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Two Kinds of Prophecy? The Rabbinic Bat Kol Explored · The Remnant Radio's Podcast

• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody, welcome back to the wonderful world of Remnant Radio.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: In this program, we're talking about two forms of prophecy in rabbinic Judaism.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be an interesting program.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: You guys stay tuned.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hey guys, I'm Josh Lewis.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're talking about the Batkol, which is a Jewish belief or the daughter of a voice, talking about two different forms of prophecy within Rabbinic Judaism.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to be looking at an early pre-Christ references.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to see some AD references.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to have uh Josephus way in here.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a couple of uh, I think substantive discussions when it surrounds the gift of prophecy.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we uh here on the show, or at least I'll speak for myself and let the guys speak for them, uh, believe there's at least two forms of understood prophecy uh when we look back into the Old Testament, that there was a level of perspicuity or quality to a prophecy that would have been inscripturated with like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and then there were other prophets who certainly were considered prophets, were called prophets, but their words were not inscripturated.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it seems as if there were two different measures of authority uh in that sense.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you've got a Moses writing Bible, uh, you've got a Nathan the prophet not writing Bible.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: He does write things, but it's not considered scripture.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think the same thing we see in the New Testament, where you have a prophet like John the Baptist, not John the Baptist, the other one, John the Revelator, uh, and then you've got uh the daughters of Philip, one writing scripture, the others prophesying not writing scripture.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just an interesting uh concept to come to grips with.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna be talking about that a little bit on the show today.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Without further ado, my co-hosts, my partner in crime, partners in crime plural, I've got Michael Miller and Michael Roundry.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of you guys want to tee up the conversation and uh kind of lay out the framework for two forms of prophecy, old and new, the continuity view, if you will.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um sure.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there are those who we we've labeled this the continuity view versus the discontinuity discontinuity view of prophecy, because uh our position is different from what uh charismatics have typically or often been labeled as being uniform in how they view prophecy.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: For instance, the Wayne Grudom view of prophecy has been taken as the uniform charismatic view, which is essentially, hey, there's a discontinuity with how old testament prophecy uh occurred versus New Testament prophecy, like hey, Old Testament prophecy, you couldn't uh you couldn't disobey it, you always had to obey it, it was always the exact word of the Lord, it never missed, and then New Testament prophecy uh you can miss, and sometimes it's wrong, but it doesn't make you a false prophet.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's kind of Grudom's category, and a lot of folks take that position.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, and you know what it does is it kind of preserves like, hey, there's this like biblical canon higher authority of scripture, which of course we were in the radio believe in too.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: But uh what we're calling the continuity view is that actually the the way that it operated in New Testament times is the same as how it operated in Old Testament times, of course, with the exception that now with the Holy Spirit poured out on the church, it is the the prophecy is democratized, that all of God's people can prophesy, that the that this the spirit is widely given, is given to all of God's people.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't mean that every single person is prophetically gifted, that's a different thing, but on any occasion, anyone could prophesy and uh and just that generally prophecy is more widespread in the New Testament.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: But uh so we would acknowledge that discontinuity, but we still call it the continuity view because we would say, well, true prophets could commit errors in prophecy and prophesying without automatically being called false prophets in the old as well as the new testament.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: And we've made that argument many times, but this is where the research on bat coal comes in.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: Miller, do you want to talk about that a little bit?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, sure.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and I'm I'm I'm curious to see if there's more literature out there.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: This is sort of Josh's research here, but uh very fascinating.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_03: What he found was that you do see a separation and category of the kinds of prophecy that existed.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_03: The um Jewish rabbis, commentators, uh those who wrote things like the Mishnah and other commentaries on scripture, they believed in a form of prophecy that they wouldn't call prophecy.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_03: So this is not exactly the same position as we would have, and we're not necessarily using this information to bolster our position, or we're not getting our position from this information.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_03: We're just finding an interesting parallel here that we want to talk about.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_03: But the idea is that after prophecy ceased, uh after the writings of Haggai and Malachi, um that they still believed that God was speaking, and God was speaking in such a way that uh people could still understand something he said, though it was nowhere near as clear as what would have been happening when the prophets were prophesying.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: And it was also not something where they sought the Lord and heard him, like the you know, somebody would go inquire of the Lord through the prophet.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_03: These prophets or these people were just randomly hearing God.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_03: God would suddenly insert himself into the conversation and speak something that they then had to make sense of.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: They would hear it, they would interpret it, and then they would apply it.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so you see a very similar thing is what we would do with uh what we believe is the democratization of spirit, where prophecy is given by and large to God's people, that God's people are a prophetic people in a general sense.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I think Josh, go ahead.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: You'll probably want to add some character to that.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, if you've got if you've got uh another thought, I'll let you finish.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, I was just gonna say that they call it the daughter of the voice, right?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's not the same thing as prophecy.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: So Bet Cole, I can't, or I think I'm mispronouncing it, Josh.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_03: I'll let you pick up here.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Bat Cole, I'm pronouncing that as uh the AI that reads to me pronounces it.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um so if I'm uh putting the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable there, that's on me.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I apologize to uh my messianic uh Jewish community who's watching this and you know getting heartburned for my pronunciations.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a couple things, you know, Michael mentioned uh that we believe that there was kind of two forms of prophecy in the old and new, um, in that one is scripture, one is not scripture, that prophets could miss it.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's important that we make some clarifications there when we talk about the Old Testament and the New Testament for that matter.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: There were prophets who prophesied, and their prophet prophecies were inscripturated.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: When Michael says uh he's representing all of us when he says this, we believe prophets in the Old Testament could err.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: We don't mean that they could err in scripture.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: We all believe that anything that is inscripturated is infallible, inerrant, that kind of thing.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: So uh we would affirm the authority and the consistency and truthfulness of those Old Testament prophecies.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I can point you to a couple of places when we look at Old Testament prophecy to say, hey, it seems like there uh was room for prophets to err.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: We we mentioned Nathan, um, Nathan in the Old Testament, and then we have Agabus um when he shows up to Jerusalem.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's a group of individuals, um, and I said Jerusalem, that's not accurate, in Tyre.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and the disciples of Tyre are urging Paul in the spirit not to go to Jerusalem.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's the Jerusalem reference there.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, no, guys, I'm I'm doing this live.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they were urging him not to go to Rome, weren't they?
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or were they urging him not to go to Jerusalem?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: They were trying to go to Jerusalem.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: They're urging him not to go to Jerusalem.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm right on the right track then.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: You would ultimately end up in Rome, but yes.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm I don't know why my geography is not clicking on my brain today.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh anyway, all that to say that uh we would say, hey, look, there were prophets who missed it that weren't considered false prophets, men of integrity, uh, that did right things.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: You can go watch an episode that we have on Deuteronomy 18 just a couple weeks ago in the archives and watch our argumentation for that.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: But then also if you look at uh the scriptures themselves, they suggest at least this idea that, man, if if these prophets were directing Israel, guiding Israel, and what they were saying was viewed as inscripturated, why is it that Israel did not canonize, did not protect those scriptures?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if I look to um, man, uh one of our examples in 1 Chronicles uh 29-29, uh, this is telling the story of David, and it says, now the acts of King David from first to last, are they not written in the chronicles of Samuel the Seer and the Chronicles of Nathan the prophet and the chronicles of Gad the Seer?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting theological point.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Each word for prophet there is a different word, which I find interesting.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but here you have writings of these prophets that are not considered scripture.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't seem like they were considered scripture in the days of uh uh these individuals, but that they were chronicling these kinds of events.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not like there were passages of scripture that have been lost at time.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: God has preserved his word, his word will not pass away.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: And yet these prophets write down these accounts.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: These accounts are not inscription.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: We've got 2 Chronicles 9, 29, very similar account, in 2 Chronicles 12, 15.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're all references to prophets who have written accounts.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: These are all written in this book, but those books are not scripture.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, then you have uh another example of like prophetic communities where Samuel the prophet goes out and about, and there are schools of prophets following after him, or when uh Obadiah saves a hundred prophets and prevents uh these hundreds of prophets from uh being killed by Jezebel.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: You have accounts of uh the sons of the prophets with Elijah and Elisha, and you have these groups of prophetic communities that are being trained up, and none of them are writing scripture.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so this would just make sense to folks to say, hey, there were prophets who were understood to be writing scripture and prophets who weren't writing scripture.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Again, that seems like two kind two different kinds of prophecy.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then we make that same connection in the New Testament to say John the John the Revelator, he's writing Bible, Philip's daughters, they're not.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that that's the first and foremost.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: And when we look at these passages that we're going to cite, and we've got a whole bunch of um, you know, ancient material that we're going to be uh sifting through here in a moment.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want you to think that our argument comes from Jewish literature.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we were completely unaware of this position until a couple weeks ago when Valentino, a friend of mine from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, sent me a text message going, Have you ever heard of this?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Read the article, thought it was fascinating, and then it started doing some deep dives and research, looking for more material on the subject, which is going to lead us to our content today.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, without further ado, do you guys want to uh maybe get some context for this first quote or anything that you would like to add before we dive in?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I think I would just add one more thing is that you do find in the writings of the Essenes, and we've talked about this in the past, that when they found the Dead Sea Scrolls, they found a number of books that were considered prophetic, but they were never considered scripture.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so the writings of the 12 patriarchs, uh, there's a guy, I can't remember his name.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: He did a lot of legwork on this.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_03: If I if I can remember his name in a little bit, I'll get it to you.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but he documents how uh at the time uh we had copies of the the 12 uh patriarchs that were medieval, and then after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, they found fragments of the 12 patriarchs pushing the date back all the way back to the time of the Essenes.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_03: So it shows again, though, that that wasn't the only kind of literature.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_03: There was that particular document on along with a number of other prophecies, prophecies that talk about specifically a person that would die for the sins of mankind.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the Jewish people would be recipients of the salvation that this person would purchase, but not only the Jews, also the Gentiles.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: So you see these kinds of prophecies written uh at the time of the Essenes, discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: So these things are predating Christ that later on um get discovered.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_03: And we realize like, look, they've always had uh prophecies that were alongside what they believed to be scripture, but these prophecies were not considered scripture and yet foretold things that came to pass, specific things about a dying Messiah that would die for the sins of the of the whole world and allow the Gentiles in as well.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: So this is, I mean, there's a lot to be said about what we're saying when it comes to the best way to make sense of all of this information, to synthesize all of this information, is that prophecy has always continued and there's always been two forms of it.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_03: At least that would be our best argument, anyway.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, yeah, and but we're let me go ahead.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: If I could just say this, because if I'm a cessationist and I'm listening to this and I say, What's so uh I mean, what's what are you trying to say?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: Because everybody, whether continuationist or cessationist, agrees that Philip's daughters weren't writing scripture, so theoretically everyone agrees that uh that there were two different kinds-ish of prophecy taking place.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like they might say, now they might not agree to calling it two tiers.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: Most cessation would be calling it two tiers, but they would say, like, yes, we totally agree Philip's daughters were prophesying and it was not in the Bible, and you know, the prophets in the cave that Obadiah was protecting, whatever they prophesied, or the schools of the prophets, those things weren't prover preserved as scripture, but that doesn't mean that it was any less authoritative than what say Isaiah would say or Moses would say, Hey, if it's God's word, the same as authoritative.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, it doesn't mean that they would somehow miss.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: So uh you guys fill in some blanks.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: What would you say to those kinds of uh objections?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: Am I going first or is Josh?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it sounded like you had something to add.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I mean, uh the arguments that I hear most of the time that if this is the ongoing argument against continuationism and the continuation of prophecy in particular, almost every uh cessationist that I've heard talk about it will often say things like, well, then it should be incorporated in the canon if it truly is prophecy.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um and yet you don't find that sense of urgency in scripture.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_03: So when they say that, yeah, we agree that Philip's daughters may have prophesied and it wasn't included in the scriptures, so what?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_03: That only proves that it wasn't included in the scriptures.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm going, but don't you see there was no sense of urgency?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_03: Why didn't they?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, how little of value do you have to have for the word of God to say that these are prophecies and yet they didn't record them?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like, but that doesn't seem like it lines up with Philip or his daughters, would it?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but what they say is God in his sovereignty chose to preserve some prophecies.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: Show me the text scripture for all Christians everywhere, but there wasn't a need for Philip's daughters.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: God in his sovereignty decided not to preserve that piece of it.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's what they would say.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: Again, I go show me the text, though.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_03: They they don't have a scripture to prove that, they're just making an argument out of the easy.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: We can all observe that these ones weren't preserved and these ones were.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: Well, again, it would show a lack of value for the word of God, and you have to come up with an excuse to say that they did value, it's just God didn't do that in his sovereignty.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: But again, I'm like, In other words, I think so.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: For you, it's like a logical theological deduction.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: You're what you what I hear you saying is hey, if God said it, we need to esteem it highly and and have a tremendous value for it versus.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I would say that that the Jews at the time of Jesus and those who believed like Philip's daughters, they would have valued it to preserve it.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I'm not saying if we did today, I'm saying, and I I do think that all of them would agree with me that they valued scripture.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so if you're telling me that they valued it but didn't preserve it, and that was just the sovereignty of God, it just sort of haphazardly happened, then I go, I don't think that's what's going on here.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_03: I just think they never considered it scripture, and that's why it was prophetic words that were given that weren't necessarily meant to be applied to all people at all times and all places, but rather prophetic words that were applying to those particular people at that particular time, not intended by God to be preserved.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um as we would say always with with two categories of prophecy, one of the things for all people everywhere.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Roundry, do you have a a more compelling answer?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because that one seems less than satisfactory to you.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: Well, uh what I'm trying to get at is uh, I mean, so for that that response, I would say for scripture, what I think makes scripture really unique, and because scripture really is prophecy, it is God speaking to us through human beings.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, you know, Peter will say, no prophecy of scripture is dot dot dot.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: So uh what I would say, scripture binds the conscience universally.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: You can't disobey the scripture without disobeying God ever.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and so and it doesn't matter who you are, whether you're an unbeliever who lives in Timbuktu, whether you live in Texas or Oklahoma, it doesn't matter.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: Scripture binds your comp conscience.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: Whatever God said through Philip's daughters is not universally binding.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so to me, this is one of the distinguishers between uh prophecy, as we call it, and so that's why I'm comfortable with the language of two tiers.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, as long as we clarify, second tier doesn't mean that it is like is like God has like grade B speech or something like that.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's not what we're trying to say.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's it's speaking to its universal scope, which only scripture has.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: Prophecy, just prophecy from one person to another or even to a group of people, never has that kind of universal scope like prophecy has.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so there's a a two-tier difference there.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: Would you agree with that characterization, Josh?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that seems fair to me.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think that uh there I would conclude that there is likely a form of perspicuity in the communication of prophetic speech that would be unscriptuated.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, like even when Daniel doesn't know the meaning of a prophecy, uh, it's clear as to what it is.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: I saw this picture, I saw that thing.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: God's like, it's not for you to know, it's for later.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, write it down.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Sure thing.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I would say that there's probably a level of perspicuity there, whereas in non-canonical sorts of prophecies, uh, we're going to see uh riddles, dark sayings, and I think you can point to Moses as an example of that.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not quite saying that um it's a greater or less lesser when it comes to uh God speaking, because God is the one speaking, but we do have accounts throughout the scripture that God speaks here way and there way, and man doesn't perceive it.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I would just say that I think in this second form of prophecy, that second form of prophecy I think could have probably a great deal of perspicuity.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just claiming that the first form, the one that is scripture, has the greatest level.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: And and the word perspicuity just means um uh understandable, comprehendable uh for for the viewing audience.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is that is that fair, Michael?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think that's fair.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, it's almost like I mean, so you have the canon, the scripture.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: So that's that's top tier, right?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: Not because sometimes God speaks lies or sometimes he messes up, any revelation God speaks is authoritative, perfectly, and true.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um but universally binding on all consciences everywhere, that's the scripture, that's the highest.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but I'm just pressing into this just for clarity's sake, because I think we're also saying, like, hey, if Moses prophesied or Isaiah prophesied, or Jeremiah prophesied, even if it wasn't included in scripture, it was characteristically um different than if then maybe uh actually maybe not even putting it on the person per se, but putting it on, like we've used Nathan as an example before, and we've said like there were times, yeah, like Nathan says, Thus says the Lord, and thus says the Lord, but then we also would consider that 2 Samuel 7, Nathan missed a prophecy.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: So there's all also it's like there's two it seems like there's two tiers within even the story of Nathan.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let me argue with some of that.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I'm not arguing that uh every single prophecy that Jeremiah ever prophesied was infallible, uh infallible or has this level of persecution.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying that the ones that are in scripture are.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I think one prophet in the Old Testament can seemingly do both, um, potentially.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: And and the reason I'm I'm making this argument, I I don't think that Jeremiah missed it or I even have an account of him missing it.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying it it seems as if that would be possible.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to go watch our episode of Deuteronomy 18 to make sense of some of that.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_03: But but that the the passage about how none of Samuel's words fell to the ground would also imply that, Josh.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um the very fact that it says it, if that was sort of assumed, why say it?
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_03: We don't tell people things like everybody breathes oxygen.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_03: Why don't we make statements like that?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: Because everybody knows we breathe oxygen.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: And so if you're saying that prophets by their very nature were always infallible, then why on earth would the author take the the the length to say uh none of Samuel's words fell to the ground unless it was pointing out something unique about Samuel that wasn't necessarily true of all the others?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Let me circle back around to the question that Michael asked me because I I didn't quite answer that one.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um what what makes canonicity canonicity?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Is it the the level of revelation the prophet's getting?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Is it the clarity?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Does he have like this this real tingly trance that he goes into?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Does arms feel fuzzy when he prophesies?
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's how he knows.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: What what determines canonicity is the reception from the people of God.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: This has been the same in the old as it has been in the new.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the the people of God recognize this is the word of God, and there's kind of communal agreement on that as being scripture.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, when you look to Josephus, yeah, Josephus looks back and says, hey, these are our Old Testament books.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: We all recognize this to be so.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the same is true of the New Testament.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: There are books that were good and edifying and probably even prophetic, like I think of uh the Shepherd of Hermos.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: But the church says, hey, there's just a different quality to this book.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I I want to make, I want to make it the clarity for the audience who's listening, going, okay, when you're talking about two tiers of prophecy, one that's got, you know, this perspicuity, this other one that may have it but may not.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Have it.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not talking about the experience determining canonicity.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: The community does that.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: The covenant community says these are the words of God.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: But what's interesting is the covenant community can recognize that Nathan's words are the words of God and still not consider them scripture.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because if they had considered them scripture, the books of Nathan would be in the Bible.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I would just say, I think that's how canonicity was determined.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I say that that's what church history tells us.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a pretty established fact, I think, from uh both the Jewish and and Christian perspective.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, are we ready to dive into some of these batkol?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: We've got a lot of bat cole to cover.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a lot of we got a lot of at bats.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, here we go.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: So we have the first one.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't know how to pronounce this word, guys.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's Tosefta.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I can't pronounce Hebrew words.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: I apologize.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's Sota 13.3.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and this is a piece of literature that emerges uh in the kind of first century period.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's a Mishnah preserving material from the Tanim and the rabbis of the first and second century.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it is connected to the Bible, uh it's not commentary on the Bible necessarily, it is historical record of how um Jewish case law operated and some of the case laws and how they've been handed down to interpret.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: In this citation here, it's a very short citation.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, Josh, before you get into it, just just real quick for sake of clarity.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: In the notes, you put that it was a third century.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: So second century uh uh Yeah, I just clarified just now is it the first and second century?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: I apologize and misspoke, but I did clarify soon after that saying that this is a third century work summarizing work from the first and second centuries.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I apologize.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_03: Gotcha.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I'm sorry about that.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's okay.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but here uh the this is rules that have been passed down and they're carrying on these rules as like Jewish case law.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um here they talk about uh uh the ways that God used to speak in adjudicating case law.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they mention the altar, they mention uh the the ephod, they mention they don't mention lots, but the what's the other one, guys, after the ephod?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: I forget what it is.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: The Urim and Thomum, that kind of thing.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and he says, Hey, but look, we've got the bat kol, um, which is interesting.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: So let's let's check out clip number one.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: When the prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi died, the Holy Spirit ceased from Israel.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: And even so, they were made to hear by a bat kol.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so that's the quote, uh Sefta Softah.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: I apologize, I can't pronounce Hebrew.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, here what you see is uh this is Jewish case law.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh once all the prophets had spoken, we no longer have a succession of prophets.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: What we have is the bat kol.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the one of the first saying it's the first is a misnomer because we actually have it in the Babylonian Talmud and in other places, but but this is an early reference in the the first couple of centuries where we have a reference of the batkol being used.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: And here he's saying, look, hey, we we've had all of these means by which God had spoken to us in the past.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: How do we determine uh these things now?
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you refer to the batkol.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have a whole lot of context in this passage of what the batkol is, but we do have it in further passages.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Did you guys want to jump on to clip two?
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because we can move through this pretty quick, I think.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, let's jump through them.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: This one's the Babylonian Talmud, uh, as the name indicates, uh, after the exiles come out of Babylon.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, here are some rules and traditions uh that they're trying to make sense of.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: This specific quote is coming from rabbis uh in regards to the Song of Solomon, chapter 8, verse 9, where a wall gets covered in silver and a door gets covered with cedar.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and they're looking at Israel saying, Hey, look, we didn't return in great glory, so we must have been clothed with cedar, and then references this in connection to a bat coal.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if that doesn't make sense, you guys help me on the back end of this.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: What is the cedar?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: Ulah said, Sazmagor.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: What is Sazmagor?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: Rabbi Abba said, the bat coal, as it was taught, when the latter prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi died.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit was removed from Israel, and still they were making use of a bat coal, be Yomanine, B.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: So in both of those references, what you see is the spirit has been removed from Israel.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: You should not be hearing that and thinking to yourself that the Holy Spirit has been removed from Israel entirely.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the language there is the spirit of prophecy has been removed.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that seems to be what all the commentaries are saying as it relates to these two passages and in following passages when it speaks of the Holy Spirit being removed.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: But here, um, the prophets being Zechariah, Haggai, Malachi, those would have been silver.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but now we have the bat coal.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: That would have been cedar.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's an opportunity where uh man, there is not a great honor and glory being placed upon the prophets, but a lesser form of divine revelation.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you guys have questions, feel free to jump in and stop me.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we've got other quotes we can do from Babylonian Talmud uh just to keep pushing through.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Any questions?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: No rather Rev Naman Bar Yitzek said, Who are the former prophets?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: The phrase is used to exclude Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, who are the latter ones.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: As the sages taught, when Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi died, the Holy Spirit was removed from Israel, and even so they were making use of a batkol.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: For on one occasion they were reclining in the upper chamber of the house of Guria in Jericho, and a batkol was given upon them from heaven and said, There is one man among you who is worthy that the Shechanah rest upon him, but his generation is not worthy of it.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: They set their eyes upon Hill of the Elder.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: And when he died, they eulogized him.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: Alas, the pious one, alas, the humble one, the disciple of Ezra.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: B.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Soda 48.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: B.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the first account that I have uh in our notes today where a batkol is being described, where the voice comes upon the elders and is speaking to them about something, and they have to figure out who this word is for, but there seems to be a collective revelation given to a community to make sense of.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: The batkol is replacing the urim and the thumim, and it's replacing uh the ephod as it's a way that God is speaking directly to individuals, but they still understand it as a different kind of prophecy of that that would come to Haggai and Malachi.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: That kind of prophecy has ceased in the minds of these Jewish folks and says there's a different kind of prophecy that comes.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the next uh reference we have in the Babylonian Talmud is actually going to be two separate accounts, one referencing the one we just read, and then an additional account about uh the Samuel the Lesser.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: The sages taught when the latter prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi died, the Holy Spirit was removed from Israel, and even so they were making use of a batcal.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: On one occasion they were reclining in the upper chamber of the house of Guria in Jericho, and a batcal was given upon them from heaven.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: There is one here who is worthy that the Shekinah rest upon him, like Moses, our teacher.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: But his generation is not deserving of it.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: The sages set their eyes upon Hillel the elder, and when he died, they said of him, Alas, the pious one, alas, the humble one, the disciple of Ezra.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: Again, on another occasion they were reclining in an upper chamber at Yavnah, and a batcoal was given upon them from heaven.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: There is one here who is worthy that the Shekinah rest on him, but his generation is not deserving of it.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: The sages set their eyes upon Samuel the small, and when he died, they said of him, Alas, the pious one, alas, the humble one, the disciple of Hilel.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: He too said at the time of his death, Shimon and Yishmael to the sword, and their companions to slaughter, and the rest of the people to plunder, and great troubles are destined to come upon the world.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: And of Judah Ben Bava they wished to say the same.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: But the hour was disordered, for one does not deliver eulogies over those executed by the government.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: B.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Sanhedrin 11.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so as I I said right before we played the clip, Michael, it's gonna reference the first story and then tell another story.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it is a separate passage in the Babylonian Talmud, talking one about El uh Hellel the Elder and then Samuel the Lesser.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: So uh that that's gonna have both stories connected to them in a similar formation, but these individuals are the ones who are actually doing the prophesying.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: So in all of these accounts, it they understood there to be two forms of prophecy as we have described up until this point.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now I'm gonna toss it over for any kind of group discussions, questions, comments, concerns, love letters, death threats, or anything else.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, again, we would never base our view on prophecy on this.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's just an interesting discussion.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: Point being, they repeatedly say, they repeatedly say things like the Holy Spirit ceased from Israel, uh, speaking specifically of this succession of prophets.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: And that is a common interpretation, say, of Deuteronomy chapter 18, even among cessationists, that there's a a line of prophets that's being uh kind of at the forefront uh of Deuteronomy 18 that's culminating in the Messiah.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so they'll speak of this line of sort of big name prophets that when that comes to the end, they say the Holy Spirit cease.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, the Holy Spirit is instrumental in prophecy, where one of the great works of the Holy Spirit is revelation.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: And when people prophesy, they prophesy by the Holy Spirit.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so they're they're communicating, hey, the the prophets left, the spirit left with them.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: In essence, what sounds like cessationism, Jewish style, right?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and then they're talking about this bat cole where there are oracles spoken of some kind.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: And and so we're saying, hmm, that's kind of interesting.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: Now, these are these are taking place after the New Testament times.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so we're we're not saying it's the exact same thing, we're not saying we're basing it on this, we're saying that it at least in that historic context, Jewish rabbis had categories for hey, there was like that uh that tier of prophecy, if you will, that came from Malachi and uh and the others.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then there were these just sort of oracles that people spoke as well.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: We're saying that's interesting.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's an interesting analog for what we uh are also talking about, whether we want to talk about the canon of scripture versus people prophesying.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: We could talk about it like that.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or anyway, maybe I'll no, you said that, Michael, but the Babylonian Talmud is A D, yes?
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Am I am I mistaken?
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_03: Well, some of it is, some of it isn't.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_03: It was compiled over like 800 years, with some of it being contributed to back in like 200 BC.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_03: And so the parts that we have quoted so far are actually common era.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: So this is this is rabbinic Judaism now that is contributing to this.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um, which I you know we've said in the past rabbinic Judaism actually looks a lot more like cessationism.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_03: If there was any cessationism that existed, or well, the Pharisaical class were a class of uh cessationists.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they believed that the spirit had stopped being uh stopped giving prophecy.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so um and I think it was the pharisaical class that eventually becomes rabbinic Judaism, which is what we're quoting here.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh the whole uh I mean I just called Yeah, I mean I just looked it up.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's got uh Jerusalem Talmud at four to four hundred to four fifth AD and then five hundred to six hundred for Babylonian.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: But what's hard about dating these things is they they repeat traditions that have been around for centuries, and so could this have been rattling around in Paul's brain or you know, like it it does seem possible for sure.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was definitely rattling around in the brain of Josephus, and we've got a couple quotes in here from him because he's gonna talk about the ceasing of canonical like scripture, uh, and yet uh like the prophets have been much closer to New Testament, much closer.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so if it's in the mind of Josephus, it certainly could be in the mind of Paul.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he's going to make reference to not explicitly the Bat Cole, but again, this idea that the succession of prophets has come to an end, and yet he's going to point to prophets like those in the um uh Essene community, uh, which is really interesting.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the first quote from Josephus, unless you guys have any more commentary to add on that other stuff.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_03: Wait, let me just get clarity here, Josh.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_03: You're saying that Josephus, he points to the prophetic literature being contributed to by the Essenes that was not considered scripture, and yet he also claims that these prophecies that were given have come to pass.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_03: Is that accurate?
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh okay, yes, on both, but that was those weren't actually my points.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: My first point was that he's going to say that there was a period of time where our books of the Bible were compiled by certain prophets, and those prophets have ceased.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then he'll go.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Also, there's a group of community uh called the Essenes.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: They prophesied a lot, and they hardly ever got their prophecies wrong.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: And now that's Josh's version.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'll let you uh uh they seldom missed their predictions, is what he actually says.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then he's gonna have another citation about a man named Judas, one of the Essenes, who prophesied quite regularly and seemed to nail it.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: He was an extremely godly and pious man.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_03: So Josephus is gonna say that call, but he is calling it prophecy.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: So he's he's gonna say, in one sense, hey, the prophets have ceased.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have scripture anymore.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then he's gonna say, but we have a bunch of prophets who are prophesying and their words are coming to pass.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that same idea of two categories seems to be in the mind of Josephus as well, which I think is fascinating.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_02: They have a category for true prophetic, uh, prophetic individuals that are maybe not on the level of a Malachi.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: Is that kind of how you would say it?
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's uh if I was gonna pull on a defense thread, I wouldn't have used uh the Babylonian Talmud, but I definitely would use Josephus' argument as a defense that that our idea of the continuity view of prophecy is not a novelty.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_03: Like that kind of proves that right there.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think so.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um Yeah, well, let's let's let the the the audience decide.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the first quote where he talks about scripture coming to an end.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another, as the Greeks have, but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times, which are justly believed to be divine.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: And of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: This interval of time was little short of three thousand years.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: But as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes, the prophets, who were after Moses, wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: The remaining four books contain hymns to God and precepts for the conduct of human life.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: It is true, our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: So there you go.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Hey, there we have other history that's been recorded, but we don't consider it as authoritative, we don't consider it scripture because uh there's not a succession of prophets.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then he comes in with these lines.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, uh a couple things that's really important here.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he's going to tell a story of a high priest that is not an Essene, and then he's going to tell two other stories that are specific to Essenes, and I'm just going to play these clips back to back for people so that you guys can listen to all of them, uh, and then we'll make our gaze.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: Now, a very surprising thing is related to this high priest Hyrcanus, how God came to discourse with him.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: For they say that on the very same day on which his sons fought with Antiochus Cesitionus, he was alone in the temple as high priest, offering incense, and heard a voice that his sons had just then overcome Antiochus, and he openly declared this before all the multitude as he came out of the temple, and it accordingly proved true.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: Josephus.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: Antiquities of the Jews 13.2, 82 to 283, Wiston translation.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: So this guy prophesied something was going to happen, and it came to pass just as he said, his sons were coming back from battle, they were victorious that very hour.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: And here are the two quotes on the Essenes.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it is but seldom that they miss in their predictions.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: Josephus, the Jewish War, 2159, wisdom translation.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: But here one may take occasion to wonder at one Judas, who was of the sect of the Essenes, and who never missed the truth in his predictions.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: For this man, when he saw Antigonus passing by the temple, he cried out to his companions and friends, who abode with him as his scholars, in order to learn the art of foretelling things to come.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: That it was good for him to die now, since he had spoken falsely about Antigonus, who is still alive, and I see him passing by, although he had foretold he should die at the place called Stratos Tower that very day.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: And still this day is a great part of it already passed, so that he was in danger of proving a false prophet, as he was saying this, and that in a melancholy mood.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: The news came that Antigonus was slain in a place underground, which itself was called also Stratos Tower, or of the same name with that Caesarea, which is seated at the sea.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 13.31, 1 to 313, Wiston translation.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so uh that last quote can be kind of hard to follow, um, but he didn't get a prophecy wrong.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: The prophet spoke a prophetic word about a guy's death, then later sees the guy walking by after he'd come from a tower and goes, Oh man, I must be a false prophet because I prophesied and it didn't come to pass because that guy's alive right in front of me.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I should be put to death.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then as time goes on a little bit further, he goes to another city.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's another tower in that city that has the same name as the tower of the city before, and he dies there.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: Turns out he was a righteous man.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: So in both accounts, uh Josephus is writing about these guys who prophesied, one being a high priest, two uh groups, one speaking broadly of the Essenes, and one more narrowly speaking to a specific man named Judas.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty, pretty wild stuff.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and it does seem like at first when you start reading these quotes, it uses the word predictions, uh, using the scriptures to predict things.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that at first I was thinking to myself, well, that's that's kind of like what most uh futurists do when it comes to eschatology.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_03: You know, they see, you know, the bugs that come out of the pit in Revelation as the black helicopters today.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um that is not what he's talking about, and we know that's not what he's talking about because here he gives an example of this guy who predicts the death of a man.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_03: He's not using the scriptures in the way the futurists use the scriptures to do eschatology.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_03: He's making a prediction based on some sort of what he calls it, uh art of prediction.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's what the the quote says.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_03: That's fascinating.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think the quote, the exact words, uh the art of foretelling things to come.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: So uh he was a school where he was teaching others how to prophesy and they were getting it right.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: But that that's kind of the thing about the Essenes.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: The Essenes were this kind of sectarian group who went out into the desert.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: They had, you know, all kinds of these weird ritualistic rites.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: I am inclined to think that John the Baptist was an Essene.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't teach that authoritatively or dogmatically, but I'm more inclined to see a lot of similarities because the the pro the mission statement of the Essene community was to make straight the way of the Lord.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: That was the mission statement of John the Baptist.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the Essene community would uh eat off the land.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: They wouldn't eat anything that was sacrificed in the temple because they believed the Maccabeans to be a false priesthood.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so they would eat off the land, eating kosher food like locust and wild honey, right?
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they would have been in the same region that John the Baptist was in when he was baptizing in the Jordan.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: Additionally, the Essene community, um, uh what was another thing?
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, uh they they frequently adopted individuals, um, but people could also in adulthood uh join said community.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if you think of John the Baptist's parents, uh Zachariah uh and was it Rebecca, they're old in age, they're older folks.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they died and John the Baptist was adopted.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's again huge speculation.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: We have no clue.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: But there seems to be so many points of similarity and continuity.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the mission statement was the same, the ritualistic practices of dietary laws, oh, and the ceremonial washing.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: That was a very common practice within the Essene community to be cleansed of the false religious system, um, which is the very thing that John the Baptist was doing, preaching against the established religious system.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of connective tissue there.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm again, I'm not saying definitively, but it just it seems too close for to reject.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_03: Part of the Essenes was that they thought that the priesthood uh was illegitimate.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_03: And so they they felt like they're that they had to go and be a sectarian group because those who are currently high office in the priesthood were corrupt and they weren't of the right lineage.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_03: They were like proto-protestants.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_03: They were, yeah.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's interesting because I I one could make an argument that they were uh they were the Essenes were saying there was an apostolic succession that we should adhere to.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't know if I want to use them too much for that.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, you're actually that's a really good connection, Miller, actually, because um, so the the line of priests, the the priests who took over the temple um uh after Babylonian captivity were from the line of Zadok.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: So David, when he becomes king, yeah, the Levites are still in charge of the temple, but there's a specific group, a specific family that is in charge of the temple to be the high priest, and they come from the line of Zadok because Zadok aligned with David uh and with Solomon.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: So uh as you go into uh the post-Babylonian exile, they come back from exile.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Zachariah sits of the temple, Joshua the high priest, is son of Jeho Zadok.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: So he's the son through the line of Zadok, and Joshua is that established priest.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's not until like, I think it's like 252 um AD or something like that.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's around that period, maybe it's in the 300s-ish, uh, that the Maccabeans uh revolt and take over the temple.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: Maccabean revolt is not about them taking over the temple, but they they become in charge of the temple.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and the uh family of Zadok finds this very unappealing, then they go off into the wilderness uh to prepare the way of the Lord uh and uh of that sect.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: They're mostly Levites, but then Josh, they they adopt it.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't like it.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: They did not like it.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, uh here's an honest look at all this stuff.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're much closer to uh Josephus than we are with the early Jewish sources when it comes to a bat cole, but it's interesting that both Josephus and Babylonian Salamud and the other Jewish sources that we've quoted, um, all say that there is two different kinds of prophecy.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: One that has super clarity uh and that is scripture.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then another quality that they don't call prophecy, but it is God's divine communication uh that seems to be hard to grasp and not considered scripture and to be weighed along with scripture uh and uh to to to have wisdom.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh kind of by the scripture.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_03: That's probably a better way to phrase it.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, certainly.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's fair.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so again, we're not pointing to these.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead, Roundtree.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_02: Riddle me this.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm just kind of thinking out loud here.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_02: I've been kind of doing this this episode.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_02: So uh you could almost say an equivalent parallel might be.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh just play along with this and and tell me if this is terrible.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: That a parallel might be there's two kinds of uh writing history.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_02: There's just writing history, and then there is writing history that's scripture, like Luke does, or like the authors of Kings and Chronicles.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um but I'm not sure I really like that because when you prophesy, even on so-called non script non-scripture prophecy, you're still speaking the word of the Lord, which is not true of history.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, I'm just kind of teasing it out a little bit.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm done.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_02: Just need to say it out loud so I could reject it.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_02: Sounds like you, you, you, you gave your own.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for bringing up an idea and rebutting yourself, Michael.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: We appreciate that.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_02: Literally, I literally do this all day long.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_02: I like philosophize in my head, and I'm like, maybe this would be good, and I think about it, and I'll be like, that's dumb.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_03: I wish I'd had the Billy Madison quote where it says, We are now all dumber for having listened to Miller.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: I I think I've heard you say that to me more times than I think, pal.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're all dumb and trying to come over for your place, Mr.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_03: Book Writer.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: I award you no points.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: May God have mercy on your soul.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh hey guys, uh here's the thing uh prophecy is really interesting.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fascinating subject.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you want to learn more about the gift of prophecy, I want to very much encourage you guys to go check out the remnant conference in Houston, Texas uh this fall.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna be hanging out on things that we're speculating on and trying to make sense of.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: We're actually gonna be doing some deep dives into prophecy.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's not gonna be a good thing.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_03: Is there gonna be a Miller for sure?
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_03: A rabbi Miller doing a a uh some sort of shuffle at the uh event.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, yeah, some some sort of Jewish shuffle there.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: Check that out on uh a Christ walk of some kind, maybe.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um who knows?
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we've got uh man, John Mark Baker, myself, Miller, Round Tree, we're all gonna be there.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be an awesome time.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you're looking to not just learn about the stuff, but have an opportunity to practice.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: We have testimonies every single year of people's lives being transformed, not necessarily just from the teaching aspect of things, but having an opportunity to be around like-minded believers and practice together.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's it's changed a lot of people.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I encourage you to come and check that out with us.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, guys, I I think this is a wrap.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a good program.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think the Batcole agrees with us across the board.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think Josephus agrees with us across the board, but I do think that they're both really good examples of early Jewish sources believing there were two different forms of prophecy of different caliber.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: One that is scripture, one that is not scripture, one that is scripture uh and that judges all things, and another that is not scripture that is to be judged by scripture.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, I don't think we can use this as an argument to prove our case, uh, but I do think it is maybe some kind of supporting scaffolding for that larger argument.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: Do you guys have any closing thoughts?
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: That you want to instantly rebut, Round Tree.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I and I wouldn't even use scaffolding because that almost makes it seem like the argument relies on it.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: It I think I would just use the argument.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_03: Scaffolding means building on top of the background context.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's a little bit like, you know, there's a lot of debate about Heiser because he relies a lot on Second Temple literature, and people are like, maybe you should look at the Bible context instead of the you know, Second Temple literature, and you lean too heavily on that.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I do think he does sometimes, you know, like and I disagree with Miller on this.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I don't think that the the demons are departed spirits of Nephilim just because it says that in Second Temple literature, you know, uh, but at the same time, it does really help us get into the heads of how the New Testament authors were thinking.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_02: And might the bat cole, or at least the way Josephus talked about prophecy.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we shared examples that span around the New Testament times as people are talking about these different kinds of prophecy.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_02: But our only point is people thought this way.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's not crazy that perhaps the New Testament authors shared some of those at least similar ideas and uh as to what we're talking about today.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's what I would say.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_02: It just helps you crawl into the the an ancient mind and gives you a little background context for what's going on in their culture, but it is not decisive.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: Miller, as a Jewish man, can you speak for all Jewish people everywhere on what is correct?
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: What did the Jews really believe?
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, Miller.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_03: You should be eating bagels on Christmas.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's what we did in my family.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: You should uh speaking for all Jewish people everywhere, you should eat bagels on Christmas.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there you have it, folks.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for tuning in.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure to test that prophetic word from Miller against the scriptures.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh considered a bat cole.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, thank you so much for tuning in.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see you guys next time.