Hebrew Voices #124 – PART 4/4 Does John 6:4 Belong in the New Testament
In this episode of Hebrew Voices, Does John 6:4 Belong in the New Testament – PART 4 of 4, we examine the controversy about the Gospel of John which has raged for nearly 2,000 years, as we conclude our 4-part … Continue reading →
In this episode of Hebrew Voices, Does John 6:4 Belong in the New Testament - PART 4 of 4, we examine the controversy about the Gospel of John which has raged for nearly 2,000 years, as we conclude our 4-part series to solve a textual conundrum using technology John could not have imagined and draw on resources unavailable even a few years ago. Ted wrote: “Very good presentation of the case against John 6:4!” Be sure to first watch Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3!
I look forward to reading your comments!
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Hebrew Voices #124 – PART 4/4 Does John 6:4 Belong in the New Testament
You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.
Nehemia: I’m searching for the truth. And look, when I sat down to do this topic, I said to John, “I’m not here to prove that Michael’s right. That’s not my job. I want to find out if he’s right or not, and if he’s wrong, I’ll go to him and I’ll tell him, ‘Michael, this is wrong.’”
Nehemia: We already saw the Church Fathers from the 2nd century, 3rd century, even in the 4th century, who had a version of John that matched what we found in these manuscripts. And so that tells you, even though the only surviving manuscript that we currently know of is from the 11th century, this reading already existed in the 2nd century, and this has been acknowledged for hundreds of years in the church. We had Vossius in 1643, we had Pearce in 1777, Henry Brown in 1844, and many, many others. We just brought a few of them. So, this has been acknowledged for hundreds of years that the Church Fathers, when they read John 6:4, they didn’t see that verse, or certainly didn’t see the word “Passover” in it.
And look, in archeology – I did my undergrad in Archaeology and Biblical Studies, I did a double major at Hebrew University – and one of the things we learned is that what you find in archeology is to some extent random. You go and you dig in a site, and you’re not digging the entire site. You’re digging a five-by-five-meter section of that site. If you have a really big excavation, you do 5 or 10 of those squares. But there’s a whole part of the site you’re not digging, and so what you find is somewhat haphazard, and we can actually see that in the Dead Sea Scrolls. You know, in the Dead Sea Scrolls we have a lot of copies of the Book of Isaiah, a lot of copies of Deuteronomy, that tells you those books were important to them. We don’t have a single copy of the Book of Esther. Why is that? It’s just random, what you find, right?
Now, if you find a lot of something, maybe that was important to them. Okay, but why didn’t we find one copy of Esther? Well, the copy of Nehemia we found is maybe this big, right? It’s a few verses, it’s very small. You know, there’s an old Hebrew saying, “Lo matzinu eino ra’aya”, the fact that you haven’t found something is not a proof, right? So, all we have is the evidence of what we did find. And what we did find is that there’s evidence in the 2nd century, 3rd century, 4th century, and others - we didn’t bring everything - that they were reading John without 6:4. And then, we find the manuscripts 11th to 15th century, and then 16th century and on, we find scholars telling us this explicitly. So we have a pretty much… other than this one period, around the 5th to 10th century, you’re right, we don’t have a lot of evidence from there. But we do have before and we have after.
Now, I want to bring an analogy here to something from the Tanakh. And here’s a key point - the age of a manuscript does not necessarily tell you it’s importance. In other words, just because something is old doesn’t mean it’s correct. And we saw before, Acts 21:25 in Codex Bezae. What if we didn’t have Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus? We would look at Bezae and we might say, “This is the oldest version.” Maybe Acts 21:25 in the oldest version is telling us not to keep the Torah. Thankfully, we do have the other ones, right? But what if we didn’t have it?
Look, we have this manuscript in the Tanakh, and this is I call a twofer, because it’s also the name. This is a manuscript that has the full vowels “Yehovah”. It’s in Lamentations 3:55. It’s Cambridge Oriental 1753, and it’s a very late manuscript - it’s from the 16th century. However, in Tanakh studies, this is considered to be a direct copy of the Aleppo Codex. The Aleppo Codex was completed around the year 930, and most of the section on the writings, the Ketuvim, is missing. And so when scholars want to know what the Aleppo Codex has in the Ketuvim, they look at Cambridge Oriental 1753. Even though it’s from the 16th century, it’s considered a direct or possibly second-generation copy of the Aleppo Codex, and hence has as much reliability, or is considered to have as much reliability, as the Aleppo Codex itself.
And here, we can see in Lamentations 3:55 it says, “karati shimkha Yehovah,” “I called upon Your name, Yehovah,” Yehovah with the full vowels. Beautiful. Can I get an Amen out there?
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Yeshua’s crucifixion nearly a week *after* Pesach??
ELECTRIFYING!
I have enjoyed hearing this information. As a Christ follower, this is good to have more information to gain understanding. Don’t judge Christendom because of what knowledge that has been set before us for generations. Access to the knowledge you have has not been accessable to most until media and technology became the norm, probably in the last 5-10 years. I have felt as an adult that the pool of Silome water stirring had to do with some kind of pagen ritual and not from God but had no knowledge of what. As a child it was assumed a angel came because it was in the Bible even though that wasn’t preached at any time. I think now this generation is able to learn why on so many things. I have so many Bible translations including the Hebrew and Greek . Thank you for doing all of this. I listen to Rabbi Sobel and go to a protestant church as well. It is nice to see respectful behavior while we are learning from you all.
Very good presentation of the case against John 6:4! But I was bothered by the repeated putdowns of KJV adherents like me.
There are many, many problems with the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus codices, but let me just point out that both omit the last 12 verses of Mark (16:9-20). They end with the women visiting the tomb, finding it empty, and being really scared. Now no one who believes in the Resurrection is going to believe for one minute that Mark would leave it out of his Gospel! A “gospel” with no Resurrection would be like a version of Exodus that omits any mention of the Red Sea passage.
However the vast majority of atheistic acadaemonians and tomb dwellers in today’s theological cemeteries love the missing verses because they concord with their basic unbelief in the deity of Christ and give them the opportunity to sow doubt by asking “Yea, hath Matthew/Mark/Luke/John/Christ said …?”
Irenaeus in the 2nd century quotes Mark 16:19 in “Against Heresies” and also mentions that certain Gnostics of his time were prone to mutilate the Gospels by removing passages that didn’t conform to their particular heresies. And Michael Rood includes Mark 16:9-20 in his Chronological Gospels, so it seems that he doesn’t credit Vaticanus/Sinaiticus either. Sadly the NIV and most of the newer NT translations rely heavily on them.
@Christopher J Whitaker, can you please explain here what you mean by:
“As can be seen using the 62 weeks as the length of Christs Ministry fits nicely within the framework of the Jewish festivals and eliminates the necessity to remove the word Passover from John 6:4 as there is only one Passover that it could refer to.”
Thank you.
I think he doesn’t
know it yet-see the look of joy on his face?
man oh man I gotta tell ya about 20 min in the Ruach ha Kodesh was dancing IN my soul and we had fun!
I believe Nehemiah is born from above and doesn’t know it yet!
Love it! A classic finale to a brilliant teaching.
Dorothy, some healings were apparently happening – either because of their faith or despite their superstition (like the Placebo Effect), and either belief would only be reinforced.
38:47 are you saying you believe Yeshuah is the messiah, sent one of YHVH?
Over 10 years ago I first learned from Michael Rood’s that Christ’s ministry was only 70 weeks but could not make it fit with any of the chronological date I had discovered although his arguments were pretty sound. The main problem was the starting and ending date could not be associated with known festivals given in the Bible. First the year of the Crucifixion is 27AD not 28. Passover 27AD is exactly 46 years after Herod decreed he would rebuild the Temple and the first Passover Pilate would have been in Jerusalem, also the 14th on Nisan fell on a Friday. Here is a synopsis of what I have discovered.
In 27AD, Nisan 14, the Passover was on Friday April 11th , the Crucifixion on Wednesday the 16th and the entombment on the 17th. The day of Preparation for the Wave Offering. The High Sabbath beginning at sunset on April 18th to the 19th and resurrection sometime after sunset. If the Crucifixion was indeed on April 16 then the ascension 40 days later was on May 26th. May 26 27AD was the Julian day 1731065.
In 26AD the first crescent Moon appeared on the evening of the 9th March making Sunday the 10th, the first day of the week and the first day of the year. Nissan 10 the day the Passover Lamb is brought into the Temple was Tuesday March 19th and this Julian day was 1730632 exactly 434 days (62 x 7) inclusive until May 26th 27AD.
As can be seen using the 62 weeks as the length of Christs Ministry fits nicely within the framework of the Jewish festivals and eliminates the necessity to remove the word Passover from John 6:4 as there is only one Passover that it could refer to. There is a great deal more to this interpretation than I could possible include here but I will willingly send it to you through other channels.
Corrected my hard copy KJV, cuz maybe 2000yrs from now it’ll miraculously survive n someone may need it.
Waited patiently for this episode. I enjoyed it very much. Thank you
Thank you so much, Nehemia, John, and Michael. I am not exaggerating or making anything up when I say that I had shivers running through my body as I listened to the last 3 minutes of this presentation.
Best 1 of the 4! Loved this!!! I just have a question. If that pool was not stirred by an angel and it was just water what happened to the people who did go in it? If they didn’t get healed wouldn’t that be obvious and word get around that it didn’t work?
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