Dr. Nehemia Gordon - Bible Scholar at NehemiasWall.com

In this episode of Hebrew Voices #193 - Global Outpouring "The Name of Our Father", Nehemia is interviewed by Philip and Sharon Buss from Global Outpouring where he shares his fascinating perspective on the deep things of the Hebrew Scriptures and how he has put decades of study into finding and confirming the correct pronunciation of the Name “Yehovah.” He shares with the Busses just a few of his many discoveries, the fascinating history of how and why God’s name, Yehovah, became forbidden to say, and why it’s important for Christians and Jews to understand it’s meaning.

I look forward to reading your comments!

PODCAST VERSION:

Download Audio

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: The Romans said, “If we can get people to just use God, we know that God is Zeus and Jupiter, and they don’t know that yet, but they’ll eventually get it.” But if, instead of God you say Yehovah... well, no, Yehovah is not the same as Zeus and Jupiter. So, for me it’s important that if he says, “This is My name forever. This is My mention for generation to generation”, I should take that seriously.

—

Philip: God promises in Joel 2:28 to pour out His spirit on all humanity. Welcome to Global Outpouring, where we contend for that promised outpouring. We equip for that outpouring so that we may engage in that very outpouring. I’m Phillip Buss.

Sharon: And I’m Sharon Buss. Welcome to the podcast today. We have with us a very, very special guest that I’ve been longing for a long time to have with us. His name is Dr. Nehemia Gordon, and he is an author, and he is a scholar of the deep things of the manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible. And he’s going to share with us some things that we need to know about the name of our Father.

Thanks for joining us today. I know you’re going to enjoy this podcast. But before we get started, we want to encourage you; if you haven’t already done so, please go to our website, globaloutpouring.net and sign up for our email lists. You never know when something might happen, that we might say something on YouTube or on some other platform that we might get thrown off, and then you wouldn’t be able to find us. So, if you are on our mailing list, we’ll be able to stay in touch with you. And we’d love it for you to stay in touch with us, if you would give us some feedback. You can send an email to [email protected], or you can go to that globaloutpouring.net page, and there’s a feedback form there.

And also, if there’s anybody that is really being fed by this podcast, if you would like to help us pay it forward, help us to continue to make these podcasts, there’s a donation page on our website, and we would greatly appreciate your help.

So, today we have with us Dr. Nehemia Gordon, and I need to tell you some of the backstory for this episode. If you want to understand the Bible, you have to get back to the Hebrew first. The scriptures that the writers of the New Testament referred to are the Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament. Paul, writing to Timothy, said, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” He said that in 2 Timothy 3:16. So, what he’s referring to is the Hebrew Bible. There was no canon of New Testament scripture in those days.

And then he wrote in Romans chapter 3, verses 1 and 2. Verse 1 says, “What advantage has the Jew?” Or “What is the superiority of the Jew?” Depending on what translation you read. And then in verse 2 it says, “Much in every way. For first, indeed they were entrusted with the oracles of God, the very words or the utterances of God.” And the contemporary English Version says, “First of all, God’s messages were spoken to the Jews.” So, that’s why we should go back to the Jews to find out the nitty gritty of the Hebrew language.

So, I’ve been following Nehemia Gordon on YouTube for years, and I’ve read two of his books. He’s an expert in the Hebrew language because he’s Jewish and he has studied it all of his life. He comes from a long line of rabbis, so he has a great teaching gift in his DNA. He’s not a ...

In this episode of Hebrew Voices #184: Creation vs. Evolution: Raw and Unedited, Young Earth creationist Kent Hovind of DrDino.com explains to Nehemia about the errors of evolution, dinosaurs on Noah's Ark, and the formation of heavy elements in stars. Nehemia's most controversial guest to date, Hovind describes himself as a "lowly high school science teacher with a non-accredited degree from a Christian school who happens to believe [the Bible] is true and evolution is not only stupid it's dangerous."

I look forward to reading your comments!

PODCAST VERSION:

Download Audio

Hebrew Voices #184 – Creation vs. Evolution: Raw and Unedited

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: Okay. Is this being recorded? Got it. Alright, I think we’re recording. Alright, let me just jump into it, and we’ll just have a conversation here. What is your timeframe? I’ve done interviews everywhere from 25 minutes to 7 hours, so, just to warn you!

Kent: Well, I have to preach tonight at 7:00 o’clock.

Nehemia: Okay, we’ll be done by then.

Kent: Okay.

Nehemia: If it’s okay, we’ll just go naturally. Like I said, it might be half an hour, it might be as long as it goes.

Kent: Okay.

Nehemia: If it’s longer, we’ll probably break it into multiple episodes.

Shalom and welcome to Hebrew Voices! I’m here today with Kent Hovind, who, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say is the most controversial guest I’ve ever had on the program! Shalom Kent!

Kent: Hey, shalom, very good to be with you!

Nehemia: Is it okay if I call you Kent?

Kent: Sure! I get called a lot worse than that on the internet, you would not believe.

Nehemia: I can imagine! So, Kent is, I think, probably one of the most famous Young Earth creationists in the world. Let’s start with, what is Young Earth creationism? Because some of my audience won’t be familiar with that. But in one sentence or in one phrase, you’re opposed to evolution, is that right?

Kent: Well, yes. I have been a Baptist preacher for 50 years. I taught high school science and math for 15 years. And I started a ministry back in 1989 called Creation Science Evangelism, defending the Bible as being scientifically accurate.

The Bible says God made everything in six days, but our kids in public school textbooks are being taught dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. Well, somebody’s lying. I mean, big time lying! I believe the Bible is true. God made everything in six days, and if you add up the dates in the Bible... if you look at the Bible, Genesis chapter 5, it says Adam was 130 when Seth was born and Seth was 105 when Enos was born. The dates are all right there in Genesis 5. After the Flood, you go to Genesis 11, and there’s more dates given of how old they were when their kids were born. Anybody can add them up. It comes to about 6,000 years for the age of the Earth.

So, I started traveling and teaching about the Bible being scientifically accurate. God made everything. And animals always bring forth “after their kind”, “after their kind”, “after their kind”, there are no exceptions. These evolution charts that they’re teaching our kids in school, where they have the sunflowers are related to frogs; this is not only propaganda, it is flat stupid.

I’ve done 351 debates now with atheists at universities. The most famous one... I was debating three atheists at the same time at Embry-Riddle University, south of Jacksonville, Florida, and one of them asked me, “Where did God come from?” And my two-minute answer has 900 million views. Two minutes long. Type in, “Where did God come from?”

Nehemia: What’s the answer? Give us the 30-second version.

Kent: Well, the question is invalid. If I said, “Why are elephants orange?” How would you answer that? They’re not orange. I can’t answer your question about why they’re orange because they’re not orange! To ask “where did God come from” assumes God had to come from somewhere. God’s not limited by time, space, or matter; we are. He created time, space, and matter. “In the beginning,” there’s time, “God created the Heaven,” there’s space, “and...

Watch the SNEAK PEEK of Revelation or Imagination: Part 2, where Nehemia learns from Royal Skousen how Joseph Smith misread the seer stones, the role of editors and copyists in the transmission of the Book of Mormon, and why he changed passages in the English translation of the Book of Isaiah.

I look forward to reading your comments!

PODCAST VERSION:

Watch the full episode TOMORROW plus hundreds of hours of other in-depth studies by becoming a Support Team Member!

Subscribe to "Nehemia Gordon" on your favorite podcast app!
Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music | TuneIn
Pocket Casts | Podcast Addict | CastBox | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Pandora

The post Support Team Study SNEAK PEEK! Revelation or Imagination: Part 2 appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.

In this episode of Hebrew Voices #195, Ancient Hebrew in America?, Nehemia speaks to a geologist about the only Paleo-Hebrew inscription found in an Indian burial mound during an archeological excavation. Is the Bat Creek Inscription scientific evidence of pre-Columbian contact with Israelite lost tribes or a 19th century hoax by a Smithsonian Institute archeologist?

I look forward to reading your comments!

PODCAST VERSION:

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: Shalom and welcome to Hebrew Voices in a joint episode with Mormon Book Reviews. Steven Pynakker is here with me hosting, and we are going to be speaking today to Scott Wolter. Hello Steven and hello Scott.

Scott: How are you doing?

Nehemia: I’m really excited! We’ll be talking about the Bat Creek inscription, which is a Paleo-Hebrew inscription that was discovered in a Smithsonian Institute archeological excavation in 1889. Steven, I’m going to hand it off to you now.

Steven: Okay. Well, welcome to Mormon Book Reviews, where an Evangelical encounters the Restoration. I’m your host, Steven Pynakker, and I’m honored and privileged to do this joint collaboration with Nehemia. By the way, Nehemia, it’s Pynakker!

Nehemia: Pynakker, okay!

Steven: I’m not calling you Nehemiah anymore!

Nehemia: I don’t mind you calling me Neheemiah, Nehemia. Just don’t call me baldy, that’s very sensitive!

Steven: Okay! So, I just want to welcome Scott onto the program as well, and I’m really excited to be doing this collaboration. And it’s really nice, because Nehemia, you’re an expert. You’re a scholar, and we’re both very interested in the subject of Mormonism. Of course, you’ve been doing this epic interview recently with my good friend Dan Vogel...

Nehemia: That was a seven plus hour interview, so we ended up breaking it up into multiple episodes. We’re about to broadcast the last episode.

Steven: That’s great, I love it! And I want people to check out Nehemia’s channel. For those of you who are interested in Mormon studies and history, it’s really a fascinating conversation that he’s having with Dan. And actually, it was my interview with Dan that kind of got you down that rabbit trail.

Nehemia: Absolutely.

Steven: It’s how we ended up becoming friends and collaborators. And I think to an audience, specifically to a Latter-Day Saint audience, who believe that the Book of Mormon is an ancient record of an ancient people that inhabited the American continent... And there’s this idea... people don’t realize, they think it’s just a story about one people. In the Book of Mormon there’s actually three transoceanic... I miss pronounced that, migrations to the New World. We had the Jaredites around the fall of the Tower of Babel, then we had what would become the Nephites and the Lamanites coming around 589 BC, and then we had the Mulekites also coming. So, in the Book of Mormon there’s three that are talked about.

So, if we find something, whether it is a relic that is from Book of Mormon times or not, it just makes the book more plausible that there have been groups throughout history that have been coming across.

And not only that, but my friend Hannah Stoddard of the Joseph Smith Foundation believes that the Nephites were also diffusing across the continent as well to the Old World. She believes specifically that the Dutch people are Nephites, so she thinks that I’m a Nephite.

So, it’s really interesting just to hear these stories. The Book of Mormon also talks about shipbuilding and sending things out away from the New World into the Old World, so it’s fascinating stuff. And honestly, I’m a big fan of our guest Scott, because you and the work that you’ve done with your show, America Unearthed on the History Channel... I’ve probably watched a vast majority of the episodes. And last night I got to reacquaint myself with your Bat Creek Stone episode that was ten years ago. I can’t believe it!

It’s amazing! I think it’s really fascinating because you’re not a Latter Day ...

In this episode of Hebrew Voices #194 - Pious Fraud, Nehemia and Dan Vogel discuss a shared concept in early Mormonism and rabbinical Judaism about lying for the Lord, what biblical studies can learn from Mormon history, and the dangers of the “idealist” fallacy.

I look forward to reading your comments!

PODCAST VERSION:

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: And for me, the takeaway from early Mormon history, what my whole interest in this really has developed into is, we’ve got to be really careful making the types of arguments we’ve been making, because we have this case of early Mormonism where there are these evolutions of ideas within, like you said, the same month the book came out, he’s saying the opposite in what later becomes Doctrine and Covenants.

—

Nehemia: I’m back with Dan Vogel, the greatest living historian of early Mormon history, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating there, at least that’s my view on it. So, I want to respect people who are coming from a devout perspective, but I also want to hear what the truth is, and then I want to think about how this applies to other situations. For me, that’s the bottom line. How can I apply this?

And I want to I want to tell you one of the things, Dan, that I take away from this. We have all these ideas in biblical studies, Old Testament and New Testament, that are completely undermined by what happened in Mormonism. And I’ll just give you an example. I have no doubt whatsoever that Joseph Smith Jr. wrote the Book of Mormon, that he created it out of his own imagination, and that the Doctrine and Covenants were created out of his own imagination.

Yet they sound like they were raised by two different authors. One of them is... I mean, we started, and we didn’t get to it... before the discussion about what it means “eternal damnation”. Eternal damnation on its face in the Book of Mormon means, if you don’t have the right beliefs and do the right things, you’re going to hell for eternity. But then in Doctrine and Covenants, he explains, “No, it means you’re going to be punished by the Eternal One, by God, and eventually end up in some kind of heaven.” So, how could that be the same author? But it is.

Dan: And so soon.

Nehemia: Yeah... within a few years, he’s... within a year, even, he’s giving a different story...

Dan: The revelation you just quoted...

Nehemia: Yeah.

Dan: ...is given the very month the book comes off the press.

Nehemia: That’s amazing! So, now when I look at a document and I say, “Oh, this was ...” and this is a real example.

Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: I say, “Well, how could this have been written by Maimonides in the 12th century, because Maimonides in his Systematic Theology says X, Y, Z, and you realize, well, okay, even though he was a systematic theologian, he’s also a human being, and in some context, he’s being systematic, and in other contexts he’s not.” And that’s really important for historical study of documents, not just the Bible, but for historical philology. We have this tendency... and I know you quote, and I want you to talk about this, there’s a concept you talk about here, a certain fallacy, I forget what it’s called, that people aren’t really consistent.

Dan: Right. The Idealist Fallacy.

Nehemia: The Idealist Fallacy. So, we employ...

Dan: The Idealist Fallacy is that you hold the ideal view of humans, and the ideal view of humans is that they’re always consistent. And so, you argue, “Well, Joe Smith couldn’t have said that because that contradicts what he said over here.” And you go, “Therefore, he didn’t mean that, he meant something else.” And then you tried to spin it and try to harmonize.

And my position is, well, that’s an apologetic position to demand that Joe Smith never contradict himself. “He’s always consistent.” And to use consistency as the rationale for your very difficult interpretation to accept... like with Masonry. How could he be anti-Masonic in the Book of Mormon and then join Masonry in Nauvoo? That’s contradiction...