From: Norman Willis
To: heb_roots_chr@hebroots.org
Subject: Was the NT written in Hebrew?

Was the "New" Testament originally written in Greek, or in Hebrew?

BY NORMAN WILLIS TEACHER AND MEMBER OF
UNION OF TWO HOUSE MESSIANIC CONGREGATIONS.

As a young Christian man I was taught that Yahshua haMashiach ("Jesus
the Messiah") came to do away with the Torah of Moshe (Moses), and
that He did away with the Jews and Israel as YHWH's chosen people. I
was told that YHWH's people are now the Greek-speaking gentiles, and
that one of the most telling indications of this was that the "New
Testament" was originally inspired in Greek, and not in Hebrew. Yet
today we know that this is not true.

The church argues that the Nazarene Writings (often called the Brit
Chadasha or the "New" Testament) were written in Greek. They give a
number of reasons for this, chief among which is that Sha'ul (Paul)
was given the mission to take the Good News to the gentiles. Since
Paul spoke Greek, and since the language of the majority of the Roman
Empire was Greek, they say that it only makes sense that Sha'ul would
have written his epistles in Greek. I believed that for a long time,
until I actually started thinking about it. Then some thing did not
add up.

I first began to doubt that the Nazarene Writings were written in
Greek after reading the preface to the ISR Scriptures. I began to
wonder about some things. For example, why would a Hebrew write to
the Hebrews in any other language than Hebrew? It just does not make
any sense.

I mean, think about it. I was born an American, and my native tongue
is English. In directing this letter to the Americans (and other
English-speaking peoples worldwide) I naturally chose English as the
language of expression. Though I do speak German and Spanish, and
although many people in America and around the world speak German and
Spanish, in addressing a letter to the Americans I unhesitatingly
chose English, which is the native tongue of the land. That is what
anybody would do, given a similar situation, in trying to communicate
with a people is to write to them in the language that they know.

The language of the Jews was Hebrew, as it is to this day. For this
reason, it only seems logical that the Hebrew Sha'ul must have
written the Book of Hebrews for the Hebrews in Hebrew, and not in
Greek. So if the book of Hebrews had obviously been translated from
Hebrew in to Greek, then I began to wonder how many of the other
books of the Nazarene Writings had been translated out of the Hebrew
and in to Greek?

As I continued to study, I learned that the Book of Matthew was
acknowledged by the early church fathers to have been written in
Hebrew, and not in Greek. I obtained a copy of the original Hebrew
manuscript. In it were quotes by several of the early church
fathers: Papias, Ireneus, Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius, Jerome, and
Isho'dad, all acknowledging that the Book of Matthew was originally
written in Hebrew, and not in Greek, and I was holding a copy of it
in my hands!

So now it seemed that the Book of Matthew and the Book of Hebrews had
both been written in Hebrew, and not Greek. That being the case, I
began to wonder what other books in the Nazarene Writings had been
originally penned in Hebrew? Was it possible that the entire "New"
Testament had originally been written in Hebrew, rather than Greek?
Was the Textus Receptus a translation?

Then I learned from Messianic Israeli Rabbi Edward Nydle that Sha'ul
had not actually been sent to the gentiles like we always think of
gentiles, but that the "gentiles" of Scripture were in actual fact
the physical blood-descendants of the Lost Ten Tribes! I learned
that the orthodox rabbis had ruled in the Babylonian Talmud that they
should no longer be called Israelites, but should be
called "gentiles," because they no longer kept Torah, and no longer
lived in the Land. Thus the Orthodox rabbis called them "gentiles,"
as it is to this day.

Then I learned that the "Greeks" of Scripture were not the Nike-and-
Zeus worshipping pagan "Greeks" that we think of at all, but rather
were Hellenized Jews! The word "Greeks" meant "Greek-speaking Jews
who grew up in a Greek culture." This meant that when Sha'ul was
ministering to the "Greeks," he was not ministering to pagans at all,
but that he was ministering to the scattered and lost children of
Jacob (Israel) who were still out in the nations from the Diaspora
and the Babylonian Exile!

When I looked through the Book of the Acts of the Nazarene Israeli
Apostles, I began to notice something funny. It seemed that except
for the time that he went to Mars Hill, Sha'ul always went in to the
synagogues, to preach to the "gentiles" and the "Greeks" on the
Sabbath day. But would true "gentiles" and "Greeks" even have been
in the synagogues on the Sabbath day? No! Only Israelites and
Hellenized Jews would have been in the synagogues on the Sabbath!

The "gentiles" and "Greeks" that we have always been told that
Sha'ul's was sent to minister to were in actual fact Diaspora
Israelites of the Northern Kingdom of Israel (the Lost Ten Tribes),
and the Hellenized Jews of the Diaspora and the Babylonian Exile,
respectively. They are not the same as what we in Christian culture
think of as Greeks and gentiles at all.

The Greek-gentile story I was fed as a child was not passing the
reality-check, and neither was the story that the "New Testament" was
originally written in Greek. Consider the following:

If you were Sha'ul, writing an epistle to the people who were in the
synagogues on the Sabbath, what language would you write to them in?
Think carefully.

Go to any synagogue anywhere in the world, and the Jews that you find
there will all be speaking Hebrew. It makes no difference what
country they are in; India, Russia, Czechoslovakia, or whatever: All
Jews the world over, speak Hebrew in the synagogues. Thus what makes
the most sense is that Sha'ul wrote his epistles to the synagogues
throughout the Greek and Roman world in Hebrew!

Now I will grant you that it is possible that Sha'ul maybe wrote some
of his epistles in Greek. We don't know. It is also possible that
Sha'ul, being a learned man chosen of YHWH, perhaps wrote his
epistles first in Hebrew, and then also copied them down in to Greek
at the same time. Perhaps he even wrote to the assembly in Rome in
Latin as well (triplicate?), since we are told that Sha'ul spoke
Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. We don't know for sure what he did.

Yet it does seem likely that at least the Book of Hebrews was written
in Hebrew, and we know for a fact that the Book of Matthew was
originally written in Hebrew, and then translated in to Greek,
probably so as to establish greater currency throughout the Greek-
speaking world. And if those two books were written in Hebrew
(although we were always told that they were written in Greek) then
how many other books in the Ketuvim Netzarim (the Nazarene Writings)
were originally written in Hebrew, and only later translated in to
Greek?

And there is more. The Explanatory notes at the back of the
rendition of the Scriptures put out by the Institute for Scripture
Research indicates certain textual criticisms in the Book of the
Revelation which indicate that it was also written in Hebrew.
Revelation 19:16 reads that Yahshua will return with the words "KING
OF KINGS AND MASTER OF MASTERS," written across his thigh. That's
not right. The word "thigh" should read "banner," instead.

The problem with the word "thigh" is that if the words are written on
Yahshua's thigh, then they are speaking of a tattoo, but Leviticus
19:18 forbids us to make tattoos on our bodies. But we know that
Yahshua would never get a tattoo, because Yahshua would never break
Torah, because He tells us Himself in the Sermon on the Mount that He
did not come to break the Torah or to do away with it (Matthew 5:17-
20).

We know that sin is a transgression of the Law (1 John 3:4), so if
Yahshua has a tattoo on his thigh, then He will be breaking the Law,
which means He will be sinning. Yet we know that this can not be,
because Yahshua is without sin.

Further, we know that a person whose thigh is exposed is considered
naked in Hebraic thought (Mark 14:51, see also Shemot/Exodus 28:42),
and we know that Yahshua would never come immodestly dressed, since
He is our example. He would keep His thighs covered, especially in
battle.

What makes more sense is to acknowledge that the Book of the
Revelation must have been written in Hebrew. A particular letter in
Hebrew that represents the "d" sound (called the "dalet") has a small
stub on the end of one of the pen strokes, while a very similar
looking letter representing the "r" sound (called a "resh") does
not. It is easy for translators to mistake the two, especially when
the scroll is old, damaged, or when the translators don't know Hebrew
that well. Constantine's Catholic translators might easily have
confused the dalet for a resh.

If a scribe translating the Book of the Revelation from Hebrew (or
possibly Aramaic) in to Greek mistook the "d" for an "r", then the
word "dagel" (banner) becomes "ragel" (thigh), and you have Yahshua
breaking Torah, wearing a tattoo on a naked thigh. Given the fact
that Yahshua said that the Torah would not pass away until heaven and
earth pass away, this is impossible. It would make Yahshua an
immodest sinner with naked thighs!

When you understand that Yahshua came not to do away with the Law,
but rather to show how best to keep it, the image of Yahshua
galloping around with a tattoo on a naked thigh becomes ludicrous.
Yet a Roman Catholic scribe translating in to the Greek would not
have caught the mistake, because the Catholics teach (against
Scripture) that Yahshua did away with the Law.

So once again we have to ask the question: "If the books of Matthew,
Hebrews and Revelation were originally written in Hebrew, and those
in the synagogues where Sha'ul ministered were Hebrews, probably
speaking Hebrew in the synagogues, then how much of the Nazarene
Writings were originally written in Hebrew? Was it all written in
Hebrew?" Have we been told that the Brit Chadasha was originally
penned in Greek for someone's political reasons?

Then I learned something that convinces me beyond a shadow of a doubt
that the Glad Tidings were originally written in Hebrew. Moshe
Koniuchowsky sent out an amazing message to those on his email
listing. It provides incontrovertible proof that all four of the
Good News ("gospels") must have been originally written in Hebrew
[or perhaps Aramaic, which was also spoken widely in the area where
Yahshua and His disciples grew up, around Nazareth and the Galilee.]

Moshe explained that in the Babylonian Talmud, there is a section
where the orthodox rabbis discuss how to destroy the Good News
(the "Gospels"), which they term the "Gilyon." This word "Gilyon" is
the same word that is used in the Peshitta of the Eastern Orthodox
Church, a set of Scriptures originally written in Aramaic, and
carried forward in Aramaic to this day. [It is possible that
Yahshua's native tongue may have been Aramaic. Aramaic is to Hebrew
like Scottish is to English. There is a strong accent, and some
spellings differ, but native speakers have little difficulty in
understanding one another.]

The Orthodox Jewish rabbis are recorded in the Babylonian Talmud at
Shabbat 116A (and in the Jerusalem Talmud at Shabbat 15C, and the
Tosefta Shabbat at 13:5) as discussing how to properly handle sacred
Torah scrolls that need to be taken out of service. They go to great
length to identify the proper procedure for retiring any scroll that
contains the Divine Name, even if it has holes or blank spaces in it,
perhaps due to age, or cracking of the parchment or skins.

The custom among the Orthodox was to bury old Torah scrolls, much the
same as one would respectfully bury the dead. This was considered
the reverent way to go about disposing of an old Torah scroll, even
one with cracks, holes or tears in it. This custom (or tradition)
continues to this day.

Most would consider that it is improper ever to burn a Torah scroll,
because burning with fire was the prescribed means of destroying what
is heretical, and unclean. The rabbis felt that it was improper to
burn the Torah scroll in the same manner as one might burn something
unclean, because it would seem disrespectful. Therefore they
normally buried their Torah scrolls even if the scroll was damaged,
had holes or blank spaces, or if it was reduced to cracked
fragments. The point was to respect YHWH's Torah.

The conversation gets involved, but one rabbi writes of burning some
scrolls that have holes (blank spaces) in them. Another rabbi asks
him if he means Torah scrolls, or some other scrolls. The first
rabbi responds that no, he is talking about burning some scrolls that
belong to the Minim, or the Nazarene Israeli "heretics." He is
talking about burning the Nazarene Writings (or the Brit Chadasha).

The Orthodox did their best to stamp out the Minim (the Nazarenes),
and also to destroy all of their writings (the early Brit Chadasha)
so as to keep other Jews from being "defiled" by belief in Yahshua.
In the Babylonian Talmud at Shabbat 116A the rabbis argue about how
to destroy scrolls that they consider heretical, yet which have the
Divine Name of YHWH written on them.

One Orthodox rabbi in the Talmud wrote that the scrolls should be
burned. Another rabbi dissented, saying that scrolls with the Divine
Name written on them should never be burned. Another rabbi argues
that the Minim (Nazarene) scrolls should have the Divine Name cut out
of them on a day that is not a Sabbath day, and then whatever is left
of the scrolls (with the holes cut out of them) should be burned.
Another entry claims that the Minim scrolls are such an abomination
that they should be burned without even bothering to cut the Divine
Name out of them, but just to burn the things, because they are so
odious to him.

The point is that the Orthodox rabbis were admitting that the
original writings of the Minim (the Nazarene Israelites) had the
Divine Name of YHWH in them in Hebrew. These can not be the same
books that we read of today in the Greek Textus Receptus ("Received
Text"), where the words "Theos" and "Kurios" are used. Why? Because
we read in the Talmud that the original Nazarene Writings had the
Divine Name of YHWH written on them. And we know that the Name was
written in the Hebrew (YHWH/YHVH), because the Orthodox Rabbis would
not have made such a fuss over any scroll with the Greek
words "Theos" and "Kurios." They would have just burned the scroll
without further comment. It was only the fact that the Name was
written in Hebrew that caused controversy! ...

The more I read and the more I learn, the more convinced I become
that the Scriptures must have been originally inspired in Hebrew, or
perhaps in Aramaic, but definitely not in Greek. We can still get
along with the Greek text, just so long as we understand that Messiah
Yahshua was speaking Hebrew or Aramaic, and not Greek.

As long as we get it in to our heads that Yahshua came not to replace
Israel and the Torah, but to show people how better to keep the
Torah, then we have a chance of getting it right. He came not to
replace what He Himself handed down to Moses in the Wilderness, but
to clarify it. Otherwise, when Yahshua, Moses and Elijah (Eliyahu)
were all standing there together in the transfiguration on the Mount
of Olives, talking amongst one another, why did Yahshua not rebuke
them for teaching the wrong thing?

But He did not rebuke Moses and Elijah for teaching or doing the
wrong thing, because the Son of Man did not come to do away with the
Torah, the Hebrew language, or the Israeli people. He came, rather,
to save that which was lost.

Love in the Master
Norman Willis

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From: Daniel Rendelman
To: heb_roots_chr@hebroots.org
Subject: More proof of Sacred Name use in the NT

I thought you would find this information enlightening:

The New International Dictionary of the New Testament Theology (Volume
2, page 512) says: "Recent textual discoveries cast doubt on the
idea that the compilers of the LXX (Septuagin) translated the
tetragrammaton YHWH by kyrios. The oldest LXX MSS (fragments) now
available to us have the tetragrammaton written in Hebrew characters
in the Greek text. This custom was retained by later Jewish
translators of the Old Testament in the first centuries A.D."

From this piece of information it is easy to conclude that when
Yahshua and his disciples used Yahweh's name and that the New Testament
writers indeed included the tetragrammaton in their original
writings.

Shalom,

Daniel Rendelman

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