit of this 03:12:44.320 --> 03:12:48.640 tree. The world wars to a large degree are fruit of this 03:12:48.640 --> 03:12:54.320 tree. So much wickedness and suffering and death has flowed from this 03:12:54.960 --> 03:12:58.640 error, from this evil on the part of those who knew what 03:12:58.640 --> 03:13:02.080 they were doing and those who should have known better. 03:13:02.080 --> 03:13:05.840 There is no way that a Christian can possibly interpret it other 03:13:05.840 --> 03:13:08.480 than to look at it and recognize that it comes from the 03:13:08.880 --> 03:13:12.800 pit of hell and must be rejected. 03:13:12.800 --> 03:13:17.520 We need to have new translations of the Old Testament from the 03:13:17.520 --> 03:13:19.680 faithful Greek. 03:13:19.680 --> 03:13:22.160 Because the Greek is what God preserved. 03:13:22.160 --> 03:13:24.480 The Greek is what God gave us. 03:13:24.720 --> 03:13:27.360 And I want to emphasize that point again. 03:13:27.360 --> 03:13:30.000 God preserved the Greek. 03:13:30.080 --> 03:13:32.160 What does God promise in his word? 03:13:32.160 --> 03:13:35.520 He says that he will preserve his word. 03:13:35.520 --> 03:13:38.160 He says that none of it will be lost. 03:13:38.160 --> 03:13:40.400 Did that occur with the Hebrew? 03:13:40.400 --> 03:13:42.640 From what we have told you of the history in these two 03:13:42.640 --> 03:13:45.360 episodes, and by all means go and research it for yourself if 03:13:45.360 --> 03:13:47.760 you are so inclined. 03:13:47.760 --> 03:13:51.120 The Hebrew was not preserved. 03:13:51.120 --> 03:13:55.760 If the Hebrew was not preserved, then you have two options it's 03:13:55.760 --> 03:13:59.040 not the word of God or God lied. 03:13:59.040 --> 03:14:02.480 And that's an either or. 03:14:02.480 --> 03:14:07.760 We advocate, we are stating firmly and in no uncertain terms that 03:14:07.760 --> 03:14:12.000 the Hebrew is not the preserved word of God. 03:14:12.000 --> 03:14:15.120 It is not the divinely inspired word of God. 03:14:15.120 --> 03:14:18.240 And the reason that we say that is that we believe what 03:14:18.240 --> 03:14:21.360 God says in his word, and he says that none of it 03:14:21.360 --> 03:14:25.040 will be lost, and incidentally we have that in the New Testament 03:14:25.280 --> 03:14:28.160 over which no one is squabbling about the original language. 03:14:28.160 --> 03:14:30.960 We all know that's Greek. 03:14:30.960 --> 03:14:34.880 God says nothing will be lost, nothing was lost of the Greek. 03:14:36.080 --> 03:14:40.000 Almost everything was lost to the Hebrew. 03:14:40.000 --> 03:14:42.880 That's a simple choice for a Christian. 03:14:42.880 --> 03:14:45.120 God said he'll preserve his word. 03:14:45.120 --> 03:14:46.880 God preserved the Greek. 03:14:46.880 --> 03:14:48.720 The Greek is my Old Testament. 03:14:49.040 --> 03:14:51.840 The Greek is the Old Testament of the Church Fathers. 03:14:51.840 --> 03:14:54.800 The Greek is the Old Testament of the Early Church. 03:14:54.800 --> 03:14:59.120 The Greek is the Old Testament of the establishment of Christendom in 03:14:59.120 --> 03:15:04.640 the lands of Japheth, as Father Noah promised and as God fulfilled. 03:15:04.640 --> 03:15:07.200 All we have to do is believe what God has said. 03:15:07.200 --> 03:15:10.320 That's the baseline for being a Christian. 03:15:10.320 --> 03:15:12.720 Yes, to be a Christian, you have to have faith in Christ, 03:15:12.720 --> 03:15:15.200 and we all know the creeds and the doctrines and those things 03:15:15.520 --> 03:15:18.560 we've gone over them at length in other episodes. 03:15:18.560 --> 03:15:22.160 But a foundational matter is simply believing the word of God, believing 03:15:22.160 --> 03:15:26.960 the things that God says are actually true. 03:15:26.960 --> 03:15:28.240 What we are saying is that God 03:15:29.120 --> 03:15:33.520 has spoken the truth, He has fulfilled His word in time, and 03:15:33.520 --> 03:15:38.160 that we believe him according to the things He has said, according 03:15:38.160 --> 03:15:42.000 to the way that He has brought it about in time. 03:15:42.000 --> 03:15:46.480 Others are telling you that you instead have to believe what rabbis 03:15:46.480 --> 03:15:51.280 say, what those who blaspheme God daily say, what those who hate 03:15:51.280 --> 03:15:55.040 you and call for your death and your destruction say. 03:15:55.040 --> 03:15:57.120 Don't believe them. 03:15:57.120 --> 03:16:01.120 It's similar to how we mention in politics you have two options. 03:16:01.120 --> 03:16:04.640 When it comes to politics and social issues, you can believe what 03:16:04.640 --> 03:16:07.200 your ancestors said about the Jews, or you can believe what the 03:16:07.200 --> 03:16:09.600 Jews say about your ancestors. 03:16:10.000 --> 03:16:14.240 Again, fourth commandment should not be a difficult decision for Christians. 03:16:14.240 --> 03:16:16.400 I believe what my Christian ancestors said. 03:16:16.400 --> 03:16:19.200 I don't believe what the Jews said about them. 03:16:19.200 --> 03:16:22.880 And similarly, in the same vein, I don't believe what the Jews 03:16:22.880 --> 03:16:24.240 say about God. 03:16:24.320 --> 03:16:27.920 I believe what God says about Himself, I believe the words of 03:16:27.920 --> 03:16:32.320 Christ, and the words of Christ are that nothing will be lost. 03:16:32.320 --> 03:16:37.120 And incidentally when Christ says that, he's speaking Greek, and he's talking 03:16:37.120 --> 03:16:40.720 about the Greek, and we still have the Greek, and we should 03:16:40.720 --> 03:16:44.560 rely on and use the Greek, because that is the Old Testament 03:16:44.560 --> 03:16:48.000 of the Church, it is the received Old Testament of the Church, 03:16:48.000 --> 03:16:52.960 it is the foundation of the Church, because it is God's Word.