The Tower that Still Stands – Nehemia Gordon (Open Door Series – Part 11)

The Tower that Still Stands - Nehemia Gordon (Open Door Series - Part 11)

You are listening to the Open Door Series with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: Yesterday I talked to you a little bit about the Shrine of the Book, which is one of my favorite places in the world. This place over here. And I mentioned that I call it the Jot and Tittle Museum. And I didn’t really explain why. I said a little bit why - that it preserves, essentially, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Aleppo Codex, which is the most important manuscript… really, it’s the most important book in the world. Because for me, at least, the Bible is the most important book in the world, and the most important copy of the Bible in the world is the Aleppo Codex. And it’s in this museum here, in the Shrine of the Book, the Jot and Tittle Museum. This is what it looks like. And I mentioned how I was so blessed that I got into the vault to see the original Aleppo Codex, not just the two top pages on display, but the whole thing. And that really, for me, was an amazing experience.

And one of the reasons this was so important to me, and I guess I didn’t share this, is that there was something in the Aleppo Codex that I encountered sometime before this. This is actually a picture of me about 80 pounds ago, in my living room, in front of my bookshelf. And I have two really important books on this bookshelf, which are, for me, the two most valuable books I have. And you can see it’s sagging under the weight, because these are big books.

But up here, I have actually a copy of the Aleppo Codex. Back in the 1970s they made this volume that had photographs of every single page of this crown jewel of Hebrew manuscripts, and they only made 500 of them. And they were very, very expensive books, and they sold out almost immediately. Well, back when Reggie White came over and he was with me in the vault, we afterwards went out, and that night he said something, something that I thought was profound. He said, “This was the best day of my life.” And I said, “Reggie, what are you talking about? You won the Super Bowl, what do you mean, this was the best day of your life? Surely when you won that, that was the best day.” He said, “No, today was, because this was an answer to prayer.” And in some respects, it was for me also an answer to prayer, but the main prayer that was answered for me was a couple of years before that.

Oh, and the next day, we were sitting in the Old City of Jerusalem and we were having lunch, and I had mentioned to Reggie how they made this book, 500 copies, and they all sold out back in the 1970s, there were none left. And Reggie, in his deep voice, he said, “I need one of those.” And so I got on the phone and I called the publisher and I said, “Do you not have one single copy left?” They said, “Sorry, there’s none left. They were all sold out back in the 1970s.”

About a half hour later, they called me back and they said, “We just found 100 copies in the basement that we didn’t even know existed, we went to check because you called.” And I told this to Reggie, and then I said, “But Reggie, here’s how much they cost.” He said, “No problem, I’ll get one.” And he actually got one for himself, one for Keith Johnson, one for Qadri Ismail, and then he said to me, “Nehemia, I’ll get one for you, too.” I said, “No, Reggie, that’s too generous, I can’t accept that.” I’m not going to tell you how much it cost, but it was a lot of money. As Reggie used to say it was muuney. [laughter] I mean, this was an expensive book. And he got it for me anyway. And so, that is one of my prized possessions up there, the Aleppo Codex. And here is the Leningrad Codex, which is my second most prized possession. Now, that isn’t as expensive. It was made in modern times, in the 90s, actually, using modern technologies. And so, it was much cheaper, and I bought that on eBay for half price. Somebody’s say “Nehemia is Jewish”. [laughter]

So anyway, these two books, the reason they were so important to me isn’t just that they’re the two most important manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, but there was something in these two specific manuscripts that I came across. At first thought stumbled upon, but now I’m believing that the hand of God is in this. And what I came across had to do with the name of God, the name of our heavenly Father. His name is revealed in Exodus chapter 3, verse 15. Moses asked the question, he says, “What name should I tell to the Israelites? I’m going to say this God appeared to me. I’m going to say it’s the God of our fathers, when I go to Israel, and they’re going to say, ‘Well, what’s His name?’ What name should I give the people?”

And the reason that he would have to ask this is that there were many gods in ancient Israel, and ancient Canaan, and ancient Egypt. There was Ra, the sun god, and there was Ba’al, the lord, the master. And there were all kinds of other deities, and so, Moses couldn’t just say “the God of our ancestors”, that could have been the terafim that Rachel took and stole from Laban, right? I mean, who did he mean? So our heavenly Father revealed Himself, revealed His name to Moses in Exodus 3:15. And there it says, “Thus say to the children of Israel.” Then the four Hebrew letters, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, appear. This is a Yud, say Yud.

Audience: Yud.