August 13, 2025 • 69 mins
In this thought-provoking episode, Dr. Stephen Pidgeon—attorney, theologian, and editor of the Cepher Bible—joins us to unpack the complex history of how the Bible was edited, redacted, and shaped over centuries. We explore the political forces, religious councils, and cultural agendas that influenced what texts were included—and excluded—from the canon. Dr. Pidgeon dives deep into original languages, lost books, and the implications of translation decisions that continue to impact modern theology. Whether you’re a scholar, seeker, or skeptic, this conversation challenges conventional narratives and invites a deeper look at the sacred texts millions consider foundational.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:01):
Welcome to Ashley On, your one-stop podcast where
we talk about health andwellness, spirituality and all
things new.
Stick around as we delve deepinto innovations to support a
better world.
SPEAKER_02 (00:25):
Hello and welcome to the show.
Today's show is with Dr.
Steven Pidgeon.
Dr.
Pigeon is the founder andpresident of Suffer Publishing.
He's a political scientist,really an eclectic individual.
I think you're really going toenjoy this show.
He's a political scientist witha doctorate in philosophy.
He's an active attorney, bestknown for leading his creation
(00:47):
and publication of the IfSuffer, which is a comprehensive
restoration of sacred scripture.
It's in English.
Dr.
Pigeon is fluent in multiplelanguages, Greek, Hebrew,
Russian, French, Spanish,Italian.
He's an accomplished author ofover 30 books.
He's a musician with a degree inpiano performance, and he's a
(01:09):
teacher of Hebraic studiesthrough his Sefer Academy.
His work really focuses onexploring the Hebraic roots of
faith and providing in-depthscriptural insights, trying to
simplify scripture so that allof us can understand it better.
Fantastic interview.
Hope you enjoy the show.
Thank you.
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Welcome.
SPEAKER_04 (03:35):
Hey, it's great to be here, Ashley.
Thanks for asking me to be on.
I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02 (03:39):
Yeah, it's great.
Great to meet you.
I'm excited to talk to you todayand I'd like to...
just dive in in these in theseepisodes and so i'd love for uh
for us to start just introduceyourself to our audience if you
don't mind
SPEAKER_04 (03:50):
sure my name is stephen pigeon i'm the ceo
founder and president of sephirpublishing group and we have
been engaged in um we've beenengaged in the translation and
editing and the publication ofscripture since 2012.
And before that, we actuallyhad, we had a history in, you
(04:13):
know, leading up to it thatbegan actually around 2008 in
terms of developing thecomposite of the structure, if
you will, of what would becomethe Sefer.
And it initially began as just acouple of books.
Actually, we had originally,well, what happened actually is
that we had a Bible study andthe Bible study was very
(04:36):
interesting study.
And we got into a discussion onenight because there was a
publication that was beingprepared and they had gone
public with their announcementthat they were going to create a
politically neutral, politicallycorrect campaign.
text of the scripture that wasdesigned not to be offensive to
(05:00):
anyone and i got to think aboutthat and i thought how can you
do that and you know this is thescript it is what it is how do
you do that and anyway i becamevery offended and so i talked to
a friend of mine and over theyears before this for maybe 10
years before that i had beganassembling my own text if you
will because i was reading thebooks that were supposedly you
(05:24):
know verboten by the WestminsterConfession, namely the
Apocrypha.
And I had a book that was theOxford Complete Bible.
It turned out to be the BenjaminBlaney edition.
And I was reading these texts,and I thought, you know, these
are really quite incredible.
And particularly when I came onto what's called Second Esdras,
(05:46):
a very important text.
And I read that and I went, wow,this is really, you know, this
really outstanding.
And of course, then I discoveredthe Dead Sea Scrolls and the
Book of Jubilees and the Book ofEnoch and so forth.
And so all of these readingswere really very attractive to
me.
So I began to assemble them in agreen binder.
(06:08):
And as we started doing a Biblestudy, well, I was presenting
these materials to the Biblestudy and they were very
interested.
So we began to print a verylimited basis we're talking two
to maybe four at a time booksthat could be used by our bible
study and so it went through aseries of transactions where we
(06:29):
started out with three books,then it became two books, then
it became one book.
And it went from differentnames.
And finally, we came to a pointwhere we had published a book
called the Kodesh Seferim.
And it was really, we were usingreally, because we were doing
one-off publishings, these bookswere really not very well put
(06:50):
together, would be theunderstatement of the year.
They weren't sewn bindings.
They had really kind of thesecheap, high gloss covers, half
the time the cover would come inupside down.
And, you know, it was, and thebooks would fall apart after
about the fifth reading.
And they were costing us afortune.
But nonetheless, I mean, youknow, look, they were costing us
(07:13):
almost$44 a piece.
And then I would try torecapture what the expense of
getting it was.
So I'd ask$50 for the book sothat I could, you know, print
another one.
And so anyway, we got to theKodesh Sephirim, we printed 10
copies, and one of those copieswas mine.
And, you know, the book was justfalling apart.
(07:35):
I mean, you know, it hadthumbprints all over the face of
it, you know, and, you know, thecover was fading and the binding
was coming apart and, you know,all this stuff.
Anyway, I was teaching at achurch in Spokane.
And the sound man said, I wantthat book.
And I said, well, you can't haveit.
This is my book and it's thelast one I got.
So, you know, the answer is no.
Well, anyway, he talked me outof the book and he still has it,
(07:57):
by the way, he still has thatbook.
And so some friends and I, therewere four of us, four families.
We traveled to Jerusalem thatyear and we were there for the
Feast of Tabernacles.
And it was during that feastthat we decided, well, okay,
it's time that we're actuallygoing to have to do an official
printing of this book.
And we found a printer thatwould actually do a good job,
(08:20):
you know, using a sewn bindingand putting together a really
solid cover and, you know, massproducing the book responsibly.
You know, so we put our penniestogether and we came up with
enough money to do the firstprinting, which was 2,000 books.
And You know, and I said, well,look, Kodesh Seferim is a little
too much.
And it was way too much Hebrewon the cover of the book.
(08:42):
And, you know, it was like, hey,that is just too golden gilded,
yeah, over the top ornamented,you know.
And so I decided to just rip itback to just Sefer.
And, you know, Sefer, you know,it kind of means book.
I mean, you can, you know, ifyou're going to try to use a
flat-footed interpretation ofthe Hebrew, you could say that's
(09:04):
book.
It really means a numberedwriting, and in particular, a
numbered writing in a scroll.
I mean, that's really what itmeans.
Because you have to distinguishbetween the word Sefer and the
word Megillah, which is a roll.
You know, that's one handledroll.
But a Sefer is a scroll.
And so we elected to call thebook just Sefer.
(09:24):
and we had a problem using theidea of a bible because of the
pagan heritage of the city ofbiblos and uh and all that that
meant and there was a real therewas a real uh confrontation that
took place in the ancient worldbecause there was a set of books
called the bibliotheca that wasinitially called the bible and
(09:48):
it was a very expansive set andit supposedly contained all the
wisdom of the ancient world soyou're talking about you know
socrates plato aristotle uh youknow euripides uh thucydides you
know you know all thesepythagoras euclid all these guys
contained in this text in thishuge book and so when rome put
(10:09):
together its text it wanted toessentially occupy that space so
it became it became uh thecalled the Biblia or Bible,
replacing the Bibliotheca as allthe world's knowledge.
And our book was distinctlydifferent from anything that had
(10:30):
been labeled the Bible before,in that it had 87 books in it,
rather than the traditional 66,which has been limited by the
Westminster Confession, or the77 books that were found
traditionally in the averageBible That is to say the Roman
(10:50):
Bible would have 77 books.
The King James Bible had 77, theKing James Authorized Version,
and so forth.
All the initial Bibles, they allhad this Apocrypha section or
the Deuterocanonical section.
And we had additional books thanthat.
And since then, we have...
You know, and I mean, I'll justtell you straight out, Ashley,
(11:11):
we were, you know, we were kindof driving down the road blind,
you know, where are we going?
I don't know.
I mean, we were trying to createa text really for the Bible
study and we had our reasonsbehind it, but there were
decisions made that were madeearly on.
They were very importantdecisions, which had to do with
this politically neutralized, orif you will, neutered Bible that
(11:34):
was going to be produced.
And one of the decisions we madewas, okay, we're going to
transliterate all of the propernouns in the text.
We're not going to use thecommon English.
And this really happened becauseof our trips to Jerusalem.
And we were having conversationswith some rabbis.
(11:56):
And, well, they weren't rabbis.
I think they were just Hasidicrabbis.
guys and we'd be in line withthem we'd be talking to them
about the text and they startedreferring to these books like
you know Tehillim and Yekezkeland all this stuff what are you
talking about oh yeah this isyou know your book you call it
this and I thought hmm that'svery interesting so we went back
(12:17):
and we took a look and when wecame to understand that there
was this divide this huge divideand there was really no reason
for it that we decided totransliterate 3,100 names.
And so this was really thelion's share effort of what was
going to create the Sefer.
It was going to be a text withthese 87 books and all of the
(12:40):
names transliterated.
Now, there was otherdifficulties, too.
We found in the KJV, forinstance, you would see in the
Old Testament, you'd see theHoly Spirit.
In the New Testament, you'd seethe Holy Ghost.
In the Old Testament, you'd seeIsaiah, but in the New
Testament, you'd see Esaias.
In the Old Testament, you'd seeElijah, but in the New
(13:01):
Testament, you'd see Elias.
And at one point in the KingJames, they actually referred to
Elijah as Eli-Zeus.
And so we looked at that and wethought, no, this is not
correct.
These names should behomogenized if you're going to
talk about isaiah in the oldtestament well then you need to
(13:22):
talk about isaiah in the newtestament if you're going to you
know if you're going toreference elijah in the old
testament then it needs to beelijah in the new testament so
we came forward with all ofthese names with the idea that
these were foundational in thehebraic language and that these
would come forward into the newtestament to homogenize all of
(13:43):
these uh proper nouns Well, indoing this, we came, of course,
upon the larger issue.
And the larger issue was theYod-Heh-Vav-Heh.
And it was not only theYod-Heh-Vav-Heh, but also the
name of the Messiah.
So these were two, you know,issues that are just kind of
(14:04):
glaring in your face, right?
And when we got to it, westarted taking a look.
And you can't, you know, youcan't rely on Strong's
Concordance, particularly withthese names are concerned
because they don't make areasonable presentation.
It's a logically inconsistentpresentation in what they claim
(14:25):
in the Strong's Concordance.
And so we had to do additionalresearch on top of that.
Now, part of that research wastraveling into Israel to see
what the common usage was in theHebrew language.
And you can see evidence of thecommon usage really everywhere
when you're in Jerusalem.
It's very, very clear becausethe Israelis have transliterated
(14:50):
the names of these prophets andso forth, names that you find in
scripture on the names of theirstreets.
So for instance, when you come,they'll have every street sign
will have a name and it willhave it in Hebrew and in a
transliterated English and inHebrew.
Arabic.
Every street has got a littleplaque.
(15:13):
They have Jeremiah Street.
They have Ezekiel Street.
They have Isaiah Street.
But it's not Ezekiel, Jeremiah,or Isaiah.
It's Yishayahu, Yirmiyahu,Yekeskiel, Zakaryahu, Obedyahu.
And you can see it right there.
It's right there.
(15:34):
They're telling you, this is howwe transliterate this name, this
Hebrew name.
So this gave us a great deal ofconfirmation as to how you deal
with this Yod-Heh-Vav endingthat we find on 167 names.
So that became pretty clear asto how we were going to deal
(15:54):
with the Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh.
Now, there was a greatdiscrepancy that arose because,
of course, there were people inthe Messianic camp that wanted
to use the name Yehovah.
which is a Masoretic constructthat's given to us in Strong's.
And I looked at that and I said,it's just simply not warranted.
(16:16):
I mean, to give you an idea, thecurrent president of Israel or
the prime minister is BenjaminNetanyahu.
Now this name literally meansgift from Yah, right?
The gift of Yah.
Netanyahu.
But it's not Yeho, it's Yahu.
(16:37):
Yod-Heh-Vav.
And this was consistent with thename of the kingdom, Yehud.
And so it was became very,actually quite simple.
And it's really beenoverwhelming.
The tide of evidence thatsupports the Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh
being pronounced as E-Yah-Uah,that we had to go with a
transliteration.
(16:57):
And so the transliteration wewent with was to spell it
Y-A-H-U-A-H, which some peoplesay Yehua.
but it really is four vowels.
Now, Josephus, and really hereyou have the only ear witness to
the name being pronounced wasJosephus Flavius, Flavius
Josephus.
And he said at the time of thetemple, just before its
(17:20):
destruction, the priest used towear an ephod, and the ephod had
the Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh on it, whichthey pronounced as four vowels.
Now, You know, in studying theHebrew, they tell you, well,
there's no vowels in Hebrew.
Well, there are vowels that inpre-Masoretic understanding of
the Hebrew, there's vowels.
(17:42):
And those vowels are, four ofthem, or at least three of them,
are the yod, the he, and thevav.
So when we understood it wasfour vowels, it's very clear
because you can see it.
It's called the hirik yod, andit's called the shurik yod.
of vav and of course the patakha ha so it's e-a-u-a and we
(18:08):
spelled it y-a-h-u-a-h to giveit a pronunciation that was not
going to be deceptive becauseyou can imagine if we'd have put
e-a-u-a if we'd have put e-a-u-ayou might say oh or or who knows
how it would be pronounced.
So we wanted to give apronunciation guide that was
(18:30):
going to be as close as we couldget it.
Yeah, we could have put accentsin there to make it a little bit
more explicit, but we decided toleave those kind of markings out
of the text.
And so anyway, this was thewrestling match that was going
on.
And there was not only thatwrestling match, but there was
also a wrestling match in termsof including other books.
(18:53):
Now, just to give you an idea,and I'll try to be quick about
this, but what happened is youhad some text before that
existed, and we believe itexisted in the Hebrew language,
but we don't know for surebecause there's no original text
(19:14):
of anything, really.
And in fact, the only originaltext there is is really the book
of Yashar or Jasher.
The other texts were copied fromsomething so you start out with
the idea that there was thistext that was being used and the
jews in alexandria well actuallyit wasn't the jews it was the
(19:35):
leaders of the tribes ofyasharel who were living in
alexandria they decided totranslate whatever they had they
were going to translate it intogreek so they did and this would
become known as the septuagintAnd this, by the way, also
included many more books thanwhat you see in the Protestant
(19:58):
Bible.
It included all of theseapocryphal books.
And so this was translated intoGreek.
And then this was then takeninto the Seleucid Empire, which
was now the Levant.
And they were, the guys whocould read the Greek were
reading the Greek and thenspeaking it out in Aramaic.
And these guys were calledTargums.
(20:18):
And so they would teach thepeople in the Seleucid Empire
all of this text in the Aramaicand that eventually got written
down in about the first centuryBC.
It became written.
And in doing so, they had onethrough four Maccabees.
They had one, two, three Baruch.
They had first and secondEsdras.
They had all of these additionaltexts.
(20:40):
They did not have Enoch andJubilees, however.
Enoch and Jubilees were going tobe reserved for the Ethiopian
tradition.
And in Ethiopia and in theEritrean tradition, they would
keep Enoch and Jubilees.
Well, okay, so that could beconsidered marginal work until
you get to the Dead Sea Scrolls.
And suddenly in the Dead SeaScrolls, you have scribes now
(21:02):
taking the text that came fromGreek into Aramaic.
Now it's going to be recapturedinto Hebrew.
And these scrolls then are goingto include 10 copies of the Book
of Jubilees and a complete copyof Enoch in the Aramaic.
So when I saw that Enoch andJubilees had been captured in
(21:25):
the Dead Sea Scrolls, what didthe Pope know about the Dead Sea
Scrolls when they canonized thescripture?
They didn't know.
They didn't have it.
They didn't have access to it.
In fact, I'm not sure they evenhad access to the Ethiopian text
at that point.
So we came to conclude that Yes,Enoch and Jubilees were
considered part of the scriptureto be read at the time of the
(21:51):
Messiah.
And in fact, there's a directquote in the book of Jude,
there's a direct reference in 2Peter, and there's 56 references
in the New Testament that giveindication that Enoch is in
fact, was in fact a read text atthat time.
Now we know that Qumran, wherethey found the Dead Sea Scrolls,
(22:14):
was the situs of who they callYaakov Sadiq, or James the Just,
the brother of the Messiah,where he led a monastic order
there at Qumran.
Robert Eisenman thinks thatJames the Just may have been
responsible for a lot of thescrolls kept in those caves.
So this means that you can seethat this idea of Jubilees and
(22:38):
Enoch being part of the canon,if you will, the early canon,
gives substantial credence.
We have not only the Eritreantradition and the Ethiopian
tradition and the Assyriactradition, but we also have the
Qumran tradition supportingthese texts.
So we went ahead with apublication that included all of
(23:00):
those books.
And of course, Then there wasthe issue of the Book of Jasher.
And the Book of Jasher, we havea copy of the original Hebrew
text.
This is the pre-published Hebrewtext that's available on a
download on our website atsephra.net.
And this was going to bepublished in the 1400s in Italy.
(23:23):
And the publisher who publishedit in Italy treated it with
disdain.
I don't like this text and Idon't want it, blah, blah, blah.
But nonetheless, he publishedit.
And then it was translated inthe mid 1800s by a fellow in
Britain who could not get itpublished because somebody had
launched a fraudulent pseudoJasher two years before and had
(23:44):
captured the market and so onand so forth.
So he had to wait and he movedit into New York to print it.
And I think it was printed inthe 1880s in New York.
And we've since had the Englishtranslation, his English
translation of the text verifiedas being an accurate translation
of the Hebrew.
SPEAKER_03 (24:02):
And
SPEAKER_04 (24:04):
so the Book of Jasher now turns out to be, the
more we study it, the moresignificant it is.
It's a very, very importanttext.
And there's historical thingsthat are in the Book of Jasher
that are found nowhere else.
And it escaped what I call theMasoretic Massage.
(24:26):
So the Masoretes would addressthe Tanakh, if you will, the
Torah, the Nevi'im and theKetuvim, or the books of Moses,
the books of the prophets andthe writings.
And they altered virtually everyword in the text by applying
what's called Nikudot.
And these are the, Nikudot meanscookie crumbs.
(24:50):
And these are the little dashesand dots and stuff that you'd
find underneath the Hebrewletters to give it a
pronunciation guide.
Well, you might say, all right,well, thanks for the
pronunciation guide.
And I mean, it is helpful inpronouncing the words.
But, with a capital but, there'sopinion in that dotting, in that
(25:17):
pronunciation guide.
For instance, if you look at theword Adam, you know, Aleph,
Daleth, Mem.
Okay, well, that's one word,Adam.
But it's also Edom.
And it's also Adom.
So a dome is red.
Edom is a people group.
And Adam is man, the name of thefirst man and also mankind.
(25:38):
So when you see that, now yousee a Masoretic rabbi saying, I
think it's red.
I think it's Adam.
I think it's Edom.
Well, that's his editorialselection on that particular
word.
And you see quite often, notonly did they add vowel sounds
(26:01):
and preferences to the words,but they also added letters.
They added vowels, typically anO, but they also added U's, and
they also added consonants.
So you have what's called adoubling dot.
in the Nikudot that when it'sfound next to a Lamed or it's
(26:21):
found in a Mem or a Dalet orsomething like this, well, you
get two Ms, you get two Ls, youget two Ds.
And the idea of putting an O in,for instance, in the word
Elohim, there's no O there, theyadded that.
And when you see the wordAnokhi, which appears in Exodus
20, Anokhi Yahweh Eloheikim isthe passage, I am Yahweh, you're
(26:45):
Elohim.
They put the O there.
There's no O in the word anokia.
It's anki, which means I am.
So because you see this additionof O's and U's and double
letters, you get a massagedtext, a text that is the
preference and expresses theeditorial opinion.
(27:07):
of the Masorites.
So this makes for a difficultpresentation when you're
beginning to look at the text totry to find, okay, what do we
have for the reality here inthis text?
What's really being said here?
So anyway, but this is how itgot started.
SPEAKER_02 (27:26):
Wow.
That's very interesting.
So what was your inspirationto...
to go down this rabbit hole, soto speak.
I mean, obviously you were doingthe Bible study, but to go that
far with it, what was behindthat in your personal life?
SPEAKER_04 (27:45):
Yeah, Ashley, I mean, that's a great question.
And thank you for asking it.
Well, I can tell you, I'll just,I'll share this with you.
And this is what happened.
Okay.
So, you know, I had kind of a, Ihad a very long walk into my
faith journey.
because I don't know, I wouldn'tcall myself a person of faith as
(28:06):
a child.
I think I kind of believed alittle bit, but I grew up in
Alaska in a very, in a verycrude and rude and rough
environment.
And I was living in Alaskaduring the Alaska pipeline.
It was essentially pure chaos,pure anarchy run by the mafia.
And, you know, the, you know, Imean, it was not uncommon to
have people shot in parking lotsright in front of you and
(28:27):
there'd be no rest, no nothing.
People would disappear.
We had no names, mass murderseverywhere.
I mean, it was, you know, it wasdrugs, prostitution and mafia
killing and all this.
It was the biggest anarchy youcould possibly imagine.
This was, was the condition ofAnchorage in the 70s.
How I survived it, I did it byhanging out in the piano
practice room.
That's how I survived it.
(28:48):
I'd practice eight hours a dayso I wouldn't be seen in public
anywhere.
But at any rate, my faithjourney, I was at war.
Well, here's what happened.
Being a former rock and roller,used to travel, used to tour as
a rock and roll musician with mysister.
And there came a day, one daywhen my sister came home and she
was She had been jamming withthis band on Saturday night and
(29:11):
the keyboard player said, hey,why don't you jam with me
tomorrow?
And she said, well, where areyou jamming tomorrow?
He says, well, I'm going to beplaying to this gospel church,
you know, at 9 a.m.
Come in and play.
So she it was a black gospelchurch.
So she went to this black gospelchurch.
And the next thing you know, youknow, she has a salvation
moment, you know.
So she comes home and she's justflying high.
(29:33):
This was my sister who was, youknow, Janis Joplin, you know,
reincarnated, you know, I mean,we were on the road, you know,
she'd finished Southern Comfortbefore noon.
You know what I'm talking
SPEAKER_02 (29:43):
about?
Yeah.
SPEAKER_04 (29:44):
And so, and here she is converted.
I'm like, wow, this isincredible.
You know, so I was very excitedwith her and she was just in
joy.
You know, I was very excitedabout this and following her and
watching her.
Well, you know, three weekslater, she was killed in a
head-on collision.
And for me, that was my 18thfuneral.
(30:05):
I was 21 years old.
That was my 18th funeral that Ihad gone to as a young man.
And it was really kind of the,it was the, it was the straw
that broke the camel's back.
Okay.
because that funeral really, Iwent into a PTSD.
I didn't know I had PTSD, but Idid.
I had this continual expectationthat the adrenaline was going to
(30:30):
flow with the news of somebodyclose to me had died.
And I would just experience thatover and over again.
And so anyway, I just, you know,I kind of looked at Jan and I
went, I don't want any part ofthis.
You know, if I confess a faith,I'll be dead in three weeks.
I'm not going there.
You know, so I've had thisargument.
It was like, you know, you wantto have an argument between you
(30:51):
and Satan.
You guys duke it out.
Leave me out of the mix.
I'm not going to be a part ofthis.
I don't want any part of it.
And so I was like that for many,many years.
And, you know, it was really thePTSD was beginning to really
overwhelm me.
You know, and finally I was likein a condition of a, and you
know, and I didn't, I was in acondition of a nervous
breakdown, really.
And finally I cried out andguess what?
(31:12):
In 15 minutes, there wassomebody at the door with the
Bible.
Of course, it was the JehovahWitnesses and it was the Jehovah
Witness Bible, which had itsproblems, you know, it had its
problems.
But anyway, but I had never, I'dnever owned a Bible.
I'd never read a Bible.
I'd never seen a Bible, butokay, great.
You know, I'll take this Bible.
And this began my faith journey.
Well, I could acknowledge thefather, but I could not
(31:34):
acknowledge the son.
It would be a 12 year journeybefore I would finally
acknowledge the son.
And when I acknowledged his son,so both my wife and I, we came
to faith at the same time, whichwas really fantastic that she
has been alongside me on thisjourney, which she has been.
And so anyway, we both came tofaith at the same time.
(31:55):
And so we're like, well, wedidn't know anything, you know,
as in, I mean, I had noexperience at all, you know,
growing up in Alaska as a rockand roll.
I mean, what experience did Iknow, you know?
So we kind of went into thischurch and we went into that
church and we went here and wewent there and, you know, we had
some real, you know, it was realeye-opener because, man, some of
(32:16):
the stuff happening in thechurches was like, really?
You know, like when the pastorran off with somebody else's
wife, you know, this kind ofthing.
And so, you know, anyway, in2001, we joined a different
church and part of thischurch's, well, game plan, if
you will, was to do missionwork.
(32:37):
And so one day, you know,they're telling me, you know,
you need to go out and find outwhat mission you're going to be
on.
And I'm like, mission work.
What are you talking about?
You know?
So anyway, I went out, I wentout there and there was a guy
and he had a sign up that said,what part of go don't you
understand?
And I started laughing.
I think that's pretty good.
And he says, yeah, you're comingwith me.
I said, well, where are wegoing?
(32:58):
He said, we're going to Russia.
I thought Russia.
Okay.
I grew up in Alaska with manyRussians.
My piano teacher was a Russian.
You know, okay, all right, we'regoing to Russia.
All right, okay.
So the next thing you know, Ifind myself at Sheremetyevo
Airport in Moscow, lookingaround and going, all right, all
right, what am I doing here?
(33:19):
Of course, you know, I was amilitant anti-communist, right?
Okay, do you guys realize you'velet this militant anti-communist
into your country here?
You know, but anyway, we wentdown to the city Kursk.
This is a lot where the battleis going on, had been going on
here this year.
We went down to Kursk, and atKursk, well, I was baptized in
(33:40):
the Ruach HaKodesh.
And this was without hands,without somebody laying hands on
me or breathing on me or doinganything else.
But I had this baptism, youknow, what people call baptism
in the Holy Spirit.
I had this baptism.
First, I got soaked in the rain,and then I had this baptism in
the Holy Spirit.
Well...
I mean, I was just, you know,flying high.
(34:02):
It was just like unbelievable.
I couldn't believe what wasgoing on.
I couldn't believe the joy I washaving.
And I couldn't believe what washigh.
It was like, okay, I got to goback to Russia.
Why did I want to go back toRussia?
Well, that's where the HolySpirit is.
Well, no, I mean, the HolySpirit's everywhere.
But in this particular case, youcould feel, you could feel the
Ruach like a low cloud coverover Russia.
(34:24):
It's like, I'm going to dosomething here.
I'm going to, I'm doingsomething here.
And you know, when we were inKursk, we stayed at a hotel that
was right next to a graveyardfrom the Kursk battle of 1944,
when the Germans lost 800,000men and the Russians lost 1.5
million men in that battle, thattank, the biggest tank battle of
(34:46):
World War II.
And it was dispositive.
From that battle, the Russianswould march against the Germans
all the way to Berlin.
But I mean, we're staying rightnext to them.
The first night I went to bed,like i kind of closed my eyes
and like whoa there's thousandsof souls walking around on the
turf outside of this hotel thisis weird i had no idea the
(35:08):
graveyard was right there righthouse in a little bit thousands
of souls i could see him youknow so i went back and and the
second trip i went i wanted topreach in russian and my friend
yuri mikhailovich he was thepastor there He would let me
preach in the Bible study, youknow.
So I began to preach on apassage out of John in the
(35:30):
Russian.
For this reason I was born, forthis reason I came to the earth,
to testify to the truth.
Those who are of the truth hearmy voice.
So this was the passage I wasbeginning to preach on in
(35:52):
Russia.
And as I began to preach on thispassage, Yuri looks at me, he
says, you know, Stephen, hesays, you speak Russian like a
Georgian.
You should go to Georgia.
I'm like, Georgia?
I don't know Georgia from Adam.
I don't have any ties toGeorgia.
Why would I go to Georgia?
Oh, you should go to Georgia.
Well, turns out I did go toGeorgia.
So I ended up as a missionary inGeorgia and I made four trips
(36:13):
into Georgia and I traveledthroughout the whole country.
And I was there in Belize and inBatumi and in Gori and in
Kutaisi and in Tiskin Valley andthroughout the whole country and
made many good friends.
And we came alongside ofdesperately impoverished
country, but a country that wasreally quite full of beauty and
(36:34):
wonderful things, wonderfulpeople.
And anyway, so this mission workreally kind of changed me.
And I came back, when I cameback to the States, I wanted to
teach on the truth.
And so I began teaching a thingcalled the truth project.
And the truth project was allabout the truth.
What's the truth of scriptureand so on and so forth.
(36:55):
Well, it didn't take long.
I was teaching this truthproject and I had people come to
me and say, well, we want to bein your Bible study.
And I told them, I said, well,if you're going to be in my
Bible study, we're not going todo a new age pop Bible study
where you have one verse ofscripture.
And then somebody sells you anexercise program or a diet
program or economics managementprogram.
If we're going to do a Biblestudy, then we're going to study
(37:16):
the text.
SPEAKER_02 (37:17):
The truth.
SPEAKER_04 (37:18):
Yeah, we're going to study the truth.
We're going to look at it.
We're going to look deeply atit.
Well, I'm telling you, that wasthe most exciting Bible study
you could possibly imagine.
As one friend of mine said, allof a sudden we were reading the
pages of the Bible where thegold stuff was still stuck
together, you know, and it waslike it, the, the experience was
(37:41):
really quite overwhelmingbecause you go from being in a
Christian church where you'regetting a spoonful of pablum
once a week.
Okay.
Here's the, you know, here's thewidow's might, here's the good
Samaritan, you know, here's theteaching of Paul, you know, and
you get this little spoonful ofpablum and that's it.
And it's like, okay, well, youknow, what about the beef,
(38:05):
right?
Where's the beef?
Well, when we got into this,this robust Bible study, man, it
was a steak dinner, you know?
And so we get over there at sixo'clock on Thursday and we'd be
there until midnight or oneo'clock, you know, and people be
bouncing off the ceiling withexcitement with what we were
discovering.
It was just incredible.
And so as all of that began tounfold, I began to see the, um,
(38:28):
kind of the whole context of thething.
And so as we began to see that,we realized, look, if, you know,
and then this book comes out andsays, we're going to neutralize
the Bible.
I was just outraged.
I was like, no, you, no, no.
So I looked at Brad, I said,Brad, we need to do our own
Bible.
He says, what are you talkingabout?
(38:49):
I said, let's do our own textand let's make it twice as
difficult instead of making itneutral and friendly and all
this, let's make it justhostile.
impossible to read, verydifficult, as intellectual
astute as we can possibly makeit.
He said, okay, let's do it.
So this is what we did,
SPEAKER_02 (39:08):
right?
So here you are.
SPEAKER_04 (39:09):
Yeah.
And so gradually, you know, sowe've tried to, you know, and
I've tried to make it, you know,initially when people were
reading, it was like, huh?
Who is Yakiskiyahu?
How do you expect me to knowthat?
And, you know, and Yekezkel,and, you know, what are these
names?
So, of course, we had to quicklyassemble a lexicon so people
(39:30):
could figure out what it is thatwe did, you know, with the
transliteration of the names.
And then I tried to make it,then as time goes on, I've tried
to make the text more and morereadable while keeping its
intellectual content.
And of course, what we found is,as time went on, that we found
(39:53):
there were many, many thingsthat, you know, for a lot of the
people who are not familiar withscripture that have not read a
lot of it, the KJV was builtupon a number of ideas.
And there were 15 premises thatKing James sat down and said,
you have to follow these.
(40:13):
And they were reiterated in theWestminster Confession.
One was to keep the EnglishBible in vulgar language.
That's the language that's usedin both the King James
Instruction and in theWestminster Confession to use
vulgar terms.
Now, one of those vulgar termshad to do with church versus
congregation.
(40:33):
In fact, King James was quitespecific.
You retain the word church andyou do not use the word
congregation.
The reason being is becausecongregation meant we the
people.
church meant me the king i tellyou what the religion is but
congregation means we the peoplenow the puritans that were that
(40:56):
are called the puritans thatcame to massachusetts plymouth
rock there they didn't callthemselves puritans they called
themselves congregationalistsand it had to do with that word
the congregation and so weweren't particular about
congregation congregation calledthat assembly ecclesia kehila
whatever you want to call it Weeventually came with called out
(41:21):
assembly rather than thecongregation.
But either way, it was not theKirke based on the Greek goddess
Circe Kirke, but rathercongregation.
Well, this was one of many ofthe changes that were made.
And when we went to war withthese premises of the King James
(41:41):
Version, ideas that you weregoing to use vulgar language?
No, because there is no James inthe text.
You know, his name was James,not James.
And there is no James.
But, you know, I want my name inthere.
It's my Bible.
So put me in there.
The guy whose name was Jacob inEnglish would have been Yaakov
in the Hebrew.
I want my name to be there.
So let's call the book James.
(42:01):
Well, yeah.
And, you know, and you get otherthings like this.
Well, some of the issues andthis was what really, really
became a big deal.
was the use of the word God forElohim and the use of the word
Lord for the Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh.
And there was reasons why thiswas done.
(42:22):
And the reasons why wereprimarily to always keep this
ambiguity going.
When you prayed to the Lord,were you praying to the Creator?
Or were you praying to the King?
Or were you praying to the Earl?
Or were you praying to theBaron?
were you praying to yourlandlord or someone else in the
(42:43):
house of lords and of course thethe text this idea of the pope
and what would eventually becomehenry viii the pope said look i
am vicarious filio de i am inplace of god on earth so when
you pray to the our fatheryou're praying to me that's why
i'm called papa the pope becauseyou're praying to me you see and
(43:07):
so these prayers The languagewas cut in such a way that there
was always this ambiguity.
Were you praying to the Creator?
Were you praying to the King?
Were you praying to the Father?
Or were you praying to the Pope?
And the scriptural text itselfis very, very clear about who
the Father is.
(43:28):
It's found in 1 Chronicles 29,beginning at verse 10, when
David gives the Our Fatherprayer.
So when the Messiah says, look,Pray like this.
When you pray, don't be one ofthese hypocrites who recites
prayers from memory, you know,in the public square, wearing
your phylacteries down to yourankles and, you know, strutting
(43:50):
around like you're the rabbiwhile you're praying this, you
know, incantation of repetitiveprayer.
Don't do that.
Instead, pray like this.
Well, then the New Testamentrecords it as beginning our
father.
But when you go and you see fromwhere this prayer came
initially, it came from David'sprayer, which he begins in the
(44:11):
Hebrew.
Baruch atah, Yahweh, Elohai,Yasharel, avinu ma'olam
v'adolam.
Blessed are you, Yahweh, theElohai of Yasharel, our father
forever and ever.
Then he gets into
UNKNOWN (00:00):
.
SPEAKER_04 (44:28):
To you is the kingdom and the power and the
glory and the majesty and thevictory.
It's all in that prayer.
But it was redacted by Eusebiusin order to create the
ambiguity.
(44:50):
Are you talking to the creatoror are you talking to the Pope?
Who are you petitioning for yourprayer?
And so we saw this prettyclearly.
And in, in, so in making themove, we had to ask ourselves
the question in all ofscripture.
And, you know, I was, I wastalking with my wife about this
this morning, you know, theWestminster confession, the
(45:13):
constructs of King James havepermeated Western society for
400 years.
Thou shalt not touch the ideasthat we have put in stone.
that this shall be in the vulgartext, that it shall only contain
66 books, that these are, youknow, that the other stuff is
only historical, all of thesethings.
(45:33):
Thou shalt not touch.
Well, you know, look, I'm not asubject to the crown, nor have I
ever been a subject to thecrown.
I'm not beholding to the EnglishParliament or to the Westminster
Confession.
And I don't see, you know, ifI'm going to look to authority,
I'm going to look to scripturalauthority rather not to the
authority of somebody inparliament.
(45:55):
Sure.
Okay.
So when we began to look atthat, there's the question of
the ineffable name doctrine.
And the ineffable name doctrinewas created by the Jews when
they founded Judaism.
Now, a lot of people thinkJudaism went back to King David.
It did not.
Judaism was founded and createdby the Maccabees in the first
(46:18):
century B.C., And again, this isbecause they heard the Greek,
told them in Aramaic, and theybegan to write it down.
And when they write it down,when they wrote it down, they
created this religion calledJudaism with two camps, the
Sadducees, or the Sadduceen, andthe Pharisees, or the Perishtim.
(46:39):
These two camps were going tocreate this religion of Judaism.
Well, if you read in Jeremiah44, it says that Yah has taken
his name out of the mouth of theYahudim who are still in Egypt.
He's taken his name out of theirmouth.
So they couldn't say the name.
And so they began to say, well,nobody can say the name.
(47:02):
It's too sacred to be said.
Well, who said that?
Who said it's too sacred?
Well, Rabbi Akiva.
Rabbi Akiva, who was anAmalekite convert to Judaism,
said, you have to put a fencearound the name.
You can't say the name.
All right.
Well, what does the text say?
Well, Moses says, I will publishthe name of Yahweh.
(47:22):
David says in Psalm 22, verse22, I have declared your name
unto the assembly.
And the most importantdecision-making of all would be
the Messiah in his great prayerof John chapter 17, which is the
most beautiful prayer I think inall of scripture.
And here's the Messiah prayingin John 17.
And he says at the very end ofhis prayer, just before he's
(47:44):
going to be arrested, beaten,and then crucified, he says, I
have declared your name untothem and will declare it, that
the love of you that is in memight be in them and I in them.
So here we have Moses, we haveDavid, we have the Messiah all
saying, I declare your name andwill declare it.
We have Joel telling you declarethe name, call upon the name,
(48:07):
call yourself by the name, swearby the name, publish the name,
make mention of the name.
It goes on and on and on and onin hundreds of places throughout
the text.
So who am I gonna believe, RabbiAkiva?
Or am I going to believeMoshiach?
SPEAKER_01 (48:20):
Sure.
SPEAKER_04 (48:22):
So we said, well, we're going with that.
And so we're going with that andwe're going to publish the name
as we find it.
And so we've had to weather, asyou might imagine, Ashley, we've
had to weather firestorms likeyou would not believe.
SPEAKER_02 (48:36):
Oh, I'm sure.
I want to get to that too.
But before we go there, on thispath, what's the biggest
discovery If you could sharesomething with our audience,
like the biggest discoverythrough this process that you
think everybody should know thatthey most likely don't, whether
it be through the translationsor transliterations that you've
(48:59):
done or the non-canonical booksthat you've included, what would
be the biggest, if you have toshare just one learning that
would be transformative to theaudience?
SPEAKER_04 (49:13):
What's the coolest thing?
SPEAKER_02 (49:15):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_04 (49:15):
yeah yeah i'll tell
SPEAKER_02 (49:17):
you exactly what's the coolest thing
SPEAKER_04 (49:18):
i'll tell you what i think is the coolest thing i
think it's just absolutelyfantastic quite frankly i mean
i'm getting excited justthinking about telling you this
this one okay so you know whenyou when you start to read the
bible you know when you're achristian and somebody says well
let's read the bible so as achristian you say okay well i'll
start in the new testament andi'll begin in matthew And so you
(49:40):
open up Matthew and it goes, andAbraham begat Yitzhak and
Yitzhak begat Yaakov and Yaakovbegat Judah and Judah begat
Perez.
And you're like, how am I goingto get through this book?
I'm falling asleep and I'm onlyin chapter one.
(50:00):
And so chapter one is like soextremely exciting when you know
what to look for.
Okay.
So here, You have chapter onesaying right in the very first
verse, it says that the Messiahis the son of David.
Okay, can that claim besubstantiated in the typical
(50:20):
English Bible?
And the answer is no, it can't.
And the reason being, if youlook at Matthew one, you'll see
that there are a number of womenmentioned, and I love the women
that are in that roster, right?
You have Rahab the prostitute,you have Tamar, the
daughter-in-law who seduced herfather-in-law.
You have Bathsheba who seducedDavid, right?
(50:41):
These are the women that, andyou have Ruth.
These are the four women thatare laid out in that litany and
the Moabite, right?
And so when you look at thosewomen, those women are not
counted.
So it tells you at the end ofthis says, okay, look, there's
42 generations total fromAbraham to the Messiah, 14 from
Abraham to David, 14 from Davidto the taking away to Babylon in
(51:03):
Yekunyahu, and then 14 to theMessiah.
Okay, that sounds pretty good.
There's 42, 14, 14, and 14.
But you don't count Bathsheba.
You don't count Tamar.
You don't count Ruth.
You don't count Rahab.
So you don't count Mary eitherbecause she's an empty DNA.
She's not Y-DNA.
She's not patrilineal.
So when you do the count, guesswhat you get?
14, 14, and 13.
(51:26):
What?
And it's talking about Joseph,the husband of Mary.
Well, then you flip over to Lukechapter 3, and here's Joseph,
the supposed father of Mashiach.
What?
Isn't that the same guy?
The supposed father is also thehusband, right?
How come they have twocompletely different
genealogies?
Who's lying here?
Matthew or Luke?
(51:47):
Well, that's because they gotone word wrong.
Because Joseph was also the nameof the father of Miriam.
Now, when you understand thatJoseph was the name of the
father, which Joseph?
Well, there's a guide that whenyou read it, and remember that
in Hebrew, In the biblicalHebrew, there's no of, just like
(52:08):
there is no is.
There's no word is and there'sno word of.
So they're inferred, if youwill.
They don't have to be in italicswhen you use of or is.
However, you see this guy talkedabout all the time, Joseph of
Arimathea.
And people are going, well,let's see, where's Arimathea?
Where would that land be?
Is it Ramallah?
Is it Aram?
(52:30):
What is this Arimathea?
Well, it's not a place.
There is no up.
It's Joseph Arama Thea.
And Arama Thea means first inthe divine line of kings.
So when you're reading Matthew1, you know, you have this
litany that goes from, you know,Abraham to David.
(52:51):
David becomes the king.
Then you have 14 kings in a row,David, Solomon, Rehoboam, et
cetera, until you get to thelast king, Yeconyahu.
Then every king after that iswhat they call an exilarch king.
from Shealtiel to Zerubbabel,all the way to Joseph, the
father of Miriam, exilarch king,directly in the line of David.
(53:14):
Miriam was his daughter.
And of course, if you believethe divine conception, then
there is no Y DNA, but the DNAin Miriam, who is of the line of
David, connects the Messiahdirectly to David.
Then he becomes the Ben David.
But only with that correction.
So that correction is extremelyimportant.
(53:36):
But to understand who Aramathaeais now is going to change the
entire understanding of thebirth of the faith in the New
Testament.
Because Aramathaea was one ofthe richest men in the world at
the time.
He controlled 70 ships.
He was responsible for all theshipping of tin and copper from
(53:58):
the British Isles into theMiddle East.
He was the one bringing it.
He was a member of the RomanSenate.
He was known as Nobilius deCuriae in the Roman Senate.
There's a huge Roman recordabout him.
He was also a member of theSanhedrin in the Holy Land.
But this is why, like when youlook at the death of Mashiach,
right?
(54:18):
He dies on the cross.
Joseph of Arimathea is the onethat goes to Pilate.
Now, think about this.
If somebody dies in your townand you're the rich guy, can you
go in and say this?
I'm the rich guy.
I want the body of the guy thatyou just crucified or that you
just executed.
No, who are you to take thebody?
Well, he had to be someone.
He had to be the patriarch ofthe family.
(54:40):
That's who he was.
He was the grandfather.
I'm here to get my grandson.
Now, there's been some rabbiswho say, oh, he was an uncle.
No, he was not the uncle.
He was the grandfather.
And so he is the one that cameto get the body, and he got the
body down before the Sabbathbegan in order to put him into
the tomb.
Well, the Ramathea is going tobe beaten by the Sanhedrin five
(55:02):
times once a year for the nextfive years because he was
proclaiming the name.
And so in the year 36 AD, heleaves and he leaves with his
daughter Miriam and he leaveswith 11 other disciples and they
come to Britain and theyestablish the faith in Britain.
They're in Cornwall and inWales.
(55:23):
And this begins the faith inBritain that is going to grow
for hundreds of years beforeConstantine is going to create
Catholicism.
And the path that was pushed outby Arimathea in Britain is the
ancient true path of the faith.
SPEAKER_02 (55:40):
Wow.
That's awesome.
I know why you say it's thecoolest part then.
Just exciting.
Amazing.
You know, we just have a fewminutes left.
I would love for you to have achance to address the critics.
I mean, I'm sure, you know, youalluded to it earlier.
(56:02):
I'm sure you've just beenhammered over this.
You know, I can only imagine,but what would you say to the
critics?
I mean, it sounds like youstarted this from a very genuine
place, you know, the path fortruth.
You know, I love the story.
What would you say to thecritics?
SPEAKER_04 (56:19):
Well, I would say, I mean, you know, first of all, We
try, you know, sometimes it'shard to accept criticism, you
know, because anytime evenconstructive criticism can be
hurtful.
You know, well, okay, yeah, I'mugly, right?
I'll try to do something.
I'll get a haircut.
Okay.
But, you know, we've had a lotof criticism come in about the
text.
And when we get criticism aboutthe text, I look and I go back
(56:43):
and I research it and researchit and research it and research
it and try to make sure that thetext is accurate, as accurate as
we can make it.
But some of the, some of thecriticism was just like, okay,
we're going to destroy you inthe public square.
We're going to completelydestroy you.
We're just going to smash youinto pulp.
We're going to, we're going tountil everybody hates your guts.
Now that kind of criticism wasvery difficult to take it.
(57:07):
I wanted to quit for a longtime.
There was about a year period.
I was going to quit.
I was just, that said, you know,I can do other things.
I don't have to do this.
I can go do other things.
I don't need to do this.
And, um, But there were peoplewho came alongside me and said,
no, you're not going to do that.
You're going to get back on thehorse and you're going to ride.
And it took me about six monthsto get to where I could do that.
(57:28):
And since then, there have beenother people.
There was a fellow that I thinkwas being paid to take apart the
Sefer cult, right?
He was putting out the feelerout there.
How many people, tell us whatit's like to come out of the
Sefer cult.
you know, well, it didn't flyvery well because we're not in a
cult.
(57:49):
And, you know, this is not aboutme at all.
This is about the text.
And, you know, when we talkabout the text, those who have
criticized us, I want to thankthose who have criticized us,
really.
Most of the critics have beenquite helpful.
Even the ones that wanted todestroy us, they nonetheless
have been helpful because wehave cleaned up our position.
You know, you come in, youthink, oh yeah, we got it all
(58:11):
together.
You don't, you know, you haveslop, right?
You think you're going to go outand race your car and you don't
realize that you forgot totighten this particular belt or
you forgot to do this or yourmuffler isn't on correct.
You find out when you startdriving at 110 miles an hour,
what you did wrong, right?
Well, and so we found that wehad peripheral stuff that was
sloppy, that should not havebeen a part of our ministry.
(58:32):
And so we kind of cut that stuffout and we, you know, pursued,
Ever so gradually, most of thecorrections, of course, are
in-house.
But we've had other people whohave said, I've discovered this,
I've discovered that, I'vediscovered this.
And we take a look and we go,yeah, those discoveries are
important.
Let's incorporate them into thetext.
And so to my critics, I want tosay thanks.
(58:53):
It's been hard.
It's been hard for me personallyto deal with some of the
criticism.
But nonetheless, it has createda weathered product.
You know, the sword was plungedinto the cold water and
survived.
And so now we have the swordthat is the word in a scripture
that is now, and Ashley, I'lltell you, I'll just share this
(59:14):
with you.
It's being broadly accepted now.
When we went into Italy topresent some of the ideas in the
Sefer, we were in Italy and Iwas expecting to be, you know, I
didn't know how I was going tobe received there.
We were talking to pastors inMilano, we were talking to
pastors up in Lugano and pastorsin Sicily, you know.
(59:35):
and very warmly received.
Particularly when I asked themthe question, you know,
UNKNOWN (00:00):
,
SPEAKER_04 (59:42):
what is the name of the Lord?
What is the name of the Father?
They wanted to know.
And for a lot of the Christianchurches now, we're seeing a
huge crisis of faith in theChristian church.
And I think that crisis is goingto get even higher because the
United States is about tosacrifice Israel on the altar of
(01:00:04):
global hegemony.
That's about to happen.
It almost happened here lastmonth, and it's about to happen
again.
And when Israel is sacrificedfor American hegemony, a lot of
the Christian churches are goingto go, wait a minute, weren't we
told this?
Weren't we told that?
Weren't we told the other thing?
And the answer is that you needto go back and look carefully at
(01:00:28):
the text.
And the beauty of the Sefer isthat as challenging as it is,
And this is something that Ilearned about raising children.
You know, Dostoevsky once saidthis.
When you talk to a child, don'ttalk baby talk to a child.
Talk intelligent speak to thechild.
Speak at a full adult level andmake the child come up to
understand what you're talkingabout.
Don't baby talk them, right?
SPEAKER_02 (01:00:50):
Totally agree, yeah.
SPEAKER_04 (01:00:51):
And it's the same thing with the text.
The text is difficult to read.
And, you know, you're like, Idon't know that name.
I don't, why is this name here?
I don't understand this.
But when you start plowingthrough it, what we have found
is people who could not read aBible because of its, you know,
look, when you think about theaverage Bible, you know, you,
you know, you open it up, you'vegot block text, right?
(01:01:13):
And first of all, all-cap textis not English language.
That's symbologized Latin.
It's incorrect.
It's grammatically incorrect.
You've got these block texts.
You have everything in justifiedcolumns.
Some Bibles are four-point font.
They've got five columns on onepage.
You've got a four-point font.
And it's impossible to read.
And yet somebody is saying, haveyou read your Bible yet?
I don't know.
(01:01:33):
I can't read that.
It's the most hostileenvironment you could imagine
for the eyes to see.
right
SPEAKER_03 (01:01:41):
yeah it
SPEAKER_04 (01:01:42):
is i took a look at that and i went okay look you
know look no no block text noall caps all caps you know we
used to have that we used tohave the the first number of the
chapter a three space bold andthen we'd have the first word in
bold all caps therefore you knowso you're reading along you know
and yeah and then they went tojerusalem chapter three
(01:02:05):
therefore The Messiah then wasbaptized.
Why did we have this screamingat you?
Why was this so important?
Why did this have to be liftedup into this higher?
Nonsense.
That's just nonsense.
How about something polite andkind and smooth and that's
gentle on the eyes and it'swell-marked.
(01:02:26):
You have landmarks.
You can see, oh, okay.
Yeah, there's the header.
Okay, here's the chapter number.
Okay, that's big enough for meto see.
And, you know, so the space andthe font is big enough.
Like when you look at, now seethis sepher, right?
Here, let me see if I can, letme see if I can.
Well, anyway, this sepher, wehave this font here.
(01:02:50):
This is a black chancery font.
I like that font.
It's kind on the eyes.
It's kind.
So you look at it and go, oh,yeah, okay, that's easy.
And so we have this idea ofhaving easiness on the eyes,
gentleness in the approach.
So when you open up the text,you're going, yeah, okay, I can
be here, right?
I can be in this spot.
(01:03:10):
And then when you begin to seethat the language has been
changed up from this kind offormalized KJV language into
some language that's palatable,Well, now we find people that
are reading the text that couldnever read the Bible before.
They're reading hundreds ofpages, hundreds of pages.
And they're having that sameexperience that we had in the
(01:03:32):
Bible study in 2008, 2009, whereyou're just bouncing off the
ceiling with excitement aboutwhat you're reading.
Really?
Is that story really there likethat?
Did that really go on?
Yeah, yeah, that's whathappened.
And you start asking, and all ofa sudden it's like, you know,
when you have one of those lightbulb moments, oh, wow, like,
(01:03:54):
here, let me give you a lightbulb moment.
Luke, right?
Luke tells you quite explicitlywhen the Messiah was born.
He tells you very, it's, youdon't see it if you don't, if
you haven't read the whole book,you don't see it.
But he starts out, he says, oh,yeah, Zechariah, who was in the
course of Aviyahu, What's thecourse of Aviyahu?
(01:04:16):
Who knows?
I'm not going to ask myself thatquestion and I'm not going to
bother to look.
But if you did bother to look,you know that the course of
Aviyahu was the 10th course ofpriests, which means he was
working in the month of July,which means Elizabeth got
pregnant in the month of July,which means she gave birth in
the month of March to John theBaptist, which was exactly six
months before the Messiah wasborn, putting his birth right in
(01:04:36):
September.
Just boom, just like that.
Proof right there in Luke.
Then you get to this interestingpassage in Luke 3 where he's
talking about this genealogy ofthe Messiah through Joseph, the
supposed father.
And he goes, here's all thesenames.
Like those guys don't appear inMatthew 1.
Well, forget about that.
Let's just take it from theMessiah and let's count down.
(01:04:58):
Well, the book of Enoch saysthat the demons, the disembodied
rule code, the demons would belocked in the earth for 70
generations.
When you count in Luke fromMessiah and you count down to
70, you get to Enoch.
(01:05:19):
Mind-boggling.
And in that count, there is thisguy named Canaan.
Canaan, the son of Shelach.
What?
That doesn't appear in Genesis.
That doesn't appear in 1Chronicles.
That doesn't appear anywhere.
What are you talking aboutCanaan, the son of Shelach?
Where'd you get that?
And so all the commentators foryears ignore that name, pretend
(01:05:40):
it doesn't exist.
Who knows?
Luke came up with something.
He's harebrained here.
It's, you know, it was probablyan ad.
We don't know what it is, right?
And then we find out it's rightthere in the book of Jubilees,
chapter eight, tells you exactlywho he was, tells you exactly
who he was.
You know, anyway, these are thekinds of things, these light
bulb moments, right?
When you see these kinds ofthings and it's just like, oh
(01:06:02):
yeah, okay.
And we have, they're stillongoing.
for us.
They're still ongoing.
We have light bulb moments allthe time.
SPEAKER_02 (01:06:09):
Well, thank you.
I'm going to have to check thisout, obviously.
This has really been quiteinteresting and illuminating to
me personally.
I hope our audience has enjoyedit as much as I have.
It's probably a great place towrap.
I would love for you to hold onjust a second and talk to you a
little bit off camera for a fewmore minutes before I let you
go.
But Dr.
(01:06:29):
Steven Pidgeon, thank you somuch for your time and for
joining the show.
You want to give your websiteout one more time.
I want to make sure people havea chance to check out your work.
SPEAKER_04 (01:06:38):
Yeah, sure.
If you want to come over tosephir.net, C-E-P-H-E-R dot net.
And we have, we've got, I thinkI have like 400 blogs that will
tell you about what we do.
We've got lots of free resourcesand free downloads.
And, you know, there's plenty ofresources on the site,
sephir.net.
SPEAKER_02 (01:06:57):
Awesome.
Thank you, Dr.
Pigeon.
Great to meet you.
SPEAKER_04 (01:06:59):
You bet.
Thanks, Ashley.
Thanks for having me here.
SPEAKER_02 (01:07:02):
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Thanks for listening to Ashley on Nothing But The
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Stick around as we delve deepinto innovations to support a
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SPEAKER_02 (00:25):
Hello and welcome to the show.
Today's show is with Dr.
Steven Pidgeon.
Dr.
Pigeon is the founder andpresident of Suffer Publishing.
He's a political scientist,really an eclectic individual.
I think you're really going toenjoy this show.
He's a political scientist witha doctorate in philosophy.
He's an active attorney, bestknown for leading his creation
(00:47):
and publication of the IfSuffer, which is a comprehensive
restoration of sacred scripture.
It's in English.
Dr.
Pigeon is fluent in multiplelanguages, Greek, Hebrew,
Russian, French, Spanish,Italian.
He's an accomplished author ofover 30 books.
He's a musician with a degree inpiano performance, and he's a
(01:09):
teacher of Hebraic studiesthrough his Sefer Academy.
His work really focuses onexploring the Hebraic roots of
faith and providing in-depthscriptural insights, trying to
simplify scripture so that allof us can understand it better.
Fantastic interview.
Hope you enjoy the show.
Thank you.
If you're looking to improveyour memory or lower your stress
(01:32):
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Ignaton.
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ancient energetics with cuttingedge physics.
And this stuff really works.
It's clinically proven.
We'll talk about that in asecond.
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They're subatomic quasiparticles from the sun and
(01:52):
originally identified in privateresearch at CERN.
This is heavy physics.
Ignaton's space-age technologyentangles these particles with
supplement ingredients tosupercharge them and make them
work better.
Here's what makes this reallyexciting.
In university-led, peer-reviewedstudies, IgniCognition,
Ignaton's flagship brainformula, was shown to improve
(02:14):
total memory by 100% in just 30days.
That includes short-term,operational, and working memory.
It's crazy.
The IgniLongevity formula theircellular stress and aging
formulation, reducedinflammation markers like
C-reactive protein or CRP andinterleukin-6 or IL-6 by 37% and
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54% respectively in just 60days.
Huge impact.
These studies were compared toboth placebo and to the same
supplement ingredients that werenot charged with ignitons.
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body align with higher levels ofclarity, coherence, and
resilience.
(02:57):
I've been using bothformulations now for about 60
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sleeping through the night,every night.
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(03:17):
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Dr.
Steven Pidgeon, nice to meet youand thank you for joining the
show.
Welcome.
SPEAKER_04 (03:35):
Hey, it's great to be here, Ashley.
Thanks for asking me to be on.
I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02 (03:39):
Yeah, it's great.
Great to meet you.
I'm excited to talk to you todayand I'd like to...
just dive in in these in theseepisodes and so i'd love for uh
for us to start just introduceyourself to our audience if you
don't mind
SPEAKER_04 (03:50):
sure my name is stephen pigeon i'm the ceo
founder and president of sephirpublishing group and we have
been engaged in um we've beenengaged in the translation and
editing and the publication ofscripture since 2012.
And before that, we actuallyhad, we had a history in, you
(04:13):
know, leading up to it thatbegan actually around 2008 in
terms of developing thecomposite of the structure, if
you will, of what would becomethe Sefer.
And it initially began as just acouple of books.
Actually, we had originally,well, what happened actually is
that we had a Bible study andthe Bible study was very
(04:36):
interesting study.
And we got into a discussion onenight because there was a
publication that was beingprepared and they had gone
public with their announcementthat they were going to create a
politically neutral, politicallycorrect campaign.
text of the scripture that wasdesigned not to be offensive to
(05:00):
anyone and i got to think aboutthat and i thought how can you
do that and you know this is thescript it is what it is how do
you do that and anyway i becamevery offended and so i talked to
a friend of mine and over theyears before this for maybe 10
years before that i had beganassembling my own text if you
will because i was reading thebooks that were supposedly you
(05:24):
know verboten by the WestminsterConfession, namely the
Apocrypha.
And I had a book that was theOxford Complete Bible.
It turned out to be the BenjaminBlaney edition.
And I was reading these texts,and I thought, you know, these
are really quite incredible.
And particularly when I came onto what's called Second Esdras,
(05:46):
a very important text.
And I read that and I went, wow,this is really, you know, this
really outstanding.
And of course, then I discoveredthe Dead Sea Scrolls and the
Book of Jubilees and the Book ofEnoch and so forth.
And so all of these readingswere really very attractive to
me.
So I began to assemble them in agreen binder.
(06:08):
And as we started doing a Biblestudy, well, I was presenting
these materials to the Biblestudy and they were very
interested.
So we began to print a verylimited basis we're talking two
to maybe four at a time booksthat could be used by our bible
study and so it went through aseries of transactions where we
(06:29):
started out with three books,then it became two books, then
it became one book.
And it went from differentnames.
And finally, we came to a pointwhere we had published a book
called the Kodesh Seferim.
And it was really, we were usingreally, because we were doing
one-off publishings, these bookswere really not very well put
(06:50):
together, would be theunderstatement of the year.
They weren't sewn bindings.
They had really kind of thesecheap, high gloss covers, half
the time the cover would come inupside down.
And, you know, it was, and thebooks would fall apart after
about the fifth reading.
And they were costing us afortune.
But nonetheless, I mean, youknow, look, they were costing us
(07:13):
almost$44 a piece.
And then I would try torecapture what the expense of
getting it was.
So I'd ask$50 for the book sothat I could, you know, print
another one.
And so anyway, we got to theKodesh Sephirim, we printed 10
copies, and one of those copieswas mine.
And, you know, the book was justfalling apart.
(07:35):
I mean, you know, it hadthumbprints all over the face of
it, you know, and, you know, thecover was fading and the binding
was coming apart and, you know,all this stuff.
Anyway, I was teaching at achurch in Spokane.
And the sound man said, I wantthat book.
And I said, well, you can't haveit.
This is my book and it's thelast one I got.
So, you know, the answer is no.
Well, anyway, he talked me outof the book and he still has it,
(07:57):
by the way, he still has thatbook.
And so some friends and I, therewere four of us, four families.
We traveled to Jerusalem thatyear and we were there for the
Feast of Tabernacles.
And it was during that feastthat we decided, well, okay,
it's time that we're actuallygoing to have to do an official
printing of this book.
And we found a printer thatwould actually do a good job,
(08:20):
you know, using a sewn bindingand putting together a really
solid cover and, you know, massproducing the book responsibly.
You know, so we put our penniestogether and we came up with
enough money to do the firstprinting, which was 2,000 books.
And You know, and I said, well,look, Kodesh Seferim is a little
too much.
And it was way too much Hebrewon the cover of the book.
(08:42):
And, you know, it was like, hey,that is just too golden gilded,
yeah, over the top ornamented,you know.
And so I decided to just rip itback to just Sefer.
And, you know, Sefer, you know,it kind of means book.
I mean, you can, you know, ifyou're going to try to use a
flat-footed interpretation ofthe Hebrew, you could say that's
(09:04):
book.
It really means a numberedwriting, and in particular, a
numbered writing in a scroll.
I mean, that's really what itmeans.
Because you have to distinguishbetween the word Sefer and the
word Megillah, which is a roll.
You know, that's one handledroll.
But a Sefer is a scroll.
And so we elected to call thebook just Sefer.
(09:24):
and we had a problem using theidea of a bible because of the
pagan heritage of the city ofbiblos and uh and all that that
meant and there was a real therewas a real uh confrontation that
took place in the ancient worldbecause there was a set of books
called the bibliotheca that wasinitially called the bible and
(09:48):
it was a very expansive set andit supposedly contained all the
wisdom of the ancient world soyou're talking about you know
socrates plato aristotle uh youknow euripides uh thucydides you
know you know all thesepythagoras euclid all these guys
contained in this text in thishuge book and so when rome put
(10:09):
together its text it wanted toessentially occupy that space so
it became it became uh thecalled the Biblia or Bible,
replacing the Bibliotheca as allthe world's knowledge.
And our book was distinctlydifferent from anything that had
(10:30):
been labeled the Bible before,in that it had 87 books in it,
rather than the traditional 66,which has been limited by the
Westminster Confession, or the77 books that were found
traditionally in the averageBible That is to say the Roman
(10:50):
Bible would have 77 books.
The King James Bible had 77, theKing James Authorized Version,
and so forth.
All the initial Bibles, they allhad this Apocrypha section or
the Deuterocanonical section.
And we had additional books thanthat.
And since then, we have...
You know, and I mean, I'll justtell you straight out, Ashley,
(11:11):
we were, you know, we were kindof driving down the road blind,
you know, where are we going?
I don't know.
I mean, we were trying to createa text really for the Bible
study and we had our reasonsbehind it, but there were
decisions made that were madeearly on.
They were very importantdecisions, which had to do with
this politically neutralized, orif you will, neutered Bible that
(11:34):
was going to be produced.
And one of the decisions we madewas, okay, we're going to
transliterate all of the propernouns in the text.
We're not going to use thecommon English.
And this really happened becauseof our trips to Jerusalem.
And we were having conversationswith some rabbis.
(11:56):
And, well, they weren't rabbis.
I think they were just Hasidicrabbis.
guys and we'd be in line withthem we'd be talking to them
about the text and they startedreferring to these books like
you know Tehillim and Yekezkeland all this stuff what are you
talking about oh yeah this isyou know your book you call it
this and I thought hmm that'svery interesting so we went back
(12:17):
and we took a look and when wecame to understand that there
was this divide this huge divideand there was really no reason
for it that we decided totransliterate 3,100 names.
And so this was really thelion's share effort of what was
going to create the Sefer.
It was going to be a text withthese 87 books and all of the
(12:40):
names transliterated.
Now, there was otherdifficulties, too.
We found in the KJV, forinstance, you would see in the
Old Testament, you'd see theHoly Spirit.
In the New Testament, you'd seethe Holy Ghost.
In the Old Testament, you'd seeIsaiah, but in the New
Testament, you'd see Esaias.
In the Old Testament, you'd seeElijah, but in the New
(13:01):
Testament, you'd see Elias.
And at one point in the KingJames, they actually referred to
Elijah as Eli-Zeus.
And so we looked at that and wethought, no, this is not
correct.
These names should behomogenized if you're going to
talk about isaiah in the oldtestament well then you need to
(13:22):
talk about isaiah in the newtestament if you're going to you
know if you're going toreference elijah in the old
testament then it needs to beelijah in the new testament so
we came forward with all ofthese names with the idea that
these were foundational in thehebraic language and that these
would come forward into the newtestament to homogenize all of
(13:43):
these uh proper nouns Well, indoing this, we came, of course,
upon the larger issue.
And the larger issue was theYod-Heh-Vav-Heh.
And it was not only theYod-Heh-Vav-Heh, but also the
name of the Messiah.
So these were two, you know,issues that are just kind of
(14:04):
glaring in your face, right?
And when we got to it, westarted taking a look.
And you can't, you know, youcan't rely on Strong's
Concordance, particularly withthese names are concerned
because they don't make areasonable presentation.
It's a logically inconsistentpresentation in what they claim
(14:25):
in the Strong's Concordance.
And so we had to do additionalresearch on top of that.
Now, part of that research wastraveling into Israel to see
what the common usage was in theHebrew language.
And you can see evidence of thecommon usage really everywhere
when you're in Jerusalem.
It's very, very clear becausethe Israelis have transliterated
(14:50):
the names of these prophets andso forth, names that you find in
scripture on the names of theirstreets.
So for instance, when you come,they'll have every street sign
will have a name and it willhave it in Hebrew and in a
transliterated English and inHebrew.
Arabic.
Every street has got a littleplaque.
(15:13):
They have Jeremiah Street.
They have Ezekiel Street.
They have Isaiah Street.
But it's not Ezekiel, Jeremiah,or Isaiah.
It's Yishayahu, Yirmiyahu,Yekeskiel, Zakaryahu, Obedyahu.
And you can see it right there.
It's right there.
(15:34):
They're telling you, this is howwe transliterate this name, this
Hebrew name.
So this gave us a great deal ofconfirmation as to how you deal
with this Yod-Heh-Vav endingthat we find on 167 names.
So that became pretty clear asto how we were going to deal
(15:54):
with the Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh.
Now, there was a greatdiscrepancy that arose because,
of course, there were people inthe Messianic camp that wanted
to use the name Yehovah.
which is a Masoretic constructthat's given to us in Strong's.
And I looked at that and I said,it's just simply not warranted.
(16:16):
I mean, to give you an idea, thecurrent president of Israel or
the prime minister is BenjaminNetanyahu.
Now this name literally meansgift from Yah, right?
The gift of Yah.
Netanyahu.
But it's not Yeho, it's Yahu.
(16:37):
Yod-Heh-Vav.
And this was consistent with thename of the kingdom, Yehud.
And so it was became very,actually quite simple.
And it's really beenoverwhelming.
The tide of evidence thatsupports the Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh
being pronounced as E-Yah-Uah,that we had to go with a
transliteration.
(16:57):
And so the transliteration wewent with was to spell it
Y-A-H-U-A-H, which some peoplesay Yehua.
but it really is four vowels.
Now, Josephus, and really hereyou have the only ear witness to
the name being pronounced wasJosephus Flavius, Flavius
Josephus.
And he said at the time of thetemple, just before its
(17:20):
destruction, the priest used towear an ephod, and the ephod had
the Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh on it, whichthey pronounced as four vowels.
Now, You know, in studying theHebrew, they tell you, well,
there's no vowels in Hebrew.
Well, there are vowels that inpre-Masoretic understanding of
the Hebrew, there's vowels.
(17:42):
And those vowels are, four ofthem, or at least three of them,
are the yod, the he, and thevav.
So when we understood it wasfour vowels, it's very clear
because you can see it.
It's called the hirik yod, andit's called the shurik yod.
of vav and of course the patakha ha so it's e-a-u-a and we
(18:08):
spelled it y-a-h-u-a-h to giveit a pronunciation that was not
going to be deceptive becauseyou can imagine if we'd have put
e-a-u-a if we'd have put e-a-u-ayou might say oh or or who knows
how it would be pronounced.
So we wanted to give apronunciation guide that was
(18:30):
going to be as close as we couldget it.
Yeah, we could have put accentsin there to make it a little bit
more explicit, but we decided toleave those kind of markings out
of the text.
And so anyway, this was thewrestling match that was going
on.
And there was not only thatwrestling match, but there was
also a wrestling match in termsof including other books.
(18:53):
Now, just to give you an idea,and I'll try to be quick about
this, but what happened is youhad some text before that
existed, and we believe itexisted in the Hebrew language,
but we don't know for surebecause there's no original text
(19:14):
of anything, really.
And in fact, the only originaltext there is is really the book
of Yashar or Jasher.
The other texts were copied fromsomething so you start out with
the idea that there was thistext that was being used and the
jews in alexandria well actuallyit wasn't the jews it was the
(19:35):
leaders of the tribes ofyasharel who were living in
alexandria they decided totranslate whatever they had they
were going to translate it intogreek so they did and this would
become known as the septuagintAnd this, by the way, also
included many more books thanwhat you see in the Protestant
(19:58):
Bible.
It included all of theseapocryphal books.
And so this was translated intoGreek.
And then this was then takeninto the Seleucid Empire, which
was now the Levant.
And they were, the guys whocould read the Greek were
reading the Greek and thenspeaking it out in Aramaic.
And these guys were calledTargums.
(20:18):
And so they would teach thepeople in the Seleucid Empire
all of this text in the Aramaicand that eventually got written
down in about the first centuryBC.
It became written.
And in doing so, they had onethrough four Maccabees.
They had one, two, three Baruch.
They had first and secondEsdras.
They had all of these additionaltexts.
(20:40):
They did not have Enoch andJubilees, however.
Enoch and Jubilees were going tobe reserved for the Ethiopian
tradition.
And in Ethiopia and in theEritrean tradition, they would
keep Enoch and Jubilees.
Well, okay, so that could beconsidered marginal work until
you get to the Dead Sea Scrolls.
And suddenly in the Dead SeaScrolls, you have scribes now
(21:02):
taking the text that came fromGreek into Aramaic.
Now it's going to be recapturedinto Hebrew.
And these scrolls then are goingto include 10 copies of the Book
of Jubilees and a complete copyof Enoch in the Aramaic.
So when I saw that Enoch andJubilees had been captured in
(21:25):
the Dead Sea Scrolls, what didthe Pope know about the Dead Sea
Scrolls when they canonized thescripture?
They didn't know.
They didn't have it.
They didn't have access to it.
In fact, I'm not sure they evenhad access to the Ethiopian text
at that point.
So we came to conclude that Yes,Enoch and Jubilees were
considered part of the scriptureto be read at the time of the
(21:51):
Messiah.
And in fact, there's a directquote in the book of Jude,
there's a direct reference in 2Peter, and there's 56 references
in the New Testament that giveindication that Enoch is in
fact, was in fact a read text atthat time.
Now we know that Qumran, wherethey found the Dead Sea Scrolls,
(22:14):
was the situs of who they callYaakov Sadiq, or James the Just,
the brother of the Messiah,where he led a monastic order
there at Qumran.
Robert Eisenman thinks thatJames the Just may have been
responsible for a lot of thescrolls kept in those caves.
So this means that you can seethat this idea of Jubilees and
(22:38):
Enoch being part of the canon,if you will, the early canon,
gives substantial credence.
We have not only the Eritreantradition and the Ethiopian
tradition and the Assyriactradition, but we also have the
Qumran tradition supportingthese texts.
So we went ahead with apublication that included all of
(23:00):
those books.
And of course, Then there wasthe issue of the Book of Jasher.
And the Book of Jasher, we havea copy of the original Hebrew
text.
This is the pre-published Hebrewtext that's available on a
download on our website atsephra.net.
And this was going to bepublished in the 1400s in Italy.
(23:23):
And the publisher who publishedit in Italy treated it with
disdain.
I don't like this text and Idon't want it, blah, blah, blah.
But nonetheless, he publishedit.
And then it was translated inthe mid 1800s by a fellow in
Britain who could not get itpublished because somebody had
launched a fraudulent pseudoJasher two years before and had
(23:44):
captured the market and so onand so forth.
So he had to wait and he movedit into New York to print it.
And I think it was printed inthe 1880s in New York.
And we've since had the Englishtranslation, his English
translation of the text verifiedas being an accurate translation
of the Hebrew.
SPEAKER_03 (24:02):
And
SPEAKER_04 (24:04):
so the Book of Jasher now turns out to be, the
more we study it, the moresignificant it is.
It's a very, very importanttext.
And there's historical thingsthat are in the Book of Jasher
that are found nowhere else.
And it escaped what I call theMasoretic Massage.
(24:26):
So the Masoretes would addressthe Tanakh, if you will, the
Torah, the Nevi'im and theKetuvim, or the books of Moses,
the books of the prophets andthe writings.
And they altered virtually everyword in the text by applying
what's called Nikudot.
And these are the, Nikudot meanscookie crumbs.
(24:50):
And these are the little dashesand dots and stuff that you'd
find underneath the Hebrewletters to give it a
pronunciation guide.
Well, you might say, all right,well, thanks for the
pronunciation guide.
And I mean, it is helpful inpronouncing the words.
But, with a capital but, there'sopinion in that dotting, in that
(25:17):
pronunciation guide.
For instance, if you look at theword Adam, you know, Aleph,
Daleth, Mem.
Okay, well, that's one word,Adam.
But it's also Edom.
And it's also Adom.
So a dome is red.
Edom is a people group.
And Adam is man, the name of thefirst man and also mankind.
(25:38):
So when you see that, now yousee a Masoretic rabbi saying, I
think it's red.
I think it's Adam.
I think it's Edom.
Well, that's his editorialselection on that particular
word.
And you see quite often, notonly did they add vowel sounds
(26:01):
and preferences to the words,but they also added letters.
They added vowels, typically anO, but they also added U's, and
they also added consonants.
So you have what's called adoubling dot.
in the Nikudot that when it'sfound next to a Lamed or it's
(26:21):
found in a Mem or a Dalet orsomething like this, well, you
get two Ms, you get two Ls, youget two Ds.
And the idea of putting an O in,for instance, in the word
Elohim, there's no O there, theyadded that.
And when you see the wordAnokhi, which appears in Exodus
20, Anokhi Yahweh Eloheikim isthe passage, I am Yahweh, you're
(26:45):
Elohim.
They put the O there.
There's no O in the word anokia.
It's anki, which means I am.
So because you see this additionof O's and U's and double
letters, you get a massagedtext, a text that is the
preference and expresses theeditorial opinion.
(27:07):
of the Masorites.
So this makes for a difficultpresentation when you're
beginning to look at the text totry to find, okay, what do we
have for the reality here inthis text?
What's really being said here?
So anyway, but this is how itgot started.
SPEAKER_02 (27:26):
Wow.
That's very interesting.
So what was your inspirationto...
to go down this rabbit hole, soto speak.
I mean, obviously you were doingthe Bible study, but to go that
far with it, what was behindthat in your personal life?
SPEAKER_04 (27:45):
Yeah, Ashley, I mean, that's a great question.
And thank you for asking it.
Well, I can tell you, I'll just,I'll share this with you.
And this is what happened.
Okay.
So, you know, I had kind of a, Ihad a very long walk into my
faith journey.
because I don't know, I wouldn'tcall myself a person of faith as
(28:06):
a child.
I think I kind of believed alittle bit, but I grew up in
Alaska in a very, in a verycrude and rude and rough
environment.
And I was living in Alaskaduring the Alaska pipeline.
It was essentially pure chaos,pure anarchy run by the mafia.
And, you know, the, you know, Imean, it was not uncommon to
have people shot in parking lotsright in front of you and
(28:27):
there'd be no rest, no nothing.
People would disappear.
We had no names, mass murderseverywhere.
I mean, it was, you know, it wasdrugs, prostitution and mafia
killing and all this.
It was the biggest anarchy youcould possibly imagine.
This was, was the condition ofAnchorage in the 70s.
How I survived it, I did it byhanging out in the piano
practice room.
That's how I survived it.
(28:48):
I'd practice eight hours a dayso I wouldn't be seen in public
anywhere.
But at any rate, my faithjourney, I was at war.
Well, here's what happened.
Being a former rock and roller,used to travel, used to tour as
a rock and roll musician with mysister.
And there came a day, one daywhen my sister came home and she
was She had been jamming withthis band on Saturday night and
(29:11):
the keyboard player said, hey,why don't you jam with me
tomorrow?
And she said, well, where areyou jamming tomorrow?
He says, well, I'm going to beplaying to this gospel church,
you know, at 9 a.m.
Come in and play.
So she it was a black gospelchurch.
So she went to this black gospelchurch.
And the next thing you know, youknow, she has a salvation
moment, you know.
So she comes home and she's justflying high.
(29:33):
This was my sister who was, youknow, Janis Joplin, you know,
reincarnated, you know, I mean,we were on the road, you know,
she'd finished Southern Comfortbefore noon.
You know what I'm talking
SPEAKER_02 (29:43):
about?
Yeah.
SPEAKER_04 (29:44):
And so, and here she is converted.
I'm like, wow, this isincredible.
You know, so I was very excitedwith her and she was just in
joy.
You know, I was very excitedabout this and following her and
watching her.
Well, you know, three weekslater, she was killed in a
head-on collision.
And for me, that was my 18thfuneral.
(30:05):
I was 21 years old.
That was my 18th funeral that Ihad gone to as a young man.
And it was really kind of the,it was the, it was the straw
that broke the camel's back.
Okay.
because that funeral really, Iwent into a PTSD.
I didn't know I had PTSD, but Idid.
I had this continual expectationthat the adrenaline was going to
(30:30):
flow with the news of somebodyclose to me had died.
And I would just experience thatover and over again.
And so anyway, I just, you know,I kind of looked at Jan and I
went, I don't want any part ofthis.
You know, if I confess a faith,I'll be dead in three weeks.
I'm not going there.
You know, so I've had thisargument.
It was like, you know, you wantto have an argument between you
(30:51):
and Satan.
You guys duke it out.
Leave me out of the mix.
I'm not going to be a part ofthis.
I don't want any part of it.
And so I was like that for many,many years.
And, you know, it was really thePTSD was beginning to really
overwhelm me.
You know, and finally I was likein a condition of a, and you
know, and I didn't, I was in acondition of a nervous
breakdown, really.
And finally I cried out andguess what?
(31:12):
In 15 minutes, there wassomebody at the door with the
Bible.
Of course, it was the JehovahWitnesses and it was the Jehovah
Witness Bible, which had itsproblems, you know, it had its
problems.
But anyway, but I had never, I'dnever owned a Bible.
I'd never read a Bible.
I'd never seen a Bible, butokay, great.
You know, I'll take this Bible.
And this began my faith journey.
Well, I could acknowledge thefather, but I could not
(31:34):
acknowledge the son.
It would be a 12 year journeybefore I would finally
acknowledge the son.
And when I acknowledged his son,so both my wife and I, we came
to faith at the same time, whichwas really fantastic that she
has been alongside me on thisjourney, which she has been.
And so anyway, we both came tofaith at the same time.
(31:55):
And so we're like, well, wedidn't know anything, you know,
as in, I mean, I had noexperience at all, you know,
growing up in Alaska as a rockand roll.
I mean, what experience did Iknow, you know?
So we kind of went into thischurch and we went into that
church and we went here and wewent there and, you know, we had
some real, you know, it was realeye-opener because, man, some of
(32:16):
the stuff happening in thechurches was like, really?
You know, like when the pastorran off with somebody else's
wife, you know, this kind ofthing.
And so, you know, anyway, in2001, we joined a different
church and part of thischurch's, well, game plan, if
you will, was to do missionwork.
(32:37):
And so one day, you know,they're telling me, you know,
you need to go out and find outwhat mission you're going to be
on.
And I'm like, mission work.
What are you talking about?
You know?
So anyway, I went out, I wentout there and there was a guy
and he had a sign up that said,what part of go don't you
understand?
And I started laughing.
I think that's pretty good.
And he says, yeah, you're comingwith me.
I said, well, where are wegoing?
(32:58):
He said, we're going to Russia.
I thought Russia.
Okay.
I grew up in Alaska with manyRussians.
My piano teacher was a Russian.
You know, okay, all right, we'regoing to Russia.
All right, okay.
So the next thing you know, Ifind myself at Sheremetyevo
Airport in Moscow, lookingaround and going, all right, all
right, what am I doing here?
(33:19):
Of course, you know, I was amilitant anti-communist, right?
Okay, do you guys realize you'velet this militant anti-communist
into your country here?
You know, but anyway, we wentdown to the city Kursk.
This is a lot where the battleis going on, had been going on
here this year.
We went down to Kursk, and atKursk, well, I was baptized in
(33:40):
the Ruach HaKodesh.
And this was without hands,without somebody laying hands on
me or breathing on me or doinganything else.
But I had this baptism, youknow, what people call baptism
in the Holy Spirit.
I had this baptism.
First, I got soaked in the rain,and then I had this baptism in
the Holy Spirit.
Well...
I mean, I was just, you know,flying high.
(34:02):
It was just like unbelievable.
I couldn't believe what wasgoing on.
I couldn't believe the joy I washaving.
And I couldn't believe what washigh.
It was like, okay, I got to goback to Russia.
Why did I want to go back toRussia?
Well, that's where the HolySpirit is.
Well, no, I mean, the HolySpirit's everywhere.
But in this particular case, youcould feel, you could feel the
Ruach like a low cloud coverover Russia.
(34:24):
It's like, I'm going to dosomething here.
I'm going to, I'm doingsomething here.
And you know, when we were inKursk, we stayed at a hotel that
was right next to a graveyardfrom the Kursk battle of 1944,
when the Germans lost 800,000men and the Russians lost 1.5
million men in that battle, thattank, the biggest tank battle of
(34:46):
World War II.
And it was dispositive.
From that battle, the Russianswould march against the Germans
all the way to Berlin.
But I mean, we're staying rightnext to them.
The first night I went to bed,like i kind of closed my eyes
and like whoa there's thousandsof souls walking around on the
turf outside of this hotel thisis weird i had no idea the
(35:08):
graveyard was right there righthouse in a little bit thousands
of souls i could see him youknow so i went back and and the
second trip i went i wanted topreach in russian and my friend
yuri mikhailovich he was thepastor there He would let me
preach in the Bible study, youknow.
So I began to preach on apassage out of John in the
(35:30):
Russian.
For this reason I was born, forthis reason I came to the earth,
to testify to the truth.
Those who are of the truth hearmy voice.
So this was the passage I wasbeginning to preach on in
(35:52):
Russia.
And as I began to preach on thispassage, Yuri looks at me, he
says, you know, Stephen, hesays, you speak Russian like a
Georgian.
You should go to Georgia.
I'm like, Georgia?
I don't know Georgia from Adam.
I don't have any ties toGeorgia.
Why would I go to Georgia?
Oh, you should go to Georgia.
Well, turns out I did go toGeorgia.
So I ended up as a missionary inGeorgia and I made four trips
(36:13):
into Georgia and I traveledthroughout the whole country.
And I was there in Belize and inBatumi and in Gori and in
Kutaisi and in Tiskin Valley andthroughout the whole country and
made many good friends.
And we came alongside ofdesperately impoverished
country, but a country that wasreally quite full of beauty and
(36:34):
wonderful things, wonderfulpeople.
And anyway, so this mission workreally kind of changed me.
And I came back, when I cameback to the States, I wanted to
teach on the truth.
And so I began teaching a thingcalled the truth project.
And the truth project was allabout the truth.
What's the truth of scriptureand so on and so forth.
(36:55):
Well, it didn't take long.
I was teaching this truthproject and I had people come to
me and say, well, we want to bein your Bible study.
And I told them, I said, well,if you're going to be in my
Bible study, we're not going todo a new age pop Bible study
where you have one verse ofscripture.
And then somebody sells you anexercise program or a diet
program or economics managementprogram.
If we're going to do a Biblestudy, then we're going to study
(37:16):
the text.
SPEAKER_02 (37:17):
The truth.
SPEAKER_04 (37:18):
Yeah, we're going to study the truth.
We're going to look at it.
We're going to look deeply atit.
Well, I'm telling you, that wasthe most exciting Bible study
you could possibly imagine.
As one friend of mine said, allof a sudden we were reading the
pages of the Bible where thegold stuff was still stuck
together, you know, and it waslike it, the, the experience was
(37:41):
really quite overwhelmingbecause you go from being in a
Christian church where you'regetting a spoonful of pablum
once a week.
Okay.
Here's the, you know, here's thewidow's might, here's the good
Samaritan, you know, here's theteaching of Paul, you know, and
you get this little spoonful ofpablum and that's it.
And it's like, okay, well, youknow, what about the beef,
(38:05):
right?
Where's the beef?
Well, when we got into this,this robust Bible study, man, it
was a steak dinner, you know?
And so we get over there at sixo'clock on Thursday and we'd be
there until midnight or oneo'clock, you know, and people be
bouncing off the ceiling withexcitement with what we were
discovering.
It was just incredible.
And so as all of that began tounfold, I began to see the, um,
(38:28):
kind of the whole context of thething.
And so as we began to see that,we realized, look, if, you know,
and then this book comes out andsays, we're going to neutralize
the Bible.
I was just outraged.
I was like, no, you, no, no.
So I looked at Brad, I said,Brad, we need to do our own
Bible.
He says, what are you talkingabout?
(38:49):
I said, let's do our own textand let's make it twice as
difficult instead of making itneutral and friendly and all
this, let's make it justhostile.
impossible to read, verydifficult, as intellectual
astute as we can possibly makeit.
He said, okay, let's do it.
So this is what we did,
SPEAKER_02 (39:08):
right?
So here you are.
SPEAKER_04 (39:09):
Yeah.
And so gradually, you know, sowe've tried to, you know, and
I've tried to make it, you know,initially when people were
reading, it was like, huh?
Who is Yakiskiyahu?
How do you expect me to knowthat?
And, you know, and Yekezkel,and, you know, what are these
names?
So, of course, we had to quicklyassemble a lexicon so people
(39:30):
could figure out what it is thatwe did, you know, with the
transliteration of the names.
And then I tried to make it,then as time goes on, I've tried
to make the text more and morereadable while keeping its
intellectual content.
And of course, what we found is,as time went on, that we found
(39:53):
there were many, many thingsthat, you know, for a lot of the
people who are not familiar withscripture that have not read a
lot of it, the KJV was builtupon a number of ideas.
And there were 15 premises thatKing James sat down and said,
you have to follow these.
(40:13):
And they were reiterated in theWestminster Confession.
One was to keep the EnglishBible in vulgar language.
That's the language that's usedin both the King James
Instruction and in theWestminster Confession to use
vulgar terms.
Now, one of those vulgar termshad to do with church versus
congregation.
(40:33):
In fact, King James was quitespecific.
You retain the word church andyou do not use the word
congregation.
The reason being is becausecongregation meant we the
people.
church meant me the king i tellyou what the religion is but
congregation means we the peoplenow the puritans that were that
(40:56):
are called the puritans thatcame to massachusetts plymouth
rock there they didn't callthemselves puritans they called
themselves congregationalistsand it had to do with that word
the congregation and so weweren't particular about
congregation congregation calledthat assembly ecclesia kehila
whatever you want to call it Weeventually came with called out
(41:21):
assembly rather than thecongregation.
But either way, it was not theKirke based on the Greek goddess
Circe Kirke, but rathercongregation.
Well, this was one of many ofthe changes that were made.
And when we went to war withthese premises of the King James
(41:41):
Version, ideas that you weregoing to use vulgar language?
No, because there is no James inthe text.
You know, his name was James,not James.
And there is no James.
But, you know, I want my name inthere.
It's my Bible.
So put me in there.
The guy whose name was Jacob inEnglish would have been Yaakov
in the Hebrew.
I want my name to be there.
So let's call the book James.
(42:01):
Well, yeah.
And, you know, and you get otherthings like this.
Well, some of the issues andthis was what really, really
became a big deal.
was the use of the word God forElohim and the use of the word
Lord for the Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh.
And there was reasons why thiswas done.
(42:22):
And the reasons why wereprimarily to always keep this
ambiguity going.
When you prayed to the Lord,were you praying to the Creator?
Or were you praying to the King?
Or were you praying to the Earl?
Or were you praying to theBaron?
were you praying to yourlandlord or someone else in the
(42:43):
house of lords and of course thethe text this idea of the pope
and what would eventually becomehenry viii the pope said look i
am vicarious filio de i am inplace of god on earth so when
you pray to the our fatheryou're praying to me that's why
i'm called papa the pope becauseyou're praying to me you see and
(43:07):
so these prayers The languagewas cut in such a way that there
was always this ambiguity.
Were you praying to the Creator?
Were you praying to the King?
Were you praying to the Father?
Or were you praying to the Pope?
And the scriptural text itselfis very, very clear about who
the Father is.
(43:28):
It's found in 1 Chronicles 29,beginning at verse 10, when
David gives the Our Fatherprayer.
So when the Messiah says, look,Pray like this.
When you pray, don't be one ofthese hypocrites who recites
prayers from memory, you know,in the public square, wearing
your phylacteries down to yourankles and, you know, strutting
(43:50):
around like you're the rabbiwhile you're praying this, you
know, incantation of repetitiveprayer.
Don't do that.
Instead, pray like this.
Well, then the New Testamentrecords it as beginning our
father.
But when you go and you see fromwhere this prayer came
initially, it came from David'sprayer, which he begins in the
(44:11):
Hebrew.
Baruch atah, Yahweh, Elohai,Yasharel, avinu ma'olam
v'adolam.
Blessed are you, Yahweh, theElohai of Yasharel, our father
forever and ever.
Then he gets into
UNKNOWN (00:00):
.
SPEAKER_04 (44:28):
To you is the kingdom and the power and the
glory and the majesty and thevictory.
It's all in that prayer.
But it was redacted by Eusebiusin order to create the
ambiguity.
(44:50):
Are you talking to the creatoror are you talking to the Pope?
Who are you petitioning for yourprayer?
And so we saw this prettyclearly.
And in, in, so in making themove, we had to ask ourselves
the question in all ofscripture.
And, you know, I was, I wastalking with my wife about this
this morning, you know, theWestminster confession, the
(45:13):
constructs of King James havepermeated Western society for
400 years.
Thou shalt not touch the ideasthat we have put in stone.
that this shall be in the vulgartext, that it shall only contain
66 books, that these are, youknow, that the other stuff is
only historical, all of thesethings.
(45:33):
Thou shalt not touch.
Well, you know, look, I'm not asubject to the crown, nor have I
ever been a subject to thecrown.
I'm not beholding to the EnglishParliament or to the Westminster
Confession.
And I don't see, you know, ifI'm going to look to authority,
I'm going to look to scripturalauthority rather not to the
authority of somebody inparliament.
(45:55):
Sure.
Okay.
So when we began to look atthat, there's the question of
the ineffable name doctrine.
And the ineffable name doctrinewas created by the Jews when
they founded Judaism.
Now, a lot of people thinkJudaism went back to King David.
It did not.
Judaism was founded and createdby the Maccabees in the first
(46:18):
century B.C., And again, this isbecause they heard the Greek,
told them in Aramaic, and theybegan to write it down.
And when they write it down,when they wrote it down, they
created this religion calledJudaism with two camps, the
Sadducees, or the Sadduceen, andthe Pharisees, or the Perishtim.
(46:39):
These two camps were going tocreate this religion of Judaism.
Well, if you read in Jeremiah44, it says that Yah has taken
his name out of the mouth of theYahudim who are still in Egypt.
He's taken his name out of theirmouth.
So they couldn't say the name.
And so they began to say, well,nobody can say the name.
(47:02):
It's too sacred to be said.
Well, who said that?
Who said it's too sacred?
Well, Rabbi Akiva.
Rabbi Akiva, who was anAmalekite convert to Judaism,
said, you have to put a fencearound the name.
You can't say the name.
All right.
Well, what does the text say?
Well, Moses says, I will publishthe name of Yahweh.
(47:22):
David says in Psalm 22, verse22, I have declared your name
unto the assembly.
And the most importantdecision-making of all would be
the Messiah in his great prayerof John chapter 17, which is the
most beautiful prayer I think inall of scripture.
And here's the Messiah prayingin John 17.
And he says at the very end ofhis prayer, just before he's
(47:44):
going to be arrested, beaten,and then crucified, he says, I
have declared your name untothem and will declare it, that
the love of you that is in memight be in them and I in them.
So here we have Moses, we haveDavid, we have the Messiah all
saying, I declare your name andwill declare it.
We have Joel telling you declarethe name, call upon the name,
(48:07):
call yourself by the name, swearby the name, publish the name,
make mention of the name.
It goes on and on and on and onin hundreds of places throughout
the text.
So who am I gonna believe, RabbiAkiva?
Or am I going to believeMoshiach?
SPEAKER_01 (48:20):
Sure.
SPEAKER_04 (48:22):
So we said, well, we're going with that.
And so we're going with that andwe're going to publish the name
as we find it.
And so we've had to weather, asyou might imagine, Ashley, we've
had to weather firestorms likeyou would not believe.
SPEAKER_02 (48:36):
Oh, I'm sure.
I want to get to that too.
But before we go there, on thispath, what's the biggest
discovery If you could sharesomething with our audience,
like the biggest discoverythrough this process that you
think everybody should know thatthey most likely don't, whether
it be through the translationsor transliterations that you've
(48:59):
done or the non-canonical booksthat you've included, what would
be the biggest, if you have toshare just one learning that
would be transformative to theaudience?
SPEAKER_04 (49:13):
What's the coolest thing?
SPEAKER_02 (49:15):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_04 (49:15):
yeah yeah i'll tell
SPEAKER_02 (49:17):
you exactly what's the coolest thing
SPEAKER_04 (49:18):
i'll tell you what i think is the coolest thing i
think it's just absolutelyfantastic quite frankly i mean
i'm getting excited justthinking about telling you this
this one okay so you know whenyou when you start to read the
bible you know when you're achristian and somebody says well
let's read the bible so as achristian you say okay well i'll
start in the new testament andi'll begin in matthew And so you
(49:40):
open up Matthew and it goes, andAbraham begat Yitzhak and
Yitzhak begat Yaakov and Yaakovbegat Judah and Judah begat
Perez.
And you're like, how am I goingto get through this book?
I'm falling asleep and I'm onlyin chapter one.
(50:00):
And so chapter one is like soextremely exciting when you know
what to look for.
Okay.
So here, You have chapter onesaying right in the very first
verse, it says that the Messiahis the son of David.
Okay, can that claim besubstantiated in the typical
(50:20):
English Bible?
And the answer is no, it can't.
And the reason being, if youlook at Matthew one, you'll see
that there are a number of womenmentioned, and I love the women
that are in that roster, right?
You have Rahab the prostitute,you have Tamar, the
daughter-in-law who seduced herfather-in-law.
You have Bathsheba who seducedDavid, right?
(50:41):
These are the women that, andyou have Ruth.
These are the four women thatare laid out in that litany and
the Moabite, right?
And so when you look at thosewomen, those women are not
counted.
So it tells you at the end ofthis says, okay, look, there's
42 generations total fromAbraham to the Messiah, 14 from
Abraham to David, 14 from Davidto the taking away to Babylon in
(51:03):
Yekunyahu, and then 14 to theMessiah.
Okay, that sounds pretty good.
There's 42, 14, 14, and 14.
But you don't count Bathsheba.
You don't count Tamar.
You don't count Ruth.
You don't count Rahab.
So you don't count Mary eitherbecause she's an empty DNA.
She's not Y-DNA.
She's not patrilineal.
So when you do the count, guesswhat you get?
14, 14, and 13.
(51:26):
What?
And it's talking about Joseph,the husband of Mary.
Well, then you flip over to Lukechapter 3, and here's Joseph,
the supposed father of Mashiach.
What?
Isn't that the same guy?
The supposed father is also thehusband, right?
How come they have twocompletely different
genealogies?
Who's lying here?
Matthew or Luke?
(51:47):
Well, that's because they gotone word wrong.
Because Joseph was also the nameof the father of Miriam.
Now, when you understand thatJoseph was the name of the
father, which Joseph?
Well, there's a guide that whenyou read it, and remember that
in Hebrew, In the biblicalHebrew, there's no of, just like
(52:08):
there is no is.
There's no word is and there'sno word of.
So they're inferred, if youwill.
They don't have to be in italicswhen you use of or is.
However, you see this guy talkedabout all the time, Joseph of
Arimathea.
And people are going, well,let's see, where's Arimathea?
Where would that land be?
Is it Ramallah?
Is it Aram?
(52:30):
What is this Arimathea?
Well, it's not a place.
There is no up.
It's Joseph Arama Thea.
And Arama Thea means first inthe divine line of kings.
So when you're reading Matthew1, you know, you have this
litany that goes from, you know,Abraham to David.
(52:51):
David becomes the king.
Then you have 14 kings in a row,David, Solomon, Rehoboam, et
cetera, until you get to thelast king, Yeconyahu.
Then every king after that iswhat they call an exilarch king.
from Shealtiel to Zerubbabel,all the way to Joseph, the
father of Miriam, exilarch king,directly in the line of David.
(53:14):
Miriam was his daughter.
And of course, if you believethe divine conception, then
there is no Y DNA, but the DNAin Miriam, who is of the line of
David, connects the Messiahdirectly to David.
Then he becomes the Ben David.
But only with that correction.
So that correction is extremelyimportant.
(53:36):
But to understand who Aramathaeais now is going to change the
entire understanding of thebirth of the faith in the New
Testament.
Because Aramathaea was one ofthe richest men in the world at
the time.
He controlled 70 ships.
He was responsible for all theshipping of tin and copper from
(53:58):
the British Isles into theMiddle East.
He was the one bringing it.
He was a member of the RomanSenate.
He was known as Nobilius deCuriae in the Roman Senate.
There's a huge Roman recordabout him.
He was also a member of theSanhedrin in the Holy Land.
But this is why, like when youlook at the death of Mashiach,
right?
(54:18):
He dies on the cross.
Joseph of Arimathea is the onethat goes to Pilate.
Now, think about this.
If somebody dies in your townand you're the rich guy, can you
go in and say this?
I'm the rich guy.
I want the body of the guy thatyou just crucified or that you
just executed.
No, who are you to take thebody?
Well, he had to be someone.
He had to be the patriarch ofthe family.
(54:40):
That's who he was.
He was the grandfather.
I'm here to get my grandson.
Now, there's been some rabbiswho say, oh, he was an uncle.
No, he was not the uncle.
He was the grandfather.
And so he is the one that cameto get the body, and he got the
body down before the Sabbathbegan in order to put him into
the tomb.
Well, the Ramathea is going tobe beaten by the Sanhedrin five
(55:02):
times once a year for the nextfive years because he was
proclaiming the name.
And so in the year 36 AD, heleaves and he leaves with his
daughter Miriam and he leaveswith 11 other disciples and they
come to Britain and theyestablish the faith in Britain.
They're in Cornwall and inWales.
(55:23):
And this begins the faith inBritain that is going to grow
for hundreds of years beforeConstantine is going to create
Catholicism.
And the path that was pushed outby Arimathea in Britain is the
ancient true path of the faith.
SPEAKER_02 (55:40):
Wow.
That's awesome.
I know why you say it's thecoolest part then.
Just exciting.
Amazing.
You know, we just have a fewminutes left.
I would love for you to have achance to address the critics.
I mean, I'm sure, you know, youalluded to it earlier.
(56:02):
I'm sure you've just beenhammered over this.
You know, I can only imagine,but what would you say to the
critics?
I mean, it sounds like youstarted this from a very genuine
place, you know, the path fortruth.
You know, I love the story.
What would you say to thecritics?
SPEAKER_04 (56:19):
Well, I would say, I mean, you know, first of all, We
try, you know, sometimes it'shard to accept criticism, you
know, because anytime evenconstructive criticism can be
hurtful.
You know, well, okay, yeah, I'mugly, right?
I'll try to do something.
I'll get a haircut.
Okay.
But, you know, we've had a lotof criticism come in about the
text.
And when we get criticism aboutthe text, I look and I go back
(56:43):
and I research it and researchit and research it and research
it and try to make sure that thetext is accurate, as accurate as
we can make it.
But some of the, some of thecriticism was just like, okay,
we're going to destroy you inthe public square.
We're going to completelydestroy you.
We're just going to smash youinto pulp.
We're going to, we're going tountil everybody hates your guts.
Now that kind of criticism wasvery difficult to take it.
(57:07):
I wanted to quit for a longtime.
There was about a year period.
I was going to quit.
I was just, that said, you know,I can do other things.
I don't have to do this.
I can go do other things.
I don't need to do this.
And, um, But there were peoplewho came alongside me and said,
no, you're not going to do that.
You're going to get back on thehorse and you're going to ride.
And it took me about six monthsto get to where I could do that.
(57:28):
And since then, there have beenother people.
There was a fellow that I thinkwas being paid to take apart the
Sefer cult, right?
He was putting out the feelerout there.
How many people, tell us whatit's like to come out of the
Sefer cult.
you know, well, it didn't flyvery well because we're not in a
cult.
(57:49):
And, you know, this is not aboutme at all.
This is about the text.
And, you know, when we talkabout the text, those who have
criticized us, I want to thankthose who have criticized us,
really.
Most of the critics have beenquite helpful.
Even the ones that wanted todestroy us, they nonetheless
have been helpful because wehave cleaned up our position.
You know, you come in, youthink, oh yeah, we got it all
(58:11):
together.
You don't, you know, you haveslop, right?
You think you're going to go outand race your car and you don't
realize that you forgot totighten this particular belt or
you forgot to do this or yourmuffler isn't on correct.
You find out when you startdriving at 110 miles an hour,
what you did wrong, right?
Well, and so we found that wehad peripheral stuff that was
sloppy, that should not havebeen a part of our ministry.
(58:32):
And so we kind of cut that stuffout and we, you know, pursued,
Ever so gradually, most of thecorrections, of course, are
in-house.
But we've had other people whohave said, I've discovered this,
I've discovered that, I'vediscovered this.
And we take a look and we go,yeah, those discoveries are
important.
Let's incorporate them into thetext.
And so to my critics, I want tosay thanks.
(58:53):
It's been hard.
It's been hard for me personallyto deal with some of the
criticism.
But nonetheless, it has createda weathered product.
You know, the sword was plungedinto the cold water and
survived.
And so now we have the swordthat is the word in a scripture
that is now, and Ashley, I'lltell you, I'll just share this
(59:14):
with you.
It's being broadly accepted now.
When we went into Italy topresent some of the ideas in the
Sefer, we were in Italy and Iwas expecting to be, you know, I
didn't know how I was going tobe received there.
We were talking to pastors inMilano, we were talking to
pastors up in Lugano and pastorsin Sicily, you know.
(59:35):
and very warmly received.
Particularly when I asked themthe question, you know,
UNKNOWN (00:00):
,
SPEAKER_04 (59:42):
what is the name of the Lord?
What is the name of the Father?
They wanted to know.
And for a lot of the Christianchurches now, we're seeing a
huge crisis of faith in theChristian church.
And I think that crisis is goingto get even higher because the
United States is about tosacrifice Israel on the altar of
(01:00:04):
global hegemony.
That's about to happen.
It almost happened here lastmonth, and it's about to happen
again.
And when Israel is sacrificedfor American hegemony, a lot of
the Christian churches are goingto go, wait a minute, weren't we
told this?
Weren't we told that?
Weren't we told the other thing?
And the answer is that you needto go back and look carefully at
(01:00:28):
the text.
And the beauty of the Sefer isthat as challenging as it is,
And this is something that Ilearned about raising children.
You know, Dostoevsky once saidthis.
When you talk to a child, don'ttalk baby talk to a child.
Talk intelligent speak to thechild.
Speak at a full adult level andmake the child come up to
understand what you're talkingabout.
Don't baby talk them, right?
SPEAKER_02 (01:00:50):
Totally agree, yeah.
SPEAKER_04 (01:00:51):
And it's the same thing with the text.
The text is difficult to read.
And, you know, you're like, Idon't know that name.
I don't, why is this name here?
I don't understand this.
But when you start plowingthrough it, what we have found
is people who could not read aBible because of its, you know,
look, when you think about theaverage Bible, you know, you,
you know, you open it up, you'vegot block text, right?
(01:01:13):
And first of all, all-cap textis not English language.
That's symbologized Latin.
It's incorrect.
It's grammatically incorrect.
You've got these block texts.
You have everything in justifiedcolumns.
Some Bibles are four-point font.
They've got five columns on onepage.
You've got a four-point font.
And it's impossible to read.
And yet somebody is saying, haveyou read your Bible yet?
I don't know.
(01:01:33):
I can't read that.
It's the most hostileenvironment you could imagine
for the eyes to see.
right
SPEAKER_03 (01:01:41):
yeah it
SPEAKER_04 (01:01:42):
is i took a look at that and i went okay look you
know look no no block text noall caps all caps you know we
used to have that we used tohave the the first number of the
chapter a three space bold andthen we'd have the first word in
bold all caps therefore you knowso you're reading along you know
and yeah and then they went tojerusalem chapter three
(01:02:05):
therefore The Messiah then wasbaptized.
Why did we have this screamingat you?
Why was this so important?
Why did this have to be liftedup into this higher?
Nonsense.
That's just nonsense.
How about something polite andkind and smooth and that's
gentle on the eyes and it'swell-marked.
(01:02:26):
You have landmarks.
You can see, oh, okay.
Yeah, there's the header.
Okay, here's the chapter number.
Okay, that's big enough for meto see.
And, you know, so the space andthe font is big enough.
Like when you look at, now seethis sepher, right?
Here, let me see if I can, letme see if I can.
Well, anyway, this sepher, wehave this font here.
(01:02:50):
This is a black chancery font.
I like that font.
It's kind on the eyes.
It's kind.
So you look at it and go, oh,yeah, okay, that's easy.
And so we have this idea ofhaving easiness on the eyes,
gentleness in the approach.
So when you open up the text,you're going, yeah, okay, I can
be here, right?
I can be in this spot.
(01:03:10):
And then when you begin to seethat the language has been
changed up from this kind offormalized KJV language into
some language that's palatable,Well, now we find people that
are reading the text that couldnever read the Bible before.
They're reading hundreds ofpages, hundreds of pages.
And they're having that sameexperience that we had in the
(01:03:32):
Bible study in 2008, 2009, whereyou're just bouncing off the
ceiling with excitement aboutwhat you're reading.
Really?
Is that story really there likethat?
Did that really go on?
Yeah, yeah, that's whathappened.
And you start asking, and all ofa sudden it's like, you know,
when you have one of those lightbulb moments, oh, wow, like,
(01:03:54):
here, let me give you a lightbulb moment.
Luke, right?
Luke tells you quite explicitlywhen the Messiah was born.
He tells you very, it's, youdon't see it if you don't, if
you haven't read the whole book,you don't see it.
But he starts out, he says, oh,yeah, Zechariah, who was in the
course of Aviyahu, What's thecourse of Aviyahu?
(01:04:16):
Who knows?
I'm not going to ask myself thatquestion and I'm not going to
bother to look.
But if you did bother to look,you know that the course of
Aviyahu was the 10th course ofpriests, which means he was
working in the month of July,which means Elizabeth got
pregnant in the month of July,which means she gave birth in
the month of March to John theBaptist, which was exactly six
months before the Messiah wasborn, putting his birth right in
(01:04:36):
September.
Just boom, just like that.
Proof right there in Luke.
Then you get to this interestingpassage in Luke 3 where he's
talking about this genealogy ofthe Messiah through Joseph, the
supposed father.
And he goes, here's all thesenames.
Like those guys don't appear inMatthew 1.
Well, forget about that.
Let's just take it from theMessiah and let's count down.
(01:04:58):
Well, the book of Enoch saysthat the demons, the disembodied
rule code, the demons would belocked in the earth for 70
generations.
When you count in Luke fromMessiah and you count down to
70, you get to Enoch.
(01:05:19):
Mind-boggling.
And in that count, there is thisguy named Canaan.
Canaan, the son of Shelach.
What?
That doesn't appear in Genesis.
That doesn't appear in 1Chronicles.
That doesn't appear anywhere.
What are you talking aboutCanaan, the son of Shelach?
Where'd you get that?
And so all the commentators foryears ignore that name, pretend
(01:05:40):
it doesn't exist.
Who knows?
Luke came up with something.
He's harebrained here.
It's, you know, it was probablyan ad.
We don't know what it is, right?
And then we find out it's rightthere in the book of Jubilees,
chapter eight, tells you exactlywho he was, tells you exactly
who he was.
You know, anyway, these are thekinds of things, these light
bulb moments, right?
When you see these kinds ofthings and it's just like, oh
(01:06:02):
yeah, okay.
And we have, they're stillongoing.
for us.
They're still ongoing.
We have light bulb moments allthe time.
SPEAKER_02 (01:06:09):
Well, thank you.
I'm going to have to check thisout, obviously.
This has really been quiteinteresting and illuminating to
me personally.
I hope our audience has enjoyedit as much as I have.
It's probably a great place towrap.
I would love for you to hold onjust a second and talk to you a
little bit off camera for a fewmore minutes before I let you
go.
But Dr.
(01:06:29):
Steven Pidgeon, thank you somuch for your time and for
joining the show.
You want to give your websiteout one more time.
I want to make sure people havea chance to check out your work.
SPEAKER_04 (01:06:38):
Yeah, sure.
If you want to come over tosephir.net, C-E-P-H-E-R dot net.
And we have, we've got, I thinkI have like 400 blogs that will
tell you about what we do.
We've got lots of free resourcesand free downloads.
And, you know, there's plenty ofresources on the site,
sephir.net.
SPEAKER_02 (01:06:57):
Awesome.
Thank you, Dr.
Pigeon.
Great to meet you.
SPEAKER_04 (01:06:59):
You bet.
Thanks, Ashley.
Thanks for having me here.
SPEAKER_02 (01:07:02):
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sleeping through the night,every night.
Visit igniton.com and use codeASHLEY10 to get 10% off your
(01:08:50):
first order.
That's igniton.com,I-G-N-I-T-O-N.com.
And the code is Ashley10 for 10%off your first order.
Igniton, born from light, backedby science.
SPEAKER_00 (01:09:08):
Thanks for listening to Ashley on Nothing But The
Truth for a better you and me.
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