Michael Brown's "The Real Kosher Jesus"

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

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James White. And good afternoon, good evening, wherever you're listening. Welcome to The Dividing Line on a

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Thursday afternoon. I am joined this afternoon, or this evening, I guess it's evening on the

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East Coast. It's still very much the afternoon here in the Valley of the Sun, where it's actually rather cool today in comparison to what it's normally like.

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But anyways, I'm joined today by Dr. Michael Brown, the author of the new book called The Real Kosher Jesus.

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And of course, there's a background to all this, which I will allow Dr. Brown. Does your voice hold up pretty well?

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Because you just got done with two hours of radio, didn't you? Oh yeah, two hours of radio and ready to go, man.

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Looking forward to our hour together. Well, most of you know I am often listening to the sonorous tones of my friend from New York as I'm riding along.

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Sometimes what happens is whatever I'm listening to, I get done with it and I'm just sort of looking around in my iPod for something.

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And just recently, for example, I went over the line of fire stuff and for some reason it hadn't updated for quite some time.

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So I'm listening to stuff from like, I don't know, back in April, May, something like that. I forget what it was. And I'm always looking around, looking for some

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Jewish stuff or sometimes you just wander off into some really interesting areas. And I think the last time

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I did something like that, you were doing... What was it you were doing? It was supposed to be funny. I forget what it was, but it's very, very entertaining.

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I was actually listening live today. Unfortunately, I got interrupted. Did you figure out who the

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Islamic Antichrist is? No, I didn't. Here's the big thing to me, though, regardless of anyone's eschatology, what was most important to me is that people take

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Islam seriously and they recognize the global threat it is. They recognize God's purposes for the

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Muslim people. And in that context, I mentioned you, Dr. White, is one of the few and far between Christians who's taking on Islam apologetically.

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And what is it, something like one full -time missionary for every one million Muslims? Oh, yeah. It's ridiculous. It's almost non -existent, though the

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Lord still is doing a work, especially in Africa in that way. But especially when it comes to interacting with Islam on an apologetic basis, really dealing with...

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There's so much work that needs to be done, for example, in the history of the Quran and the history of the Hadith. There's just so much fruitful area there, but so few people.

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And of course, it's not exactly like people are flocking to do that kind of work, because people who publish in that area then end up living in fear the rest of their lives.

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And so it is a real, real challenge, and one that I know you've mentioned you want to possibly start looking a little bit more into that area sometime, especially given your background, dealing especially with some of the

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Quranic issues. It would be great to have you along. It's not like you've got nothing else to be doing.

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No, it's important, though. I had three years of classical Arabic, and of course my degrees are in Semitic studies.

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And some of my classes, my advanced Arabic classes, I had very religious Muslims in the class. In fact, there was one late afternoon class that we had, late afternoon, early evening, and it worked out that it fell during a prayer time.

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But there was a guy from Sudan, and then there were a couple of Muslims, black Muslims, not

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Nation of Islam, but black Americans who were Muslims. They were there, but they had different traditions as to when they were supposed to pray.

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So it's just like a mitered church split. They would actually go out at separate times with their prayer mats to pray because they were from different traditions.

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But to me, the greatest strength that we have in dealing with Muslims is the religious ones work so hard, and yet they have no assurance of forgiveness of sins and no concept of Allah as a loving father.

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And that, to me, is just a foundational need in every human being, to know God as a loving father and to have assurance of forgiveness.

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And that is the one thing that Islam cannot deliver, no matter how it's packaged. That's for sure. I have said many, many times that theology matters, and it really does in that area.

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Well, I was just speaking up in Boulder, and we had a Muslim attend two of the three nights, and we had excellent conversations with him afterwards.

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And one of the saddest things, and you especially, because I listened to—when did you do the program?

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It was just recently. You did a program on the vital importance of repentance.

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You had people calling in, and what's the relationship between faith and repentance? That was within the past week or so, wasn't it? Yeah, or within the past few weeks.

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I mean, I'll tell you what. I've done some shows on counterfeit grace and some of the anti -repentance teaching, and because of that, it's obviously a recurring theme, and it's such a foundational lack in the church today.

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So, it's certainly within the last month I touched on it afresh. Right, right. I heard the program, and I'm sitting there, of course, riding along going,

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Okay, Michael, you're almost there. You're almost—keep going. You're almost there. Because, obviously, that's an issue

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I've actually debated against Dr. Robert Wilkin, who's one of the primary proponents of the no -repentance perspective.

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But in talking with this Muslim on the second night that we spoke, the first night we spoke, he says—and we're going to get to the book here in a second, but when you and I start talking, we just talk fast anyways.

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But the first night, he said, you know, one of the biggest struggles I have is, you know, how could

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God become flesh? And, you know, it was a good discussion of what we really do mean by the incarnation, what we don't mean by the incarnation.

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It was great. Then the second night that we talked, he said, well, I'll be honest with you. Every Christian I've talked to—and this is what was so sad.

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He says, every Christian I've talked to, one of my biggest problems is, you believe in the golden ticket. Now, normally,

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I'm left going—normally, I have a response, but I'm like, the golden ticket? He says, yeah, you believe that all you have to do is believe in Jesus, and then you can just go and do whatever you want.

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There's no personal responsibility. You just got your ticket punched. You're going to heaven. And I was really troubled when he said, every

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Christian that had bothered to talk to him had had that view. And I was like, well, actually, that's not what the

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Bible teaches. Let me tell you what the Bible teaches. And he was amazed when I went through, you know, Paul saying, shall we continue in sin, the grace of men increase, and so on and so forth.

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He was amazed at that, and I hope that a seed was planted, an opportunity for further dialogue with him.

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But so many Muslims have the idea that, in essence, to be a

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Christian means you don't believe in any personal responsibility. Jesus just did everything, and you just, you know, you can just go live like the world.

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And many of them look at the West and say, see, there it is, because they look at the

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West as being Christian. And, of course, it's about as far from that as it could be. Right, and often in dealing with Jewish rabbis through the years, they would take issue with instant forgiveness.

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On the one hand, the forgiveness through the cross is a scandal, that God forgives us because of what

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Jesus did and declares us not guilty because of what his son did is a scandal, because we always feel we somehow have to earn it.

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But the scandal comes to those who realize the impossibility of earning it, and then the debt of gratitude for the rest of my life.

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What must I do? How shall I live? And, you know, when I talk to people, I've tried to reduce this to sound bites, and I just, you know, try to emphasize salvation actually saves us.

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Salvation is from something to something. It's like if I give you a free ticket, you know, no one can get on this plane, it's booked 10 years in advance, it's a million dollars a ticket.

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I give you a free ticket, it's free, but when you get off the plane, you will be somewhere else.

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And, obviously, when people see the low standard of so -called Christianity, when they see the scandals in the church, when they see so many leaders, when it seems sometimes the most prominent superstars are the most riddled with scandals, it makes the name of Jesus look bad, it makes all of us look bad.

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And how is a Muslim or a traditional Jew supposed to discern who's the real

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Christian and who isn't when they just hear, quote, Christianity, and this, you know, the mixed martial arts guy cracks the guy's skull open in the name of Jesus, and, you know, the star in the

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R -rated movie taking off her clothes gives thanks to the Lord for giving her the opportunity to be in this movie.

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It's so hard to distinguish what's going on. Just a little bit. Now, you just made reference to Jewish rabbis, which is a nice way of transitioning.

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Segue. Segue here with the professional radio man. Yes, okay.

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I will have to admit, I remember the first time I ever heard you in a debate with Rabbi Shmuley Botiach, okay?

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I remember exactly where I was. And I wanted to jump off my bike and beat my head against a rock just for a little while to feel better.

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Because you were so wonderfully patient. And Shmuley was so wonderfully completely missing everything that you were saying that I was just like, okay, obviously

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God has given to Michael a special gift of grace that he is able to do this and do it over and over again.

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And I've had that situation. I know there are certain, for example, Islamic apologists, I get along real well with them.

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Other people that deal with them don't get along with them at all. And vice versa. There's some people I can't get along with at all and other people can.

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So obviously there's personal stuff involved and things like that. But you've got a long relationship with Shmuley.

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And that's where this all comes from. So why don't you tell me a little bit about that relationship and his book,

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The Kosher Jesus, as the background to yours. Yeah, absolutely. And I do have a profound love for Shmuley.

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And I often love to see how he turns a conversation or a debate in the direction that he desires it to go.

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Sometimes I like to raise my hand and say, excuse me, that's actually not the subject of the debate. But he's brilliant at it.

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And we have become dear friends. So here's the background. In the early 2000s, he was on CNN and was,

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I think, on Larry King. He was opposite David Brickner from Jews for Jesus and some others. And after that, he put out some challenge.

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He was going to debate Jewish believers in Jesus. He was going to take everyone on. He had been a famous debater when he was at Oxford University leading a

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Jewish club there and very confident. So there was a Messianic Jewish fellow in New York and a friend of Shmuley's.

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And he wrote to Shmuley, emailed him and said, you need to take on our gladiator, meaning me. So I found this out afterwards.

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And Shmuley said, you bet I'll take this guy on. And he was quite clear he was going to demolish my positions. Well, we had a debate in April of 2002.

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There was a pre -signed contract that we couldn't distribute it publicly. But we had this debate. We had a turn away over 300 people.

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It was quite an extraordinary event. And let's just say we were able to put up a brick wall of truth on that occasion.

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And although Shmuley and I were not friends then, he at least had respect for me on an intellectual level.

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Well, two years later, right before Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ, came out, we did a debate, standing room only, at the

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New York Hilton, about 1 ,000 people there, news coverage. It was quite an event in itself. But it was called,

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Who Really Killed Jesus? And right before that debate, I had sent him a copy of my book, Our Hands Are Stained with Blood, which talks about anti -Semitism in church history and some of the beauties of Judaism and so on.

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Anyway, he got that book. He realized he had been looking at me one way only, just as this

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Messianic Jewish missionary. He reached out to me. We went out for a dinner with our wives as well, after the

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April 2004 debate. And from then on, we developed a genuine friendship. We've debated all over America.

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We did a big debate with about 1 ,200 present in Phoenix. We've debated at Oxford University in England, and spent many hours talking together in drives.

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And he's come twice to speak to our students at our school of ministry. He's even allowed us to surround him and pray for him, as long as we didn't pray in Jesus' name.

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I said, well, God knows what we're doing. In fact, a quick little anecdote, then I'll get to these books.

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We had done a debate, Shmuley Darabach, New Testament scholar from Dallas Theological Seminary, Shmuley Darabach and I, on the

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Da Vinci Code, and we were coming at it from different aspects, you know, Dan Brown's phenomenal -selling fictional book.

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And afterwards, we went out for a meal together, and Shmuley was about to be on The Oprah Winfrey Show. He was flying out to do the interview the next day.

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And he said to us, hey, pray for me, that the interview will go well. I'm talking about family issues and other things.

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So I said, why don't we pray right now? So I grabbed his hand, and we joined hands at the dinner table, and I prayed for God to bless the interview, and use it to help raise moral understanding and the importance of family.

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And I prayed it in Yeshua's name. And Shmuley, with a smile, said, why did you have to pray in Yeshua's name? I said, well,

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Shmuley, you want it to work, don't you? Anyway, in our debates, he would surface these ideas that Jesus was actually a freedom fighter against Rome.

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He was a great rabbi, but the New Testament has been reconstructed to make the Jews the bad guys, and the

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Romans neutral, or even good guys. Whereas the Romans were the good guys. The early Jewish leaders loved

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Jesus because he was a great Jewish teacher. He was a patriot who hated the Romans. He even makes reference to having some swords at the

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Garden of Gethsemane. That's a hidden reference to the original text. And he was going to lead a revolt against Rome, and he failed.

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He was not a false messiah. He was a failed messiah. He was a noble patriot. Jews should reclaim him.

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And Paul's the one who came along and changed everything. And Shmuley largely followed the theories of a

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British scholar, Chaim Maccabee, who did some excellent work in medieval Jewish debates and Jewish literature, but had some really bizarre theories about Paul and Jesus, even saying that Paul was not even

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Jewish by blood. So, last year he notifies me that he is putting out all of this, he's worked on it for six years, putting it out in a book called

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Kosher Jesus. And he's written other books like Kosher Sex and Kosher Adultery and Kosher Sutra, whatever, so now

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Kosher Jesus. That's kind of his theme. And he wants Jews to reclaim the real

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Jesus. He goes, no, this is not the Jesus of the Christians. You're going to differ here. Christianity is a great religion, but it's wrong about this, this, and this.

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But perhaps we can have common ground where Jews at least appreciate the real Jesus and Jews and Christians can work together to make the world a better place.

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That kind of thing. And throughout the book, very politely, he attacks me and quotes my books and attacks them and then has a friendly acknowledgement, very sweet in the back in a funny way, acknowledging me and our friendship.

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Well, he contacts me late summer, early fall last year, and says, Mike, will you write an endorsement for my book

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Kosher Jesus? I want to get this out to everyone. He ends up with endorsements from Glenn Beck to Pat Boone to Alan Dershowitz to Alan Combs.

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You've got to be kidding me. But he wanted me to write an endorsement. I thought, well, how can I do it? I disagree with the fundamental thesis of the book.

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He bashes me throughout the book, but he really wanted my endorsement. So I thought, okay, here's what I'll do.

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I'll say I disagree passionately with this, this, this, and this, but I think it's great to see an Orthodox Jew reclaiming

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Jesus as a fellow Jew and rabbi. And we can call this book America's Most Famous Rabbi meets the Most Famous Rabbi of All Time.

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He loved it. He used the endorsement. I forget about it, except we're going to have some debates on the subject come

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March or April. That's our goal. January 18th, I'm following the news. I'm just talking to a guy from Israel.

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He told me in our office, he said, oh, yeah, this was getting controversy in press all over Israel. The book was going to be published by an

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Israeli publisher named Geffen. It was coming out end of January in Israel, early February in the

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States, and instant controversy about the book. How dare he say anything good about Jesus?

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Jews reject Jesus. You don't want to get Jews reading the New Testament. That's the worst thing that could happen. Rabbi Shochet, whose debate you moderated

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March 30th of 1995, he comes out. He's an old man in his 80s.

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He bans the book. No traditional Jews are allowed to read this book. It's dangerous. Worldwide controversy swirling.

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The chief rabbi of Nebraska, I didn't know such a person existed. Nebraska? Yeah, he's maybe part -time golfer, part -time chief rabbi.

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I don't know. But he can't be too busy unless he makes a lot of house calls. I mean, how many

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Jews in Nebraska? Chief rabbi of Nebraska, because I'm starting to follow this online now, he says, I just ordered the book.

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I haven't gotten it yet, but if Michael Brown says it's good, that's a problem because he's this leading missionary. I get this burden late in prayer,

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January 18th, I've got to make my own statement, maybe write a review of his book or something. I wake up January 19th, it's just all over me.

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Write your own book. He's got Kosher Jesus. Set the record straight and make this the best tool you've ever written to just give to an interested

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Jewish person or to open the eyes of an interested Christian into who Jesus really was and the mysteries of what

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I call the hidden Messiah and Jewish background and get the book out now. Well, easier said than done.

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How do you write it? Our schedules, you know how busy they are. Even to write a book, a serious book in a few months, then a publisher nine months to a year on the rush pace to get it out.

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Well, I started writing the book January 19th. April 2nd, the book was printed on my desk from a leading

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Christian publisher. I wrote the book in three weeks. The book was published from the day

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I started writing to the day it was out, less than two and a half months. I really took it as a sign of the

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Lord's favor. Obviously, truth stands or falls on its own, but I experienced so much grace in writing it.

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I couldn't wait to start writing. I didn't have to force myself to go to sleep at five in the morning. I felt bionic.

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Everything just pouring out of me. I took the closing part of the book and excerpted some of the key apologetics parts in my other five -volume series that were most relevant.

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The goal is to take the reader on a journey of discovery, the Christian reader and the Jewish reader.

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James, the thing that blessed me the most was one Christian reviewer a serious reviewer online said that it was the most phenomenal revelation of Jesus he ever got.

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This is from a Christian perspective. Now it's getting into the hands of Jewish people, some prominent Jews as well.

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We're waiting to see what happens. That is the background to my relationship with Shmuley and the

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Real Kosher Jesus. Yes, he wrote an endorsement for my book, too. His book then remains banned.

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There was a lot of going back and forth there for a while between he and Rabbi Shochet and primarily

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Rabbi Shochet's son, right? Yes, Immanuel Shochet. In fact, I even got involved in the middle of that because his son, who's the leading rabbi in England and a possible candidate for chief rabbi of England and Shmuley's name was even floated for that, interestingly enough.

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But he then turned around and started to attack Shmuley and in the process happened to mention that Shmuley debated me and he's derogatory toward Shmuley.

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He was completely outclassed, debating me, but not his dad. Immanuel Shochet, Immanuel Shochet debated me in 1995 and defeated me and there was a panel of judges who declared his victory.

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I was like, wait a second. We set the debate up. It was friends of ours, believers that set the thing up.

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Dr. Weiss, a friend, he moderated the thing. There was a panel of people sitting there to make sure the thing was conducted properly.

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But there was no panel of judges that made a decision. So that got me involved because that came out in the

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Huffington Post and I replied to it. So, quite amazing. As far as the ban, Rabbi Shochet never took it back.

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And once it's issued, it's issued. But what Shmuley was surprised of was that religious Jews, Orthodox, ultra -Orthodox

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Jews even found out about it because he didn't write it for them. He didn't think they'd ever notice it. But it's created quite a stir and a lot of the counter -missionaries, the counter -missionary rabbis were very upset with the book because they felt it would be a wonderful stepping stone for Jews to read it, think about Jesus.

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And in that respect, I agree. And it's my prayer that it will be a stepping stone that Jews will start to read what

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Jesus actually said and want to find out more about this amazing Jew. So, fundamentally, as I understood it, and by the way,

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I know when you actually saved the final file that you sent to me anyways was

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February 24th. And the reason I know that is when I first converted it to MP3 to listen to it

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I didn't cut out the bottom portion of each page. So every time a page would finish, it would repeat the date and the exact time the file was saved and it was driving me insane.

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So I redid the entire thing. So I remember that one very, very clearly. You wrote it at a the only time

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I've written a book faster I actually beat you. Because when the Jesus tomb story came out the

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Cameron and all the rest of that stuff I wrote my response in 17 days. Whoa. Hang on, hang on.

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How many words? Oh, I don't know. I'd have to go look. What if it's like an 8 page book? Rich, find out how many pages

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I'm sending Rich to find out how many Wait a minute, I think I might Wait a minute, here it is. From Toronto to Emmaus is 152.

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Oh, well, come on. Mine is like 248 with 450 endnotes. But listen, you know what

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I think it is I think you were destined to write faster and I willed it to try to write and that's why you beat me.

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Well, in any sense in any way the two points it seemed to me

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I've listened to it twice that were the primary issues and you spent a lot of time going through the sources that Shmuley used and identifying what those sources are and where the problems with them were but two fundamental perspectives was what you called the

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Rambo Rabbi or Rabbi Rambo, Rabbi Rambo theory based upon the two swords idea and obviously very much connected with that was this and I've heard him do this and I just wanted to scream this incredibly radical perspective he has on the transmission of the text of the

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New Testament. One of the things that bothers me is I would expect him to know better basically because he's using the worst that the

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Muslims use this New Testament text that is absolutely fluid and it can be edited and changed and formed and all this stuff and yet leave absolutely no evidence in history of any of the pre -existing forms and all the rest of that kind of stuff

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Two pronged attack this is what I originally said and we really can't trust what's there anyways due to Paul and the changes in editing and stuff like that.

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Is that a good summary? Yeah, that's basically it. The real Jesus is the one that has now been reconstructed which

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I basically say based on two swords. He has made a mountain out of two swords and then what do you do with the fact that every strand, every layer of the

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New Testament, however you unpeel it, whichever author you look at whichever voice you look at is testifying the same thing that Jesus came as a lamb that Jesus did not come to start a civil war against Rome or a revolt against Rome that he willingly laid his life down that he's the son of God.

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That somehow all of these strands, everything this was all changed by Paul and nobody quite noticed it because you still had these other original

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Jewish followers of Jesus that were the core of the Messianic body the church at that time. So I said it's basically like someone rewrote the

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American Constitution and wrote instead the Communist Manifesto but nobody noticed it.

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Or somebody took the Mona Lisa portrait and instead changed it so it's the face of an ugly man with a beard and mustache but nobody noticed it.

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It would be that absurd and I go through what has to happen even Paul's own testimony about himself

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I point out that in the Middle Ages there were Catholic censors who would look at the rabbinic text the

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Talmudic writings the writings of Maimonides and others and if they saw overt attacks on Christianity or realized that these were coded attacks on Christianity or Jesus, they would cut them out and then some of the

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Jewish scribes not wanting these things to be cut out would put out editions that were missing these and then you'd have a book in the yeshiva that would say right here's all the passages that were taken out either by the

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Jewish scribes or by the Catholic censors so this idea of cutting out parts of sacred scripture is very abhorrent in Jewish tradition.

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So I have a whole section where I actually have the writings of Paul where he talks about himself and I have them all crossed out.

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It's actually with lines running through it in the text. I don't know how that played out as you were listening to it but maybe it's like I didn't notice that part so I'm not sure how that worked.

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That's how it is on the page that they're actually crossed out and you think yikes! You're crossing out passage after passage after passage but the biggest issue of course is that the

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Jesus of the New Testament did not come to die he was not the lamb, he was not the guilt offering for us, he did not lay his life down to make an atonement

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I have a whole section on the book on Jewish tradition on the atoning power of the death of the righteous and what

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I do is I go through the Rabbi Rambo theory. Now why do I call it Rabbi Rambo? Because Jesus in the garden says to his disciples how many swords do you have?

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They have two. Now he's talking about he's going to be crucified and Isaiah 53 said he's going to be numbered with the transgressors and he says look they're going to have to look at us as a bunch of transgressors and law breakers how many swords do you have?

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Two. And he says okay enough. In other words you're not getting the point here as they volunteer we have two swords.

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He said okay enough you're not getting the point of what I'm saying. And then he goes on to categorically say put the sword down.

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Peter don't cut the guy's ear off he renounces the sword over and over thereafter.

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Well in Shmuley's theory this is a hidden reference to the fact that he was actually going to lead a revolt against Rome.

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Now here's the problem he's got eleven guys and two swords I mean this is Rambo like he's now going to take down how many tens of thousands of Roman soldiers were stationed in Jerusalem and thereabouts so Shmuley's theory was that as Jesus led the revolt like let's bring them down and they flashed the two swords maybe swing them overhead to make them look like more who knows that suddenly the

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Jewish populace would rise up and together they would take down Rome and lead this noble revolt what do you call someone like that that tries to take down the government with eleven men and two swords you call that person delusional you don't praise that person

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Moses is going to lead the children of Israel march on men the sea is going to part, they all drown

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Noah spends years, decades building an ark and the rain never comes Elijah promises fire to fall from heaven and instead of fire falling from heaven they slice him up because he's a false prophet or he spoke false in the name of his

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God that's delusional I talk about in the book something called Jerusalem syndrome which is actually a known phenomenon by name among psychologists, psychiatrists in Israel there are even hospitals that specialize in helping people with Jerusalem syndrome what it is when people get to the wall what we call the wailing wall

28:39

I say we outside of Jews, Jews don't call it the wailing wall when they get to the wall when they get near the ruins of the temple they somehow get these delusions

28:50

I am Jesus I am Elijah the prophet I am Mary and they actually think that they are these people and they have to be hospitalized, some for a matter of days some for longer periods of time generally speaking when they come to their senses they're very embarrassed, well you've got

29:06

Rabbi Rambo with Jerusalem syndrome when he gets near the temple he thinks that he's the

29:11

Messiah and he's going to lead a revolt against Rome, and he doesn't some guy shows up at the White House with a pistol he's going to overthrow the corruption of the

29:18

Obama regime, you know and he's announcing all this stuff and foaming at the mouth we don't follow that guy and found a religion based on him we pity him so it breaks down textually, but I have to admit

29:30

I had some fun in that chapter it's called how a well -meaning rabbi hijacked Jesus well

29:36

I know that in listening to that you did the irony is

29:42

Shmuley says a lot of things that seem to contradict themselves I mean at the one hand you have this

29:48

Jesus who completely fails in what he's trying to do at the other hand he has identified Christianity what's the terminology?

29:55

as the greatest idea the world has ever seen something along those lines oh yeah, absolutely how do you how do you put those two things together?

30:07

I don't understand how he can say those two things and say them seriously to me it's more of a humanistic approach to things like look at the inspiration of these

30:19

Christians it's not based on dogmatic truth because based on dogmatic truth you can't say the two at the same time they are mutually contradictory but then

30:27

Shmuley would also praise Islam and its positive nature and say that Islamic terrorism is not representative of real

30:34

Islam without reckoning with the fact that according to the Quran the Jewish Torah is full of error and is a deceptive reconstruction as is the

30:42

New Testament so I would say it's based more on a humanistic appreciation than based on dogmatic textual truth so just before I look at some of the things you said in the book from a theological perspective where would you put

30:56

Shmuley as far as Judaism is concerned? I mean that's one of the things that has left me somewhat befuddled in listening to him is that it really seems especially when you press him, he becomes quite malleable right, here's the issue with Shmuley, the greatest emphasis in Judaism is on orthopraxis, there are creeds obviously confessing

31:19

God as one and fundamental things in terms of who he is and what he requires of Israel those are important, but it's often said in a caricatured way

31:29

Judaism is the religion of the deed Christianity is the religion of the creed so orthopraxis is the big issue and Shmuley and all of his family live as orthodox

31:40

Jews in fact even with leanings towards ultra -orthodoxy, his wedding for his oldest daughter

31:47

Mushki, she got married in November, November 1st I think it was last year, I was invited there and was able to fly in and attend the wedding in New Jersey and it was a

31:56

Hasidic wedding Shmuley was in full Hasidic garb the men sat on one side the women sat on the other the events for the celebration were two completely separate events

32:06

I've been with his whole family and his kids lead orthodox lives I've watched them go through their prayers after a meal

32:14

I've been with Shmuley on the road when he's tired after a debate and he can't find anything to eat, we're trying to figure out how to get something kosher, we've sat in a restaurant well can you pack this in tin can you heat it here what do you actually put in that oven so in terms of orthodox lifestyle, he lives by the book, he is a traditional

32:34

Jew in terms of some of his thinking he definitely has ideas that to me are more liberal most famously, and this is something that we've debated, most famously that because Judaism has 613 commandments if you are practicing homosexual, you cannot practice two of the commandments one is to be fruitful and multiply and the other is not for man to lie with a man so he says you might as well keep the rest though, that you should be an observant Jew if you've tried to change and you can't then be an observant Jew and keep all the other commandments and observe the

33:10

Sabbath and keep the dietary laws and say your prayers and so on, so of course that gets him a lot of scorn in the orthodox community, so in terms of thinking, mentality, much more liberal in terms of lifestyle, thoroughly orthodox so doing 611 is going to get you there?

33:28

Oh well, the idea is everyone falls short and everyone repents and asks God receives mercy from God and that God kind of gets you in where you are, so the heaven hell, in, out, black and white view that we have and that I would say scripture has he and other

33:45

Jews would not hold to Okay, alright, well unique perspective there so you write this book and now is the presentation that you make of the

33:56

Messiahship of Jesus is all of that the vast majority of that most of that, is that in your much larger work in answering

34:06

Jewish objections to Jesus? Yes and no. Yes in terms of the larger apologetic issues,

34:13

God's triunity, the idea that God can be incarnated, the question of the atoning power, the death of the righteous the timing of the

34:23

Messiah's coming that is spread out in my five volume series, Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, and some of those are excerpted for the last section of the book, which is the secrets.

34:34

Just wanted to uncover these things in a way that maybe people have not seen before. That being said the presentation of the

34:42

Jewish reclamation of Jesus, the second chapter of the book where I go through the last hundred plus years, all these

34:49

Jewish scholars, intellectuals religious thinkers, who are reclaiming Jesus in different dimensions that's brand new.

34:57

The way I present Jesus as the Lamb who was slain, the way I present him as a prophet who is having a conflict with religious leaders, because Shmuel would say that the

35:07

New Testament makes up the conflicts between Jesus and Pharisees and Sadducees, etc. and that as many critical scholars will say, this is a reflection of late first century when there was a conflict between church and synagogue.

35:19

This is superimposed where I lay out the prophetic conflict and paint Jesus in that way, and where I develop the ways that he was a rabbi like no other, a rabbi and much more.

35:30

All of that I would say is new. And then of course the reputation of Shmuel's part. So it's new and old, really, but it's meant to be the one volume to give to an interested

35:40

Christian or to give to a thinking Jew, and in that it's completely new. Okay, alright, so the form of presentation is obviously rather different than the question -answer type format that you had in the five -volume set then.

35:55

So this is the one volume that you'd want to give to somebody or something like that. Absolutely. For a

36:00

Christian that really wants to find out more who Jesus is and understand Jewish background, and for a non -believing

36:06

Jew. Oh, by the way, let me say this really quickly. I don't know how much you hear this in terms of Islamic apologetics, but when it comes to Jewish background,

36:15

Jewish apologetics, there are so many myths floating around. And somebody called my show today and she said she heard that in a

36:22

Jewish... Oh yeah, I heard this, I heard this, yeah. A Jewish engagement ceremony, a betrothal, when there's a proposal made that the husband to be says to the bride to be, the wife to be, will you have me as your husband, whatever,

36:37

I want to marry you. And then he pours a glass of wine and says, this is the blood of the covenant I'm making with you.

36:43

And this is the background to the Last Supper. Where do people get this from? I mean, I did a quick search because I had never heard that particular argument.

36:52

And I did a quick search during a two -minute break and saw website after website after website saying this as if it was just authoritative and well -known.

37:01

Where do they get this from? So one thing I like to do in my stuff, and I appreciate yours, is we actually do some research to the primary sources and see if it's so.

37:11

Yeah, well, isn't the Internet a primary source? I mean, that's how it's done today, isn't it?

37:17

I get folks all the time that and, of course, many Muslims who will hear someone say something and, interestingly enough, direct parallels to what

37:30

Shmuley is saying in the sense of well, it was that bad guy, Paul.

37:35

I mean, he came along and it's always made me wonder, so Jesus' disciples were pretty much a bunch of wimps, weren't they?

37:44

I mean, if this guy can come along and pretty much hijack the whole movement and we don't even have anything left in history of the original disciples of Jesus who allegedly had these much more orthodox views of Jesus, which ironically, again, direct parallels in, well, it must have been those

38:04

Ebionites. It must have been the Ebionites. They're the real original followers of Jesus because they didn't like Paul and they must be, but actually, they ended up believing a lot of things that Muslims don't believe about Jesus and certainly things that the modern

38:18

Jews don't believe about Jesus. That really doesn't work. That kind of stuff is very, very, very common, and unfortunately, the

38:25

Internet, due to its nature, just really encourages that kind of recitation, recitation, recitation, until you have so many recitations, it's become a body of argument unto itself.

38:42

And how do you refute it? Well, the one place you go is Wikipedia, of course, because at least that will set the record straight.

38:49

Yeah, of course. That's what I do all the time. Yeah, I mean, that's how I got my 450 endnotes so quickly.

38:55

That's right. Just pull it off there. Well, that's the problem, is that people do look to that and obviously we're not saying that everything in Wikipedia is wrong.

39:05

I mean, sometimes you forgot how to spell a word, it's a good place to go, and, oh, that's right, or something like that. It has its uses, but especially in talking with folks today, these myths, how many myths are there in the homosexual area?

39:20

What was the thing about Boswell, that Boswell thing that came out about the church and same -sex marriages?

39:28

Same -sex unions in pre -modern Europe. With the president's statement about redefining marriage, suddenly that book has been resurrected and it was so thoroughly refuted by church scholars, by historians, by scholars of the

39:45

Greek documents and the Latin documents, that it just should have been buried for good, and then tragically

39:51

Boswell dies of AIDS as a young man, a professor at Yale University. The whole thing is tragic, but it gets resurrected, and people refer to it as if it's authoritative, and here's the troubling thing, and it really is deception, and we really have to pray for God to open hearts and minds, but when you systematically present truth based on the primary sources with the original languages and documents in front of you, and people just dismiss it out of hand because they differ with it or it challenges their worldview, it's scary to see, and I see it a lot.

40:27

Hello? I thought you were going to say, I thought we had lost something there, that would be a bad place to stop.

40:35

It is scary to see, and unfortunately our society, though, I'm really,

40:42

I've been saying a lot on the program recently, don't people read 1984 anymore? They need to, because what's happening in the educational system, you see it so much in the homosexual area, but we see it in other areas as well.

40:57

History has become this pliable thing that you form it to substantiate your arguments, you redefine language, you redefine the meaning of terms, and as a result the people who are educated in our educational system today are taught what to think, not how to think, they don't recognize these things, and they're honestly left going, well,

41:21

I like this person over here, and he says this, and I like this person over here, and he says this, therefore no one must know what the truth on this is, because I like people who have differing views.

41:31

Now, we sit here and go, that's not a really good way of thinking, but that's how many of our, especially the next generation, that's how they think, that's how they do these things.

41:41

Obviously, I want to share a few more neat things about the real kosher Jesus, but I had a remarkable time of interaction online with a man who says he's monastic, he's homosexual, but he's monastic, seems to absolutely embrace gay activism, and the rewriting of scripture, and then a supporter of his who says he's

42:02

Catholic, and 11 years of catechism, and so on, so I carried on an extended dialogue with them online, one reason was to reach out to them, but the other thing was to archive it, so others could look at it and learn from it, and I said, okay, what do you do with these scriptures?

42:16

So I quote 1 Corinthians 6, 9 -11, where Paul lays out those who will not inherit the kingdom of God, which includes those practicing homosexuality, but then there's mercy and transformation for all through the gospel.

42:28

I quote the verse, and she writes back, I don't need your rules. Jesus taught love.

42:34

So I quoted the words of Paul, so I said, okay, Jesus said if you love me, you keep my commandments.

42:39

She writes back, who are you to speak for God? It was one of the most remarkable interactions where Jesus was rejected in the name of Jesus, and Paul was rejected in the name of Christianity.

42:54

It was mind -boggling, but reminds us that it really is a battle between light and darkness.

43:00

Well, it wasn't nearly as mind -boggling if you hadn't been up until almost 5 o 'clock in the morning, or was it 3 o 'clock in the morning?

43:05

I forget which one it was. No, that one went, I couldn't fall asleep, so I kept going back. That one went until about 4 .40

43:10

a .m. Yeah, I read it, and I'm like, well, you know, what do you expect at 3 .30

43:17

in the morning? I mean, seriously, the sun's got to be up for rational thought to take place. Now, one of the issues that I had mentioned to you that I would like to introduce folks to as we discuss

43:30

The Real Kosher Jesus with Michael Brown here on The Dividing Line today, you had a fascinating section on the issue of Isaac and the offering of Isaac, which a lot of Christians obviously find a tremendous amount of deep theological water to tread when it comes to dealing with the commandment in Genesis chapter 22 from God to Abraham to take his son.

44:02

I mean, it's not like God left this as something that was maybe

44:08

Abraham was just worried. In fact, Genesis 22 too, he said, take your son, your only son

44:15

Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which

44:21

I shall tell you. So he knows exactly what the commandment is. He knows exactly what's involved here.

44:27

We have New Testament revelation that I think is very important to look at here because it couches all of this in the context of faith and Abraham's faith that God is able to raise the dead and they travel three days, which

44:43

I find very, very significant in regards to Old Testament prophetic paradigms.

44:48

All of that we've all sat around and thought about this particular issue, but what most of us don't have any idea of is how the

45:00

Jewish people, even before the days of Jesus and thereafter, have dealt with this subject of Isaac.

45:08

I'm not sure how many pages it took because, again, I listened rather than had a book in my hand, but you spent a fair amount of time going through the story of Isaac, especially as this comes out in Jewish sources and making a connection to your response to Shmuley.

45:27

Give us a little background as to what did the Jewish sources say about this issue of Isaac?

45:37

It's absolutely fascinating, in fact, and it's something I discovered years ago as I was looking at these traditions and reading different volumes because I didn't grow up in an

45:48

Orthodox home, so I didn't know these things. Some of them wouldn't even be known in standard Orthodoxy because they're in a wide range of sources, but in some, in Jewish tradition, although Abraham is praised for his willingness to sacrifice

46:03

Isaac, Isaac is the hero of the story, and in Jewish tradition, Isaac is 37 years old, not a boy, 37 years old in the account, and in fact, later in life, where he goes blind as we remember from the accounts with Jacob and Esau, we can't see them physically, the rabbis say that was because of the angel that appeared and the brightness of the light hurt his eyes, so it's really interesting.

46:28

Judaism calls it the Akedah, the binding, meaning the binding of Isaac, and it takes on great importance in later

46:36

Jewish tradition because of his willingness to sacrifice himself. There is even a

46:42

Midrash, a later homiletical interpretation that would post -date the time of Jesus that said, carrying the wood on his shoulder, he was like a man carrying the cross beam on his shoulder on his way to execution.

46:54

So here's some of the most important details. Before you dive in,

47:00

Michael, when you talk about Jewish tradition, are we talking about pre -Christian, pre -Jesus traditions or only post -Jesus traditions?

47:11

In this case, we're talking about both. We're talking about traditions that existed before the time of Jesus.

47:18

For example, in 4th Maccabees, where it refers to the deaths of the martyrs, these were freedom fighters against the

47:27

Greeks, a century and a half plus before the time of Jesus. And when they were dying, they prayed that their blood would serve as a righteous sacrifice, as an atonement for Israel, and they pointed back to Isaac as if his blood had actually been spilled.

47:45

See, this is the concept. Let's just say you can get the ringleader, the guilty ringleader, and cut off that guilty ringleader.

47:54

That can be sufficient for everyone else. You have in Numbers 25, when Phineas thrusts the spear through Zimri and Cosby, an

48:03

Israelite man and a Midianite woman, and the wrath of God stops and it says he made atonement for Israel.

48:08

How? By putting to death representative ringleader sinners. Well, turn it around and think of the power of the death of the righteous.

48:17

Think for Catholics, if the Pope was held hostage, and you're going to kill a million

48:23

Catholics, and the Pope said take my life, take my life. Well, to Catholics he'd be more important than a million

48:28

Catholics. His life could take the place of theirs. Now let's look at it from a theological angle.

48:35

And it's hard to place exactly when these traditions developed. But a verse in Ecclesiastes says that there are righteous people that suffer, there are wicked people that seem to prosper.

48:45

The question, why do righteous people suffer? Well, the answer would be that sometimes for the sake of a generation a righteous person will be smitten or an innocent child will be smitten and they'll die prematurely and their death will serve as an atonement for everyone else.

49:02

So this atonement theology begins to develop around Isaac and most of this now postdates

49:08

Christianity, but a lot of it in its earliest form predates the New Testament. It has to do with this idea of a righteous martyr whose death takes the place of the death of others whose death brings atonement and Jewish tradition develops things to the point that it says that Isaac actually shed his blood or it was accounted as if Isaac actually shed his blood.

49:32

There are Jewish traditions that say all of the sacrifices offered in the temple were received based on the merit of the sacrifice of Isaac.

49:41

There are Jewish New Year's prayers that are still preserved in certain prayer books that say God, when you are looking on the world have mercy and forgive because of the sacrifice of Isaac and when the ram's horn is sounded at the

49:56

Feast of Trumpets, what becomes the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah that is also a reminder to the ram that was caught in the thicket that took

50:05

Isaac's place so we remember the sacrifice of Isaac and there are top scholars like Gezer Vermesh, a great

50:11

Dead Sea Scroll scholar and a professor at Oxford University who argue that it's the Isaac imagery that helped form the concept of the atoning power of the death of Jesus and even the concepts of the

50:22

Last Supper that this comes from the theology that already existed around Isaac and the big thing for me is to open up this idea that the atoning power, the death of the righteous is something found in biblical text and Jewish tradition.

50:38

It is not some foreign quote Christian invention. Now, one of the statements you just made was that there is a tradition that all of the sacrifices in the temple derive their efficacious nature from that one sacrifice of Isaac?

50:59

Exactly. Yeah, it's found in some of the early 2nd century

51:04

Midrashic writings called Midrash Halakha, legal Midrashic writings where these statements are actually made.

51:11

Now, here's the thing with rabbinic tradition. We don't know if the statements made, say, in the year 200, did it originate then, even if it's put on the lips of a rabbi then, or does it come from 300 or 400 years earlier or 200 years earlier?

51:26

That's what's always debated because of the tenacity of the way certain traditions were preserved. On the flip side, there can be a later tradition that they try to retrovert and put in the mouth of an earlier sage to give it authority.

51:37

But it's pervasive enough that at the very least, these concepts develop side by side with the theology of the cross and the understanding of the death of Jesus.

51:50

And, of course, Isaac doesn't actually die. There's even resurrection in it on some level, as the writer to Hebrews mentions in Hebrews 11.

51:58

So, rather than Judaism backing away from this because of the theology of the cross and the preaching of Jesus, it's almost as if Judaism develops an even deeper theology of Isaac.

52:09

When I taught on this years ago at a Messianic Jewish school in Maryland, one of my friends, who was a

52:16

Jewish believer and led a Messianic congregation, said I could almost hear the rabbis singing, Oh, the blood of Isaac.

52:24

It is fascinating. I think it would help a lot of folks, especially in dealing with Genesis 22 and fleshing it out to look at that.

52:37

Unfortunately, not a lot of folks have ever studied any type of Midrash or anything like that.

52:44

I remember back when I was in seminary, I think I was the only seminary student in my class that actually purchased the entire

52:53

Sincino Talmud, which I still have in my library. Now, obviously, I have it in electronic forms.

53:00

It's a whole lot easier to use, but it doesn't look nearly as impressive as the entire Sincino Talmud does on your shelf.

53:07

I even took a class on Midrash at the local Jewish community center.

53:14

They basically used a lot of news newsbooks and things like that. A lot of folks are not familiar with that kind of material, wouldn't even know where to look to find it, and as you have pointed out many, many times, that kind of stuff is also rife for abuse, especially by people who set up a website, throw a bunch of Hebrew on it, and get themselves some followers, which unfortunately happens a lot as well.

53:43

That kind of stuff really needs to be used in a balanced fashion, right? Oh yeah, absolutely.

53:48

I've interacted with Orthodox rabbis, counter -missionaries for decades now, and although they'll challenge me here and there on a source or challenge the accuracy of a particular reading of a source, they appreciate the fact that I'm going to be honest.

54:03

In fact, one counter -missionary told me that he was discussing me with another counter -missionary. He said, we decided that you were the most dangerous

54:11

Jewish missionary in the world, and I said, why? He said, because you're honest. I found that fascinating, his perspective, but check this out.

54:21

There's a Midrash, so again, early homiletical Jewish interpretation, and the ones that get more free form are called

54:29

Midrash Agadah, or Haggadah Midrash, which is homiletical, and takes off in different ways.

54:36

The legal Midrash tends to stay a little bit more, based on the text as it goes through the different books, and it's also earlier, by and large.

54:44

But, some of the earlier Midrashic interpretation, in Exodus, when I see the blood,

54:50

I will pass over you, I see the blood of the binding of Isaac. And Gezer Vermesh states, according to ancient

54:57

Jewish theology, the atoning efficacy of the Tamid offering, which is the fixed daily offering, of all the sacrifices in which a lamb was immolated, and perhaps, basically, of all expiatory sacrifice, irrespective of the nature of the victim, depended on the virtue of the

55:12

Akedah, the binding of Isaac, the self - offering of that lamb, whom God has recognized as the perfect victim of the burnt offering.

55:20

And here's a New Year prayer, attributed to a Talmudic Rabbi, Bibi Bar Abba, so when the children of Isaac commit sin and do evil, remember on their behalf the binding of Isaac, and full of compassion towards them, be merciful to them.

55:35

So, regardless of the dating of this, the theology, the mindset, has continued and persevered in Judaism, and to me is a great bridge to help

55:45

Christians understand the Biblical and Jewish roots of this concept of Messiah's death on the cross, and then a great bridge to reach out to Jewish people and say, hey, this is not some foreign thing.

55:55

And even though I knew as a follower of Jesus that what I was doing was right and true, when

56:01

I discovered these things some decades ago in my studies, it was revelatory for me, and suddenly made the whole thing feel much more legitimate in presenting to a

56:12

Jewish person. And also, I've been preaching through Hebrews for quite some time, and it's certainly anybody who's worked through Hebrews knows you have to have those

56:23

Old Testament backgrounds in mind, or the book absolutely makes no sense whatsoever. But it also illustrates,

56:30

I think, some of the more difficult texts in Hebrews are dependent upon a mindset, almost a midrashic commentary type mindset, that's very, very difficult for Western -trained, logically thinking, non -Semitic category scholars or interpreters to even begin to enter into.

56:53

It's really, really hard to enter into that area in dealing with Hebrews. But when you hear these types of things and you see the connections that the

57:03

Jewish mind would make in regards to the binding of Isaac and even the idea of resurrection, even though he is spared and the knife is not plunged in, it's as if he did.

57:16

All of that is there, and that's the context to which so much of this New Testament writing was originally directed.

57:23

And that really helps us to understand that if we're willing to actually look at it, which unfortunately, especially due to things that happened in church history and the split between the synagogue and the church and the sense of no communication and eventually, well,

57:38

I just think of even the beginnings of relearning

57:44

Hebrew and the fact that those who pioneered in that were risking their lives to do so.

57:52

The huge wall that had developed, it's certainly understandable why there's so much difficulty in understanding these things today, and I just found it a fascinating discussion on your part.

58:02

I really appreciated it in regards to Isaac and that material. And that's not the only fascinating stuff. There was much, much more, but that especially,

58:09

I found to be really, really helpful. Yeah, I'm so glad, because it has been so helpful for me, and then especially for Jewish believers that have read the material and shared it with them over the years and now in this more focused form of the book.

58:22

By the way, I took about 15 pages to deal with the issue of the secret of the invisible God who can be seen, because the ultimate stumbling block for Jewish people would be, well,

58:31

Christians don't keep the Torah, or say, Jewish followers of Jesus don't keep the Torah. But then even more fundamentally, making man into a god, making a god into a man,

58:42

God is not a man, number is 23. And James, seriously, I mean this, one of the greatest joys

58:48

I had in the last few years was when we teamed up side by side to debate the deity of Jesus question with Sir Anthony Buzzard and Mr.

58:55

Joseph Goode, with our friend John Bernis on Jewish Voice Broadcast. But because I'm constantly dealing with this objection,

59:01

I really wanted to nail it in a concise eye -opening way, and I've gotten some amazing responses.

59:07

One guy in particular who lived as an ultra -Orthodox Jew for 19 years found that chapter completely revelatory for followers of Jesus, and then for Jews.

59:18

So hopefully people will be enriched and helped by the book, and they'll find value in it as they read it.

59:24

Now you've already—I'm not even going to ask you—you've already done three hours worth of talking today, and you probably need to get to dinner,

59:31

I would imagine. But I know that folks in the audience would love to hear some more discussion, maybe even ask you some questions.

59:44

Do you need to go right now? If you do, please. No, I'm game. I didn't know exactly what time we would be ending.

59:51

Well, in fact— Hey, it's a webcast, man. Yeah, I understand that. I'm absolutely game to do it.

59:58

I've got a little time, and then a certain point I do have to go, because I've challenged my eight -year -old grandson to a game of stickball.

01:00:06

I told him he's going down. He's going down. With joy. You got some callers? I'll tell you what, folks are listening live right now.

01:00:15

If we get some callers immediately at 877 -753 -3341 877 -753 -3341 877 -753 -3341 then we'll go for them.

01:00:23

If not, then I just wanted to have a brief conversation with you.

01:00:29

Did you have the opportunity— while we're talking about this, we'll see if anyone wants to call in with any questions for Dr.

01:00:35

Michael Brown. Did you get an opportunity to view the video that Douglas Wilson posted of his experience at the

01:00:48

University of Indiana at Bloomington? Oh, yeah. I absolutely did.

01:00:55

I mean, it's the complete yogi Baratheon, you know, déjà vu all over again.

01:01:02

I kind of live in that world and have been in some settings just like that.

01:01:08

A few years back when I told people that gay activists who came out of the closet—I understand the vast majority of homosexual men and women are not activists and just want to live their lives and not be bothered and just want us to accept them.

01:01:21

I understand that. But I've often said that gay activists who came out of the closet 40 plus years ago now want to put us in the closet.

01:01:28

And when I began to say that five, six years ago, seven years ago, no one's trying to put you in the closet.

01:01:35

Well, what I've heard the last few years is bigots like you belong in the closet. So now it's a justified hatred.

01:01:42

There's this one part where he talks about liberalism that tells others to shut up and then someone says, shut up.

01:01:48

There you go. It was

01:01:54

I mean, I haven't been in that exact situation. I've not been in quite that nasty a situation.

01:02:01

I've heard a number of the debates you've done. I've heard some of the people asking questions. It can become very, very, very violent and angry very quickly, unfortunately.

01:02:13

But what concerned me was, okay, a guy standing back there going, there's a public university.

01:02:21

There's no religion here. You just want to go, really? Honestly? You were taught that there.

01:02:30

But everybody else, even the people that had sat there and hadn't done the interrupting and had listened to what

01:02:37

Doug had said, the only term I can use is there's a veil lying over their minds.

01:02:44

I mean, they did not hear a word that he said. And I've heard callers, not callers, but people in situations where you've been answering questions.

01:02:54

It's the exact same thing. There is an absolute blindness on the part of these young people.

01:03:00

And it's very troubling. Yeah. When I did a debate last year at the

01:03:06

University of Central Florida, same -sex marriage, should it be legal? Sadly, there were

01:03:11

Christian groups on different campuses in the Orlando area that told folks that were trying to organize the event that if we try to bring any debate on homosexuality onto their campus, they will fight to shut it down.

01:03:23

It's become so volatile, and there's so much concern that they would lose their status, and concern that this would rock the boat of their witness and so on, whereas it would actually do the opposite because of the gracious presentation we would make.

01:03:34

Well, finally, a Filipino professor at University of Central Florida, a

01:03:40

Christian woman, booked a room in a public building, and that's how we were able to have the event.

01:03:47

An outside group could sponsor it because she, as a professor, booked the room there. She was threatened with the loss of her job for doing that.

01:03:55

It ended up that university vice presidents, as many as five university vice presidents, got involved in a discussion whether the debate should be allowed to be held at all.

01:04:06

There were gay activists trying to shut it down, the diversity department registrars trying to shut it down. I even let another professor that challenged me that he would take me on.

01:04:15

I let him choose the subject. Same -sex marriage, should it be legal? Let's remember, in the state of Florida, there's a constitutional amendment that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, so it's already been settled there.

01:04:23

It's not legal. Redefining marriage is not going to happen there. Well, finally, the day before the debate, there were 11 people on a conference call.

01:04:31

I was excluded from it, including university vice presidents, campus police, you name it. They finally agreed it's better to go on with it.

01:04:38

It would be worse publicity not to than to do it, but we could only do it if we had four armed policemen present on the campus in that room for the debate.

01:04:50

That's how volatile the thing was. It's extraordinary. And then, look, it's one thing if you're going to the

01:04:56

London Islamic Center, right? And you understand the volatility of that. We're talking about a campus in America debating a very important subject that should be debated.

01:05:06

Well, I made a comment during the debate. The professor got up and said, name for me one difference between a man and a woman.

01:05:17

What can a woman do that a man can't do? And I found it so remarkable. The statement, and he had a bunch of his students with him, and they were snickering and laughing.

01:05:27

So I said, okay, a woman can have a child and so on. He goes, oh, they're just baby factories. They're just baby machines. There were some pregnant ladies that wanted to give a piece of their mind and more.

01:05:36

Well, I turned to those students and I said, what are you laughing at? I basically took them to task as a father and a grandfather.

01:05:44

I said, there's no difference between your mom and your dad. Your mom you just throw away. Your dad you just throw away.

01:05:50

There's no difference between males and females. I had a friend there, former student who's 29 years old, and he was stunned.

01:05:58

He said to me afterwards, Dr. Brown, if this had happened when I was in school 10 years ago, the atmosphere would have been completely different.

01:06:06

He was from Florida. He said, I cannot believe the change in just 10 years. But it's like Vice President Joe Biden said,

01:06:12

Will and Grace has done a great job of educating. Look, we get in trouble for saying it, but there really is a spirit of deception.

01:06:19

It's not just lack of critical thinking. There's more going on. I actually played excerpts from that debate and commented on myself on the program.

01:06:28

And I could hear when you just amazement in your voice. And you normally don't do this.

01:06:35

I'm a little bit more that way. I'm a little bit more of the hard -nosed guy because I look at that and I just want to go, you don't live this way.

01:06:45

Don't you realize that you're living in one way and you're thinking in another way and you don't even see this.

01:06:51

But anyways, our line's filled up. Okay, we've actually got a call from Oxford, England, which would be interesting.

01:06:58

But folks, we can't keep him forever. He's got a major stickball event coming up.

01:07:03

So please be very, very quick. Very, very brief. Let's start with Zach in Seattle.

01:07:09

Zach. Hi. Thank you for taking my call. You guys, between the two of you, are my favorite apologists.

01:07:16

I apologize if I'm hard to hear. Someone on the channel said, we're Dr. Beige. Dr.

01:07:21

Brown, Dr. White, together we're Dr. Beige. So that's how it works. That's awesome. I'm actually on the channel if anybody's wondering.

01:07:28

I'm a little under the weather, so I apologize if I'm hard to hear. But I was hoping if you guys could clarify a little bit in Hebrews chapter 7 the relationship of Jesus and Melchizedek in that comparison.

01:07:42

Okay. All right. Thank you very much, Zach, for your phone call. Dr. Brown, I'll let you jump right on that.

01:07:49

Any comments on Jesus and Melchizedek? Yeah. What's interesting is that later Jewish tradition actually makes

01:07:57

Melchizedek, Melchizedek in Hebrew, actually makes him into a known figure. It says that he's actually Shem, who lived a really long time, and then reappears as Melchizedek.

01:08:07

But that's just complete tradition, nothing to it. The basic parallel is that he appears out of nowhere and then disappears.

01:08:16

So he has no beginning, he has no end, and he is a king and he is a priest, and he is the king over Shalem, which is then taken to mean

01:08:25

Jerusalem. So the priestly king, the royal priest without beginning, without end, one to whom even

01:08:33

Abraham paid tithes, recognizing him as superior, and thus a type of the priestly Messiah.

01:08:39

And of course I have a whole section in the Secrets part of The Real Kosher Jesus on Jesus as the priestly

01:08:44

Messiah, and why it's so important to recognize that. And what many Christians don't know is that there were

01:08:49

Jewish traditions prior to the New Testament that recognized that there would be two messiahs, a priestly messiah and a royal messiah.

01:08:57

In the Dead Sea Scrolls Moshiche Aharon B'David, the messiahs of Aaron and David. And yet of course

01:09:03

Scripture only speaks of one messiah, and Zechariah 6 makes clear he will be a priest sitting on a throne.

01:09:09

Well that was another one of the excellent portions of the book, was the discussion of that very thing, the different concepts of the messiah.

01:09:19

So much of it was there, unfortunately, I don't know why, but we lost

01:09:25

Oxford, and then we lost Barry, so I think

01:09:32

I do know, however, what Barry was going to ask, so I'll ask it in his place if I could.

01:09:39

He wanted to know when you and I are going to write a book together. Ah, okay, and while I'm talking to you, a former student of mine wanted to know when

01:09:49

I'm going to be debating you again on Calvinism. So are we... Still there?

01:09:57

Hello. But in terms of, like you did with Dave Hunt, point -counterpoint, or the two of us teaming up the way we did against Sir Anthony Buzzard and Joseph Goode, what do you think he was talking about?

01:10:08

I don't know. I don't know. It was just, the question was basically when are you guys going to write a book together, and I think a lot of folks, at least in my audience, yeah, they do want us to do the debate that we still need to do someday in the future, but I think they prefer hearing like what we did on Jewish Voice, and you've been back on Jewish Voice since then.

01:10:35

I haven't heard anything from them at all, so even though I live here in Phoenix, so maybe you could put in a good word for me, but real quick,

01:10:46

Steve got back with us from Oxford. Anyone who's staying up that late in Oxford, we should at least let them get their question here.

01:10:53

Let's see if we can get him before he disappears. Steve. Hi, Dr. White. Welcome to the program.

01:10:59

You're calling from the motherland? From Oxford, England, but I am a

01:11:05

Yank. So we're not going to get a wonderful lesson in English diction here.

01:11:12

Hang on, July 4th was yesterday. July 4th was yesterday, yeah, that's true.

01:11:18

That's true, I wished a happy 4th of July to everyone here, and they just didn't seem to get it. What can we do for you,

01:11:24

Steve? I had a question that maybe brings together both of your areas of expertise, and that is the doctrine of Sola Scriptura and Judaism.

01:11:33

I recently have been reading a little bit about Karaite Judaism, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, and from what

01:11:39

I understand, they disagree with Orthodox or Rabbinic Judaism as it relates to tradition, and they argue that the

01:11:47

Scriptures alone are infallible. And so I was just wondering if Dr. Brown could tell me a little bit about Karaite Judaism, if he knows anything about it.

01:11:56

Yes, of course, and if you think of Koran, Karaite Judaism, or Karaite Judaism, and then what

01:12:03

Scripture's called Mikra, it's all from the same root, Kara, having to do with reading, having to do with the text, and Koran would ultimately go back more to an

01:12:12

Aramaic borrowing of that same term. In any case, Jewish in Jesus' day, you know that there were various groups that were competing as the true

01:12:24

Judaism, just like you have different Christian groups competing as the true Church. And the

01:12:29

Sadducees held the sacred only the first five books, and did not believe in an authoritative chain of tradition.

01:12:36

The Pharisees did. We can date the Pharisees back to the mid -second century

01:12:42

B .C., but a traditional Jew would say that the true Jews were always a Pharisaic thinking, and that true

01:12:48

Jews today, the most authentic, are still Pharisees. And the Pharisees ultimately constructed this doctrine, it became the concept of Rabbinic Judaism, that on Mount Sinai, God gave

01:12:59

Moses a written law and an oral law. The oral law was the explication of the written law.

01:13:05

For example, don't work on the Sabbath. If you work, you'll be killed. Well, the Torah doesn't define what work is. How can we know what it is?

01:13:11

And on and on. So, what happens is the Jewish tradition says that the oral law, oral tradition, oral understanding of the text was passed on, and even though that Scripture is authoritative, the whole of the

01:13:24

Hebrew Bible is authoritative, is God's Word, and the five books of Moses the most sacred of all, because according to Jewish tradition, they were dictated by God to Moses.

01:13:34

Without the traditions, you cannot understand the written text. So, that you have two

01:13:40

Torahs that were given, the oral Torah and the written Torah, and the written Torah without the oral

01:13:45

Torah is useless, and that is now put in writing over a period of time, the oral Torah gets written down, and continues to develop through the ages, as you have new situations come up, how do we keep the

01:13:56

Sabbath when an astronaut is out of space, whatever, and you keep having rulings on this, and that's the ongoing life of the oral law, which gives the law vitality.

01:14:06

The Karaites would claim that they have always been the true Jews, reflected in the

01:14:11

Sadducees, reflected in Moses and the prophets, they would claim a pedigree going all the way back to Moses, but their numbers are absolutely tiny.

01:14:19

Their numbers got down into the hundreds, they've grown probably into the thousands as people have joined from other branches of Judaism, but they say, as we do, that God gave the written scripture and did not give an inspired oral tradition.

01:14:34

And they say that the way to interpret the text is based on exegetical principles, out of which they have developed their own laws, their own customs as to Sabbath observance and feasts, and in that sense, developed their traditions.

01:14:46

So, some would claim that Jesus was a proto -Karaite holding to the authority of Scripture, rejecting the traditions, others would say that Jesus was more a

01:14:56

Pharisee, because he went to the synagogues, which is a Pharisaical innovation, and he didn't reject all of their traditions.

01:15:02

I say you can't put him in any one class, but Karaite Judaism is absolutely fascinating, because it seeks to hold to an authentic Judaism without Jewish tradition.

01:15:13

Many rabbis would say you cannot have Christianity without a Christ, you cannot have Messianic Judaism without a

01:15:18

Messiah. Well, I say you cannot have traditional Judaism without tradition, you cannot have Rabbinic Judaism without the rabbis.

01:15:25

The Karaites say no, they are authentic without the rabbis, without the tradition, and in fact, around the year 1000, they were really vying with traditional

01:15:37

Jews, the Pharisaical Rabbinic movement, as to the authentic movement, and then they basically got overcome with arguments, and then the numbers game went against them, so they've just become a tiny, tiny remnant.

01:15:49

But a thousand years ago, they were producing some brilliant literature within Jewish circles. And it's fascinating,

01:15:55

Steve, that there is a direct parallel to that within Islam. The first man that I debated, the first Muslim I debated,

01:16:02

Hamza Abdel Malik, has become, well, in English, a

01:16:07

Quran -only advocate, where he rejects the validity and binding authority of the

01:16:16

Sunnah, he rejects the Hadith, says, look, it's a self -contradictory mass of material, and I think he'd probably have a pretty decent argument at that point, but the idea being that you go with the

01:16:30

Quran only, and of course my problem is there are entire sections of the

01:16:35

Quran that make absolutely no sense whatsoever, because no background is enunciated within the text of the

01:16:41

Quran, and without the commentary provided in the Ahadith, there's just no way to interpret that at all.

01:16:49

And so it does seem that almost every religious tradition has this very same tension in it, because you have within Islam, you have those who have developed this entire tradition outside of the text of the

01:17:02

Quran that makes the text of the Quran dependent upon it. Within Christianity, that's what you've got, and Orthodox Roman Catholicism, as far as the oral tradition that has been added in, so that you've got dogmatically defined dogmas like the bodily assumption of Mary and the

01:17:16

Immaculate Conception, things like that. And then you have just what Michael was just talking about in regards to within Judaism as well, and the growth of the

01:17:24

Talmudic sources and the rabbis and the traditions and so on and so forth. So it seems to be something that goes on everywhere, and it's interesting to look across the aisle, shall we say, at that same type of thing happening someplace else, and seeing the dynamics that are involved with that, it's quite fascinating.

01:17:41

Thank you, Steve, for your phone call today and getting back with us. Thank you for taking my call,

01:17:47

I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Michael, thank you ever so much for joining me today. I do have a word of warning for you, though.

01:17:56

Eight -year -olds might surprise you. No, Andrew, aside from being feisty, he's actually got a terrific arm.

01:18:06

We let him pitch in from a little closer, but when I played my son -in -law and his brother who were in town, it was

01:18:14

Andrew and I against them. We had Andrew pitching from a little closer, and afterwards, they complained that he was too fast and too hard to hit.

01:18:22

So I'll get ready. I just want to say this last thing. After my show, I went to just work out.

01:18:28

I had an hour. I had to meet with some people and work out, so I was just doing a series of 500 -meter rows on the rowing machine, and pushing myself with thinking, all right,

01:18:37

James is in the desert, going up these 400 -mile mountains without a break.

01:18:43

I can push a little harder on the rowing machine. Well, I'm glad to push you that way.

01:18:50

I have a ride coming up next week that's 120 miles, 11 ,000 feet of climbing, up to 12 ,000 feet above sea level.

01:18:58

So, yeah, I'm really pushing myself hard right now, but it's a good thing to do.

01:19:04

But one other word of warning. If you're playing stickball at our age, and you're a little bit older than I am, you've got an eight -year -old grand.

01:19:13

I'm waiting for my first one to arrive here in December. So I'm just about to get into the grandpa business myself, but sometimes we get aches and pains after swinging that bat.

01:19:24

So just we need you around, so be careful. I'll be careful. And I just had this thought.

01:19:30

If we do co -author a book, we could do it in like five days. Well, actually the book

01:19:38

I'm supposed to have done for Bethany House seven months ago, I don't know about that, but it would really depend on what the topic is.

01:19:44

I would be very interesting to see what you and I could team up on sometime, because we do have a lot of overlapping areas.

01:19:52

If you ever get a chance where you're challenged on the homosexuality issue to a two -man type situation, that would be something that would be very, very interesting as well.

01:20:03

Absolutely. I'd keep that in mind for my direction as well. Brother, love you. Thank you so much for being with us today.

01:20:09

Same here. You're my joy. God bless. Bye -bye. That's Dr. Michael Brown, folks, and I tell you,

01:20:15

I love having Michael on. Even today as I was listening to him, he said some things,

01:20:21

I'm going oh, oh, you know, some eschatological stuff, you know.

01:20:27

But we can, as brothers in the Lord, we can work past those issues and work through those issues and really, really appreciate knowing that he's out there taking a leading role in responding, especially if you have not read his book,

01:20:43

A Queer Thing Happened to America. You've just got to. I mean, the amazing thing is so much has happened since it came out a year ago.

01:20:54

Amazon .aomin .org. Thank you. Okay, Rich is telling me we have that available. So much has happened since then.

01:21:01

I mean, there'd have to be a whole section, I would imagine, on what the president did and what's happened with Dan Savage and just so much stuff has taken.

01:21:13

Matthew Vines and his presentation. It is, but still, if you have not gotten it, you need to read

01:21:21

A Queer Thing Happened to America. It's available on Kindle now as well, and for those of you,

01:21:27

I mean, it's a big book, and so people like me have to listen to these things, and I'm on my second time through it myself, so you need to get that book.

01:21:36

But he's on the front lines, and unlike me, Southern Poverty Law Center has already identified him as a freak, one of these people to be watched.

01:21:52

I'm irrelevant, but they've already nailed him, so pray for him,

01:22:00

I know here, you can listen to his program. I was listening to it live today. Only a half hour of it is aired here in the

01:22:07

Phoenix area called The Line of Fire, so there'll be times you'll go, like what

01:22:13

I was mentioning, I should mention this. He was talking about the issue of, you know, he believes, like I believe, that there is no gospel without repentance.

01:22:24

He finds the idea of a repentance -less gospel to just be horrific.

01:22:33

Just got to push him a little bit farther, back into the Reformed camp, because how do you consistently present repentance and faith?

01:22:42

They're gifts of God, works of the Holy Spirit, that's why there's false repentance, false faith, because there are people who work that up within themselves, but there's no change in the heart, there has to be that regeneration of the heart, all the rest of that stuff.

01:22:55

You know, so, there's so many places where we're right on, and then a couple places where we go whoops, type of thing, and yet, anybody who's watched the debates we've done, we did together, will see that when it comes to central aspects of the faith, we're right on, and we work very, very, very well together.

01:23:14

I hope if you didn't have the opportunity of listening to the program we did, what, about a month or so ago now, where we went through Isaiah chapter 53, it was so exciting,

01:23:25

I was up in Colorado, and some folks there mentioned that they were just blown away by that. They said, you won't find that anywhere else.

01:23:34

Who does an entire 90 -minute program where you just go through Isaiah 53 based on the

01:23:39

Hebrew text? It is pretty unusual. So, again, many thanks to Michael Brown for being with us.

01:23:47

We're going to wrap things up here, and next week, let me just tell you, I don't know what my internet access is going to be like until I get up to Colorado and be in Colorado next week.

01:24:00

I'll let you know. I mean, obviously, I should be able to at least get enough internet access to blog, so I'll let you know one way or the other.

01:24:07

If I've got good internet access where I'm going to be, then we'll try to arrange some dividing lines, but they're going to probably be at different times than normal, so just to let you know that.

01:24:18

So, next week, just keep an eye on the blog. We'll let you know when we'll be back, and we'll see you then. God bless.

01:24:37

I believe we're standing at the crossroads. Let this moment of sin flow away.

01:24:44

We must contend for the faith our fathers fought for. We need a new Reformation day.

01:24:52

It's a sign of the times. The truth is being trampled in and buried down.

01:24:59

Won't you lift up your voice? Are you tired of plain religion? It's time to make some noise.

01:25:05

Howling old Wittenberg. Howling old Wittenberg. Stand up for the truth.

01:25:14

Won't you live for the Lord? Because we're pounding on. Pounding on Wittenberg.

01:25:20

The dividing line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries. If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

01:25:28

Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona 85069. You can also find us on the

01:25:34

World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's a -o -m -i -n dot o -r -g, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.