Transcript for:
Moses Scroll and Biblical Origins

I remember being a little kid in church and hearing about the Moses story and reading it in Sunday school and Moses brings down two tablets with ten commandments from Sinai and then you turn to the next book and there's 600 plus lurggical laws that are supposedly the law of Moses and I always thought I don't remember Moses bringing down 600 laws. It was just the 10 laws, the ten commandments. I came across your book a year or so ago and this explosive document called the Moses scroll. The bottom line is somebody wrote in the name of Moses that wasn't Moses. But it goes a whole lot deeper than that. When you're in church, you're raised to just not even question any of this stuff. What really sent me back into the Hebrew Bible is the words of Jesus. When he's saying these things like, "Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice." He keeps saying, "Go back and look." There are a growing number of people who want to know the truth. But you know what anchors us is this common quest to find that way, the good way. And that's really what this is about. Welcome to the Jesus Way podcast, a series dedicated to restoring the true gospel of Jesus. We believe that Jesus showed us the perfect way to God. So we invite you to walk the Jesus way with us. [Music] Hello friends and welcome back to the Jesus Way podcast. We've got a really fun episode for you guys today, especially if you joined us for our Moses scroll episode a couple of weeks ago where Cam and James and I unpacked this explosive document that was found in the 1800s, which has taken new life in recent years thanks to scholars like Ross K. vehicles and Alan Dersowitz and James Taber and others which is essentially a a copy of the book of Deuteronomy but written in protoheebrew which is a much more ancient form of biblical Hebrew and it was found in a Bedawin cave near Kuman and it contains no mention of animal sacrifices or any of the priestly Levitical laws. It has chapters 12 through 27, I want to say, of our current Deuteronomy in our Bible today, completely missing, no sacrifices, no ritual laws, and a missing commandment that is also not in our Bible today. And so, the implications of this text are monumental to say the least, especially for the Jesus way philosophy. So, we're going to unpack that today and dive a whole lot deeper into the Moses scroll, including its origins, uh, the kind of the backstory behind it and its implications, which is the most exciting part to discuss. And so, today I am not joined by James Benefico, our co-host of the show, as he's out today with some other plans he had to attend to. But we are joined by our third member of the podcast whose uh long awaited return is now here from his uh leave of absence from having his first child. So Cam, so great to have you back today, man. You've been sorely missed. Welcome back to the show, brother. Thank you. Thank you. So happy to be here. And uh hopefully I've gotten enough rest last night with the newborn to uh properly cognitively fire on our uh podcast today, but I think I'm there. What are you averaging per night right now? You know, I would say L is, you know, a averaging way less than me than me, so I don't have much room to talk, but um he's doing really good. He's doing really good. He's sleeping mostly through the night. He wakes up two or three times and then I just got to be on burp duty and diapers and all that. And I can do it a little bit half asleep, some of those duties. So, I'm getting pretty good sleep. Well, as somebody who also just entered fatherhood about seven months ago now, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you the obligatory question of how's fatherhood, man? How's the transition been for you in a few words? Well, I just feel like I'm experiencing a just the greatest miracle of life. I mean, you hear about it and it sounds so cliche and I know that everybody kind of says that, but looking back at, you know, my son and having him looking at me, it's one of the most unbelievable, inexplainable feelings I've ever had where I just feel like I could just sit for hours and just stare at him and I'd be fine not doing anything else. I'd probably forget to eat. He's just so cute and and it's almost like wisdom being imparted in some wordless kind of way where you're just really understanding what life's really about. So that's beautifully said, man. And I could not agree more. I spend most of my day staring at my daughter and uh never get tired of it. It's it's truly something unique and uh very divine to bring a new life into this world. So congrats again, man. I know our audience has been really happy and excited for you and really looking forward to your return to the show. So, great to have you back today for this uh very poignant episode for you to be back on where we're having our good friend, mentor, and um expert in this specific topic we're discussing today, Mr. Ross Nichols. Uh so excited to finally get you on the podcast, man. and um why don't you just give the audience a you know quick overview of who you are, what you do, and how you got into this subject of the Moses scroll. Man, first of all, I want to say thanks to you guys. We've been talking about aligning our schedules to make this happen for quite a while now. So, I am thrilled to be here and I hope that this podcast is a special blessing to your audiences because I think we're going to have some really good discussion around a topic that I am very very excited to share and it's even more exciting to me because you guys share the same uh I guess passion about the subject. First of all, let me say first of all, I am a husband and a father like you guys and I'm a little bit older obviously. Uh I'm also a grandfather. So I have six children with my wife Bridget. We've been together for a long time. We were high school sweethearts as we say. Six kids. We have Yeah, man. That's right. We I always tell people when she's not listening, I say that is the luckiest woman that you will ever meet. But truth is, I'm the luckiest guy or I'm the most blessed. But I have six kids and we have through those six children. We have nine grandchildren. And God willing on Tuesday, uh, this coming week, we'll have number 10. So, we are thrilled. We love kids. I if I can't help you with Bible questions, Cam Aaron, at least call me and ask me some questions about kids and burping and all night stuff, I can help you with that. But, uh, truth be known, I have studied the Bible for a long time. I am passionate about understanding and discerning the word of God and getting back to that authentic message. What is the the beginning? you. This is the Jesus way podcast. You know, Jesus in Matthew 19 talks about from the beginning it was not. So that propelled me a long time ago to say, well, what what does that mean? What was it like in the beginning? So for the past few decades, I've been searching for what was it like in the beginning? And that propelled me to really dig into to study biblical Hebrew. And so I would first of all say Erin that I'm a student, a teacher, and a lover of scripture. And I think because of that, I have a lot in common with you guys and your audience. So with that, man, I'm ready to jump in. Let's go, man. Yeah. Thank you for the for the intro and the overview. Um, you are a biblical researcher who specializes in the Old Testament and Hebrew. Would you say that's accurate? That's that's very fair. That is right. Right on the money. So, obviously most of our audience, the Jesus way audience is already aware of the Moses scroll because we did an episode a couple months back, Cam and James and I. Um, but we're not the resident experts on this topic and we really just kind of touched the surface of the whole subject itself. So, um, we'll just start with in case anyone watching isn't totally familiar with the Moses scroll. Um, what is the Moses scroll or the Shapiro scroll and how did you come across this document? And uh let's start with that and we'll get into the nitty-gritty from there. E excellent way to lead it off. And by the way, I watched your podcast and I think you guys did a great job. Really, I I knew that Cam would be able to handle his own because he has been here to my place. We've discussed it. We've been on the phone with each other while he's off gallivanting the world, chasing things down, and I'm here in Louisiana. So, I knew he would do great, but I was surprised uh just because I hadn't really talked to you and Jim uh James about it, but you guys picked up on it very well, too. But in a nutshell, read your book. Uh yeah, that I mean it it's a fun book. I tell you what what was so interesting is prior to the book, prior I'd never heard of Moses Shapiro. I never heard of the the Moses scroll, none of that. But I was curious again tracing back that authentic what's the original message of Moses? because and we'll tear into this as you want to Aaron uh but as as most of your viewers probably know when you read the text of the Bible there are certain elements which feel to be at tension I know you guys have talked about sacrifices versus no sacrifices how do we how do we make sense of all this and I was in the throws of that over the past decade in 2019 I was uh I gave a lecture at a conference in April of 2019 called uh the Torah within our Torah. And basically what I was looking for was what did Moses actually write? And I can do this very briefly and then we can unpack it. But but what shocked me uh I was reading in Deuteronomy 31. I've read this chapter I don't know how many times in my life. In Deuteronomy 31 in verse 9 and then verses 24- 26, it describes Moses finishing the Torah, the law as most English translations have it, to the very end, and then he gave it to the Levites to keep. And I remember when I first read that, it it kind of rocked me back like I'd never seen it before because how could Moses, it's telling me that Moses finished the Torah to the very end and told the Levites to put it in the, you know, in the side of the ark and then we still have three chapters left to the Torah. I was confused. And then I I thought about it. I said, "Wait a minute. This is third person." And honestly, I'd never really noticed this before. Honestly, I never saw it. But it made me think, well, this is odd. Why would Moses, because traditionally we believe that Moses wrote the five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, but this is describing Moses doing a Torah, but it's clearly not the book that I have called the Torah all my life. So, that set me out on a quest for authorship. You know, what did Moses write? That was one of my first questions because to me it made all the difference in the world. Perhaps I thought if some things weren't written by Moses that leaves open the possibility that someone later wrote these things and if that's the case maybe that could give a long way away an answer to a long asked question about some of these items that are at tension one with the other. So, that's kind of what that's kind of what got me into the subject. And then uh I didn't hear about the Moses scroll or the Shapiro scroll until December of that year, which we can talk about, uh as you want, but it had to do with an email from Dr. James Taber. So, Oh, really? I think you guys know James very well. Yeah, it's uh it's it's such an interesting topic because I remember being a little kid in church and hearing about the Moses story and reading it in Sunday school and from a very young age. I don't know how young I was, maybe 10 or 12 or something, but reading these passages or hearing them read, I always thought Moses brings down two tablets with ten commandments from Sinai. Yeah. Yeah. And then you turn to the next book and there's 600 plus lurggical laws that are supposedly the law of Moses. And I always thought I don't remember Moses bringing down 600 laws. It was just the 10 laws, the ten commandments. And so that was what began to spark my curiosity around the ten commandments and Mosaic law. And I believe the, you know, typical narrative of Protestantism, which is, well, it was all the law and it was, you know, Moses wrote those later after Sinai and it's all Mosaic law. But as I got older and started studying, you know, more of the scholarship side of things, I found out that actually there was an entire sect of Judaism that broke off of orthodoxy basically over this one issue of animal sacrifices and ritual laws which they believed Moses did not command from the beginning. Jeremiah 7:21. And then you have the famous Jeremiah 88, which we quote a lot on this show, the lying pen of the scribes. How can you say we are wise? For the law of the Lord is with us, the Torah. For behold, a lying pen of the scribes has falsified it. And when Christians hear us say this, they say, "Oh, that doesn't mean the Torah. It means something else." And so, we've been kind of discussing more about the documentary hypothesis and the four different sources and all that. And the P source, the priestly source of all these Levitical commandments um basically proves Jeremiah 8:8 at the minimum because you can say, "Hey, did you know when does Leviticus date to?" long after Moses. So, it couldn't have been written by Moses as it is stated and purported to be. And so, we sometimes call that a forged text or a pseudonmous text. But the bottom line is somebody wrote in the name of Moses that wasn't Moses. Therefore, Jeremiah 88 is proven sufficient just in that alone. But it goes a whole lot deeper than that because the early Jewish Christians, Nazarene, Zebianites also had the same view of the Essenes. may have kind of been the same sort of group as the Essenes even as we've discussed as well, but also rejected sacrifices and said Moses never commanded these. So, it's like Ross, where do all these silly Jewish sects from ancient times get this crazy idea that Moses didn't command sacrifices? We know he did because it's in our Bible today. Well, I came across your book a year or so ago and this explosive document called the Moses scroll, which seems to strongly corroborate the passages in Jeremiah, what the Essenes, Nazar, Nazarines, Ebianites have all said from antiquity that Moses didn't command this stuff. This was added later by the lying pen of the scribes. So, just take us into kind of the I know you have a faximile, don't you, of of the Shapi scroll as well. probably be cool of you to pull that out, but just take us into the basics of what are the explosive implications of this scroll. What does it say? What does it not say? Very good. What one of the things just to kind of kick this off because I know that your viewership is probably very well um I guess versed in this because you guys, you and Cameron and James have discussed some of these ideas. But but one thing just to note because sometimes I know for me when I first heard somebody talk about the documentary hypothesis uh and J E P D I remember thinking look I don't know what you're talking about but I believe in the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob and I don't see a J an E and a D in my Bible. So stop right there buddy you're bringing stuff that I'm not familiar with. So before we even talk about what the scholars called that, uh, and I don't I I hope that your audience is okay with me doing just a one step back on that. Oh yeah, please. It really Yeah, it really comes down to like if we don't know anything about that and we just have the text tradition says that Moses wrote Genesis 1:1 through Deuteronomy 34:12. But when you look at those texts like you and Cam and and uh our audience today, you recognize that some things probably weren't written by Moses. If you really get down to it, let me give you an example. In Deuteronomy 34, it describes that Moses died and the Lord buried him or and he buried him, presumably the Lord, the only other person mentioned in the text. And no one knows where his burial place is. Well, it's not likely. And every scholar and sage and rabbi noted from way back that that probably wasn't written by Moses, right? Because now there is, by the way, a rabbitic tradition that I think Cam and I talked about this when we were across the table from each other having some fun last time he was here. There is a rabbitic tradition that Moses wrote that through his tears. But, you know, I mean, that's just an apologist. You guys have had fun with apologists. That's an apologist viewpoint which is trying to support a tradition which is not supportable. So here's another one. Um what about Moses was the meakest man in all the earth or the most humble man who ever lived. The the most humble man who ever lived would probably not write that he's the most that's like that's like us saying we are probably the three best looking guys on a podcast right now. Well, I mean, maybe we are, but we shouldn't say it if we are. So, there are certain texts which which give away that it wasn't written by Moses. I'll give you one more example. Uh, in fact, if I can go to my Bible and read an example, Aaron, can I do that, please? Yeah. You let's let's look at together, if you have a Bible handy, uh, Exodus chapter 16. And I find this to be quite convincing. in verse 33. Let me let me back up and tell you just a little bit of context. Chapter 16 of Exodus is all about the mana. The mana that comes down and you know the children of Israel eat it. Well, then when you Now remember they're not even at Mount Si yet. They're they're one and a half years at most into the Exodus from Egypt. They still have 39 38 years left in the wilderness. But this listen to this. So verse 31 of 16, the house of Israel called it mana. It was like coriander seed, white and taste of it was like wafers made with honey. Moses said, "This is what the Lord has commanded. Let an of it be kept throughout your generations in order that they may see the food with which I fed you in the wilderness when I brought you out of the land of Egypt." All right, pay attention. And Moses said to Aaron, "Take a jar and put an omer of mana in it and place it before the Lord to be kept throughout your generations." As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the covenant for safekeeping. The Israelites ate mana 40 years until they came to a habitable land. They ate mana until they came to the border of the land of Canaan. An Omar is a tenth of an ephi. Now, this gives it away that this was written after the time of Moses. How do I know that? Cuz it says they ate it for 40 years and they they ate it until they went into the land. Now, here's the deal. Moses never went into the land. He he he died on the other side. So, this is a later writer. I'm not even suggesting that this isn't true, but it's written after the time of Moses, you see. Yeah. Scholars would call that an anacronism. Yeah, anacronism. That is the key word here. And we see these throughout the biblical text. Yeah, there's a lot of them. And that's that's the giveaway. Moses describing his own death. Um Deuteronomy, the first part of the first chapter, describes how it was written on the other side of the Jordan, indicating that the writer is on the wrong side of the Jordan to be with Moses. Well, Ross, I'm even thinking of the two different creation accounts. like why wouldn't Moses write if it's one guy writing both it they should be identical but we have all these contradictions and differing details in the narrative so I mean there's another piece of evidence right right and and that's exactly right and we see lots of examples of these but to very short order on the question uh concerning the sources and then as we need to we can unpack it scholars began to notice that there are at times just as you described sometimes times two accounts, two accounts of the same story, but they're told clearly differently. And one of the main differences is at times the story is told with the name of God as Elohim. And sometimes a story with different details but describing the same event is told with the name Yode Vave. Some would say Jehovah, some say Yahweh, Yahwh, different versions of pronunciation, but but which is it, right? And so scholars begin to notice that we have doulets, sometimes even triplets of the same story and and they begin to identify these different sources. So for those text which told a story but used Elohim by the way these are German scholars in the 19th century primarily is when it began to uh come together the grath andhousen theory as it's known. Uh so so they began to notice that if it if it's uh uses Elohim they called it the E source. If it uses J uh Yahweh they called it the jawist. The Yahwist is the way it's pronounced. And uh and then we'll get into the priestly and the Deuteronomic. But one more point on the name just because I want your viewers to really understand that embracing this doesn't make you a heretic. It makes you an observant person. In Genesis 4 26 it says, "Then men began to call upon the name Jehovah or Yahweh." What's interesting though is that when you get to Exodus chapter 6, Moses meets God and God tells him, "By my name Jehovah, I was not known." So, how can both be right? But according to the sources, the name is revealed at different times. So, when we get to Exodus chapter 6, that's P. And P does not use the name Jehovah until that point, and then it uses it frequently. Uh, and then if you read in Genesis, it's a whole another writer. It's a whole another source. To that writer, Jehovah was the name from the beginning. Wow. Yeah. There's so much to unpack with the documentary hypothesis and uh, you know, the four source theory, but I mean, let's let's begin with how the Moses scroll fits into this and maybe even which of those four sources you think, Ross, it may have come from. So, we have the um Elois, the E source, the Yahwist J source, the priestly P source, and the Deuteronomic D source. Um would would I be right in assuming that you would put that in the D category? D source. That's a excellent first stab at it. And and to be honest, that's the first thing that people talked about when this scroll came to light in the 19th century. So remember uh according to the narrative and you guys have read the book some of your viewers have have read it as well. Uh Shapi the scroll according to the legend is discovered in 1865 Trans Jordan east of the Jordan high up in the cliffs of the Wadi Muji Bedwin fleeing from their enemies go into a cave. There they think they found gold. They rip it over. You know the story. In there are these strips of leather which we'll show to the audience shortly. But but what they I don't have the real ones yet. Uh Cam and I are about to find them though. I think that's right. Uh so anyway, what but but it clearly it doesn't come to the world's attention because this Bedwin keeps them for about 12 years. But in 1878, Shapiro, who's well known as an antiquarian and scroll merchant, comes to possess the scrolls, the fragments, and he immediately notices that this looks like Aaron. It looks like a version of Deuteronomy, but it's different. Interestingly enough, it's missing a major chunk. This is the first thing that's noticeable. Chapter 12 through 26, which is the bulk. It's the law code we call it. In fact, even scholars today, talking about documentary hypothesis and academia, most scholars today believe that if you were to trace back to the earliest strata of Deuteronomy, you'd come to the law code. So, if you're a forger in 1878 to 1883 and you're going to fake the world and you're going to make a fake scroll of Deuteronomy, it's going to have 12 to 26, not leave it out. I mean, that's crazy. No one in their right mind, even today, if they're going to make a fake, they're not going to leave 12 to 26 out. But you know the thing about this this whole thing about the which which of the documentary hypothesis which of the sources does the text match more closely to Deuteronomy uh might be the first guess but then it has some other things which might make you think something else. So let's do the let's think about E for a minute. The esource doesn't use the name Jehovah until later in the text after chapter 3 of Exodus because you you have to introduce the name before you can say it, right? And so what's interesting about this text and the scholars picked up on it immediately is this fact and that is that um this fact is that the name Yode Vave does not appear in the text the main body of the text except in the opening and closing line which is clearly later by a scribe. it it you know it's sort of an intro and an outro but the body of the text doesn't contain the divine name at all. So that might make you think that it's an Elois text but I'm going to take it one step further. Remember in the 19th century these are scholars dealing with the Pentatuk as we've received it. Genesis 1 through Deuteronomy 34:12. And that's what they have to go on and that's where they're seeking their answers from. But I'm gonna ask a question, and I know uh Cam and I have talked about this a little bit. Could it be that this text, the Moses scroll, or a text very much like it goes before this theory? In other words, it's not really an EEX or a Dext. It is a source text from which these other documents are built. You know what I'm Does that make sense? Mhm. You know, and so what we find is that for instance, sacrifices, which I know a lot of your good work has been on working through this issue of sacrifices and how is this part of God's divine order if we have other texts which say exactly the opposite. But what if for instance it's J has sacrifices, E has sacrifices, P has sacrifices, and D has sacrifices. My document doesn't have sacrifices. So, could it be that my document uh I say mine because I've spent some time on it. You can have it, too. But the Moses scroll, we can share it. It we can share it. It's our It's the world's document. I really think it is. Oh, yes. It seems to be a document which predates and upon which are added all of these external elements. And and I believe I can prove that not from some academic criteria or some some scholarly speculative idea, but I think I can prove it to your audience from the Bible itself. And we can get into that because I think that scroll is found in the Bible. And we'll talk about that. Yeah, let's let's get into it. In fact, just just in case there's people watching who may be a little lost on the documentary hypothesis, um, basically what that hypothesis says, and correct me if I'm wrong, Ross, is that the Pentatuk, the first five books of the Old Testament, were not written by one man named Moses, but are a collection over time, many, many centuries of sort of different iterations of of changes and all this stuff. As I mean, Israel has the Jewish people have a crazy history, right? two kingdoms. Judah to the south, Israel to the north. Assyria conquers Israel. A lot of them flee to Judah. Later the Babylonians conquer Judah and then they conglomerate into one nation even though they used to be sort of enemies. So there's a lot of reasons why the scriptures may have been changed and adjusted. Even the fact that like I've heard a lot of scholars who uh do work on the documentary hypothesis say that you know Judah to the south may have had the um the Egyptian history of Moses whereas Israel to the north would have kind of carried the Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and those two traditions may have actually been separate traditions that at some point after Jud Judah and Israel merged together through all the different exiles and whatnot they were like hey you know let's blend our history traditions together into one book and so they kind of put Moses and Abraham into the same uh Bible or Penetuk. So there's all kinds of reasons why there's different sources but basically what it says is that there's the Eloh source, Yahweh source, priestly source and Deuteronomic source that I think like the the P source from the priestly class dates to around the sixth century BCE. And Ross, do you know the dates the estimated dates of the other three sources? You know that that's that's a good point. What in scholarship there's so many different speculations on the dates and remember that's what we're dealing with is we don't have any evidence that clearly dates these texts. So a lot of that is academic speculation. But you're right if you look if you back up and you say okay I don't have a date but what are the order if we think about how did these texts evolve into the Bible we have? You take the penetuk and you peel back the layers. The way most of the scholars would say is that you had J and E. J would be um more likely the stories from the kingdom of Judah as you were just describing er Aaron and then E most of those stories would be primarily reflect terminology in the north. And and one of the reasons one of the ways they get to that is which which places for instance geographic places that have importance uh in in E it's primarily the areas of the north. So they associate the kingdom of Israel in the north with E. Same thing goes with J where the patriarchs are seen in towns and places that are very important to the kingdom of Judah. So that scholars say oh well this is clearly written in Judah. So that's that's kind of the breakdown. And then P they figure is later. And then D is according to most scholars the last of all. Now this one we can date with more certainty. And I think there's an element of truth here because it ties to our story today. And let's say that many scholars believe in fact almost without exception that duteronomy or a deuteronomic text like our Deuteronomy say an earlier uh uh an earlier version of Deuteronomy would date to get this let me be precise how about 6:22 BCEE. Now how do you get that close? Well, because what they say is that a scroll that was found in the 18th year of Josiah, mentioned in 2 Kings 22 and 23 and 2 Chronicles 34:35. It's the 18th year of Josiah. What year is that? 6:22 B.CE. I was going to say that's King. That's it. So, what some scholars have said though, it wasn't it wasn't discovered, wink wink, as the text tells us, it was written at that time. And part of that has to do with this interesting thing that happens in Deuteronomy that doesn't happen anywhere else. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, they have sacrifices all over the place. Mhm. you you guys that don't believe in sacrifices. What have you not read? Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and then Deuteronomy though comes along and all of a sudden God has a problem with all these other sacrifices everywhere else and only wants them at the place where I'll put my name. So like Deuteronomy 12, Deuteronomy 17, these texts which seem to promote a uh a central location for sacrifices, all of a sudden it's only Deuteronomy that you see this. So what they say, scholars say, I get it. They call it in the 19th century they referred to it as a pious fraud that Josiah wants to reform the religion of his day and he wants all the sacrifices to come to Jerusalem. So they rewrite it. They put out a Josiah revised version, the JRV. They published it in all the Barnes & Noble bookstores at the time. And uh and that's what they had. And so they put it out and and but here's the way they did it. How do you pull the wool over a whole nation? You go, "Hey guys, we you're not going to believe this. Hilkaya the priest just found a scroll in the temple and uh it says that all the sacrifices have to come here." And they go, "Really?" So that's how you get the this is what the scholarly view is on Deuteronomy. Oh, okay. Well, I want to loop you in Cam here because uh this this topic around King Josiah's reign in particular you put me on to Cam uh with second Mcabes and all that and connection with Hilkaya. From what I've studied, I think most scholars believe that the Jewish people became a truly monotheistic religion during the reign of Josiah. And I find that interesting. I mean, most people like, "Wait a minute, they were always monotheistic." But actually the truth is per almost definitely not because they lived in a day and age in the ancient world where everybody was polytheistic and believed in this pantheon of gods and it was about like which god can you get to come down and shepherd over you and and give you favor and battle and fertility and agriculture. So they were all trying to almost like woo the gods with temples and sacrifices and worship and all that. So the even Deuteronomy 6:4 of here, O Israel, the Lord's our God is one. Um can be interpreted as like this is the only God you're supposed to worship. We only worship one God. Not that there only is one God, but we're only worshiping the one God. So like if this is all true, what scholars say that the Jewish people would have believed that there are many gods, but we just worship Yahweh because we think Yahweh is the best God. And then Josiah reforms, you know, Judaism basically to total monotheism. But no, there are no other gods. There's only the one creator. And that all coincides with the finding of this book of the law that causes King Josiah to tear his garments and say, "We've forsaken the law of God and blasphe the law." It's like, I don't I can't think of any other theory that would connect all these dots other than this sacrificial theory of of Josiah realizing, "Oh my gosh, this was never commanded from the beginning." So, Cam, where do you want to take this? uh for not just yourself but Ross in terms of the implications of what we're discussing. Yeah. Well, to me what it reminds me of is my just relating it to my own journey and maybe this will help relate to people who aren't as in the Hebrew Bible as much. They're more, you know, uh evangelical or have that kind of background. This finding out about these sources in in the Hebrew Bible reminds me of what it was like when I first found out about kind of the two source theory of critical scholarship with the Gospels. And you know, when you're in church, you're ra you're raised to just not even question any of this stuff. Um, but then if you can ever just get a morsel of of of will to put that behind you for a second and just and just try it out, you'll see that there is so much to be learned and discovered. And I think, you know, the truth can't break. The tr the the capital T truth can't break. So there's no fear and nothing to be, you know, hesitant about to get in there and really understand, hey, what's the historicity behind how these traditions developed? And the same way that we're talking about the Hebrew Bible is what's going on in the New Testament. You know, where we come to realize that out of the Greek New Testament, Mark's probably written first for a number of reasons. And then Matthew and Luke are utilizing Mark and then John's this whole other thing. But it's it's a theological development happening over time. And that's what we see happen in in the Hebrew Bible in a way is it seems like there's some simpler form of the faith that's then de developing adding these lurggical laws etc. But what the implications that I think are interesting is how those how that New Testament and Old Testament ties together because what really sent me back into the Hebrew Bible is the words of Jesus when he's saying these things like go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. And then when he's in the temple, he says, "Is it not written, my house should be a house of prayer for all nations, but you made it in a thieves?" He keeps saying, "Go back and look." And I kind of feel like Jesus, what we've had an experience, you know, in kind of the land of deconstruction and everything where we're going and looking in the New Testament at these bits and pieces that aren't fitting. I think Jesus was doing the same thing in his time with the Hebrew Bible. He was saying, "Wait a minute. Go really look and see what this says because I think he knows that if people are hearing his message and what he's talking about, they'll understand." Oh, there's You turned me on to that verse actually, Ross, from Jeremiah. The separating the the profane from the Oh, yeah. Jeremiah 15. I love it. Yeah. Exactly. And so I it's I just want to emphasize too part of the implications are if this kind of stuff you you you mentioned this in the beginning Ross like hey I know some people can be hesitant to even go here but the reality is I don't think any of us would say that this is any grounds to throw the Bible out you know throw the throw the whole baby out with the bath water. Hey, there's something deeply deeply more true about this than we ever even realized about how even amongst all of the scribal, you know, uh Jeremiah 88, line pin of the scribes, there's still this tradition that we can find and it's so mysterious and so beautiful. And I think that this Shapiro scroll um just adds I mean the the the key it's like the master key that could really unlock this thing if uh if it's real. I think that the Moses scroll is to the Old Testament what the Hebrew gospel of Matthew is to the New Testament. I mean even the fact that Papius our first addestation of the Hebrew gospel said Matthew first wrote down the oracles of the Lord in the Hebrew dialect for the sake of the Jews who believed. So a lot of scholars think oh maybe the original gospel that Matthew wrote was just a saying's gospel similar to the gospel of Thomas. Now, interestingly, the 48 quotes we have from the Hebrew Gospel um alone, which is not very many, we actually do have a couple of correlations to the Gospel of Thomas, such as the one famous phrase from Thomas, which says um those who I can't remember how it goes, but it's like those who first discover will be uh angry and then they'll be afraid and they'll be astonished and then they'll rule over all. You know that phrase? Well, that's basically a version of that is in the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, very very closely worded to the Gospel of Thomas. So you're like maybe Thomas was where some Christians Mark Christians took that original sayings gospel to Egypt you know and then uh what we have in Palestine is the Hebrew gospel later because as the gentile Greek gospels were written I think the Jewish Christians were like hey they're putting all these narratives to our master's life and ministry we got to have our own narrative to sort of counter that and show what we believe is true of the master. So then maybe later, and this is some of Hugh Shafield's work, but maybe later the narrative aspects of the Hebrew gospel were added in. So it's like you have maybe this protohebrew gospel of Matthew that might have just been a saying's gospel, teachings of Jesus like Thomas's. And I find that to be stunningly similar to the Moses scroll, which is kind of this like proto Deuteronomic text long before the scribes got their hands on it and added the stuff in. So would you say that's kind of a fair comparison? I think not only is it fair, I look, I've been teaching the Hebrew Bible for decades now, but I started off as a fundamentalist Christian, but Cam, you got to blame Cam because every time I'm around him, or even both of you guys, you know, I I hadn't thought about some of these things, but you have me going on Amazon, my basket, the the poor Jeff Bezos is confused. He's like, "What's Ross buying all this stuff on Hebrew Gospels?" But Cam has said, "Look, we're going to have to, you know, when we're out there looking for the Moses scroll, we're going to have to travel and find the the lost Hebrew gospel." But let me let me say this, Aaron, because I think this is where our work is collaborative. Uh, I I've been so excited since I watched your podcast and I told you guys offline that some of my friends who study with me, like I told them, yeah, I'm going to be on this uh podcast with uh Aaron Abkkey and and Cameron and and they're like, "Oh my god, I love Aaron. I love Cam." And so I these guys are big fans. But here's here's something that I wanted to touch on, and I'm interested in your take on it, both of you. Um, when Cameron brought up that you when you talk about Jeremiah, I find this to be really sort of knock you back on your heels when you talk about Jesus and this is the Jesus way podcast. So, think about this. You, and I know you guys know this and your viewers probably do, but 40 years before the destruction of the first temple, God calls Jeremiah. We read in Jeremiah 1:1 that Jeremiah uh is called in the 13th year. You know, it goes through it gives the date. We we can put a date, a time stamp on when his ministry, if you can call a ministry started, the 13th year of Josiah and it covers 40 years and then the temple is destroyed. Now if if you look at uh Jesus of Nazareth, according to most chronologies, most academics would say that the ministry of Jesus begins 40 years before the destruction of the temple. That's a crazy parable. I mean, is it is crazy. Now, here's something that's really crazy. If you open up Jeremiah and you start reading Jeremiah closely, like we did a 25p part series on Jeremiah and barely scratched the surface. But here's the deal. If you get into Jeremiah, you can't help but see correlation between the ministry of Jeremiah and the ministry of Jesus. Now, a lot of people would say, "Yeah, Jesus comes later. He's just using the words of Jeremiah like like Cam just quoted. you know that talking about the this temple and how it's this corrupt system of of killers or ravagers or however you would translate that but again that the it's uncanny the similarities between the two and what I find striking about Jeremiah he's a prophet when the scroll is found and and this is what's so powerful for me because Jeremiah gives us some indication Like, why would the king rip his garments? Was he reading Leviticus? No, I wouldn't rip my garments reading Leviticus. Some might refer to the the uh curses, if you will, but no, not really. He's not reading numbers. He's not reading anything like what we have, but something causes him to be remorseful and and leads to this uh you know, he he contacts Halda and so forth. I think I know what it is. I think it's I think it's this scroll that he reads and it's got some things in it that he that surprised him that contradicted the religion of the day. I think that's what's going on. I would agree. And um which gospel is it Ross do you know which says that um when they say hey you know Jesus says who do men say that I am and in one of them maybe more than one they say some say you're Moses others say you're Elijah others say Jeremiah or one of the prophets I mean if people in Jesus's day were even equating him to Jeremiah you know who's this guy interesting like Jeremiah reincarnated I think that says a lot about because we know what Jeremiah's MO was. I think just that verse alone really corroborates our thesis here, the Jesus way, which is that perhaps the main aspect of Jesus's ministry was, I'm going to liberate the Jewish people from this reprehensible system that they've been in bondage to for centuries. Kind of like Jeremiah was trying to do. And I might add, history has obliged. In other words, people can argue like I I know that you guys are very controversial to fundamentalist apologists. That's clear. I watched a debate that showed that. But here's the deal. When people when people they they act like you've not read these text and totally consumed the the Jesus of popular Christianity at some point in your life. I did as well. But through a good deep study and prayer and seeking to find the God of truth and the truth of God, your faith has evolved. And so whenever we look at these things, it's pulling us back to something more authentic, something more original. And whenever we look at Jeremiah, we see, look, here's the deal. When you know that they tried to kill Jeremiah, why did they try to kill Jeremiah? You know, they said things like, and I'm paraphrasing, read chapter 7 of Jeremiah. Read chapter 26. And the opponents of the day, the religious leaders said, "We heard this fella. We heard this fella say that he wanted to destroy the temple. Well, that sounds familiar. Sounds like what happened? Yeah. And and the only reason they didn't kill Jeremiah according to Jeremiah 26, the only reason they didn't kill him is because somebody in the room said, "Hey, wait a minute. Remember remember Micah? Micah said that God was going to make this temple mount like a plowed field." In other words, Micah in the days of Isaiah a hundred years prior had threatened to destroy the temple then. So, think about a common theme here. Micah, you can read it. It's in chapter 3 of Micah. It basically just says, uh, I'm going to turn this temple mount into a plowed field that not one, it's like saying not one stone is going to be left standing. So you fast forward to the time of Jeremiah and Jeremiah says you trust the temple. Jeremiah 7:1 you say the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these. I'm telling you, this is going to be like Sheilo. This place is going down. Jesus of Nazareth. Again, what is the consistent theme of the prophets? And that is that if you don't get rid of this corrupt system, it's going down. And it did. 2,000 years it's gone. Yeah. Well, that's our favorite quote from the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, which a dozen early church fathers attested to, which Wes and Steven themselves conceded was legitimate. Jesus says, "I've come to abolish sacrifices. Until you cease from sacrificing, the wrath will not cease from you." So Jesus, like the Essenes, was trying to let them know, hey, you want to know why you've been in exile so many times? You know, Syria, Babylon, Egypt, now Rome. You want to know why you're always slaves to other nations? Yeah. Because you're doing abominable deeds in God's holy temple, and you're incurring God's wrath. So it's like it's none of this is going to stop until the temple stops. And even Jesus says Mark 11:18, similar to the passage you pulled out, Ross, uh, from Jeremiah where they threatened to kill Jeremiah for his, you know, what he said about the temple. Mark 11:18, that's what they said about Jesus. After Jesus said these things, the priest sought how they would put him to death. So, you're absolutely right. We see this recurring pattern through scripture. I think the temple sacrificial system is the overarching issue of the whole Bible in my opinion in terms of its implications for the Bible. But we see the same theme, right, of like the priestly class is protecting this what I believe is basically a profit scheme for the priests and the scribes going all the way back to Jeremiah's day and before that and stretching into Jesus's day. You've turned my father's house into a den of thieves and if you knew what this meant, you wouldn't condemn the innocent. Jesus opens the cages of the animals, lets the animals out. It's like this this sort of apologetic idea that he was only upset about the money changing. he could care less about those dumb animals. He just wanted people to stop changing money in the temple. It does not stack up to the evidence we have. And so I just I love the what you're pulling out here with Micah, Jeremiah, correlating that to Jesus because there's so many incredible connections we could dice into there. But, you know, one thing we didn't get into, Ross, in our um previous podcast on the Moses scroll is uh sort of steel manning its legitimacy. And uh you know I we watched your live stream a couple weeks ago about the Moses scroll where you really went into the details of the document and what some of the critics have said about why it's a forgery and kind of debunking all that. Um would you mind if we got into that a little bit of like how you prove that this is a definitely a legitimate document and not an 18th century forgery? Sure. And in fact I would just add one caveat for the person who doesn't want to line up with me right away. I mean, I I would encourage you. I'd welcome you to do that. But if someone wants to have a little bit of reservation on that end, I would say that the first criteria is is to say, could it be could it be authentic? Could it be ancient? And and you know, they don't have to go all the way on day one. I think that that is what I set to do in that class, Aaron, was to establish the let's say the preponderance of evidence suggests that this A is ancient, b that it's authentic, and then if that's the case, what are the implications which bring in your work, your life work, you and Cam and James and others? I mean, so I'm ready, man. I'm I'm ready for anything you want to do. Let's do it. Yeah, le let's get into that because I think that's an important topic for the Moses scroll is proving its legitimacy because uh you know apologists and critics Christian critics of it will try to say oh well you know there's all these reasons why it's a forgery um when it was discovered in the 1800s there was a number of uh opponents of Shapiro I'm pretty sure all of them being religious but uh oh yeah this is one of the things we say about like animal sacrifices for example me and Cam have these conversations like on Instagram on YouTube every day. And even with Wes and Stephen, um when we bring out all of these hardline angry anti-sacrifice verses from the Old Testament, I desire mercy, never sacrifice. Right. Yeah. Take away from me to smell these abominations. I never asked for this. I never commanded you sacrifices. Apologists will just say, "Oh, no, no, no. It doesn't mean what it says. It means got to get your heart right." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kill animals with a pure heart. As if that's not an oxymoron. And we say, "Okay, show me one verse where God says anywhere in the Old Testament, I do want sacrifices with a pure heart or some kind of combo mixture, obedience, anything at all." And of course, they can't provide such a verse because there isn't one. And so, we often say, "Okay, look, for every verse you can jin up that even comes close to saying God wants sacrifices as long as you're obedient and doing it the right way, we'll show you five that says no, he never wanted this." I feel like it's kind of like that with the Moses scroll in that there was a couple of these criticisms back in Shapi's day of, oh, it's got these inner punks, oh, it's on leather, oh, it's got this oily substance on it. We've never found a document like this. It's definitely a forgery. But when you pull out the faximile and you go through all of the internal evidence in the manuscript itself, you've got so many pretty bulletproof uh pieces of evidence that this is definitely a legitimate document. So, I kind of feel similar with the Moses scroll. It's like, "Hey, critics, give us your best debunk points and we'll give you three in favor of it because there's so much more evidence that proves this legitimate." So, you can start wherever you want to start if you want to pull it out and show anything or whatever. We'll give you the four for that because I find it to be extremely interesting. All right, look, let me grab my prop because I I have it somewhere. You would think I would have that for the show today. I would have right in your back pocket. So, I I do have a prop that is that is pretty cool. I got this on eBay, so no one get excited. This is not the real deal, but I'm just going to show you. Look at this. Look at this. It opens up. Now, I've taken mine and I've folded it. Uh, notice a couple of things. Notice that it has an arch along the top and it's got a little bit of a jagged edge at the top. If I can put that maybe against my black shirt, it'll show up. And the bottom is more smooth. All of these things. Notice how I'm folding it. I know you guys talked a little bit about this on your podcast, but but we'll we'll use we'll refer to this as we get into the subject, but just quickly, uh, a lot of the arguments against the authenticity of the strips are still being used today. Now, here's the deal, guys. It worked well before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, primarily the Kuman scrolls and then you know there those scrolls that were discovered and that's what I did my live stream on a couple of weeks ago was it's fine to say h you know we would expect a scroll to be like this and this and ancient scrolls don't survive in caves by the Dead Sea. Look, all of that made perfect sense. Famous last words 18. Yeah, in 1883 that made perfect sense. In fact, two of the biggest opponents of the scrolls authenticity in 1883, brilliant guys. Let me just say that I don't fault them because they knew what they knew in the 19th century. But I at different times a person by the name of Monsure Claremont Gano stood at Kumran and looked across and he he wrote about what he saw there. He wrote about there was a cemetery there and there were certain ruins. Claude Condonder, the famous scholar soldier, said the same thing basically. But but right in front of them basically are 11 caves that later were discovered to have ancient scrolls in them. And Condor even said, "I've been in I think every cave in Palestine and there's no way that this could nothing could survive in these caves." 50 feet in front of him. There's a big cave that had he gone in that one, cave four for instance, he'd have found the mother lode. Wow. Bottom bottom line is again most of the arguments that were put forward in the 19th century, scholars today, again, first of all, what a lot of them will say is, "Well, we don't have it. We don't have the scroll. So, whoopde-doo. It doesn't matter, Ross. You can say what you want to say because we don't have the scroll. What they failed to mention is that we can compare the 19th century work that scholars who actually saw it. What did they say and now postkuman we know quite a bit. One quick example uh I I use this in my class here. Here's a photo on it's on the front of Emanuel Tove's book on textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. By the way, I highly recommend this. I want you to notice along the top edge. This is not an edited photo. This is not cropped for the book cover. This is one straight edge and the bottom has got jag a jagged edge. This is similar to what they saw and described. And so what they said was they said that can't be. You know what happened? This is this what they thought. They said I know what happened here. The forger probably Shapi cut the strip from the bottom of an existing scroll and treated it to make it look older and then wrote whatever as they put it in the 19th century whatever text fancy dictated. In other words, they just winged it. They made it up. So this sample, my example, my prop from eBay, which is not real, but I wish it was, uh, is is a little bit bigger than actually what the real scroll. This represents there were 16 strips of leather. This represents one of them. And this particular text I refer to as fragment E. Fragment E contains the Shama Aaron, which you mentioned shortly thereafter. But this version of the shama and it contains the 10 words uh slightly different than the 10 words that most people are familiar with in Exodus and Deuteronomy. But I know uh Cam's got some insight on some of this too. One thing about Cam I want you to touch on for the audience at some point since this is the Jesus Way podcast. We're at a conference together. Cam Cam is at this conference with me, with James Taber, a bunch of other people, and he brings up something on the blessings and curses from this manuscript that tie into presumably or could possibly tie into an understanding that Jesus of Nazareth had. So, we don't have to get into it right now, but I think we ought to unpack that later, too, because it's really a good observation. So guys, we can we can talk about the comparison of this scroll to the Dead Sea Scrolls, but just in a nutshell, there are features that were found in this manuscript that are mentioned in academic works that people laughed at in the time, the size of the manuscript. It was written in PaleoHebrew. At the time they knew Paleo Hehebrew, ancient script, but they only knew it from lapidary for instance, like the Messella, you know, engraved in stone. They knew it from coins, but they had never seen PaleoHebrew on leather. The fact that it was written in Paleo and it's written what we call scripioinua, which just Latin for continuous script. This the text has no word breaks breaks between words except in the ten commandments or the 10 words as we call it in Hebrew uh and various periodically throughout the manuscript almost at the end of certain verses but not all. Otherwise the words just flow together. You have to know you have to recognize where the word would naturally break. So this things really blue. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That piece of evidence to me is the most compelling. That is a defeater for the forgery narrative because as somebody who has a little bit of experience in Hebrew, I study and can read biblical Hebrew at an elementary level. And PaleoHebrew, guys, is completely different than, you know, modern biblical Hebrew. It's like I can't read it at all. Like the symbols are totally different. You've got the inner punks. So it's like how would Shapiro have learned because it's legitimate PaleoHebrew. It's not like some some dude is kind of like scribbling. Oh, nobody will understand this anyway. Let's make some up. It's like, no, this is legitimate PaleoHebrew. Where would he even have learned such an ancient language in his day? Well, it it's a good question and I will say that the arguments for that uh when they point and say he forged it, here's what they say he did and he could have become familiar with it. In fact, we know he was. Let me tell you why. because he worked in this ancient script again from engraved in uh in in lapidary. For instance, the Messa Stella was discovered in August on August 19th of 1868 by a German uh and and this was discovered in the Trans Jordan, by the way, not very far from where the scroll was discovered at a place uh right there by Auror, you know, as as you're going down the Wadi Mujib. So it's right there where this particular um uh monument was discovered. Shapiro worked on that monument. And then in 1880, which is on the back side of the discovery, the scroll comes to Shapiro in 1878. In 1880, uh, a young guy by the name of Jacob Eliu was walking through the Salom tunnel and came upon what is known as the Saleom inscription. And I've proven in my research, I gave a talk on this at the Albbright Institute in Jerusalem, that Shapiro is the first one to crack the code on what that inscription meant. We, everybody knows what it means now, but he's the first to read it. So, so just to your point, Aaron, great question, but this actually is used against him because what they say is they go, even though all the things you said about paleo are true and dead on, it's very difficult. It's, you know, how many people actually knew it at the time, but he happens to be one of the guys who was familiar with the text. So, they just say, "Oh, come on." You see, but but reading the text as someone like you who knows that, you know, to you're learning to read, you're studying Hebrew. One of the things that you and I deal with in modern Hebrew is that certain letters, five letters in Hebrew have a final form in the letter forms that we use, right? So, you know that that's the final cough, for instance. But Paleo has no final form. Yeah, that's true. So, you're reading along and and you just don't know where a word ends. Here's another thing that complicates this text as opposed to modern Hebrew. Just we and we didn't know they didn't know this in 1883 or 1878. When you get to the end of a line, you go from right to left. You get to the end of the line and you're a scribe, you don't worry about, I got to finish this word. I'm going to write the last letter smaller. You just pick it up on the next line. Wow. So letter No, you just you drop down and start at the next line. It's just that's the way you do it. See, those are ancient markers to me. That's right. That's right. And so that's what they did. They initially the the 19th century experts, they only knew what they knew. They said, "Wait a minute. You're telling me that a bedwin went in a cave?" Okay. Okay. By the Dead Sea, happens to get a bundle. Thought it was G. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And And then, by the way, you're telling me that this is written on leather. You think it's thousands of years old? As if leather could survive in a cave for thousands of years. And And it's wrapped in linen like linen would survive for thousands of years. Oh, by the way, and it's dipped in it's got some kind of black sticky asphalt smelling substance. What are the ch like what is that about? And and why is it folded and not on and on and on and on all of these features all of these features made them suspect that it was just a lie. It was a forgery. It was a fake. Fast forward the winter of 1946 and 47. Bedwin go in a cave, think they found treasure, find bundles, open the bundles, find leather with ancient writing wrapped in linen, got a sticky black asphalt smelling substance. Now, what are the chances? So I would say to your audience, Aaron and Cam, if he faked it, if if Shapiro faked it and and people insist that they want to believe that, he predicted the future what was going to be discovered 65 years after his death. Come on, man. That is the biggest defeater for the forgery argument. And even Ross, I I would push back on what what you explained is kind of the apologetic reply to how did he learn PaleoHeb? Well, he he discerned this other PaleoHebrew script that no one else could, so he clearly could read it. That's all true. But as a linguist yourself, Ross, and somebody who's studying Hebrew, uh there's a massive difference between saying, "I can read Hebrew and I can write Hebrew or any language." Just because you could read a language absolutely does not mean you could write a complex literary work like a deuteronomic text with rhetorical techniques and all these things. The syntax of the language and the grammar is very difficult to learn at a level where you can write a legitimate document like that. Maybe Shapiro had studied PaleoHebrew for thousands of hours to the point where he could write a document like the Moses scroll. But I think it's it's a nons well because he could read it. He could write it. It's like, oh, absolutely not. Most scholars who can read Greek, no problem, could never write a literary work in Greek because they're just not familiar enough with the structuring of this the grammar of that language. So, I don't think that that's by any means uh an argument against uh Shapiro knowing Paleo Hebrew means he forged it. It's like, well, I mean, how many thousands of hours would he have had to study this ancient language to be able to write like that to to the level where scholars are actually translating it and have translated it? That's that's a very different thing than just saying I can read PaleoHebrew. I hear you. Well, jumping in on that too, just to push back a little bit as well, I feel what it reminds me of is, you know, I'm I don't know Greek. I could I could never I couldn't write Greek if I wanted to. But going into the Gospels, I've had to teach my things about Greek just enough to be able to decipher and dissect certain things. But because I don't know it to the level of scholars and haven't been taught to view it the way scholarship views it, sometimes I find myself connecting dots that I'll even turn over to someone like Dr. James Taber and he'll go he'll say, "Wait a minute, that's interesting. Yeah, I hadn't ever caught that before." So, I I think his him cracking the code on the inscription might even point to the idea that he knows just enough as a hobbyist, as someone who's just passionate and loves this uh to to but then he's he doesn't have the rigid boxes of maybe having learned it at a scholarly level to be able to produce documents and everything and that's how he's able to see things that maybe other people don't see because you know, you know what I mean? So definitely no and and I go I just for both of you guys I mean I don't consider myself a linguist or an expert but I am passionate about studying these ancient languages and so forth. And I'll tell you one of the things that I find uh so funny is that that when you look at the academics who looked at this scroll in the 19th century the what they compared the scroll to was what they knew from like for instance uh a scholar by the name of Driver had done a work on tenses like Hebrew and one of the things that's interesting is that one of the criticisms is that there are some spelling mistakes in this document that the scholars of the day said, "You know what? If um I wish that our boy, our forger, had spent more time studying grammar and he wouldn't have made these mistakes." So, there were criticisms. Now, what's interesting about that is that when we found the Dead Sea Scrolls, not me, but when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered and scholars began to unpack that and look at things like orthography and, you know, how did these how were these things spelled and so forth, what they found is that there are spelling mistakes there, too. Things are different. No, Ross, it's word for word with the Maseretic text. We know this. Hey, there you go. Hey, that's one way to get viral. Say that again. It's word for word. That's right. Word for word. That Hey, that'll get us on Joe Rogan right there. That's right. How do you How do you make How do you make uh the continuous text word for word? Aren't you Aren't you guys Aren't you guys also I know you and Jono are working with it. Sometimes the thing about uh scriptural continuum is that it's where you take the break in the letter could actually change. Sometimes it can make two different word combinations that can mean two different things. Right. That's something that you kind of have to deal with with reading text. You you have to and at the same time like it doesn't like some people might think well then if that's the case it's impossible. How will we really know what that is? But but there there actually is some sense. Now what there's some sense to it. What what we do find is Edon Dersuitz as an example found among the files in the start biblotech in Berlin. Did did you go there by the way Cam or did you did you go to Germany when you went or you went to England mainly? I went I went to England. Germany's next lens. We're going together. We need to go together. Yeah. Because I want to show you some things. But one of the things uh is that in the St. Biblotech there's a collection of a bundled up and bound in a beautiful book some papers from Shapiro's files. And among those were three pages. Uh we call them colloquially the purple pages because they were written with what is now a purple ink. I have to assume maybe over age maybe it looks purple but I think it was purple ink either way. But the purple pages contain a partial transcription of the manuscript that Shapiro had in his possession. this a partial transcription of the 16 fragments and we're able but he wrote it in modern Hebrew. So like if you're looking at the Paleo Aaron to your point you're you're trying to make sense of it and you you write line one, line two, line three and then you represent it in modern Hebrew. So then someone who can read modern Hebrew goes, "Oh, these are the words that Moses spoke." Whatever. And that's what this represents. It's just a partial manuscript, but he made some mistakes and some of the mistakes that he made are associated with what Cam was talking about. You you don't have word breaks. So, you have to determine is this word ashair alen re or is it alfeen and it spells a like fire? You know what? What are we actually spelling here? Well, a lot of that is pretty easy when you think about context. So, you know, if you know Hebrew pretty well, you can work through it. You go, "Oh, wait a minute. This," and this is what happened to Shapiro. We have a record, by the way. I've got a lot of books out uh just to show you there. One of the books that I read is is uh called The Little Daughter of Jerusalem. This is a translation from a French original that his daughter wrote and she tells the story of growing up with Moses Shapiro, her dad. Wow. She idolized him. And in this book is a lot of material on the scroll itself. And so amazing. She she actually reports that her dad was like, "Honey, listen to this. This is like an ancient Deuteronomy." and and he said if this is authentic I think this is the oldest copy. Now one other thing that I want your viewers to know guys is that this when when this manuscript was discovered 16 fragments represented not one copy but two copies of the same manuscript. So it's it's almost like if you found by the way the scroll when you measure it and you look at the number of words and so forth it's about the size of the book of Hosea you know in terms of of volume it's like having two copies of an ancient text of Hosea. So this is what was actually found. Again if you're a forger you're taking a big chance on getting busted if you do one text let alone two. You see, hold on. I'm learn I'm learning this live right now, so it's blowing my mind a little bit. All right. You just said they found they actually found two Moses scrolls together. Two of the same text. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. So, they're each H strips. Uh, well, technically you could say that. In other words, there's total of Yeah, you're right. There are 42 columns of text of varying lengths. So some for instance let me just do it this way there were five single strips five strips of one column of text that had been over time Aaron were separated just age eight through the the whatever and then you had two of two and then you had a certain number of three strips and a certain number of four and a certain number of five but they're broken in different places but here's what we know we know from reading the reports from in the 19th century by the scholars that it represented 42 columns of text roughly 21 columns of text per manuscript two copies of the same manuscript. Does that make sense? So, so you but you got two copies. Yeah. I'm sure you've cross compared them, right? Are there a lot of differences or no? Well, here's what we know. I wish I wish they would have given us the text of manuscript one versus manuscript two. But what they had to do because I believe they're ancient and there's some deterioration and there's some missing there's some gaps in the text. They had to take the best of what they had. We know there are two, but here's why we know there are two, Aaron. They said there are two almost identical. There are a couple of slight differences, and I can tell you about one of them in a minute, but but the differences are very, very minor. and something that you would expect in ancient manuscripts. Again, I study the Dead Sea Scrolls all the time, and contrary to some opinions, and I know that people have beat this this uh to death, but the idea that they're word for word, there there are slight variations between these ancient manuscripts generally in orthography or spelling and so forth. But we know they're different hands because it's like if I wrote uh a paragraph and each of you wrote a paragraph, my wife could pick mine out. She would know my handwriting. And I don't even I've never seen your I've seen Cam's handwriting. She's not a philologist. Yeah, that's right. So, the bottom line is there there are noted differences in the manuscript in terms of handwriting. But I find that amazing that we have two copies of the same manuscript. Again, if you're going to fake it, you better stop at one house or you're probably going to get caught. I never heard of someone forging two of the same text in all of human history. That's right. There's some funny stuff going on. That's right. That's another huge proof to its to its credit. Um, you know, friend Dr. Taber, who we've mentioned many times, he calls it I've heard him call it a Dead Sea Scroll found in a cave in in Moab, which is very close to the Kuman caves. Uh we showed the map on the last episode. We'll we'll put it on the screen as well so you guys can see how close by they were. But you know, you can almost see this scenario of um if the Essenes who believed that the Torah had been corrupted by the lying pen and the scribes and didn't believe in sacrifices or all the lurggical laws, they probably would have prioritized this text as their main text of the law that they followed. And so if there's different Ainian groups around Kuman and stuff, you can see how somebody or some small group who maybe was living a little bit to the southeast um near those caves in Moab may have kept one of their law documents, this Deuteronomic text we have and ended up stashing it in a cave there where they were living rather than in Kuman with the other texts. the fact that they're so close by geographically and then the fact that like you said Ross when they found the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 I want to say they found at least nine other texts Ross with PaleoHebrew continuum inner punks on leather like just like the Moses scroll is that correct there there are according to Emanuel to the number you may have read nine the number is according to Emanuel Tove 12 manuscripts only out of all now We're talking about roughly a thousand manuscripts. 250 approximately are biblical manuscripts. A lot of the others are sectarian texts as you guys know. But then then that of those of the 1,000 and then the 250 biblical manuscripts, we have 12 manuscripts that are written in PaleoHebrew. And get this, all of which are texts which are attributable to Moses. In other words, there's not a copy of Isaiah written in Paleo Hebrew. We have an Isaiah. We have great Isaiah scrolls, but it's not in PaleoHebrew. This is one of uh I'm sorry, there are 12 manuscripts. This text matches in many ways what we find in those paleo manuscripts. Let me give you an example. Only only the Paleo written manuscripts use Scripio Continua. Only the Paleo manuscripts use inner punks between words. Only the Paleo, it just goes on and on. So like if you go, well, this this manuscript had inner punks between the words in the 10 words in the Ten Commandments. Uh you go, well does do we find that in the Isaiah scroll, the great? No. You know why? Because it's not written in paleo. But in the Paleo manuscripts, we see this. So, so again these are features which could not have been faked. So much so this blows me away. 65 years after the death of Shapiro and after this reaches the European scholars when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered and they begin to seek out some scholars to look at them. Two of the first scholars that they go to declined to even weigh into the situation because they said, "No, we don't want to get into this because it's going to be another fake like the Shapiro scroll." I mean, they they didn't know. They they said, "No way." And turns out now we know that these manuscripts are sea scrolls were forgeries initially, right? They they did. Now remember, they only had a few in that first find in cave one. They only had a few manuscripts, but but like come on, Ross. A cave of forgeries. Doesn't that sound a little cartoonish? I I tell you, everything sounds cartoonish now, Aaron. But remember, at the at the time, they're like, "Oh, come on. Tell me again the story about the cave and the Bedwins. Th this is silly to the people in the 19th century." But but now now when you hear that story, you go, "Of course they found it by the Dead Sea. Of course, it was in a cave. I know it's going to smell like it. I can smell it as I read it in the New York Times. But then it wasn't. So, you see, from the beginning, it was not. So, the story sounded silly at the time. And now now the other point that you made um when whenever Shapi begins to wrestle with who could have written this like I'm he's shocked a that in the main body of the text it doesn't use yode vave the divine name but he uses Elohim. So he goes, "Who would who would say that?" I mean, is it could it be possible that maybe a tribe east of the Jordan doesn't use the name Jehovah this late in the game? I mean, could And then he says, "Could it be an Elohist text?" Back to your question earlier, Aaron. Uh, as you began to embark on a study of the sources, you go, "Well, could this be?" See, he's beginning to read this stuff, too, by the way. We know this. But but then he says, "But why would you have Jehovah mentioned in the opening line and the closing line? Could it be that a later scribe who used the name put Jehovah at the beginning and the end of a text? Didn't you know that's right. Mhm. So anyway, there are all these questions, but one of the biggest things is what are the implications of like like again I didn't set out to find a scroll which match my budding theology. I I know I mean I found tension in the text. Does God want sacrifices or as Camt often quotes and no sacrifice? Like God says, "I desire loving kindness and not sac how how do you I I love the way Cam puts this." Maybe I'll let him do it, but he he always says, "If you wanted to convince somebody that sacrifices were not need, how else would you say it?" Is that right, Kim? I get Yeah. How else would you say it? I mean, I This blows me away. So, anyway, I didn't set out to find a text which agreed with my theology. I began to find these tense places in the text where I found conflicting ideas. God wants sacrifices. He likes to smell the barbecue. Then text which said I don't if I was hungry I wouldn't ask you to feed me that I don't eat the blood of drink the blood of bulls or flesh of go. You know all this kind of stuff. And then you got other texts which say I never commanded that. I mean, you know, you've got these really strong texts and then you've got the whole sacrificial cult is one of the biggest things in the text. Here's another one. The Bible as we have it talks about the monarchy for hundreds of years. The monarchy is one of the biggest things in the in the text. But God never wanted that. Yeah. I mean I mean think about this. So here, let me build this up and then I want you guys to jump in on the the implications of the scroll because I need help with this. I'm puzzled. The sacrificial cult is one of the biggest parts of the Bible. I have people ask me all the time, "Well, Ross, if you take that out, what's left?" Well, pretty much what God wanted from the beginning before the scribes added lies to the text. But but let's say the monarchy. You go, "What do I do with the monarchy if you're telling me it wasn't supposed to be?" When the people of Israel go when they ask Samuel to make him a king, don't you think Samuel could have said, "You know, I knew this day was coming because Deuteronomy 17-20 says that you're going to ask for a king like the nations and I'm going to give you." He didn't say that. You know why? because it wasn't part of the Bible that he knew. He said, "You've rejected me." And he goes to cry to God. And that would have been a great time for God to say, "Hey, you know, it says in Deuteronomy 17 14- 20 that this is going to happen. Why are you upset, Samuel? Give him a king." He says, "They didn't reject you. They rejected me." Nobody in the story knows about the king except for the story reveals it. Long story short, that in 1st Samuel 10:25, it says that Samuel was told to put that in the book. I think this is where it's added. So bottom line, you take out the monarchy, that wasn't part of God's original plan from the beginning per Jesus. It was not. So Matthew 19, I'm using his phrase. No king, no sacrifices. The next question would be, did God even want a temple? All right? I mean, you can start chipping away. And if you take those elements out that weren't part of the original plan, and you go back to what it was in the beginning, you begin to see clearly that faith was much more streamlined, much more clear and clean, and without all this additional stuff, right? This stuff gets me excited. I want to jump in on that too because it even for someone who may have a hard time with the idea that there could be that tension and that um the Bible in some way is almost like bocal or dual vocal. There's at least an admission too in what is it? Ezekiel 20:25 where it said where it says I gave you over to statutes which you could not live by. So, at any rate, even if we if we see it as one continuous voice, maybe God's just like, "Look, you guys want it? Have it." And and it's all and it's all there. It's it's all in the scripture. This these systems that were never meant to be, but now it's in this text so that we here in 2025 can look back on it and learn from what God wanted and what God didn't want and how the consequences of those decisions played out, you know, so that there there's a lot of wisdom that can be gleaned from all of that. That's a that's a beautiful that text. Uh God says, "I gave them statutes that were not good and that they couldn't live by." Right. That's powerful. Right. That's not too dissimilar from Jeremiah 88. Exactly. One thing too is not only is the uh the tension between the prophets speaking of or or speaking against animal sacrifice, but then all the Levitical laws and everything promoting it. That that tension. There's even tension in the sacrificial system itself like it can't figure itself out with Exodus tw Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 12 contradicting each other which plays into that idea of Josiah's reforms like Exodus 20 is saying oh you can sacrifice on altars wherever as long as you use God's name but then right am I getting that right Deuteronomy 12 Josiah it's it's all in Jerusalem now well in Exodus yeah you're right it's sort of like wherever my name is called upon that's good you sacrifice everywhere like e Ezekiel uh well let me let me use another example Elijah he doesn't know anything about this sacrifice in he's on Mount Carmel the patriarchs are sacrificing all over the place but to your point Deuteronomy 12 says uhuh boys bring them here to Jerusalem right here right so one thing I want to bring into the conversation is uh yeah tying it into the implications that it could mean for say the Jesus way literally for what for understanding the truth of what Jesus was really speaking about in this time. And then after that, I kind of want to bring up some of the as a documentarian myself, you know, investigative journalist, I I want to get into some of the juicy almost Da Vinci Code level tension, you know, you know, storytelling that we can have around what happened to the scroll, you know, later on in the in the 1800s. And um but before getting there, one thing that I think is interesting, you kind of alluded to it earlier, is this area of the Trans Jordan era, and you were talking about these groups that maybe did have this original text or at least know of it, and they're trying to preserve this tradition. And uh the more I've looked into it, and Ross, you and I fire off text and stuff back and forth, and Eric, Erin, we have our chat about this where you start to see the pieces come together. You know, Ross, you turned me on to this um where in Joshua 22 where the tribe of Reuben and Gad and half of Manasseh, you know, the 12 tribes of Israel, we got two and a half of them that decide to not stay in the land of Israel, the promised land, and they go back over to the Trans Jordan, and it says they built an altar there, but not for sacrifice. That's a beautiful text, isn't it? Wow. Right. Right. And so we've had this conversation where, you know, maybe an apologetic view would be, oh, they're building it not for sacrifice because only sacrifice can happen in the land and this and that. But that would be a great apologetic, you know, excuse for maybe a deeper meaning, which is that they were kind of rejecting the the d the direction that maybe some of the other tribes were going and they brought it back over to the other side and they wanted to preserve this earlier way. Uh, could that be, could it not be? I don't know. But the more that you look down the line into history, the more probable it becomes because, you know, you see that uh Jesus uh John the Baptist, Jesus, the the Dead Sea Scroll communities, these John the Baptist is doing ritual baptism, not animal sacrifice for the remission of sins. And we see with the Dead Sea Scroll groups that they have the same idea as well. And all of that is Trans Jordan, right? You know, every or or it's in that general area, right? they're they're stepping either right to the edge uh of the Dead Sea or they're across to the other side and that's where the scroll was found. And so it it it seems so obvious to me when I really look at it that there was this other group that um was in this northern kingdom Israel space. They also too, they would have missed out. I I was researching that they would have missed out on some of Josiah's reforms as well because um you know Judah was the one was taken over and and sent into exile and maybe some of these groups could have survived that exile and still preserve some or they got into the earlier one with the Assyrians, right? So anyways, all of it comes together for me, which I've shared with you, uh, Ros before, which one of the biggest pieces of evidence that just blew my socks off when I was making the film Christpiracy, which centers around this idea that Jesus possibly rejected animal sacrifice as a main part of his ministry, the temple cleanse, where he's running the animals out of the temple, is this text by Epiphanius who in in the uh Penarion, which Epanius is an early church father who is actually pretty mean and he's trying to condemn everyone, you know, just Yeah. Yeah. nasty as as Dr. Taber says. But even in all of his condemnation, I'm so happy that he wrote what he wrote because he preserves this text about this group called the Nasarans, which, you know, Jesus the Nazarene. It it it coincides that Jesus the figure could have been related to this sectarian group. not just that they're from a place called Nazareth, but they have a particular belief system. And he writes in there that they uh reject, they're just like the Hebrews in every other way, but they reject animal sacrifice and even flesh consumption because they believe it's unlawful to do these practices. Why? And it says in the text, because they believe that Moses received the law, but not this one, some other institution. And it goes on to say that they're they're in the Trans Jordan, that this is where these groups are found, that they were a Jewish sect that he documents alongside the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Oines and some of the other sects that he documented. They were their own distinct sect over there in the Trans Jordan in these same areas where this text was found. So, we've got a later petristic church father condemning these people because they said they had some other law of Moses that didn't contain animal sacrifice. See, this is what you do to me all the time, Cameron. I don't remember you telling me this particular piece. Maybe you did and you just blew my mind again. But the fact that it's the same area, I mean, and what if what if it's, you know, you got, like you said, Joshua 21:22 and the story of that, the people that they're making a altar site, but not for sacrifice. You've got the the the Moses scroll. You have this this Come on, man. What are the chances? I mean when and I just keep saying it because I can envision Aaron and Cameron with me and my buddy Jono on You met Jono Cameron. When we go on these trips, we go to these areas. I mean, can you imagine standing on the lip of the Wadi Mujib and thinking about these ancient groups who didn't believe in in sacrifice be because it's not like just for any other reason that it just wasn't part of the law code of Moses. It wasn't there. Right. Well, I can actually do you one better, Ross, on what Cam just shared. Cam and I have talked a lot about in our own like private, you know, brainstorms the thread that would connect the Ebianites with the Ionym of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the sectarian group and the Nazarines, Nazarines, the couple different spelling variations the church fathers use with the Nazarene sect of Jesus's day in the first century. You know, Stephen tried to argue this in our debate. He's like, you know, we don't have any proof of the Ebianites existing before 70. I'm like, well, that's fantastic news because we have the Eonym, which is Ebianites in Hebrew masculine plural. Same same word, uh, existing up to the 70 AD when the when the Jerusalem temple was destroyed. So, to me, that's a link right there. It's like the Ebianites pick up where the Eonym leave off and they're just called Ebianites because that's the English transliteration. It's the same word in Hebrew. But here's the crazy part, Ross. What Cam just said about the the Jewish Christians, Nazarines relocating to the Trans Jordan. Well, it's either Ucius or Epiphanius or maybe both. One of the two they quote from Hegypus' five volume set of Jewish Christian church history, which is no longer extant today, but it was in their day. And in those early days of of the Christian movement, the first couple centuries, the church fathers are quoting from the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew and and uh Hisp volume church history set because it was before the Catholic decided to name the Jewish Christians outright heretics and ban all their texts. It took a number of centuries I think into the late fourth or fifth century where I think Pope Demas is like, "No, you can't even practice Jewish Christianity anymore. We'll take your property. It's illegal." Before that, these church fathers were like, "Hey, you know, we know that this Christian religion we have stems from the Jews, the Jewish people. Jesus was a Jew, his disciples, Nazarines, Ebianites. We know that." So, we read their texts and we learn things from them. And so, Ucidius or Epiphanius quotes from Heisipus' five volume church history where he documents from the crucifixion all the way through 180 AD when he was writing. He writes he wrote an extensive history set of how the Jewish Christian Nazarene movement transpired over history and you just go man if we could just can you imagine if we could have that full text and all the gems we would learn about the Jewish Christians man it's a bummer but we do have paragraphs quoted from Epipanius and Ucius and would you believe Ross what they say the Jesus movement his 12 disciples and the Nazarenes did to escape the destruction of the temple had Decipus says they went first to they fled to Jericho before the temple was destroyed. I think even as early as ' 66 maybe like right at the start of the Jewish war with Rome. They fleed Jericho and then ultimately settle in Berea I believe it is Cam uh a city right in the Trans Jordan region. So there's the golden thread, right? Connecting the Nazarenes of Jesus, the Nazarene and his followers with the Nazarines of the later movements that these church fathers are writing about is that those Nazarines went to the Trans Jordan. And then we have Epiphanius in the third or fourth century saying all the Nazarines are in the Trans Jordan. It's like sounds to me like it's probably the same sect, went to the same area, called the same thing. How do we come to any other conclusion here? It's it's truly baffling to me how apologists try to say, "Oh, those are different groups called Ebianites." Yeah, same name, different groups. Nazarines, same name, different groups. It's like, sorry guys, the the evidence we have just does not converge in that direction at all. Certain certainly not. Uh I'm not familiar with some of these things like you guys, but every time I talk to Cam, and you know, usually late at night when maybe he's up feeding or you're walking the baby like I used to have to do, I'll get this text. Yeah. And it'll say, "Hey man, check this out." So, but the idea of these different groups and how their theology kind of it, you know, it's like if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you know, it's the idea that maybe it's a So, I don't know. But Cam, I tell you this, some of these ideas, these threads as you guys have called them, what if I mean what if there is this tradition that uh or there is this truth that's been carried through the ages and it just surfaces from time to time. That's what I always feel when I read the Shapiro scroll or whatever. It's like how what are the chances that this came up when it did? Well, I think it's quite possible because it came up at other points in history, right? Well, it come I think it comes up and then like whack-a-ole it gets crushed by the hand of of the uh the monarchy or you know the other side of the coin that wants to continue things as they are in the system as it is. Um, I mean, even to add on to what you just said, Erin, once we have the established, you know, petristics that put the Nazarene, Ebianite, uh, Jewish Christian groups over in the Trans Jordan and up in the region of Pella and Borea, etc. We also have Jerome and and some of uh the church fathers as well saying that this Hebrew gospel of Matthew or a an Aramaic written in the Hebrew letters version of Matthew is found in the same area uh by the Nazarines living in this area. So, it's almost like I see in a way going back to our point a while ago that what if this is the big what if what if the Torah that we have is really based on a single document that looks something like or even is this Shapi scroll and what if the New Testament is summed up in a single document which is like this and really there really is no old covenant, new covenant, New Testament. There's one single thread in one single way and it's just a people losing their way and prophets trying to bring them back to that original path, the ancient paths like Jeremiah said. And that's what I see because you know you've got all the prophets condemning animal sacrifice, you know, the temp whether they're outright condemning the temple or just the way it's being performed. Maybe they want more of a tabernacle type of a version of a gathering place. Um, but they're condemning these elements of the religion as it's gone on and then they're squashed over time and then Jesus comes, but the same thing happens to him that happens to the prophets with the New Testament where these same practices get peppered in in a different way through, you know, the Greek gospels and some of Paul's letters and some of these things. So, I think I want to um because I know we're we're we're going, you know, almost on two hours here. The thing that I think would be really fun to end this with speaking of these kind of truths being squashed over time uh is this idea of the Shapi scroll and Moses Shapi and his findings somewhat having some interesting whether it's foul play some dots that come together that start to feel like this Da Vinci Code like story where it's you know after it's trying to you know auctioned off in the UK we find it in the hands of a of a of a a Freemason and all of that. So, you we'll talk about it, but maybe you just tell us the story from around the time, you know, we know that he was deemed as a forager. He's smeared in the newspapers and almost, you know, his reputation is harmed and he eventually is found dead by suicide. Can we talk just start from there and kind of put together some of the pieces that you Exactly. Suicide suicide. Yeah. I I tell you, and this is uh this is why I want to go to Europe with uh with you, Cam, so we can chase some of this down because I some of it I've read, some of it I've I've invest I've investigated all of it to the best that I can from here. I've been to Amsterdam, I've been to uh Europe, I've been to London. I know we'll get some of your input on some of that, but here's what happens quickly in a nutshell. Um it's it's basically in May of 1883 Shapiro goes to Europe. He's decided that he w he put it away for 5 years. But now he's become convinced through things I outline in my book that it is authentic. It is ancient. He pulls it out. He heads to Europe. He goes to Germany first where a document is written about the scroll. And and so it's basically not really champion the way he felt. He goes to London. The first person he meets in London is a man by the name of Walter Basant who is not only a um leader, the secretary of the Palestine Exploration Fund, but he's also a leading Freemason. We know that to this day that he was uh a a founder of one of the greatest um free or masonic educational research organizations and uh so it he meets there. Now what's interesting is in the first meeting of those who examine the scroll now you might say in Victorian England most men were probably Masons of high stature. Uh, but I will say that in this particular story, pause for one second, Ross. I think we lost your camera signal. He's back. Okay, you're back. All right. Is that Aaron? You playing around? You cut me out. Okay, so here we go. I didn't do nothing. All right. So, uh, he ends up he he goes to Walter Basant and then almost everyone who sees the scroll in that first meeting are members of the lodge. Now, just kind of put that on the shelf because we're talking about the end of July 1883. a man by the name of Christian David Ginsburgg, who's one of the top Hebrew scholars of the time and is still highly respected to this day, particularly when it comes to the Hebrew Bible and the Meseretic text. He was assigned by the British Museum to investigate and give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down. If it's a thumbs up, the British are going to try to buy this scroll for an exorbitant amount of money as it should be paid if this is authentic. So he spends the end of July through the third week of August examining the manuscript and publishing the text of that manuscript in the London papers which are then dis uh passed throughout the whole world. Everyone's reading the story. the 23rd of August, the the bad news hits the paper that this is shot down, that basically all the scholars by this point, the French, the Germans, the English, it's a pile on Cam. Everybody, as you know, says it's fake. So Shapi goes to Amsterdam and a lot of people think and describe if you read a lot of books on Shapiro because people are lazy and they don't investigate. They think he's crazy. He's out of his mind. He's going there to end his life because why else would you go to Amsterdam? What we've discovered in our research is that in Amsterdam at the time is what is equivalent to the World's Fair. It's an expo where millions of visitors come to Amsterdam to see the greatest inventions of the time in the 19th century. So there are brand new hotels everywhere that and in Amsterdam at the time or actually right down about you know 30 kilometers there is a major Semitic conference. We think that Shapi is there trying to sell that manuscript. We know at the time that he's actually selling manuscripts. So, here's where it gets a little bit conspiratorial. It's not like he's out of his mind. He's still doing business and he's still selling manuscripts to the British Museum. But then he goes to Rotterdam. Now, the interesting thing about he's there in Roderdam. This is a total of about the last six months of his life. He's in the Netherlands. in Roderdam. After being there for a couple of weeks, some guests at the hotel notice that he's missing. And what they find is that they ultimately call the police. The police investigator comes and they find Shapiro dead in a hotel room or in this guest house. But the problem is we've got the police reports and they don't agree. So here are some questions. Was he on the bed or was he on the floor? We've got different reports that say that. Was he killed? Was there a revolver in the room? Was there a rifle in the room? We just don't know. A lot of something's going on here. One report that we found actually describes two bullet holes in his head. Now, I don't think you could get two off if you're squeezing it. I mean, I I know a good bit about weapons. The old military guy. Now, I don't know if the translation means that there's an entry wound and an exit wound, but we're investigating this. We need to go look at the actual reports, Cam, and we need to get a native speaker uh who can read the Dutch and and really give us this. Okay. So, now once he's dead and news finally gets back to Jerusalem, what happens next is quite puzzling. His wife writes a letter. We don't have her letter. We have a letter. She writes a letter to the person who's in charge of the British Museum. We have his letter to Ginsburg. And his letter says the widow Shapi is asking about her husband's manuscript. She wants us to send it back. Now, the next thing that we find out is not a response from the British Museum to her. We don't know if he responded. Maybe he did. What we do have is that ultimately the manuscript is sold at an auction to uh an organization called Sabes, an auction house. Then they in turn sell it for pennies on a dollar and then it disappears. We lose track of it. And various theories were put forward for a long long time about where it went. And nobody, you know, people just made up stories. They think maybe this guy Nicholson bought the scrolls and Nicholson's house burnt down in 1899. So for a long time, people proposed that maybe the scroll was burned up in 1899 in the Nicholson fire. Then all of a sudden in 2011, an Australian researcher by the name of Matthew Hamilton found an entry in a journal of conology and it was reporting of a u a eulogy that was read by a friend of a person by the name of Philip Brooks Mason who's from Burton on Trent, England. And it basically says that at a meeting of this organization, the scroll was displayed. He was the last known possessor of the scroll. Now, that's 15 manuscripts, 15 strips of the 16. And we know now that that meeting took place in a Masonic lodge. Now, is there a connection? That's what we have to investigate. The other part is that in the letter that the widow wrote to the British Museum, she reported that she sent two pieces of the manuscript, which I prove in my book that that's the missing 16th strip. It had two pieces. That missing strip was sent to a scholar in Germany. We also have to investigate that. These are the things that we're tracing down. Did he kill himself because he was distraught? I could see that that's a possibility. Or was there something in that manuscript that was revolutionary that someone wanted to silence? And is Freemasonry involved? Not sure, but it certainly uh or it's another element that we have to investigate. So, there are all these sorts of things. Now, I've been to Burton on Trent. You've been to Burton on Trent. What do you think? Where are you uh thinking we need to go next? Well, we definitely need to go to Germany and see what we can find in regards to that single strip and Australia to talk to Matthew. Um, but after having been to England this last summer to kind of follow some of these breadcrumbs that you are putting me on, Ross, I can tell you that nothing I thought Christ spiracy and making that film was a real life Da Vinci Code in a lot of ways. Um, but it's it's 10x with this story because I found myself, you know, in the British Library. Ross says, "You need to go to the British Library. You need to look at, you know, the documents on Shapiro." And we can put some of the B-roll up here of of just where I'm flipping through. I'm seeing Shapiro's letter where he's upset saying, "You've made a fool of me, you know, because of uh the smearing campaign against him being a forger and all of this." And the documentation that's there, you're you you I felt like I could put it up on a wall and put all the pieces of red string together like you've done for so many years. And and then I went over to the auction house and saw the document where it showed that he was originally trying to sell it for I think it was 1 million British pounds. Yeah, that was a number that was being tossed around. That's a lot. That's $120 million in 19 2020 I think. Holy moly. So you know whereas the Da Vinci Codes talking about the Mona Lisa and some of these super high value paintings. I mean, you got that kind of element if this guy That's another thing is I can't I can't really imagine someone thinking or even having an inkling of a a reality they that they had forged a document and if there was even a slight possibility that they know they might get caught. I seriously doubt they would be trying to sell it for a million British pounds in the 1800s because you're basically putting a big target on your head, you know, uh for everyone to come look at it. Um so that that was another piece. And then the final thing is, you know, you sent me up to Burton on Trent and I talked to a local there, David, who's a lawyer on the ground and he's been obsessed with this story for a long time, too. and he took me to Philip Brooks Mason's grave where you know he holds a theory I don't know where you're at on this but that potentially the strips are buried with Philip Brooks Mason the last known holder of the of the strips in his grave because there's an inscription on his gravestone that begins with the concept of you know uh never lost I think it says you know never uh it could be that he's just talking about it's talking about the memory of Philip, you know, from his family that he's not lost anyone's memory or hearts, but it's very it's a very odd way to phrase and inscribe one of these kind of like gravestone memoirs. Yeah. So, I stood over that and looked and heard Yeah, I know. So, that's that's one of the things that we got to do is we got to talk to Burton on uh Trent's, you know, um I guess city committee and figure out because I don't know that he has any surviving uh surviving family members that would attest to this. So, that would be that would scratch one thing off the list. Is that a possibility? He he doesn't he doesn't have because we've investigated deeply on descendants and you know the the last placement of various items in his will. So uh that's uh that's something that we can put on the list but but as far as descendants no yeah I mean it's open. Right. Right. And David even has a guy that I was hoping to get on the phone when I was there but we weren't a able to make the connection. There's a guy who's about 80 something years old that still lives in Burton on Trent that made a phone call one day when he heard about the story because he remembers being at Philip Brooks Mason's uh estate sale and seeing these these old strips of a manuscript there. No way. That was in the That was in the 70s, wasn't it? Didn't that one? Yeah. Uhhuh. So, that guy kind of corroborates by eyewitness testimony that he saw them there at the estate sale. So, maybe they're not in the grave or, you know, there's so many ways that this could go, but the fact that there is Freemasonry involved, the fact that there's suspicious suicide versus homicide kind of possibilities. Uh, the World's Fair. There's so much about the world. Religious implications. Religious implications. what it could mean. So, I think we're really really dealing with one of the most explosive cases uh that I could ever imagine with biblical scholarship or just as a storyteller, you know, uh the human the human story like this is massive, you know. Oh, yeah. Erin, if if we just knew somebody who was a popular film producer. Oh, wait. That's make a documentary. Gee whiz. or somebody with a a nice following on YouTube, we could really just blow the lid off. Get this thing out there. Huh. The story, as you pointed out, Cam, the story has every element. Like, I didn't I never until December of 2019, I didn't know anything about this. I mean, I it again, I didn't set out to find a cool story to support what my crazy brain had concocted after, you know, 35 years of biblical study. It just came to me in almost very Yeah. And and let me tell you, speaking of destiny, you'll get a kick out of this. There's one academic work that was published on the scroll in 1883. And um it's it's written that this is German but this is a work by Herman Gouta. Herman Gouta and another guy by the name of Edward Edward Meyer. Herman Gouta and Edward Meyer came together for one week in July and their purpose was to investigate the scroll. And this was a book that was published August the 14th 1883 by Gouta. It's about 95 pages in length and it tells everything about the scroll from Gouta and Meyers perspective. Well, I don't know German. I'm studying German, but I don't know German. So, uh the Tylers, friends of mine who are also Shapiologists, they're searching for the scroll, too. Uh they hired through their company a German translator and I did the Hebrew, he did the German. And so after the Moses scroll was published, we published this booklet. It's called Fragments of a Leather Manuscript containing Moses's last words to the children of Israel. Very important. It covers things that aren't uh covered in by anyone else. Now, this is the part that freaked me out. They met in a hotel in July of 1883 in Leipzig, Germany at a place that translates Ross Street and Ross Place and the hotel the hotel Ha was at Ross Ross. So what are the chances? I don't know. But it was destroyed uh during the war. But but I think that hotel was but I think we could still go to the corner of Ross and Ross and say here I am boys you call for the one you prophesied would come the the man mentioned in your prophecy is here to investigate. What are the chances really? I mean really what are the chances? That's crazy. I think it's pretty cool. All roads All road leads home. No matter which way no matter which fork you take in the road you're always going to get to Ross. Two two Ross two Ross. Well, the the fun part about all this is the story, as we say, the truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. If you put Shapiro off to the side and you just deal with the text, it becomes obvious that the text of the Bible as we have it, which I love, contains conflicting material and and there are fundamentalist apologists who in all the greatest intention are defending the text that they think is true. But what they find themselves to be at odds with is the truth itself. Because the truth is that God has certain things that he desires. And humanity sadly his own people a lot of times have chosen those things which God doesn't desire. But what we have to do is we have to be strong and courageous and bold and and bring forward what we think is the original way. What is that ancient path wherein the good ways lie? Jeremiah talked about this. He said, you know, stand ye, Jeremiah 6:16, stand in the ways and seek and ask for the ancient paths wherein the good way lies. Guys, the Jesus Way podcast, I know you both personally. From what I can tell, you're looking for what I'm looking for. I'm looking for that good way among the ancient paths. I don't have any hard feelings towards those who hold fundamentalist apologist views. I've been there. So, I want to know what is the truth. What is the way? I mean, that's what we're really looking for. I think that's the goal. Find it, seek, find, knock, ask. Matthew 7k. Speaking of seeking and finding, that's a great transition into one last thing that I wanted to say. Uh, which is kind of following up on your Ross and Ros Street meeting and the these serendipities that happen when you start to follow that remind you that you you never were going into this looking to confirm your own bias. you were we're consistently surprised by the guidance and the miracles along the way that continue to take us down the path and things converge that we never saw and you know I could count endless amounts of these that have happened since my time you know starting this journey even before making my film Christ spiracy and just fasting and praying and asking God about some of these contradictions and really wanting to understand but you know I I remember when I found Dr. Taber for the first time making that film and got into his work and said, you know, I got to talk to this guy. And my first meeting with him, I wasn't even sure what he actually believed about some of the topics that we were going to discuss. I just knew he looked at them. He researched some of this stuff and I just wanted to know. And I ended up in a two, threeh hour interview with him that just blew my socks off. It was just unbelievable. And at the end of that interview, I'll never forget, we shut the cameras off. It was a long day. We were getting tired. We said, "Let's go have a little bite to eat and continue the conversation." We're walking out to the car and you know, I think he's reflecting on everything that we were talking about, which was a lot about Jesus rejecting sacrifice, the temple incident. He said, "You know, I have somebody that you really need to talk to." And I said, "Who's that?" He said it's this guy Ross Nichols and he's found he's found an ancient scroll that was meant to be a forgery or passed off as a forgery but he thinks it's not. Here's the thing. It's like Deuteronomy but there's no animal sacrifices. And I was like why did we not talk about this in the interview? You know I was you left that out. You left that out after we turned the camera off but he said yeah I got to link you up at him. That was when he linked us up. And so so funny, you know, we've crossed paths at the conferences and then also at your place, but you know, Aaron and I just met because Aaron came to watch Christira in Austin, Texas last summer and we connected and it was right after Aaron and I connected that I was hightailing it back across from Texas to North Carolina before the hurricane and I stopped through and saw your new office and got paid a little visit by your local police who said I was driving too fast and they're Yeah. Yeah. You got to be careful. They didn't know. Yeah. Yeah. But I just see the way these things and these connections are weaving and how we're all we we're states apart and you know come from all these various backgrounds but the paths are converging much much like your two raw streets where there's just all of us as individuals that have come from different it's almost like a prism and we're entering at different windows of this thing but we're all finding ourselves in the same position with more and more information and details to corroborate what that true path way was. Well, let me let me just say um what what really thrills me at the deepest level uh is to meet people like you guys and not just you but just uh other people that you know through your own outreaches, people that you influence because of your film or your YouTube channel or the the podcast this Jesus way. I read some of the comments on some of the video that that you posted in the previous episode about the Moses scroll and fell in love with some of the people because I feel that they have the same heart. They have the same quest. I look I don't get bothered by people who think I'm a, you know, I'm a heretic. That doesn't bother I'm so used to that. That's like it doesn't even affect me anymore. But I'm talking about I'm used to that one. I'm pe I'm talking about the people who at all cost who who no matter what they were told growing up no matter how much they have been indoctrinated that at the current at the core of their soul they feel like something is off but they they want to know the truth and the truth they know will set them free. So they're un they're not they're not even bothered by the fact that people don't agree with their current path because for them the primary goal is to be pleasing to God and to live a life that's pleasing to God. And if along the way they discover that some of what they believed is wrong then so be it. That this is the group. These are my people. These are your people. There are a growing number of people who want to know. They want to know the truth. And that's I think if if you had you we all may have differences. I know we do in our theology. I'm primarily Hebrew Bible. You know, I'm not Jewish, but I'm primarily Hebrew Bible. Uh whereas you guys do a lot of other stuff with the New Testament and you Jesus Way podcast. But you know what? What anchors us, I think, is this common quest to find that way, the good way. And that's really what this is about. It's ne It's right. Yeah. That's right. It's very narrow. Few there be that find it. So, but I I tell you and and by the way, there is so much we we've just scratched the surface. I mean, every one of the things that and I hope that that I did an effective job of answering some questions. I know we left a lot un untapped, but man, I'm telling you, anything that you guys want to follow up on, um please I this has been a a joy to me to be able to sit down with you guys. So, we we may have individual things, whether this podcast or something else, but when we get off air, we want to I want to talk to you guys some more about some other stuff anyway that might fit for another time. We have all kinds of topics, Ross, that we're like, "Oh, can't wait to do a pod with Ross on this and get his thoughts." So, um, there's definitely endless content available here, even just not even in the Moses scroll topic, but just the Bible in general and this thesis we're weaving together with the Jesus way and Christ spiracy that Jesus emerged from a sect of Judaism that opposed animal sacrifices for many centuries before Jesus. And sort of people who who look at us, you know, you, Ross, Tabert, me, Cam, anyone who's sort of championing this message right now and say, "Oh, look at these people making up all this stuff." It's like, "Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. There's an entire sect of Judaism that believed everything we're saying 2,000 plus years ago." Like, we're just echoing what ancient Jewish people have been saying for a long time. And so to maybe close with this, Ross, you had asked, you wanted to get our thoughts on the implications of the Moses scroll and this whole anti-sacrificial message. Well, for me, being more of a philosopher, it's funny how Cam and I have different approaches to this debate because he's more of the on the academic uh storytelling, filmmaker side of things with his brain. I'm more of the spiritual philosophy side of my brain. And together we we create some pretty some pretty difficult arguments to surmount. And so for me on the philosophical side of this topic of animal sacrifices, you know, there's I'm I'm a big fan of Thomas Aquinus and his philosophy, widely considered the most famous, revered Christian philosopher of all time. And he had so many philosophies that absolutely nuke this idea that you can pay God with blood or with an animal sacrifice. And we could even start with Aristotle's first mover, unmoved mover idea that God is the first cause, the first mover of all things. That there is nothing that moves God. Right? God moves everything. Nothing moves God. Doesn't Isaiah 45 say, "I the Lord do not change." Okay. So then how are you going to justify your claim to me that you change God from a state of judgment and wrath to forgiveness and mercy when you murder an animal on an altar? I the Lord do not change. You can't have your theological cake and eat it too. You can't say, you don't get to say God is omnipotent and needs blood sacrifices so he can do something. No, that's a defeater for your argument, right? If God is omnipotent, that means God has all power. There is no power that God does not have. Why don't you explain to me how you're going to give God something? you're going to do something for on God's behalf so that God can offset this metaphysical debt. Even when Paul says, quoting whatever verse in Hebrews, uh, without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sins. Or maybe that's Romans, that's a metaphysical claim. And so that therefore requires a metaphysical justification. You don't get to just make these metaphysical claims. The Lord of the universe who's omnipotent needs blood sacrifices or can't forgive. And then run away from the argument. say, "Sorry, that's just the way it is." No, no, no. You just made an extreme metaphysical claim. You've got to justify it now. And animal sacrifices, philosophically, metaphysically, ontologically, absolutely laughable, unjustifiable from a philosophical standpoint. And so, when you look at the Essenes and why they rejected animal sacrifices, you know, both Josephus and Pho both said that the Essenes were very Pythagorean, right? They had been deeply influenced by the the Greek philosophers, especially Plato and Pythagoras. And the P Pythagoreans, we know, were strict vegetarians who also uh abhored animal sacrifices because they were deeply philosophical. We know that the Essenes were deeply philosophical also because Josephus and Pho and Plenny all tell us that they were. And I mean, you guys have probably read the uh writings on the Essenes from these first century historians. They're singing the praises of this group saying this is the most Pho says this is the most remarkable group in the world. That's a huge statement to make in those days. So they thought very highly of this Athenian sect of Judaism that repudiated animal sacrifices who were seemingly very philosophically oriented like the Pythagoreans. And when you study any level of philosophy, Plato, Aristotle, pick your philosopher, any basic epistemology will nuke the idea that you can pay God with blood, whether animal or Jesus. And so the implications to me with the Moses scroll as a philosopher are yes, this confirms every what every basic philosopher, Platinus, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinus, Augustine, they've all said these facts about God's nature. God is all powerful. God cannot change. God is omnipotent, omnisient, omnipresent. And so you don't have a justification or a way to justify that. You make God from a state of unforgiveness to forgiveness with your act of slaughtering an animal. And somehow God absorbs the blood metaphysically. There's no way to explain this concept in any way that you can make it make sense. And so it's like, thank goodness we finally have some evidence emerging that these ancient people like the Essenes and other Jewish groups who rejected sacrifices um actually had texts to back it up and probably ascribed to all the same philosophical reasonings I just explained to say, "Hey guys, this makes no sense at all. This is clearly a pagan practice that the the priestly class and the scribes pulled into Judaism because they were probably seeing all the other pagan cultures making money off the temple. Hey, why don't we do the same thing? This is obviously human influence on the Bible. And so, when we talked earlier, guys, about the Nazarene connection, there's one more big piece of evidence we haven't mentioned, which is from the Bible, the book of Acts. We're trying to link the later Nazarenes who rejected sacrifices with the Nazarines of Jesus's day. Right? Well, if you guys remember Acts 21, when Paul is on trial before James for apostaceia for teaching diaspora Jews to forsake the laws of Moses, James comes to this conclusion. Actually, this might be Acts 15. It's I think it's 15. Um, where they're having this debate of should we make Gentiles get circumcised and obey Mosaic law or not? And James says, "No, no, they don't need to do any of that stuff." Whoa. What? Sounds a lot like the Nazarines who repudiated the lurggical laws of the Old Testament. But then it gets even better. James says, "You don't have to do sacrif u uh sacrifice to circumcision, Sabbathkeeping, all that stuff. You don't have to do any of that. But here's four things you must not do. Do not eat meat sacrificed to idols. Do not eat anything with blood or anything strangled or commit sexual fornication." So, three out of the four things that James, the brother of Jesus, and Jesus's hand selected successor said to Paul and his gentile community. You guys only got to do these four things. No meat sacrificed to idols. Nothing with blood. Nothing strangled. That mean that pretty much rules out all flesh, right? All flesh has blood in it. A lot of them were strangled or sacrificed to idols. This was the most important thing James had to say to the Gentiles. If you want to be part of our movement, abstain from these animal-based, sacrifice-based things. Well, that seems like a powerful connection to me to the Nazarenes and the Essenes who also rejected sacrifices right there in the book of Acts. Notwithstanding Jesus quoting Isaiah 66 twice, cleansing the temple. I mean, Jesus walks into the temple and says, "I'm gonna burn this down." How are we not going to say I don't know if he said it just like that, but yeah, maybe he said it. He said it's going down, right? This place is coming down. Why would he have said that if he had no connection to these, you know, Jewish Christian groups who believe these things? It to me, it's just silly to even pretend like there's an argument for that. So the implications are that this text, the Moses scroll, corroborates what ancient philosophical groups like the Pythagoreans, ancient Jewish groups like the Essenes and Nazarines were all saying of this pagan practice that dominates religion today. Has nothing to do with God and nothing to do with philosophy, spirituality, epistemology. You can't justify it. It's just written in by the lying pen of the scribes. And people who outsource to the priests just say, "Okay, the priest say I got to do it, so I got to do it." But for thinking people, for reasonable people and heart-c centered spiritual people, it doesn't make any sense. And it's unjustifiable in every way. And I would know, guys, because I've been in a whole lot of debates, as have you, Cam, with apologists on Instagram and YouTube, and it is like watching a turtle on its shell, you know, try to roll itself over when you ask them to justify epistemically. Please walk me through how you posit that the God of the universe, who you say is omnipotent, also needs sacrifices and blood. I think this is a conversation that's been happening for thousands of years. Yeah. I I love the argument where people say, uh, what I hear a lot of times is, "Well, Ross, if somebody sins something's got to die, you like, you know, like, well, where do you get that? I mean, where does that something's got to somebody's got to die? I'm I'm sorry. Yeah, the wages the wages of sin are death. But it seems to me that very clearly if we're going to follow that line of thinking, it leads to one's own death, one's own physical death, the decay of, you know, the consequences to yourself. It's not like ah I sin now I got to kill something else. That actually is like the antithesis I think to the original idea. I want to piggy back on that too with something that you know this idea you're speaking a lot about these philosophers and everything and and one more modern one is Richard Roar you know the Franciscan monk uh and he he said something along this line that I think resonates uh which is maybe uh maybe Jesus didn't come to change God's mind about us meaning that we're wretched and we need blood to be spilled and all these things maybe Jesus came to change our mind about God and could that exactly and could that idea kind of carry over into that there was this original idea of God and it was probably more accurate all the way back to this earliest mosaic tradition in the realm of what the Shapiro scroll is is you know attesting to but not even just the animal sacrifices to pull it back to you know you alluded to this earlier in the podcast Ross that when I was there at conference with Ross talking about the Shapiro scroll and everything. I was sitting there looking at the 10 words from the Shapiro scroll that he has printed out on the wall and the blessings and the curses and everything. And like he said, it clicked for me in the Shapiro scroll it has the idea that you shouldn't, you know, thou shalt not murder, right? Thou shalt not kill. Not only that, you shouldn't even hate your brother in your heart, which Jesus said. Exactly. And it even says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery, but you shouldn't even be, I forget the way that it's worded in the script, but you shouldn't even lust in your own heart for your neighbor's wife," sort of thing. And that is what Jesus said. Jesus says, "You've heard it said that you shouldn't kill, but I say and that you should even hit your brother in your heart." And it makes me wonder when he if if there's a tradition like the Shapi scroll in the Trans Jordan with these groups like the Nazarene, Essene, whatever name you want to give him, Jesus goes out around his baptismal initiation. He spends 40 days in the wilderness over there is he either at that point or some other time in his history growing up gleaning this information from these people that are the you know Nazarene. There's a lot of ideas of what that word means. Some say it comes from the Isaiah 11 prophecy, the branch, the netzer. Right? There's also this idea that it means the watcher or the keeper, the keeper of the law, right? So, is he going and meeting with these keepers of the original law and then he's taking it to the Pharisees and saying, "Hey, your law says this. I got you, but I'm going to take it two steps deeper because the original law is actually about the heart. It is a physical, metaphysical, philosophical position that, you know, uh, that that's at the deeper heart of all of these things. And not only are we not to hate our and kill our brother, maybe we're not even to hate and kill, you know, other sentient beings around us, God's creatures in creation, especially not in some bizarre pagan-like ritual with God smelling the flesh and all of this stuff. So, um, anyhow, just wanted to throw that in. Well, let let me just say one other thing that I got I've looked back and forth and thought about uh to this question, you know, Cam, in some ways you go, well, did anyone from say the time of Jesus, could they have been familiar with this text, you know, or a text like this or or did they come to some understanding that there was a a more righteous way in the text that they received? So for instance, you know, Jesus, we can certainly put Jesus of Nazareth straight in the text of Jeremiah time and again. And if we can do that, you know, if you think about it, let me give you an example. Jeremiah 15 you brought up. It's one of our favorite verses where he basically goes to God and uh and this this whole idea of uh uh where Jeremiah is ba he's alone. He doesn't know he doesn't have anyone. He's kind of complaining. But he talks about pulling the good from the bad or the wholesome from the profane or the the rare uh the precious is literally the way it is. The precious from the polluted. That's what Jeremiah's seeking to do. Then right after that, he talks about the lying pin of the scribes and so forth. So I've wrestled with what if because that's Jeremiah 15. Jeremiah 16, interestingly enough, has Jeremiah talk about fishing for men. So, I wonder if Jesus of Nazareth after he comes out of this region, by the way, he's in this region with John or at least close to the border there. And he comes out of that and the first thing that he does according to the the synoptics, walks along the shore of the Sea of Galilee and says, "Follow me and I'll make you fishers of men." Well, is that just a cool little put down your nets, quit fishing for fish, and come follow me and we're going to catch people? Well, yeah, partly. But the other part of that is he's quoting Jeremiah. Jeremiah says the redemption begins because I will send for fishermen and they will fish for these people. So it could be very much that Jesus of Nazareth finds himself in the text of Jeremiah and finds not only his own purpose, his own mission, and the mission that he feels is divinely imparted. You know, it could very well be that there's a connection there. But when you first noted that the the 10 words according to the Shapiro manuscript have a corresponding blessing and curse. The first one which deals with worshiping only God. The blessing says blessed is the man who loves Elohim is Elohim. And the last blessing says uh blessed is the man who loves his neighbor. And when I guess I saw that, but when I saw that the whole law when you pointed that out, you're like, "Yeah, look, look." You know, and I'm thinking, "Here he goes. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. This is I'm a Moses guy." But when you pointed it out, made me look at it. I said, "Wow, that that's pretty strong that you have love God, love your neighbor. On these two hang the whole thing." Who knows, man. What if this is some ancient authentic document? I think it probably is. Well, Ross, that is why we're all so passionate about this topic and studying the Bible and studying what we call the Jesus way. Because if it's true that Judaism always began and was meant to be a religion that centered around love God with all your heart, love your neighbor as yourself. That's the most beautiful spiritual tradition on earth in my opinion. And I really do think that that's what the core of Judaism was always meant to be and why the forces of darkness probably sought to corrupt it and entangle it in all these man-made laws and sacrifices and pagan practices to corrupt what is truly at the core and the heart of it. This is what the darkness always tries to do is subvert and invert the truth and the light. And we've seen that happen, I think, in Judaism in a big way. And I think Jesus saw that as the Essenes did and was trying to reform Judaism back to the law of Mo the original law of Moses. So to your point, Cam, with Nazarene coming from that Hebrew root word note, um I'm almost certain the word notream appears at least once in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Is that right, Ross? Do you know that's true? Oh, I'd have to do a search. I'm not sure. I I'd have to do it. Well, we can search it for the next show. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we'll fact check that one. I'm almost certain that's true. But either way, uh, Shafield is the way I learned about this distinction between the two sects of Essenes that sort of split off and, uh, the Osenes went to the south, nasarines to the north. And the word osim is the word that sort of means uh, for the southern branch of Essenes like the doers of the law. Osim those who do the law. And note is like those who keep the law. And I find that to be very corroborative of our thesis here that the Nazarines were part of this Athenian sect that was trying to keep, preserve, protect the original law of Moses, which as we've pointed out in many different ways, Jesus was clearly trying to continue that mission in Jerusalem and in Palestine and took it all the way to the temple. So this whole this whole thing to me is a perfect summation of the Jesus way that from the beginning it was always meant to be love God with all your heart. Love your neighbor as yourself. You do this, you've done the whole law. Everything else boils down to this. Love God with all your heart. And you can't say you love God if you can't love God's children. So the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. And as the 10th commandment of the Moses scroll says, "And do not hate your brother in your heart." It's like like Taber points this out too. That's important to qualify it from a positive and negative sense. Yeah. Because you can you can treat someone how you think you want to be treated, but that might not necessarily be how they want to be treated. But if you say, "Do not do harm to your brother in any way," it's like, "Well, now we're no, we have no excuse to judge, to condemn, to call heretics, burn at the stake, all the stuff that has been rife throughout church history, has absolutely no no foot to stand on under Jesus's gospel and Mosaic law, which was always about loving people. Loving God's people is the highest spiritual commandment there is. And if you do this, you've done everything." So, I think that's just a beautiful summary of the Jesus way. It's why we do this podcast. It's why we have amazing guests like you, Ross, on the show to take us deeper into this incredible story. I I call it the greatest story never told because we're we're deriving all this stuff from the Bible and yet really up until now only some critical scholars have been talking about this stuff over the over the centuries. This is why we're so passionate about it all. So, Ross, thank you for joining us today, for bringing your expertise on this subject. We're going to put the links to both of your books in the description below so you guys can check them out on Amazon. Highly, highly recommend, especially the Moses Scroll book that Ross wrote. If you're if you're intrigued by this topic at all, you're going to not be able to put that book down. It's an absolute page turner. So, we'll put the link for that below. But I just want to pitch it to you, Ross, for anything you want to close us with, where people can find you, all that good stuff, man. I tell you what, I And here I was thinking, this is perfect. Aaron is so good at this. He's wrapping this up and I I still want to talk because I I don't get out very much. Let me just say this one thing though. Let's say that some of your viewers say, "Well, you know what? I'm going to cross my arms. I prefer my Bible the way it is." Because there are people who are going to do that. And they say, "I want to have the monarchy, the sacrifices, and the cult." And I would just say this with all love, and I mean it. Well, I'm sorry, you can't. Because there is no monarchy, there is no temple, there are no sacrifices. So you have to follow the way as we have it right now. Now you might hope that somebody finds a red heer and that it doesn't grow hairs the wrong color, which by the way, it's going to happen. I promise you. I've been doing this for decades. Bessie always grows an off-colored hair. Thank God. God is good. Amen. That's right. But if a person says, "I want temples to come. I want the temple to come back and and I just won't rest until it does." Well, I promise you that based on history, the same thing's going to happen to this one because it's not the way that God intended it. There's not going to be in the end. Cam brings this up all the time when we talk and he's right. Ultimately, there'll be no hurt, no harm on all my holy temple. that there's just not gonna be no slaughter. It's just not gonna happen. So, you can get over that and say, "How do I get with the program and follow the way that God has ultimately, as I like to say, history has obliged." So, anyway, if people are interested in hearing more, uh, please follow us uh on social media. Primarily, our outreach is on our YouTube channel at Rossk. Nichols TV. That's where we do a weekly class on Saturdays. We also publish our own podcast. I work with an Australian friend uh Jono Vandoor. We do a fun and exciting podcast called Torah Pearls. And we have our co-host is an AI uh co-host that my son Seth created. The true talent of our whole organization is my son Seth. He does everything. He makes it possible. But but we encourage people to check us out. my website rosknichkels.com. I'm glad that um you know we're make sure everybody puts Ross K. Nichols because if you Google Ross Nichols it's a Wiccan and that's not me, right? So uh so check out Rossk Nichols Rossknichols.com or Rossknichols TV on YouTube and that'll put you on top of it. Guys, you've made my day. I tell you, this is the most fun I've had in a while. And uh maybe maybe we can come back together and do some more fun stuff. We'll let the better secrets out on the next episode that you bring me on. How about that? Absolutely, man. Can't wait to do it again. And I'm going to be chuckling the rest of the day thinking about all the apologists searching Ross K. Nichols and finding a Wiccan and being like, I knew this guy was a heretic. That's right. That's right. too perfect. Wrong guy. You can't you got to have the K in there. That's the That's the secret. The K is the differentiator. There you go. Yeah, baby. Well, Ross, Cam, thank you guys so much for today's podcast. It's been an absolute pleasure as always. Can't wait to do it again. And for all of you watching, thank you for tuning in and adding your energy to this conversation, to this podcast. And until next time, as you know, walk the Jesus way. Love God with all your heart. Love your neighbor as yourself. and we'll see you on the next episode of the Jesus Way podcast. Peace and love. [Music]