Hidden In The Hebrew - Dr. Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg on LIFE Today Live

you have the power of choice believe on the lord jesus christ welcome to life today live i'm randy robinson and you know we all live in a culture uh we create our own culture often times and whether it's going from you know a lutheran church to an assemblies of god church you can see sort of a different culture and of course in the united states it's a the melting pot of culture so you know you can go to chinatown and it's a different culture you can go to certain you go to new orleans and let me tell you a whole different culture than you know kansas city uh or new york city or course california i mean they've got their own code we are a nation especially of multi-cultural groups uh and of course you go overseas you get into different languages and in the cultures they're just different and i think i think they're beautiful i love i love different cultures studying different cultures i i actually enjoy some language studies i've been studying one particular language for a while now and feel like i completely have not mastered it because i haven't but one thing i've noticed and if you've done if you've been you know across cultures at all you've seen this there are things both in language and in thought patterns ways of expressing ideas that are completely different from the culture i was raised in once you start to get into that culture you start to understand some sometimes the language the the way ideas are put together god forbid you ever go to china or try to read chinese because it is so foreign to the american western mind that it's baffling but once i've been to china once you start to understand some other culture then you really start to understand the the ideas behind them and a lot of times the the truth behind some of the ideas that is very true with our bible and unfortunately i know in our western culture uh we live you know 2000 years since christ walked the earth we live in a different mindset a different culture different era different age and that's fine but when we go back and we study the original culture in which the bible took place in which the old testament was written as well as the new testament we can actually start to to get to a deeper truth and that's what we're going to do today with that long introduction my guest is someone who has great experience uh in studying the cultures of of the bible his name is dr elliott zorkin eisenberg he's asked that i just call him dr ellie and i'll do that for simplicity's sake but he's with the israeli let me get this right he is the founder and professor of ancient cultures at the israel bible center we'll talk about that he's got a litany of degrees phds mdibs he studied all over university of pennsylvania princeton theological seminary hebrew university of jerusalem and he's written numerous books we'll talk about some of those as well but we're really going to get into the culture of our scripture to understand it better so dr elliott with that welcome to life today live thank you so much and it's wonderful to be with you all right i there there are so many different directions we could go but i want to let you sort of give your take on a little bit of what i talked about in the introduction which is maybe something some things that we're missing uh in our western culture that that you can help us understand sure um well of course you know any culture is has its own merits it's got its own strengths with weaknesses so uh and so on and i i don't want to uh to begin this interview by sort of assuming that there is something wrong with the western culture sure something that i'm going to fix for you for your audience i'm not going to do that but for a simple reason that i believe that the western culture was a gift that god gave to the world and while not everything in the western culture is good and praiseworthy most things are and um and there is no reason to to have a negative attitude towards it however uh it is also true that the bible whether the hebrew bible or what the christians call the old testament or then or the the writings that talk about jesus the messiah and the writings of apostle paul and so on to the book of revelation um that christians called the new testament collection all of those books all of them were written outside of the western culture and so therefore no matter how important and good and praiseworthy western culture could be in most of its uh representation it is not the culture of the bible and therefore in order for us living in whatever culture we're living in in order for us to be able to live out the truths of the bible in our own culture we must we absolutely must first grasp it in its original setting you see and here's the beautiful thing i i mean a lot of people are saying well that's great you're jewish you were born jewish and you know i i can never i can just look up to you because i i was born in you know i don't know montgomery alba i mean i'm sorry to pick on montgomery alba this is the only thing that i thought of at the moment but but the truth is that i was also born i was born in the in the soviet union in the russian jewish family i i was born jewish but i didn't grow up religiously jewish so absolutely everything that i know today i learned just the way you can one other thing to encourage you there there is a number of christian um uh christian jewish studies uh scholars that are unparalleled and only because they're not themselves jewish ethnically does not mean that they do not have incredible insight into the jewish background of new testament and that's the kind of thing we do at israel bible center we do not teach doctrines obviously each each professor has his own set of what christians generally call doctrines but that's not what we teach we do not teach doctrinal standpoints what we teach is context and culture and languages the the tools the kind of tools that will allow you to actually dust off the the dust of history from all this ancient text and for you to take a uh um a ride in the time machine if you would you know symbolically speaking of course to get back and to walk in the shoes of abraham in the shoes of moses and the shoes of of jesus now uh disclaimer uh to be able to do that perfectly is impossible so even israel bible center cannot help you to do that but israel bible said they can can take you a lot closer to that seat so that you can see and touch and smell and hear the kind of things that went on especially when jesus walked uh and the dusty roads of ancient israel um uh you know and we could hear and people could hear sure a soft touch of a sandal feed sure so so yeah that that's that's where we are let's give people an idea of something that understanding the context and the culture how it directly impacts their understanding of the bible and you mentioned before we started the interview something that i've heard that is a i think a great example and that is when jesus says to someone who wanted to follow jesus but said you know i need to bury my father and jesus said let the berry let the dead bury the dead which to the western mind i mean anybody that's not familiar with the culture all the time sounds really odd and kind of cold-hearted yeah yeah and but there's a cultural thing that yeah yeah go ahead well well that's the thing that this is a good example of a western culture right western culture actually judged this traditional christian interpretation of what's going on uh with a lot of suspicion right and rightly so i mean how can uh the son of god right who who or to honor the word of his father knowing that one of the ten commandments is actually to honor your father right especially in the context that the jewish culture uh views um accompanying of a person in its in his or her last journey as a very honorable thing so how could he the messiah of israel can possibly call another jew to go against israel's god against the ten commandments so so actually the more honestly you can you look at at the problems in the bible the greater is the chance that you're going to be able to actually grasp its actually original meaning before it became true something else became traditional so what's what's what's the solution well the solution is actually quite simple and you can arrive to this by just visiting london of israel when you come to land of israel one of the places the places you have to go to is called israel museum there's lots and lots of archaeological finds that you will find that you will see there one of the areas you will discover uh it holds uh quite a great amount of something that's called ashwaris ashwari is a bone box how did it function well you see the jews of ancient times many of them not every not all of them but many of them used to bury people twice not once so when the first burial is the kind of burial that you're already familiar with think jesus think lazarus the body is covered in a white cloth put away in the cave covered locked or covered but the the point is it's put away somewhere far away into a cave and there it stays for a long period of time sometimes six months sometimes a year could be even more until uh specially trained with various jewish levitical practices about touching and not touching and burying the dead will actually handle the body after it's been disintegrated completely and only bones will remain then the bones are put into the bone boxes and then the bone box is actually pla uh re-buried okay so uh to it it's not to me it is not even possible to think that this is the first burial that jesus is talking about here this is not a first burial this is a second burial so in other words the man's father was dead already for a long time and he was just making an excuse why he should not go to with jesus and preach the kingdom of god and of course the reason there was an expiration date is because that was the year of jubilee jesus came to fulfill it that particular year couldn't be done a year later and so and so the man refused because he says well i i i have to wait until this is done and then jesus says well let the dead bury the dead now traditional christian interpretation without knowing this particular cultural ide reference point uh john took conclusion that the dead must be the physical people like you and i and the and the spiritual people are the ones that don't care about such physical things such as burial okay this this whole thing is a completely nonsensical right right if you take the bible for what it is it's nonsensical but this is what we arrive to but so my hypothesis is so who are the dead my hypothesis is basically because the conversation didn't take place in greek on the la in the judea greek in the language in which uh the gospels were penned down they took place either in hebrew or in aramaic the jewry is still out where the hebrew was conversational probably so but most likely there was a word like in today in modern hebrew there is a word for this called kavran kavran is a person who handles the burial in israel there is a hivrat kadisha special organization that actually is responsible for bearing dead people if but god forbid my father dies i cannot bury him somebody else has to take care of it so it's a very simple very simple thing now in the end the lesson is the same um don't make excuses follow the lord when he calls you right but but but the context all of the sudden finally exonerates our lord from from from really crazy uh uh the kind of accusations that our heart is making right oh if that's what we think jesus said yeah yeah and and what what's interesting about that is it's a relatively simple example of what we sometimes miss in the cultural gap but yet i will say that that most christians don't really stumble over that verse because i do believe that the holy spirit gives us the grace to sometimes cover our lack of understanding and go okay well i i get the the same point not to make excuses when we're called to do something and i'll go with that but man from somebody like me who i i thrive on information and understanding that really gives me comfort um right or wrong it just does to get the context of that story and go okay what i suspected was that jesus was not a complete jerk you know oh it's actually true in the context of the culture and when you explain the two burials it makes sense now i'm what are there because you know we see two resurrections we see spiritual resurrection we see physical resurrection is there any parallel to the two burials or am i jumping the head a little bit it could be that you jumping ahead but yeah so so you're pushing me to think uh i don't know i don't know i i'll just say listen there's so many things i don't know that the the the thing is that i am also with you on this journey of keep discovering all those things so i you know perhaps the next interview you invite me too okay what there is another story that if i can keep working with that sort of exonerating jesus from his crazy supposedly crazy sayings yeah there's another story um this time it's not about the sayings it's about his doing so lazarus a friend of a family is on his deathbed now what most people don't realize is that lazarus whose name means my god is my help is probably a diagonal type of monastic almost servant in the place called bethany now bethany in hebrew means house of the poor bait now the house of the poor is very interesting it matches the description of josephus flavius about the essene diagonal network throughout all of israel where they were taking care of the sick people very poor people travelers you name it and so there is a very very good chance that lazarus was a very very honorable um very well-known and honorable man in vicinity of jerusalem that's where bethany is it's today actually inside of jerusalem which is why the religious jewish leaders came for his funeral to mourn him and to comfort his family because this was a prominent jewish family and so he was dedicated to helping the poor now jesus he the family friend is uh carrying out miracle working and preaching ministry so what they do they can send a whatsapp message come and help they send a messenger right a real physical kind of messenger the messenger arrives to jesus and he says your friend lazarus is dead he's dying forgive me dying so jesus stays where he is for two more days and at this point when i tell the story i want to say let us open the hymnals to hymn number 222 what a friend we have in jesus name you know and of course i'm saying this is a as a joke but um so why why uh because you see friends don't behave like this so if you're my close family friend and if i have the miracle working powers and your sister tells me that i must come now and help you i will drop everything and will come and help you this is what friends do you don't need to be a good person you just need to be a friend to do that and that's it jesus says i'm gonna let him die he stays put for two more days imagine that now what is it and then he shows up to bethany now the key to all of this is ancient jewish culture ancient jewish tradition i don't even know if it's true or not but the tradition is true is is known that when a human being an israelite dies the nishaman the soul still hovers over the body of the deceased for the period of three days desperately seeking the to re-enter and then when after three days the the the the nishaman sees the face already disfigured and you could you could and understands the resurrection is no longer possible then then departs only then after the three days okay so then the key question we need to ask which day did jesus show up finally at betania at the house of the poor and the answer is the day number four so he waits out the three days he lets he he lets the three days elapse so that he can show up not during the day when when the period when resurrection is still possible but when the resurrection is no longer possible and so there what's the point the point is g resurrection is not something that jesus does resurrection is something that jesus is and this is the powerful truth about this story so those are the kinds of things that we're missing out look i haven't really told you anything all that spectacularly from the standpoint of like that it's very complex there's nothing complicated about this yeah right yeah it's just understanding right so if we just familiarize ourselves with this large but but doable learnable set of culture and context which is what we do with israel bible center we offer certificate in conte in jewish context and culture all the crash courses all the round table talks they all are filled literally filled with this kinds of insights israelbiblecenter.com that's my shameless plug that's okay i'm shamelessly showing your website as well so there it is israelbiblecenter.com i put it in the chat as well and you know i i grew up and we had all you know someone come into our church and we we did passover and we learned all these and i always thought it was kind of strange as a kid i just didn't get it completely didn't get it but something happened several years ago i i i'm my background ethnically is i'm an american obviously but it it's irish and i you know i watched lots of movies i've read books i've i've studied ireland you know and then a few few years ago i actually went and stayed in belfast with a former firefighter and he drove me around belfast and pointed out where things had happened and explained the whole uh the troubles they called them in ireland and it wasn't until i got into the culture with someone who knew the culture and and kind of saw and touched and i went okay for the first time i i feel like i kind of get it no not yeah doesn't make me an expert you know but i i started to understand things that for even just for you know from reading the books and watching the movies and and listening to to talks i didn't get until i really dove into it so i i get that with what you're saying about getting into the jewish culture for sake of context and that's really what i want to emphasize because there's a lot of other people with a lot of other reasons but when you guys give people context we start to go deeper into the layers of scripture and deeper into the understanding um absolutely by the way yeah go ahead by the way on the irish irish topic you know the the there is a great book out there how the irish save civilization western civilization right you know absolutely that's a great idea so and then also one of my favorite songs is pray for the city of belfast by michael cart so long so old also very old but if you haven't if you don't know the song you're gonna you're gonna appreciate it but this is a little bit right and you know if you don't understand the culture you don't understand the song yeah yeah exactly yeah so all right we've got a few more just a couple more minutes here um and i'm actually i forgot my jacket i've got we're doing broadcast shows down here in a minute it's great but yeah and and you do here is there any other thing because i know you've got a lot of uh good books out here and let me jump over here to the website because we've got the there's the israel bible center okay here's this is uh dr ellie's amazon page he's got these 40 days of the hebrew devotions and then a couple of new books one on the hebrew story of joseph the hebrew story of abraham and isaac but and i'm really interested in the jewish gospel of john which you wrote several years ago as well as the one in revelation i mean i could talk probably we could probably talk for a while if you're in the dallas fort worth area let me buy you some good tex-mex or some coffee but um because i'd love to have some longer conversations but invite me back again and we'll do it i okay and we'll we'll talk afterwards for a topic but um what can you give people um yes judy many of them can be read online and are you in jerusalem right now are you in israel right now dr ellie i am actually in the russian federation believe it or not right now really so you're talking with me from moscow oh you're in oh goodness yeah yeah yeah yeah okay oh wow i'm here right now but but i am in moscow at this moment well the connection is actually better than some people i've talked to here in the united states so very very cool there you go and i guess it's not too late okay so noon's a good time for you great good to know um so if you want i can highlight few books yeah i would i would that's what i was going to ask you to highlight a couple of these books because i want to give people some place to go sure uh look there's i think there is about 10 books there and uh the one the one that i think is my best work is the the jewish gospel of john it's one of the very very few um very few commentary-like books on the on the gospel of john what i can assure you is that it's nothing that you read before okay it's not uh uh it's not something that you've heard before um i propose a very very interesting theory about why the gospel of god of john is so pro-jewish where jesus is buried according to the customs of the jews and jesus is actually called the jew um and why does it seem to be very anti-jewish when the jews have called the children of the devil and there is all kinds of stuff so how can you possibly reconcile those things well i i do believe that i did and there's a lot of other scholars that said they they think this is really interesting what i said so so pick it up uh get it on amazon and see what you think now the one that's people been recently going crazy about in a good way that is called the 40 days of hebrew devotions so um this is where i get the highest marks people i just just read what people see what people said so the the 40 days of hebrew um let's see um any for anything from the series of the he our hebrew fathers uh the hebrew story of abraham hebrew story of jacob or hebrew story of joseph if you read that you will be blown away about the kinds of things and by the way all of this comes up in even deeper way at israel bible center what we do what i do in those books is i go under the text of the bible english bible translation and and and i show people the kind of nuance uh that exists there in the original hebrew incredible things incredible things something that makes all of this familiar stories just blow your mind can i ask you a quick question because uh i have a when you look at english translations um i i kind of have some issues with the king james version because i think it's fairly antiquated um do you have any particular english translation that you think is better that i think is better um look i tend to use uh nasb when i want to when i when i'm lazy to read something in greek or in hebrew or i make i would use an asb why because in asb generally speaking is is uh one of the most wooden translations so it sticks to the idea of translating word by word it doesn't always do that because it's crazy you cannot translate everything word by word imagine hot dog right translating a hot dog so uh english word right so however i i also want to i also want to say that you know uh uh even though king james bible just like any other bible has its own problems it really does it really does uh it is still one one probably the most beautiful bible translation out there um uh sometime look up a lecture by at oxford it's available like on itunes or on youtube i don't remember where but it's a lecture by some arc oxford archivist it's called it's called um the makings of the king james bible god said no it's called god's secretaries the makings of james bible it's going to be hilarious the guy's like a stand-up comic and he gives you so much history about this but the point is that no translation reflects perfectly yeah the message of the hebrew bible none and even if i translated it the great me okay it would still not do that yeah you know why because no matter when you go from one language to another you do lose something in translation question is only how much so this is why we need to honor bible translations we must use bible translations we must generally believe even bible translations however we must keep bible translators accountable by learning languages ourselves and going using interlinear bible and going and seeing how else could those things been translated if you have the time i can give you one example for this but tell me if not maybe yeah make i'm so i'm supposed to be in makeup here soon if you've got a short one yes absolutely because so here's one thing i got to ask you because i like the uh the what they call the parallel bibles where i've got four translations all on the same page and it's massive and i look like a complete nerd when i walk around with it but it allows me to read across and above all i think we have to rely on the holy spirit because i think the gaps in the culture and in our knowledge god can easily just solve but yet at the same time i like to dig into your example please look look no but i also want to comment about what which what you're carrying so i think that what you're doing is is is a step in the right direction it's a huge step it's not relying on one translation committee because it's really just committees making decisions of translators translations right so not relying on decisions of one translation committee godly people wonderful people but still people but comparing it with the decisions translation decisions of three at least three other uh trans so i think this is a great step forward it's not sufficient stuff because i i think you must go further i think you must go further you can knock out hebrew almost in a year if you get serious you know it's not that it's not that complicated but but and remember i was not born with hebrew right so i have the right so quick example um uh something from uh a letter to the romans now this is greek this is not hebrew but the same thing applies to greek it doesn't really matter which language of the bible um where it says that that the uh natural branches unbelieving natural branches in romans 11 will be cut off because of their unbelief you remember that it's a very famous romans 11 text of course the natural branches of the unbelieving jews right on the un natural unbelieving branch unbelievable jews and the unnatural branches are the new jesus followers of gentiles sure okay so fine great the only problem is um that that that's not what it's no i shouldn't say that's not what it says it uses the kind of word that could mean that but it could also mean that the branches are broken not broken off but broken and in many instances in other settings that same word can also be translated not as broken off not even less broken but as banned okay wow oh my gosh if if we realize what what this does you see how much wider we can begin to interpret the bible yeah okay now i'm not saying that broken would wouldn't you wouldn't you like options did the translators have when they made their decision and picked this one yeah yeah yeah and the ultimate goal correct me if i'm wrong but i think the ultimate goal for you because it is for me is not to confuse the issue or to cause doubt but to unpack layers and layers because scripture has such depth and such beauty sure sure you you you you see the beauty you see the power you see incredible actually you end up resolving most things that you're already confused about yeah you know yeah because we have enough things in the in the christian traditional understanding that's been pushed down on us and that are confusing if we get honest about those things we just don't ask those questions um and so but certainly not to confuse however you know what sometimes and perhaps there's some people listening to this and you're angry at me that i've said those things because you thought your bible was involved no it's not your bible that's infallible it's the word of god that is unfoldable and to the point to which the bible is translation is faithful to that original word it is infallible also so so um so if you angry about this it's okay i remember i got angry about this when i heard about this first time i was i thought that american christians are the liberals of the worst kind how possibly they can say that the most ancient original ones most ancient scriptures do not contain certain things in my russian speaking bible so i had to grow up yeah i had to grow up i had to mature and so should you yeah yeah yeah if someone who may be saying that sure yeah no no it's we're all on a journey i get that and i love how you said we're both we're both learning because we all are and that's great god knows that he's not yeah and i always rest on the assurance that if there's something in the bible that i don't understand it's because i don't understand it there's nothing wrong with god there's nothing really even wrong with yeah you know the funny thing sometimes [Music] and i'll give you one quick example god even places things there that could be confusing on purpose um remember the the blessing uh blessing between jacob and esau um who the the younger will serve the uh the elder will serve the younger remember that here's the here's the trick you look at the hebrew and you realize that what is supposedly what was supposed to be there a particular grammatical it's untranslatable but it it constructs a sentence a particular way so it's missing which means you can translate it both ways you can translate it as the elder will serve the younger and you can translate it as the younger will serve the elder which means what what i don't know what it means but but no i have a suspicion what it means you know uh i mean what what what the elder serving the younger we do know that's that's traditional uh covenant goes through jacob right but when you see um jacob sending reparations to his brother esau and i don't call it bribes the way it's normally their reparations their their their agreements to a sin that he personally has committed against his brother trying to defraud and d and dispossess him and succeeding in some way but so when he's giving back this this crazy amounts of uh sheep and and gold and he does this in such a way that there is one male and like four females it means that he's setting his brother up for exponential growth and so he he keeps he keeps doing that now i now i i got so excited i don't remember why i'm giving this this but anyway folks this is great there's just a lot of the more yeah there's so much all right so i'm gonna i'm gonna throw people to the website here israel bible center dot com check it out and dr elliott i gotta let you go but this is fascinating really i could talk for a while but i appreciate the opportunity and we'll uh hang on when i finish here uh because i have a question for you about a future program um and the rest of you guys out there watching you'll just you'll just have to come back and find out but uh definitely check out the books if you want to go deeper on any of these books i mean it's it's a fascinating fascinating study and and dr ellie's there to to help you with it so check out the website check out his books and come back we'll see you again thanks for uh the chat by the way good good good comments today so if you're not watching this live we always invite you to come back at noon follow subscribe uh hit like hit share it's all good and we'll see you again here next time on live today live oh [Music]

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Length: 39min 29sec (2369 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2021