Is the Bible the word of God? Yes, it is, but mostly not from God, directly: it is a human endeavor to interpret the proper meaning of the Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin words that the Bible was originally written in over the millennia.

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For a couple of years, I was attending a Hebraic Roots congregation and was honored to be able to give the Shabbat message on a regular basis. One time, I said that the Bible was a book about God, but it wasn’t God, and someone (a man I respect and know to be faithful) stood up and walked out on me!

So many people believe that the Bible is the direct, absolute, and holy word from God, himself, to the point where they almost worship the physical book they are holding as if it was God!
And then they write all over it!

God is never changing, right? He is the same today, yesterday, and tomorrow, but the Bible is not unchanging, and certainly every single Bible out there is not the same.

Did you know that under copyright laws that if I published a Bible and copyrighted it, that if someone else wanted to publish a Bible, their Bible must have hundreds- yes, hundreds!- of words different from mine, otherwise it is a violation of the copyright law.

Did you also know that the Bible is available in no less than 704 languages? Now, we all know that old adage about how something is lost in the translation, right? Well, since the Torah (the first 5 books) is the ONLY place in the entire Bible where God speaks to us, directly (with Moses taking dictation), that is the only place where we can trustfully say is the word of God. And that being true only if written in the Hebrew.

FYI: when the Sofer (scribe) writes a new Torah scroll, he copies every single letter directly from an older scroll, and at the end of each page counts every letter to ensure that there isn’t anything missing. That is why the Torah scroll, in Hebrew, is the only dependable source document where we can say it is the Word of God because it has been copied exactly for millennia.

The Bible is not God- it is a book about God (everyone still here?). As such, when we read it, depending on the version we are using, we have to remember that we cannot take every single word as what God really said.

So, nu? If I can’t believe what I am reading in the Bible, how can I believe in what the Bible says?

By using discernment, asking the Ruach haKodesh (Holy Spirit) to guide your understanding, and more than anything else, to read the Bible many times, using a couple of different versions, so that you can get a rounded education and better understand what seems to be more in line with how God works.

I know, I know- God says do not add to or take away from anything he says, but if we go along with that then we really have to reject the entire New Covenant as having any influence in our worship or lifestyle, separate from the Torah commandments, because it isn’t from God.

The New Covenant is written by men: it has the eyewitness accounts of the life and ministry of Yeshua (that’s the Gospels), the narrative of experiences that the Apostles (that’s Acts), the letters that Shaul and others wrote to congregations needing guidance because of the problems they were having (we call them the Epistles), and finally we have the vision John had, which is so difficult to understand in any language.

I am not saying to throw away the Bible, or not to trust it, or to ignore what you don’t like in it because you can just excuse it as being an improper interpretation by some human.

No!

What I am saying is that whichever version of the Bible you use, remember that it is a book about God written by someone who has tried to understand what the original language meant, and that the interpretation will be affected by whichever “original” language that interpreter is working from, not to mention the person’s individual understanding, knowledge, and bias (which is always going to be present).

The way to feel comfy cozy with your Bible is to read a couple of different versions, read them often from front to back (Genesis to Revelation), and use discernment and hermeneutics to determine which version sounds the most like the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as he describes himself in the Torah.

I can’t speak for God, and would not even think of trying, but I believe that when he told us who he is and what he wants of us in the Torah that he is saying we don’t need to know anything else about how to worship him and how to treat each other. In the rest of the Old Covenant, we learn what to expect from the Messiah, and the Gospels tell us of the life of the Messiah.

It is then up to each and every one of us to accept or reject that Yeshua is the Messiah God promised to send.

Thank you for being here and please shares these messages with everyone you know. That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!

We all know there are 12 tribes of Israel, and that 2-1/2 tribes settled east of the Jordan, while the remaining 9-1/2 tribes settled in what was then Canaan. Later, under Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, the kingdom was split into two: Judah and Benjamin in the South (Judea) and the remaining tribes in the North (Shomron, also called Israel).

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Assyria, under Tiglath Pilesar III, destroyed the tribes of Gad, Reuben, and half of Manasseh who were living in the lands of Og and Sichon (east of the Jordan) sometime around 733 BCE. Later, in or around 722 BCE, Assyria also conquered the Northern kingdom of Shomron, dispersing the remaining 7-1/2 tribes throughout the world.

The remaining tribes of Judah and Benjamin, by now almost totally absorbed by Judah, remained in the Southern Kingdom until they were also conquered and displaced by Nebuchadnezzar II in 587 BCE.

After Babylon destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, which is where the records of the tribal lineages were kept, from that time on no knows which tribe they belong to. This is devastating because, for one thing, God commanded that only the descendants of the tribe of Levi may serve him in the office of Cohen (Numbers 3:5-10), and only the direct descendants of Aaron may be Cohen HaGadol (High Priest).

Another issue is when Messiah returns and the people are regathered, who is to live where? If we don’t know which tribe we are from, then we can’t live in our ancestral location, based on where Joshua assigned land to each tribe (Joshua 18:10).

Fortunately, God has done something to at least allow us to identify the descendants of Levi.

In 1997, a professor named Karl Skorecki (working with others in Haifa) found that within Jewish Cohanim, there appeared to be a different distribution of two specific “Y” chromosomes (which are passed down only through the father) from the rest of the Jewish male population, which are named YAP and DYS19. Later, in a 1998 study, they tested a total of six genetic markers and found a clear difference between the Cohanim population and the general Jewish population. They named this pattern the Kohen Modal Haplotype.

Of course, since this is science, there are those who refute the validity of their findings, but I believe when God, who created DNA, decided to separate the tribe of Levi for himself, he made sure that there would be more than just lineage records to identify his chosen priests. Now, science has finally caught up to God and discovered his genetic marker for Levites.

Many think that when Messiah returns and is king over the earth, that he will serve as king and high priest, but even if that is true, there will still need to be those to serve as subordinate priests, just as Moses had subordinates under him.

“Yo, wait a minute, Steve- that’s fine for the priests, but what about the ancestral home thing? How will that be resolved in the afterlife?“

That’s a good question, and my answer is that I don’t know. Based on the Bible telling us that there will be only a remnant who will be saved, and we know that this remnant will be composed of both Jews and Gentiles who have received salvation through their faith in Messiah Yeshua, perhaps the distribution of the land in the new earth will be done all over again? Maybe at that time, needing to know which tribe we are from, other than the Levites, won’t be necessary? To me, it doesn’t really matter that much: all I am concerned with is being on the winning side. Wherever I live in the afterlife, as long as I am in the presence of the Almighty, I am OK with it.

I have heard different theories about the lost tribes, that some Native American tribes are from Israel (due to the similarity in the religious beliefs), that the Danes are actually the tribe of Dan, and other such theories. Since the Diaspora is so large an area, who can really know? Jews are pretty much either Ashkenazi or Sephardic (European or Hispanic), so that might help to break-down the distribution of which tribes went where, but- again- really, who knows?

I don’t think it matters because there is only one tribe, Levi, which was specified by God to perform a specific service for him, and now we know how he has made sure we can know who they are.

I do know one thing for certain, and that is that I will be in the service of the Almighty because I have the genetic marker of a Levite.

Thank you for being here, and until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Collateral damage is what happens to the innocent bystanders when there is a conflict, and when God does things, such as the plagues of Egypt, the destruction of Shomron and Jerusalem (more than once), there were many righteous and innocent people who were killed.

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When I am talking with those who are agnostic or atheist, they very often justify their belief by saying a God who is supposed to be loving and forgiving and compassionate couldn’t allow so much suffering in the world. But, since there is suffering, and so often under God’s commands innocent men, women, and children (even animals!) have been slaughtered, well… something must be wrong, and they conclude it is that God doesn’t really exist.

As I see it, it isn’t that God doesn’t exist, but that their understanding about God not allowing suffering is what is wrong.

In Acts 10, when Kefa (Peter) realized that God allowed the Gentiles to receive the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit), he said that he now understood God is no respecter of men. What he meant was that God doesn’t treat anyone differently: he sees those who are faithful to him, and those who are not.

I have often stated that whereas people are wishy-washy, always trying to find the “gray” between black and white, God is strictly binomial; with God, it is, or it isn’t: you are, or you aren’t: is you, or isn’t you, my Baby?

This is what I have come to understand about God and explains why he allows suffering and the collateral damage that has been prevalent throughout our history, as it even is to this day (reference the October 7 attacks): God doesn’t really care that much about what happens to us while we are alive, as much as he cares where we will be after we are dead.

God is not like us (DUH!) because he is an eternal being of spirit, while we are mortal beings of flesh. We cannot see or understand the eternal, and everything we know must be relatable to an experience we have had. In other words, we are stuck in the physical.

But God is eternal, and as such he sees things on an eternal level. He cares about everyone, and he hates to see anyone die (Ezekiel 18), but not die in the sense we think: to us, to die means to stop living, but to God, to die means to be condemned in the afterlife. That is why he doesn’t really care what happens to us in this life, but what will happen after this life is over.

God allows suffering, and he allows collateral damages to the innocent not because he doesn’t care, and not because he doesn’t really exist, but simply because he is more concerned with our eternal existence than this mortal one.

Now, that may be hard for most people to understand, let alone accept, but I truly believe that is why there is so much suffering and collateral damage to the innocent in the world. We want God to be what we think he should be, but he doesn’t really care what we want him to be or to do. Sorry to burst any bubbles, but God does what God wants to do, and he doesn’t really care what you think he should be doing.

He does care about you, though, and wants you to do as he has instructed you to do (in the Torah, which is the way Yeshua lived) so that when you are on the same page as he is, you will be in his presence for all time.

I’ll finish with this: the answer to the age-old question, “Why am I here?” is this: you are here to choose where you will spend eternity. I recommend you choose wisely.

Thank you for being here and that’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and Happy Hanukkah!

When Donna and I were Docents at the Philadelphia Zoo, we were told when asked why animals are the way they are, not to use the words creation or evolution, but to use the word adaptation.

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The argument for evolution is problematic because most people think that evolution is a fact, but it is still only a theory. There has never been a scientifically valid proof that animals have mutated or evolved on their own into a different species.

For science to redesignate a theory as a fact, they must be able to recreate the event within a controlled environment. Obviously, since evolution needs millions of years to occur, record-keeping is obviously going to be difficult.

Now, as far as Survival of the Fittest is concerned, which is the keystone (so to speak) of evolution, it is undeniable that the current species of an animal is more adaptable than the earlier versions of that particular specie. Therefore, the existing specie is better adapted to the environment. Now, the question that remains is this: did that specie evolve into a more adaptable form, which had to be through mutation, or did a new specie arise, separate from the earlier one?

If an entirely new specie arose, that would seem to confirm creationism, yet it is clear that survival of the fittest also is at work here, so where can we find middle-ground?

That middle-ground is called Intelligent Design.

I believe in God and that God created all life forms, both past and present, as well as future. Yes, future- I don’t think he is done, yet. How many new species are still being discovered? According to the Internet, some 15,000-18,000 new species are discovered every year! Most of these are insects, but so what? Could it really be that with all the scientists and modern technology that so many tens of thousands of creatures have gone undiscovered for so long? Or, is God still turning them out?

Back to Intelligent Design… this is considered to be a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God- at least, according to Wikipedia. But if you look on the Internet, you will see many articles where scientists are beginning to claim that there must be an intelligence somewhere behind life because it is untenable to think all this diversity and all the close interrelationships between all forms of life could have just “happened”.

So, as frustrating as it is, we will never be able to know, for certain, if life was by accident, if adaptability to one’s environment has been the result of some beneficial mutation or from an intelligent design.
(I would love to have one example, ANY example, of any mutation within a species that was beneficial to that species. Anyone ever hear of that?)

At least, we won’t know until after the Apocalypse, when God reveals himself to the world. I think when the entire world sees Messiah coming to earth in glory, riding on the clouds, even the biggest doubters will have to admit there is something supernatural happening (they’ll probably say Yeshua is an alien).

The bottom line is there is no proof for creationism, no proof for evolution, and there is no proof for intelligent design, but there is a logical approach to the question how did life develop: does it really seem feasible that the remarkable diversity of life occurred by accident, or does it make more sense, since all living things have DNA, that some form of design by a superior intelligence is at work?

What do you think?

That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

This seems silly, doesn’t it? To ask how God views sin; I mean, isn’t it obvious that God sees sin as anything we do that he doesn’t approve of.

But what about the laws people make? Does God see doing 75 in a 45 mile per hour zone as a sin?

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When we read the Book of Leviticus, the first 7 chapters are all about the different offerings made to God, such as the sin, guilt, friendship, peace, and burnt offerings. But Chapter 4 has something in it that isn’t anywhere else and gives us the only really clear understanding of how God sees the sins we commit.

In Lev. 4:1 God identifies what offering is needed for a Cohen, for the community, or for an individual. But here is the important thing to note: he says, “If anyone sins inadvertently against any of the mitzvot of Adonai…”. He assumes that any sin we commit is by accident.

To me, this means that the way God sees our sins is that they are a mistake, done accidentally!

It is my belief (which you can agree with or not) that God is so holy, even though he knows and understands our nature, he still just can’t believe that someone would sin on purpose. If you were God, so holy, so powerful, so omniscient and so omnipotent, wouldn’t you find it impossible to think that any mere human would purposefully incur your anger?

I believe God sees sin as something that happens because we are weak and easily led astray by worldly influences, but not as a result of our purposefully ignoring him.

Sadly, I think he might have thought that back then, but today he knows there are so many who reject him, fully aware of what they are doing.

Even when we sin by mistake, even if we don’t know we did so, because God is holy and 1000% trustworthy, when he tells us that when we sin, we are guilty and will be punished, he means it! And if we fail to repent and ask forgiveness, as stipulated in the Book of Leviticus, we will not have a very happy eternity.

Of course, we can’t bring a sacrifice to the temple anymore (thanks to the Romans), but because Yeshua (Jesus) has our back, so to speak, it is through his sacrifice that we can find forgiveness. But we still have to confess, repent, and ask for God’s forgiveness. That part of the sacrificial system has never changed, which means for those who believe their sins are automatically forgiven, you’ve got a really nasty surprise coming to you.

So, there you have it. Sin is something we do, or don’t do, that goes against what God said we should, or should not, do, whether by mistake or on purpose.

Oh, wait a minute! What about my original question regarding how God sees a speeding violation. Hmmmm…. I would have to say that this is also a sin, not because it goes against anything God said, but because it goes against what our authorities have said- authorities which we are told are there because God put them there (Romans 13:1).

For myself, since I know the Torah tells us that as far as God is concerned, any sin we commit, whether we know about it or not, makes us guilty (Lev. 5:17), so every day in the morning, even before I have my first sip of coffee (that’s how important this is), I pray, and in that prayer I ask God for forgiveness of any sins I may have committed against him and also I ask for strength through the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) to sin less each day.

We can never be sinless, but we can always sin less.

I will never tell anyone what to believe or what they must do, but if you don’t mind, I think what I do is a good idea, and I strongly recommend it.

That’s it for today. Remember I always welcome your comments, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

In 1st Samuel 19, we are told that Mikhal, David’s wife and daughter of Saul, told David to hide from the assassins Saul had sent, and in verse 13 of that chapter we read that to fool the men sent to kill David, she took the household idol and placed it in his bed.

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So, nu? Here is a man who God, himself, said was a man after his own heart, yet he was violating the second commandment! And this isn’t the first time we read of God’s chosen people having idols in their homes.

Rachel stole the household idols from Laban when she fled with Jacob. Now, we won’t be surprised when we hear Laban had the household gods with him because he wasn’t a fearer of Adonai. Not really. But why did Jacob, who did fear Adonai, allow Rachel to take them? And why don’t we read of him getting rid of them, at least after Rachel died?

And then in the Book of Joshua, we read how when Joshua was ready to die, he told the people he and his house will serve the Lord, and to rid themselves of their idols.

And the prophets told the people to get rid of their idols, even when it is apparent that the people were also worshiping Adonai, since Adonai said (through more than one prophet) that the offerings were no good because the people didn’t really mean it (in other words, they were going through the motions without any real heartfelt desire), or that they had prostituted themselves serving other gods.

Yet, despite this blatant violation of one of the Big Ten, so many times God granted peace to the people and didn’t punish them. If Shaul (Paul) was relating this, he probably would say something like, “So, since the LORD didn’t punish them for having idols, does that mean idol worship is acceptable to God? Heaven forbid!”

(Because this is the way Shaul wrote to his congregations that he has been so misunderstood, with Christian scholars teaching the question as doctrine and ignoring the response.)

Putting this situation in modern terms, are there household idols in people’s houses, today? What about the TV? The computer? Cell phones? Have these replaced having dinner as a family, sharing experiences with each other? Or are we just people eating food while staring at our technological toys?

Being a Baby Boomer I grew up eating dinner with the family while watching TV (generally, it was “Superman”, followed by “Batman”) and I confess I have never really broken that habit. Donna and I still have our dinner watching TV. But when we are out together on a Date Night, we do a quick “Check in” on Facebook, then the phones are put away. And when we are cruising or on vacation, the phones are left in the safe in the stateroom, taken out only to take pictures with when at some port or on an excursion.

Maybe there are more idols in our lives than we care to admit, or even recognize since so much of what we do every day becomes habit, as we “auto pilot” our way through life. So, I would ask you to take a moment and look around- do you see anything, or do you do anything that in some way interferes with your worship of God (which must include close relationship with family and friends)?

I am not saying to Deep Six the 72″ HDTV, or to throw the cell phones in the river, but maybe, just maybe, once in a while we can all have a dinner without interruption, or spend time playing a board game with the family instead of binge watching “The Walking Dead”.

Who knows? You might find out you all have something in common.

Thank you for being here and please share these messages. Remember that I always welcome your comments.

That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!

I read a little in my Bible every day. I start at Genesis and go through to Revelation, then I start all over again. Recently, going through the Book of Joshua, I have seen some very discomforting similarities between what happened in those days, and what is happening today.

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When I read about the way the Israelites destroyed the enemies of God when they entered Canaan, killing men, women, and children, as well as their animals, then totally destroying what was left, I can’t help but think that it isn’t any different than what Hamas has been doing in Israel, today; even the taking of hostages is the same as back in ancient days, except that the men were never taken hostage, only the women.

So why is it that these things were OK in the Bible, but when Hamas does them today, they are atrocities?

Don’t get me wrong! I hate Hamas, and all terrorists who are doing these terrible things. They aren’t doing anything out of a sense of justice or to regain property, all they want to do is murder Jews. They aren’t freedom fighters, they aren’t doing God’s work (they are working for the Enemy of God), and they are nothing more than cowards and murderers.

I believe that if the Jews never got back to Israel, that land today would be just as fallow and barren as it was when we first came back in the late 1940s.

The enemies of Israel do not want peace, they want genocide.

When God has the Israelites destroy the people in Canaan some 3500 years ago, it was to cleanse the land of paganism and allow them to reclaim the land that was theirs, by God’s promise. If Joshua had done as he was told to do, we wouldn’t have these problems, today. But what Hamas is doing is very different. They aren’t trying to reclaim land promised to them; instead, their only desire is the destruction of all Jews.

Yes, 3500 years ago, when the world was a different place and societies were ruled by different laws of ethics, the Israelites did things as terrible and horrible as what is being done today, but it was done to rid the land of pagans who worshipped gods that required human sacrifice, were sexually debased, and cruel.

The need for total destruction of the people, even the children, was to rid the land of an infection of evil. Even so, God restricted this destruction to only those who were living in the land God had promised to Abraham. The surrounding lands and people were just as bad, but they were not on God’s “Hit List” because they didn’t live on the promised property; as such, they were allowed to remain (unless they came out against God chosen; if they did, they were decimated).

So, thinking more about it, I realize there is a difference, and that difference is the Jews destroyed pagans who were polluting the land, and they did so not from hate or desire to kill them, but to recover the land that was promised to them by God, and cleanse it of sinfulness.

But Hamas is destroying homes, schools, hospitals, and killing innocent people of all ages, not for land or to cleanse it of sin: NO! They are performing these atrocities just for fun.

I have it from a source living in Israel that the atrocities they have performed while killing babies includes accosting the mothers who were forced to watch. That is way more horrible than anything ever done by the Israelites of old.

The only motivation behind what Hamas is doing is not for land, or money, or religious cleansing- it is genocide, pure and simple. They don’t want the land: how do I know? Because they had it for centuries and they did nothing with it!

So, as horrible as the destruction done to the people who were the enemies of God back in the days when Israel first entered and recaptured their land may have been similar to the types of atrocities being done by Hamas, today, there is a significant difference: back then, they did what they were told to do by God in order to reclaim the land that belonged to them and cleanse the land of sinfulness.

What Hamas is doing today, and what the surrounding peoples have been doing to Israel ever since we came back into our land, has no justifiable reason, religious or otherwise- it is, pure and simple, murder for the sake of murder.

Hamas does not want anything other than to see every Jew in the world, starting with Israel, dead. Why? Just because we are Jews.

And, sad to say, that isn’t any different than what we Jews have heard for millennia: from the Crusades to the Inquisition to Nazi Germany to the Middle East, today. Hatred of the Jews will never end as long as HaSatan (the Devil) exists.

There is one thing, though, that also will never end- the God of Israel will not allow his chosen people to be destroyed, and when God has had his fill of these atrocities, he will send the Messiah back to finish off his enemies, for all eternity.

That’s it for today. Remember that I always welcome your comments, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!