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Episode 66: Jubilees Part 2 - The Wisdom and Strength of Women · But is it Biblical?

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Have you had to edit out any sounds like this?
0:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh probably.
0:07
unknown: Okay.
0:08
SPEAKER_01: This chair like I barely switch my weight and it makes that noise.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: Like as long as you're not farting, we're fine.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: You ready to get started?
0:22
SPEAKER_01: I love Mondays.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm Glenn.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: And I'm Lydia.
0:29
SPEAKER_01: And you're listening to, but is it biblical?
0:32
SPEAKER_00: We invite you to join in as we evaluate church tradition and discover what scripture truly teaches.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: We are on episode sixty-six this week, and we thank you for joining us.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: Lydia, did you notice the title?
1:17
SPEAKER_01: Well, yes.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: I was momentarily excited and then also gave pause.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: Like, what are you up to?
1:27
SPEAKER_00: You think it was sarcastic?
1:29
SPEAKER_01: Slightly.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: I promise you, I am not being facetious.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: That's what I'm waiting for.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: My hope is that by the end of the episode, and really every episode, that people will be encouraged to think and to pray rather than to take what you're told or what you read in the English translation and just run with it.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember a guy named Paul Harvey?
1:53
SPEAKER_00: He was on the radio.
1:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: He would tell a story, like a historical story, and then there would be a twist at the end.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: See?
2:04
SPEAKER_00: Because his story would give some new context that you never knew about the characters that you have that everybody knows about, like famous historical characters.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: And then he wouldn't mention any names or anything.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: And then at the end you'd find out who it is, or you'd find out something, some more context about this story.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: And he had this tagline at the end, he would say, and now you know the rest of the story.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: The same thing applies to 2,000-year-old writings.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: There's more to it than you know.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: Because today, in modern times, when we read stuff like Genesis 6, where it talks about the sons of God finding the daughters of men attractive.
2:52
SPEAKER_03: Right.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, our minds go all sorts of places.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: Some people say that the sons of God are representing kings or powerful leaders and tyrants of the time.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: And those kings took multiple women to build their dynasties.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: And then others say it was talking about the men from the line of Seth mating with women from the line of Cain, and they produced evil children.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, you have people like us who believe it was the fallen angels mating with human women, resulting in half-breed monster-like beings.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: There are other interpretations, but those three are the main ones that you find in evangelicalism.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: The problem for us in modern day is that the book of Genesis doesn't go into detail on the story of the Fallen Watchers.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: So if Genesis 6 is the only thing you read and accept about this story, then you're forced to use your imagination.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: We've seen some things in the New Testament, like in Jude, that can help, but they don't spell it out the way we would like.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: But here's the rest of the story.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: If you ask a Jew who lived at the time Genesis was written, there was no doubt what was going on in Genesis 6.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: The author didn't need to go into detail because everyone already knew the story.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: It had been passed down by Enoch.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: When we go through this story next week, we'll see how the author of Jubilees says that Enoch passed his knowledge down.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: And Enoch was the first human to actually write stuff down.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: But we already know that even without writings, history was passed down orally back then.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: And these stories that were passed down were a form of both learning and entertainment.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: There were no movies, no smartphones, no radios.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: Telling stories of their past was one of their main sources of entertainment.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: And cultural, it was like a cultural identity.
5:09
unknown: Yeah.
5:09
SPEAKER_01: It was a way to maintain that as well.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we lived before cell phones.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: You remember how things were so much different when we were young.
5:19
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: Now imagine not even having TVs or Nintendo and all of that.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: Ancient people were painstakingly efficient at remembering details of these stories and passing them down so that their descendants would know about them too.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: We don't know where the manuscripts are that Enoch wrote.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they were lost in the flood.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: Maybe Noah took them on the ark and they were eventually lost or an elephant ate them.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: But we do know that oral tradition would have continued.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: And Noah would have been taught by Enoch personally.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: Not to mention Noah and his family were also witnesses to everything before the flood with the angels and giants.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: So they knew what happened and they passed that down.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: The story of the Watchers was something that all Israelites would have known.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: So Genesis didn't need to elaborate on it.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: Later on, the Book of Watchers from 1 Enoch would put this story in writing.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: And there is more information about it in Jubilees that we'll see next week.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: But my point is that there is always more to the story than what you read in one ancient book.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: When you see a movie about the Bible, directors and writers are forced to add things, like conversations and settings and other details, because if they don't, the movie won't feel realistic.
6:54
SPEAKER_01: It'd be like two minutes long.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: Right.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: You've seen movies where pretty much all of the dialogue comes straight out of uh a translation of the New Testament and it's painful to watch it.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: I mean, writings simply can't capture everything, every little detail about what happened.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: It's not possible.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: When the author of Genesis talks about the sons of God, the Jews knew that this was angels.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: They didn't need to listen to five different interpretations and pick which one they agreed with the most.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: The sons of God in Genesis 6 were the angels, many of which fell.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: And when the author of Enoch, a Jew, uses the phrase sons of God or sons of heaven or children of heaven, he is very clearly talking about angels, because in Enoch he says so directly.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: Maybe by that time it needed to be clarified in 350 BC.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: But the author makes it clear that those phrases are about angels.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: And here's why all of this matters.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: The details that are missing in the stories, in manuscripts like Genesis, that doesn't mean that those details weren't known or didn't happen.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: And based on the meticulous way that the Jews passed down oral history, many of those details did survive, and they were written down in books like First Enoch and Jubilees.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: Now, that doesn't mean that every single manuscript by every ancient author is to be taken as true, because some of them are written by people looking to stir up trouble.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: That's why we need to learn more about the author and context.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: We need to see if there is anything in the writing that goes against God's true commandment.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: And we need to see how the writing was received at the time it was written.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: We've already done that with Enoch and Jubilees.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: Those two books were accepted.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: We aren't so sure about the Book of Parables, which wasn't found in Qumran, but we know about the rest of Enoch and Jubilees.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: They were accepted.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: So knowing it was accepted by Jews, and not just any Jews, but the Jews that Jesus and the disciples agreed with the most, aren't you interested in reading about some of the missing details from Genesis?
9:34
SPEAKER_00: Some of this oral history that was passed down?
9:39
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the best ways to learn how you should be reading Genesis.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: Because this is how they read and understood it.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately for us, even though this clarified older writings for a newer generation when it was written, that newer generation is now 2,000 years removed from us today.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: So there are still some things that require deep study and thought, like metaphors and allegory that we might not understand are actually there.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: Case in point 67.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: We need to remember what those numbers represent.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: And those aren't the only numbers in the Hebrew language that have significance.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: So let's open up Jubilees and see what we find.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: The author gives a quick one-sentence prologue.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: And you need to understand that the author never speaks in the first person, at least not talking about himself.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: When he quotes the angel or Moses, they speak in the first person, but the author is not claiming to be Moses or the angel.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: Some people make the claim that this book is pseudo pigrapha, which is misleading, because the author is not claiming to be someone else.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: He's simply telling a story.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: It's anonymous, for sure, kind of like Enoch, but the author never makes the claim that he is someone he is not.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: But the prologue, it's short, so I'm just going to read it to you.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: It says, These are the words regarding the divisions of the times for the law and for the testimony, for the events of the years, for the weeks of their jubilees, throughout all the years of eternity, as he related them to Moses on Mount Sinai when he went up to receive the stone tablets, the law and the commandment, by the word of the Lord, as he had told them that he should come up to the summit of the mountain.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: All right.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: When it says regarding the divisions of the times for the law and for the testimony, the law there is the law of God, which to them was the law of Moses, the rules.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: We know what that's all about, though, right?
12:11
SPEAKER_00: The law of God is love.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: But the testimony, what is that?
12:18
SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew word is teuda.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: It's H 8584, and the literal meaning is testimony or affirmation or confirmation.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: But throughout the book of Jubilees, the author uses the word teuda, testimony, to refer to the division of time, the calendar.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: In Judaism, the calendar is way more than just a way to keep time, it was divine architecture.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: The point was that creation testifies to God.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: It was all about how the universe operates and moves the way it was created to.
13:01
SPEAKER_01: Now, are you talking about the calendar, like of the feast and festivals?
13:06
SPEAKER_01: Is that include?
13:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a huge part of it.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's what I mean.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: Everything, just every day.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: The calendar.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: How many weeks are there?
13:14
SPEAKER_00: How many days are there?
13:15
SPEAKER_00: All of that.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: It was time, sacred festivals, just everything about creation is structurally bound to God's eternal testimony.
13:28
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
13:29
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, because we're so used to hearing the word testimony in thinking my words of what I've experienced, but it's more of what we witness.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: Right.
13:38
SPEAKER_01: And what we can see, the rhythms of life and nature, harvest, moon, all those things.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: All of that.
13:48
SPEAKER_01: Planets.
13:49
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: And the the Hebrew people had a ton of feasts and festivals.
13:55
SPEAKER_01: Yes, they do.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: And and they all depended, like they had to start at the right time.
14:01
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: In order to know when they're supposed to start, you have to know how to tell time.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: And while these festivals and everything were literal, they really had a deeper spiritual meaning, like every story God tells.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: Your understanding of time or the calendar also said something about how you viewed God.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: And the calendar that the book of Jubilees presents is strictly solar.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: It's based on the sun or the light.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: And we can see the spiritual significance there.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: It's all about the light.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: Like in John 8.12, Jesus says, I am the light of the world.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
14:46
unknown: Right?
14:47
SPEAKER_00: That light is something you can't have without the sun.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: This calendar based on the sun is what the Essenes used.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: And while the sun was incorporated into the calendar of the Pharisees and Sadducees too, they also used the moon.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: We refer to it as a lunisolar calendar.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: So they incorporated the light as well as the reflection of that light.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: In spiritual terms, they incorporated both God and humans.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: When Moses encountered God in Exodus 34.29, his face still reflected the light from God.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: Paul also talked about that in 2 Corinthians 3.18.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: Plus, just our very nature as humans reflects God's image.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: We as humans are the moon.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: And the Pharisees and Sadducees placed themselves on par with God by using this lunosolar calendar.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: It actually started being used while the Jews were in Babylon.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: But before that, before the exile, the Jewish calendar was highly fluid and based on agriculture.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: It was also localized because the seasons could be different depending on where you lived.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: For a modern example in Texas, we don't have a fall or a spring.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: But since we have a standardized calendar, the what do we use?
16:20
SPEAKER_00: The Gregorian calendar, we're supposed to have those seasons.
16:25
SPEAKER_01: We do.
16:25
SPEAKER_01: They're just really little.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: Like on the calendar, the season starts, but we're not seeing that.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: If our calendar was based on observing the seasons, the Texas calendar would look different than somewhere like, say, Montana.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, there were some minor differences in the calendars of the Pharisees and Sadducees, but they both used the moon.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: The calendar that modern Jews use today is pretty much identical to the one used by the Pharisees at the time Jubilees was written.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: And we need to remember here that Jubilees was written around the time that the three main Jewish sects were being established.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: So they were dividing themselves into thought camps, like modern denominations with different statements of faith.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: To the Pharisees and Sadducees, this Essene Book of Jubilees was a threat.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: It delegitimized the Jerusalem temple and accused the ruling priesthood of practicing a false religion.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: All because of this solar calendar.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: Remember, the true priests were the Zadekites, and the Essenes were the Zadekites.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: So the priests in the temple, the Sadducees, were not legitimate in the eyes of God or in the eyes of the Essenes.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: And here is why Jubilees was a problem for both the Pharisees and Sadducees.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: With a lunosolar calendar, one that uses the moon, and the one that the Pharisees and Sadducees used, humans had authority.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: They shared authority with God.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish leaders had the authority to declare when the new moon started.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: They decided when the seasons started.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: It was up to them.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously they couldn't control the weather, but they decided what day to start the new month.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: When you think about it with some common sense, it really is a false authority because the seasons are going to come whether they declared them or not.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: But they took this seriously, and it was a source of pride and power and control.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: They decided when to start the feasts and festivals and everything.
18:55
SPEAKER_01: Well, it just you know, prior planning prevents poor performance.
19:01
SPEAKER_01: They can all plan their things.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Essenes, they threatened to take that authority away by putting all authority in the hands of God back where it belongs.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about this solar calendar.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: Jubilees 4 talks about how Enoch was the first to write down the testimony, the calendar.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: Now, we didn't get into that when we did Enoch, but it's in the book of the Luminaries, which is chapters 72 to 82 of 1 Enoch.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: It's all about the solar calendar and how it is calculated.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: And this is the same calendar that Jubilees was promoting.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: With this solar calendar, the year is divided into 364 days, which is exactly 52 weeks.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: So it all revolves around the number seven completeness.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: There are 52 seven-day periods.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: So any given date would always land on the same day of the week.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: Like if your birthday is on Tuesday, it's always on Tuesday.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: Now we understand seven by now, but what about 52?
20:18
SPEAKER_00: Is there any significance to there being 52 weeks?
20:22
SPEAKER_01: All I know is it's not a factor of seven.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: So I'm sitting here going, okay.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what my thought was.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like it's not a factor.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: And as a result, my first inclination was to just write it off.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: Because I have enough material here for more episodes than I want to do on Jubilees anyway.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: I was just like, you know what?
20:46
SPEAKER_00: Move on to the next thing.
20:47
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: I noticed my outline was getting too long already.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: We're still on the prologue, but I couldn't shake it.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: Oh.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: God wouldn't allow me to ignore it, so I looked into it.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: It turns out 52 does have significance.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, right?
21:05
SPEAKER_00: And took the Jews into exile.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: And if you read Nehemiah 6:15, you see that even though the walls were destroyed, it only took Nehemiah 52 days to rebuild them.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: It was a miraculous restoration.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: And the walls re-established both the safety and the identity of the Jewish people.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: But that's not it.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: There's more.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: Because numbers in the Hebrew language are represented by letters of the alphabet.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: So Oliph, the first letter, represents the number one.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: Letters 1 through 9 represent numbers 1 through 9.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: And then letters 10 through 18 represent numbers 10 through 90.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: And then letters 19 through 22 represents numbers 100 to 400.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: It works almost exactly like Roman numerals, which uses letters from the Latin alphabet.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: What looks like a word can actually be a number.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: The word mix, M-I-X, is the number 1009, for example, in Roman numerals.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: Now, knowing that, there are two things we need to know.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: First, the prophet Elijah to Jews represents redemption.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: He was taken to heaven and he's going to return to announce the coming of the Messiah.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: He's also spiritually present at every circumcision.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: And at the beginning of Passover, Jews have a meal and they pour an extra cup of wine for Elijah and they leave the door open for him.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: The name Elijah, if you add up all the letters in the Hebrew name, it equals 52.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: Redemption.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: And this whole thing about him being spiritually present at every circumcision, that's going to come into play later on in the episode.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: So keep that in your mind.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: And the other thing we need to know is that the actual number 52 in the Hebrew letters is noon bet.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: So noon is 50 and bet is two.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: Together, 52.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: But get this: the letter noon in Hebrew symbolism represents humility and faithfulness.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: And the letter bet represents a house.
23:27
SPEAKER_00: Bethlehem is the house of bread.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: So together they are the house of faithfulness, or the house of humility, which honestly is the same thing, because by showing humility you're being faithful to God.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: So in this solar calendar that Enoch was given by God, and then it was instituted by the Essenes and written about in Jubilees, there are 52 sevens in a year.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: Seven is found in 52.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: We find full completeness in humility.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: The letter Nun was also a symbol for a fish, which is something the Bible used to compare to humanity multiple times.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: For example, Habakkuk 114 says, You make mankind like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: And in Matthew 419, Jesus says, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: In Matthew 13, forty seven to forty-eight, Jesus says, again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers, but threw away the bad.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: The bottom line here is that humility is what God wants from humanity, which we also see in the Jesus fish, the Igthus, because Jesus represents the ultimate humility.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: Now, practically and literally speaking, we know that a full revolution around the sun is actually 365.24 days, not 364.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: That's why we add leap days.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: But this shows us that this whole calendar thing was just another analogy God was using.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: Even though the Jews took it literally, just like we still take analogies in the Bible literally, it wasn't meant to be literal.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't about how to be exact and scientific.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: It was spiritual.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: It was mystical, meaning mysterious or secret.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: God was trying to tell them what he wants without telling them what he wants.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: Like when we say, tell me you're a parent of three teenagers without telling me you're a parent of three teenagers.
25:55
SPEAKER_01: Gray hairs.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: Oh wait.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: We would say something like that after witnessing someone's real life situation or experience, right?
26:04
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: It's like saying, I understand or I get it, without them having to explain it.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: 7 and 52.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: Tell me you want me to recognize the Creator and love others without telling me you want me to recognize the Creator and love others.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: That's what God was doing.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: He wants it to be real, not lip service.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to figure out humility on our own with our free will.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: Humility needs to be our choice in order for it to matter.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: But that doesn't keep him from dropping hints and helping.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: Some people will never get it, because they fail to rely on God's Spirit, which is the only thing that opens our eyes to this mystery.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: Modern scholars will read this phrase in Jubilees, the law and the testimony, and they'll say, The law tells you what commandments to perform, and the testimony dictates when to perform them.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: And that is indeed the literal way to interpret this.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: It's the analogy that's being used.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: But they miss the spiritual meaning, which is the one that matters.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: God was telling Moses what he wants from us and how to recognize the Creator.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: He was telling Moses how to love God and love others.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: But this usage of this solar calendar in Jubilees, it was a slap in the face to the Pharisees and Sadducees, because it took away their control and authority.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: The Essenes were essentially calling them corrupt from the get-ko in this prologue.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: Jubilees 632 says, Now you command the Israelites to keep the years in this number 364 days, then the year will be complete, and it will not disturb its time from its days or from its festivals, because everything will happen in harmony with their testimony.
28:11
SPEAKER_00: In other words, creation testifies to God.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: It is designed a certain way for a purpose.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: Humans were created in the image of God, designed for humility, selfless love, and to worship the Creator.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: We don't find completion without doing what we were designed to do.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: In verse 36 it says, There will be people who carefully observe the moon with lunar observations, because it is corrupt with respect to the seasons, and is early from year to year by ten days.
28:46
SPEAKER_01: That was from Jubilee?
28:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:48
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 6, 36.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: And that was literally talking about the Pharisees and Sadducees in their calendar.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: But the true meaning goes beyond that.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: The moon is the reflection of the sun and represents humanity.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: When it says lunar observations, it's talking about human knowledge.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: This verse is saying that people who live according to their own knowledge rather than the knowledge of God are corrupt.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: They come to the wrong conclusions.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: And as a result, their orthodoxy is off.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: It's skewed because they don't have the right orthopathy, the right passion or suffering.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: They don't have humility and selfless love.
29:37
SPEAKER_00: Moving on in the prologue.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: Great.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: We're not even through the first sentence of the book.
29:43
SPEAKER_01: Is it it's one massive run-on sentence anyway?
29:47
SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: We may need to rethink the number of episodes for Jubilees.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, it says that these are the words that were given to Moses when he went up to Mount Sinai to receive the stone tablets.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: The law and the commandment.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: Both of those words are singular.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: We don't need to spend a lot of time on that.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: It's the same concept as the law and the testimony.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: One is about how God wants us to treat him, and one is about how God wants us to treat others.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: It's the same song, different tune.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: The law is love and the commandment, that's actually the Hebrew word mitzvah, which means a decree.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: In 1 Enoch, it describes how God decreed how the stars move.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: It says, by this decree, the stars fulfill their courses.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: And when he calls their names, they answer him forever and ever.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: And in Enoch 18 and 21, when it's talking about the fallen angels, it calls the angels stars.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: It says, stars which transgressed the commandment of the Lord.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: So you can see this phrase, law and commandment, the same way as law and testimony, because testimony is about the order of creation, including the stars, the way things are meant to be.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: And we've made it through the one-sentence prologue.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: Now we get into the actual chapters.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: Chapter one gives the setting and elaborates on the reason for the book as a whole.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: God tells Moses, Come up on the mountain.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to give you two stone tablets, and on these tablets I have written the law and the commandment.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: Now, let's use a little common sense here.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: There are two tablets and two things God expects.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: So there's one for what he expects of us regarding him, and one for what he expects of us regarding each other.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: When you look at the Ten Commandments in the Bible, different denominations or traditions divide the commandments in different ways.
32:06
SPEAKER_00: But regardless of how you divide or number them, about half of them are about loving God, and the other half are about loving others.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: So that's common sense item number one.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: Next, we know that these two tablets are made out of stone.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: And stone is extremely heavy.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: So get that picture out of your head of Charlton Heston as Moses carrying huge stone tablets down the mountain.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: That's not what this scene looked like.
32:40
SPEAKER_01: He shared that with me in the car the other day.
32:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:45
SPEAKER_01: I'm kind of grieving the loss of that iconic photo, but it makes so much sense.
32:51
SPEAKER_01: Like now envision him holding stone tablets that are that size and make them the correct weight.
32:57
SPEAKER_01: And he is no longer standing at the top of the mountain, bruh, nice and proud.
33:01
SPEAKER_01: He's like hunched over.
33:02
SPEAKER_01: Like, guys, somebody help.
33:03
SPEAKER_01: This thing is really heavy.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: With the size of those things, he would have been laying on the ground squashed.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: Way to ruin it, Glenn.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: Charlton Heston was carrying foam and fiberglass that had been painted to look like stone.
33:18
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Hollywood.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: If this story literally happened, then the stones would have been small enough to carry both, which is very small.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: Think about the size of stone you can comfortably carry with one arm and then add another one.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: If you think about it, what God wants isn't complicated.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: It's just hard to carry out.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: So the stones didn't need to be big.
33:45
SPEAKER_01: Hard to carry out over there.
33:47
SPEAKER_01: I see what you did.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: I personally believe that this literally happened.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: Just like I believe uh the law of Moses literally existed and the flood literally happened.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: I believe there was a literal Noah with a literal ark, but like everything else God does, the literal meaning doesn't matter.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't matter whether you believe it or not.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: It points to a bigger picture.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: In this case, the law and the commandment being written on stone meant that they are unchangeable.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: Just like the English phrase set in stone, it means it's for sure, it's not changing.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: These two things that God was telling Moses, they have always been the truth, and they always will be the truth, because God doesn't change either.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: So Moses goes up to the mountain, and he's there for 40 days and 40 nights, which means he was there until God was done with him.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: That's what the number 40 means in Hebrew.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: It's a period of testing or transformation or transition.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: It reigned for 40 days with the flood.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: Moses was on the mountain for 40 days.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites wandered for 40 years.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: Joshua's spies were in Canaan for 40 days.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was tempted for 40 days.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: Saul, David, and Solomon each reigned for 40 years.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: Goliath taunted the Israelites for 40 days.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: And under Jewish custom, 40 years old is when a student is fully capable of understanding the depth of what a teacher is teaching.
35:43
SPEAKER_01: I had absolutely no clue that 40 was used that many times, that many ways, that many scenarios.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: That's just a drop in the bucket.
35:53
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
35:54
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to take up the whole episode with it.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: The list is too long to go through.
35:58
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: But 40 signifies the amount of time it takes to go from one state of existence to another.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: Transition.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: Like a spiritual rebirth.
36:11
SPEAKER_00: Even when it is literal in the Bible, the spiritual meaning is what is important.
36:17
SPEAKER_00: But we have people that die on the mountain of 40 days and 40 nights.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: Moses was on that mountain until God was done with him.
36:28
SPEAKER_00: Whether that was two literal days or 40 literal days, it doesn't matter.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: But the person who wrote this and put that number 40 in there, it was symbolic.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: And then the text says that God showed Moses everything in the past as well as everything to come.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: So this is how Moses knew about everything: creation, the flood, everything that's attributed to him in the Torah, including Genesis 6 about the fallen angels.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: And God tells Moses that he wants him to write it all in a book.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: And then God gives him the reason for this.
37:07
SPEAKER_00: He says, it's because he wants the Israelites to have a record of their unfaithfulness.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this original book, this writing of Moses, which we call the Torah, it wasn't to uplift them and tell them how to live.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: It was to be a record for their unfaithfulness.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: God says, I know these people, and I know what they're going to do.
37:34
SPEAKER_00: They're defiant and stubborn.
37:37
SPEAKER_00: And then God lists out everything the Israelites are going to fail at.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: They're going to be given the land of milk and honey, and then they'll turn to false gods.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: They're going to completely reject God, and then they're going to be captured and taken captive because they failed to keep God's commandments and Sabbaths.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: They'll make idols and altars to false gods.
38:00
SPEAKER_00: They'll sacrifice their own children on those altars.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: And as a side note on that one, yes, they really did it.
38:08
SPEAKER_00: A lot of it happened in Gehenna.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: But before you get all disgusted over this notion of sacrificing children, thinking there's no way the Israelites would do this.
38:19
SPEAKER_00: It's too way out there.
38:22
SPEAKER_00: Don't forget your whole religion is based on a father sacrificing his only child.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: But he was doing it out of love, not out of selfishness, which is what these sacrifices to false gods was all about.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: It was transactional.
38:39
SPEAKER_00: The false gods got something out of it, and the one doing the sacrificing got something out of it.
38:45
SPEAKER_00: But with the true God, the God of love, you are sacrificing self for the benefit of others.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: So God goes through this long list of everything the Israelites are going to do, as in in the future, but then he says, eventually they will return to me, and I'll gather them up.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: Verse 115 says, And they will search for me so that I may be found by them when they have searched for me with all their minds and with all their souls.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: I will rightly disclose to them abundant peace.
39:26
SPEAKER_00: Sounds like the teachings in the New Testament, doesn't it?
39:30
SPEAKER_00: Matthew six thirty three says to seek God's righteousness and everything will be added to you.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: Matthew seven, seven says, Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you.
39:44
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews eleven six says that God rewards those who seek him.
39:50
SPEAKER_00: God tells Moses here in Jubilees that eventually the Israelites will actually seek him, and that is when they will find him.
40:00
SPEAKER_00: But then he says at that time he will rightly disclose to them abundant peace.
40:09
SPEAKER_00: And that sounds like the Holy Spirit who discloses all truth.
40:15
SPEAKER_00: Luke 11 13 says, God will give the Holy Spirit to all who ask.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: First Corinthians 2 13 says that only the Spirit teaches spiritual truth.
40:29
SPEAKER_00: But Moses was standing there listening to all of this, and probably grimacing a bit.
40:50
SPEAKER_00: And he stops God and says, Wait a minute, just create a pure mind and a Holy Spirit within them.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: Why make them go through all of this?
41:03
SPEAKER_00: Now we know the answer to that question.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: A selfless heart is only acceptable if it is a choice.
41:11
SPEAKER_00: That was the purpose of free will, but Moses didn't understand.
41:16
SPEAKER_00: He wanted God to simply snap his fingers and make the Israelites holy.
41:22
SPEAKER_00: So God answers Moses.
41:24
SPEAKER_00: Verse 22 says, Then the Lord said to Moses, I know their contrary nature, their way of thinking, and their stubbornness.
41:34
SPEAKER_00: They will not listen until they acknowledge their sins and the sins of their ancestors.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: After this they will return to me in a fully upright manner and with all their minds and all their souls.
41:49
SPEAKER_00: I will cut away the foreskins of their minds, and the foreskins of their descendants' minds.
41:56
SPEAKER_00: I will create a Holy Spirit for them and will purify them in order that they may not turn away from me from that time forever.
42:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so here we see the spiritual meaning behind circumcision in the law.
42:12
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't about the literal obedience to rules, but about the heart.
42:18
SPEAKER_00: And that's going to come up later in the episode too, during the rest of the story.
42:24
SPEAKER_00: God continues, their souls will adhere to me and to all my commandments.
42:35
SPEAKER_00: Is he talking about the literal law of Moses there?
42:40
SPEAKER_00: No.
42:41
SPEAKER_00: God himself broke that one.
42:44
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, eventually they will abandon self and love each other and me.
42:51
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, I will be their father, and they will be my children.
42:57
SPEAKER_00: All of them will be called children of the living God.
43:01
SPEAKER_00: Every angel and every spirit will know them.
43:05
SPEAKER_00: They will know that they are my children and that I am their father in a just and proper way, and that I love them.
43:16
SPEAKER_00: Alright.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: All of them.
43:19
SPEAKER_00: And we're talking about humanity here because the descendant of Abraham is Jesus Christ, not the Israelites.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: We are all grafted into this covenant.
43:29
SPEAKER_00: And every one of us will be called children of God.
43:35
SPEAKER_00: Because we humble ourselves and seek after God.
43:39
SPEAKER_00: As a result, God reveals Himself and provides His Spirit and purifies us.
43:47
SPEAKER_00: Now, why was God allowing this process to happen rather than just making it happen?
43:55
SPEAKER_00: It's because in order to understand good, you need to understand evil.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites, really just humanity in general, is stubborn.
44:06
SPEAKER_00: We have a contrary nature and way of thinking, like God said, because we have chosen to seek what is best for ourselves instead of others.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: God is going to let this process play out so that in the end, true love rather than forced love is all that's going to remain.
44:27
SPEAKER_00: After God says all of this stuff to Moses, their dialogue is over.
44:34
SPEAKER_00: God then tells an angel to dictate everything to Moses, and he makes a prompt exit.
44:41
SPEAKER_00: And that's what the rest of Jubilees is.
44:44
SPEAKER_00: It's the angel telling everything to Moses.
44:49
SPEAKER_00: There's no proper name that's given to this angel, but it refers to the angel as the angel of the presence.
44:59
SPEAKER_00: In Hebrew, it literally means the angel or messenger of the face.
45:06
SPEAKER_00: It's possible that this angel was Jesus, being the face of God.
45:12
SPEAKER_00: It's also possible it was Gabriel, one of the archangels, one of the seven spirits of God.
45:17
SPEAKER_00: But we also see this description in the Bible.
45:21
SPEAKER_00: In Isaiah 63, Isaiah is remembering the mercy of God and how God showed compassion and love.
45:28
SPEAKER_00: And verses eight to nine, he says, For he said, Surely they are my people, children who will not deal falsely.
45:37
SPEAKER_00: And he became their Savior.
45:39
SPEAKER_00: In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them.
45:46
SPEAKER_00: In his love and in his pity he redeemed them.
45:49
SPEAKER_00: He lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
45:54
SPEAKER_00: This is from Isaiah.
45:57
SPEAKER_00: And the Essenes loved Isaiah.
46:00
SPEAKER_00: It's where they got their flagship verse.
46:14
SPEAKER_00: So it's likely this phrase in Jubilees is referring to the same presence that is here in Isaiah, which many scholars interpret to be a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ.
46:29
SPEAKER_00: But then Luke 1.19 says, and the angel answered him, I am Gabriel, I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news.
46:42
SPEAKER_00: So another interpretation could be that the angel of the presence is the archangel Gabriel.
46:48
SPEAKER_00: Personally, I believe it's talking about Jesus here in Jubilees and Isaiah, and you'll see why in a minute.
46:56
SPEAKER_00: But God the Father, after the initial conversation with Moses, tells an angel, a messenger, to take over and dictate what he wants Moses to write.
47:10
SPEAKER_00: Jubilees 127 says that God told the angel to dictate to Moses.
47:16
SPEAKER_00: So whoever this messenger was, it wasn't the father.
47:22
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to follow.
47:24
SPEAKER_01: So we have the writer of Jubilee.
47:27
SPEAKER_01: Is it plural?
47:28
SPEAKER_01: Jubilees.
47:29
SPEAKER_01: Jubilees.
47:30
SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
47:30
SPEAKER_01: The writer of Jubilees writing down an oral tradition, and that oral tradition has Moses receiving what to write down.
47:43
SPEAKER_00: Right.
47:44
SPEAKER_01: And Moses possibly received what to write down from this angel of the face.
47:53
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
47:54
SPEAKER_01: Which could possibly be Gabriel or Jesus?
47:57
SPEAKER_00: I believe it was Jesus.
47:59
SPEAKER_01: The same way we read Isaiah.
48:01
SPEAKER_00: The same way we read Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament.
48:05
SPEAKER_00: Like the one that talks with Abraham.
48:08
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
48:08
SPEAKER_01: I think I remember that.
48:10
SPEAKER_00: When the three lane the three angels appear and Abraham gives them a meal.
48:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:15
SPEAKER_00: And then one of them leaves and the other two go to Sodom.
48:19
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
48:20
SPEAKER_01: One of those men figures.
48:24
SPEAKER_00: Right.
48:24
SPEAKER_01: Could have been Jesus.
48:26
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
48:28
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
48:30
SPEAKER_00: But that author that wrote it down said that this angel of the presence goes in front of the Israelite camp carrying the two tablets that the father gave Moses.
48:43
SPEAKER_00: So this.
48:46
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I motioned to him like tablets, like little bitty.
48:50
SPEAKER_00: More like stones, iPhones.
48:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe a little bigger.
48:55
SPEAKER_01: Like an iPad.
48:58
SPEAKER_00: So this angel doesn't just teach Moses, he also leads the Israelites.
49:04
SPEAKER_00: And he carries God's law and testimony, the law and the commandment.
49:09
SPEAKER_00: Although this may be the first time you're hearing this, it's not really a new concept.
49:15
SPEAKER_00: Exodus 33, 20 says, Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared.
49:24
SPEAKER_00: All right, that phrase angel before you, guess what two words that is?
49:30
SPEAKER_00: It's the same two Hebrew words that are translated angel of the presence.
49:35
SPEAKER_00: It's literally angel of face.
49:38
SPEAKER_00: The way it's used there, it means the angel before your face.
49:43
SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
49:44
SPEAKER_00: But it's translated there, angel before you.
49:46
SPEAKER_00: The angel of the presence will lead the way.
49:50
SPEAKER_00: And we see here in Exodus, not just in Jubilees, that this angel of the presence is leading the Israelites through the desert.
49:59
SPEAKER_00: But not just that, let's read on to verses 21 to 22.
50:04
SPEAKER_00: It says, Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice.
50:09
SPEAKER_00: Do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression.
50:14
SPEAKER_00: But my name is in him.
50:17
SPEAKER_00: But if you carefully obey his voice and do all I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.
50:28
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is an Exodus.
50:31
SPEAKER_00: In the literal sense, it's talking about Israelites and their enemies like the Canaanites and the wars that they're going to have and how they need to stay on God's side by obeying his messenger in order to win these wars.
50:43
SPEAKER_00: That's the literal sense.
50:45
SPEAKER_00: But the spiritual meaning, which is the one that is important, is that the messenger of God, the face of God, Jesus Christ, we need to pay careful attention to him and obey his voice, and don't rebel against what he teaches.
51:04
SPEAKER_00: And if we do obey him, God will be on our side.
51:10
SPEAKER_00: And another thing to note here is that God says, My name is in him.
51:17
SPEAKER_00: What is the name God gives to Moses in Exodus 3, 14 to 15?
51:24
SPEAKER_00: I am.
51:25
SPEAKER_00: When God talks about himself, he says, I am, and when the Israelites talk about him, they say, He is.
51:33
SPEAKER_00: We see both of these forms in these two verses.
51:36
SPEAKER_00: But his name, he is, is what we call Yahweh or Jehovah.
51:44
SPEAKER_00: It's the same word.
51:46
SPEAKER_00: So God says, My name is in him.
51:52
SPEAKER_00: Now, what is the given name of Jesus?
51:56
SPEAKER_00: Yhashua or Yeshua.
52:00
SPEAKER_00: It means Yahweh is salvation.
52:04
SPEAKER_00: God's name is in him.
52:08
SPEAKER_00: So in Jubilees it says the angel of the presence will lead God's people bearing the two laws of God.
52:18
SPEAKER_00: And in Exodus we see the same thing.
52:21
SPEAKER_00: And it says we need to listen to him.
52:25
SPEAKER_00: We need to listen to that presence, which we do now through the Holy Spirit, because the presence came, and when he left earth, he gave us a helper, his spirit.
52:41
SPEAKER_00: In Exodus 33, 14, God tells Moses, My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.
52:50
SPEAKER_00: So after the author of Jubilees says the angel of the presence will lead the Israelites with the two tablets, he says that the tablets tell the story of creation.
53:04
SPEAKER_00: From the very beginning of the first creation until the new creation, when the Lord will have a new Jerusalem on Mount Zion, in the heavens, the earth, and all of the creatures will be renewed, including the fallen angels, the stars that refused to stay on their course.
53:22
SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of information for two little stones.
53:25
SPEAKER_00: That's because it's really not literal.
53:30
SPEAKER_00: And if you caught it, I also said, including the fallen angels.
53:34
SPEAKER_00: Now, here in Jubilees it says, All the luminaries will be renewed for the purpose of healing and health and blessing for all the elect ones of Israel, and so that it may remain this way from that time throughout all the days of the earth.
53:50
SPEAKER_00: If we read that passage in light of Enoch, which was around at the time Jubilees was written, the stars fell and caused corruption and sickness.
54:03
SPEAKER_00: But now those stars will be restored to their rightful place by God, and there will be no more sickness, no more pain.
54:20
SPEAKER_00: But that was the end of chapter one.
54:23
SPEAKER_00: Jubilees is packed with good stuff.
54:27
SPEAKER_00: It would take a whole year of episodes at least to do the whole thing properly.
54:32
SPEAKER_00: But chapter two is the creation story.
54:37
SPEAKER_00: It starts by talking about the six days of creation.
54:41
SPEAKER_00: And again, while the spiritual point of a lot of the biblical stories do have a literal counterpart, I don't think that's the case here.
54:52
SPEAKER_00: I think the six-day creation was probably always meant to be symbolic.
54:58
SPEAKER_00: We saw very early on in this podcast in season one that Genesis 1 is a poem.
55:05
SPEAKER_00: It's the whole 6-7 thing again.
55:08
SPEAKER_00: And also it's not possible for it to be literal because you can't have a literal day without the sun, and the sun wasn't created until day four.
55:18
SPEAKER_00: In chapter four of Jubilees, the author actually confirms this symbolism by saying that a thousand years is one day in the testimony of heaven.
55:31
SPEAKER_00: Meaning a thousand years to us is one day of creation to God.
55:38
SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
55:39
SPEAKER_01: So that idea has been around since an Essene wrote this down.
55:43
SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's been around the world tradition before that.
55:46
SPEAKER_00: Even before that.
55:47
SPEAKER_00: We find it in Psalms too.
55:49
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
55:49
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to talk about this more next week.
55:51
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
55:52
SPEAKER_00: Because it ties into the next book we're going to study too, as well as our own canon.
55:56
SPEAKER_00: We see it in Psalms, we see it in Second Peter, we see it in Revelation.
56:00
SPEAKER_00: But this just flat out says, you know, a day of creation is like a thousand years to us.
56:08
SPEAKER_00: But I believe the reason for the numbering here is symbolic in many ways, not the least of which is because creation is imperfect, six, and God is perfect, seven.
56:22
SPEAKER_00: In Jubilees, God creates many things on day one, including the angels.
56:29
SPEAKER_00: Because angels are the cause of fire and wind and clouds and everything else you need for all the other stuff that's going to be created.
56:38
SPEAKER_00: The angels make the world turn, basically, when they stay on the course that they were created for, anyway.
56:47
SPEAKER_00: The creation account in Genesis doesn't mention the creation of angels.
56:54
SPEAKER_00: But remember, the person who wrote this book, Jubilees, agreed with Genesis.
57:00
SPEAKER_00: He was an Essene.
57:02
SPEAKER_00: He wouldn't have thought that anything he was writing contradicted Genesis.
57:07
SPEAKER_00: And the rest of the Essenes accepted both Genesis and Jubilees.
57:14
SPEAKER_00: The rest of the days of creation and Jubilees shares the same basic structure and sequence that we find in Genesis 1.
57:23
SPEAKER_00: But there are some little differences, including the creation of the angels, Adam taking six days to name the animals, and God creating 22 different kinds of work before the Sabbath, total for those six days.
57:39
SPEAKER_00: This was symbolic too because there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet and 22 generations from Adam to Jacob.
57:46
SPEAKER_00: And the author actually explains that symbolism.
57:50
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, we get to the fourth day, and God creates the sun, and the author rubs it in a little bit, just to poke the Pharisees and Sadducees.
58:02
SPEAKER_00: Jubilees 2 9 says, The Lord appointed the sun as a great sign above the earth for days, Sabbaths, months, festivals, years, Sabbaths of years, Jubilees, and all cycles of the years.
58:19
SPEAKER_00: So basically, we tell time based on the sun, so that's how we do the calendar.
58:24
SPEAKER_00: Up yours, corrupt priests who kicked us out of the temple.
58:28
SPEAKER_01: There might have been some political undertones in this one.
58:34
SPEAKER_00: For sure.
58:35
SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah.
58:37
SPEAKER_00: And then we get to the sixth day, and humanity is created.
58:42
SPEAKER_00: Jubilees 314 says, After all this, he made humankind, a male and female, he made them.
58:52
SPEAKER_00: And this whole story, the creation of humanity, has a bunch of different interpretations throughout not only Judaism, but every denomination.
59:03
SPEAKER_00: But in Judaism, it's not a major point of contention.
59:08
SPEAKER_00: In other words, they don't use the fact that God created one male and one female to define marriage as one male and one female.
59:19
SPEAKER_00: An Israelite wrote Genesis and Jubilees for that matter, and it was written to and for Israelites, and the Israelites never understood it to be a definition of marriage.
59:34
SPEAKER_00: That's why we see polygamy regulated in the law, this same law that was written at the same time by the same man that wrote Genesis.
59:43
SPEAKER_00: Listen to episode 16 for more on that.
59:45
SPEAKER_00: But when Jesus quoted Genesis later on, he was speaking to Jews, knowing how they understood Genesis, and he used their understanding to make a point about how to treat companions in love rather than sending them away to live on the street.
1:00:04
SPEAKER_00: One of the interpretations Jews have had about the male-female thing is that the first human was androgynous, meaning both male and female, which was then divided into two.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_00: This view is actually in the Jewish oral tradition.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_00: It was held by Rabbi Jeremiah bin Eleazar in the late 200s AD, and many others have held this belief too.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_00: Philo of Alexandria in the first century actually believed the first human was spiritual rather than physical, so neither male nor female.
1:00:44
SPEAKER_00: But over time, Orthodox Jews have leaned toward the first created human being as male and the second female.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_00: Now, in modern day, the mystical sects of Jews, like the Kabbalists, they still hold this view of Adam and Eve being one being, both male and female, and then separated by God.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_00: But the point today in modern times is more spiritual metaphor rather than biological description.
1:01:14
SPEAKER_00: Now, based on the Jubilees text, we're going to see that the Essenes believe that the first created human was both male and female.
1:01:24
SPEAKER_00: But regardless of all of the different Jewish interpretations, the vast majority of Jews believe that this story is allegorical, metaphorical.
1:01:35
SPEAKER_00: Even the ones who interpret Adam and Eve as being two literal distinct beings, male and female, in this story, even they believe that it was also allegorical.
1:01:46
SPEAKER_00: Jews in general are very comfortable having multiple interpretations of passages.
1:01:53
SPEAKER_00: They aren't dogmatic about beliefs, because to them, religion is about right behavior rather than right belief.
1:02:04
SPEAKER_00: That's the main thing that divides Judaism from modern Christianity.
1:02:09
SPEAKER_00: But we have discovered that it's the right heart that matters.
1:02:16
SPEAKER_00: Right behavior and right belief are a result of a right heart, not the other way around.
1:02:24
SPEAKER_00: And reading on, the sixth day is past, and now we get to the Sabbath.
1:02:31
SPEAKER_00: In Genesis, it simply says that God rested on the Sabbath day.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_00: There's really no more elaboration.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_00: But in Jubilees, it's not about God being tired.
1:02:44
SPEAKER_00: The Sabbath is a sign or a covenant for God's people.
1:02:50
SPEAKER_00: We talked about this last week, how the Sabbaths were all about recognizing God and taking care of each other.
1:02:57
SPEAKER_00: In Jubilees 218, the angel tells Moses, He told us, all the angels of the presence, and all the angels of holiness, these two kinds, to keep the Sabbath with him in heaven and on earth.
1:03:14
SPEAKER_00: So everyone, including the angels, celebrate what God has done and honor God by keeping his Sabbath.
1:03:24
SPEAKER_00: And how do we do that?
1:03:27
SPEAKER_00: By loving him and loving others.
1:03:30
SPEAKER_00: Verse 21 says, In this way, he made a sign on the seventh day by which they too would keep Sabbath with us on the seventh day to eat, to drink, and to bless the Creator of all.
1:03:49
SPEAKER_00: Now the angel is talking about the Israelites specifically here, but remember that Jesus grafted us in.
1:03:57
SPEAKER_00: All of humanity is God's chosen people.
1:04:02
SPEAKER_00: And we keep the Sabbath by eating and drinking and blessing the Creator, fellowship and worship, koinonia and Eucharistia, communion and the Eucharist.
1:04:20
SPEAKER_00: Eucharistia literally means giving thanks.
1:04:25
SPEAKER_00: So we celebrate the Sabbath by sharing meals together and giving thanks to God.
1:04:32
SPEAKER_00: Love God and love others.
1:04:35
SPEAKER_00: That's what the Sabbath is all about.
1:04:39
SPEAKER_00: During the Lord's Supper, Jesus took the bread and the wine while they were eating and told them, Whenever you do this, do it in remembrance of me.
1:04:49
SPEAKER_00: We find that in Luke 22, 19 in 1 Corinthians 11, 23 to 26.
1:04:55
SPEAKER_00: In verse 26 of that 1 Corinthians 11, Paul says, Whenever you do this, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
1:05:06
SPEAKER_00: By loving each other, sharing with each other, you proclaim the Lord's death.
1:05:12
SPEAKER_00: And what was the Lord's death all about?
1:05:15
SPEAKER_00: Selfless sacrificial love.
1:05:19
SPEAKER_00: When we as humans humble ourselves and exhibit selfless love to others, we are proclaiming to the world what God is all about.
1:05:29
SPEAKER_00: We are proclaiming the Lord's death.
1:05:32
SPEAKER_00: The spiritual purpose and meaning behind what God literally did.
1:05:38
SPEAKER_00: And Jubilees 225 says that anyone who defiles the Sabbath will die.
1:05:45
SPEAKER_00: If you fail to keep God's commandment, you die.
1:05:50
SPEAKER_00: When you live in pride, living for what's best for you, you defile the Sabbath.
1:05:57
SPEAKER_00: You defile rather than proclaim.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_00: proclaim the cross.
1:06:04
SPEAKER_00: In Jubilees two, thirty, the angel tells Moses that the angels kept the Sabbath in heaven before it was made known to all of humanity that they should keep Sabbath on earth.
1:06:19
SPEAKER_00: And then the last verse of chapter two, verse thirty three says this law and testimony were given to the Israelites as an eternal law throughout their history an eternal law.
1:06:36
SPEAKER_00: Let me ask you a question.
1:06:39
SPEAKER_00: If the Sabbath was truly about resting rather than working, and if the law said you weren't allowed to pick grain on the Sabbath, like it says in Exodus 3421, you're not supposed to harvest, and how you weren't even supposed to pick up the manna on the seventh day that God gave them in Exodus 1629.
1:07:02
SPEAKER_00: Couldn't even bend at the hip and pick up the manna.
1:07:06
SPEAKER_00: Knowing that these were rules found in the law, would you have been standing next to the Pharisees blaming Jesus for breaking it when he was picking grain I would have but Jesus knew better.
1:07:26
SPEAKER_00: He knew the spiritual meaning behind it.
1:07:29
SPEAKER_00: And he also knew and understood and dare I say was the inspiration behind Enoch and Jubilees.
1:07:40
SPEAKER_00: Jesus wasn't defining work when he broke the Sabbath.
1:07:46
SPEAKER_00: He was defining the Sabbath.
1:07:50
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't saying picking grain isn't work, which is what he and the disciples were doing in Matthew twelve, when the Pharisees accused them of working Jesus responded in verses seven to eight and said And if you had known what this means that I desire mercy and not sacrifice then you would not have condemned the guiltless for the Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath.
1:08:20
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't saying I can break my own rules if I want to because I am God he was saying it's not about following rules it's about a pure heart.
1:08:32
SPEAKER_00: Loving God and loving others is the eternal law that is mentioned in Jubilees and that was written on stone it is God's Sabbath and it is perfection the seventh day we move on to chapter three now and now you're going to hear the rest of the story.
1:08:57
SPEAKER_00: The author talks about Adam naming the animals meaning humans naming the animals because as Jubilees says Adam and Eve were created together on the sixth day.
1:09:15
SPEAKER_00: They were both one and the same the first human was both male and female but the male doesn't actually meet the female until later.
1:09:28
SPEAKER_00: In the meantime before the male meets the female the author says that Adam, humanity named the animals and he or they did this during the second week the author of Jubilees here describes how the angels brought all of the animals to Adam and it took six days to name the animals.
1:09:56
SPEAKER_00: And there's that number six again it's the number of humanity but a helper couldn't be found among the animals so then God divided Adam He divided humanity he took a rib and the word for rib there literally means side but this text in Jubilees uses both the word bone and rib.
1:10:19
SPEAKER_00: God took the rib from among Adam's bones and then Eve was presented to Adam Jubilees three eight says in the first week Adam and his woman the rib were created and in the second week he showed her to him so it specifically points out that the rib within the first human was the woman part of humanity in other words the first human was both male and female and then that part of humanity wasn't separated until the second week that was the literal meaning and before you start talking about a rib being small hold on to that thought but if you want to understand the spiritual meaning behind this passage in Jubilees should be translated like this in the first week humanity and his wisdom were created and in the second week God showed her to him I'll explain humanity wasn't created in the Garden of Eden This is the case in both Genesis and Jubilees Adam is created and then brought to the Garden of Eden later Genesis 2 7 through eight says Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living creature and the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east and there he put the man whom he had formed.
1:12:13
SPEAKER_00: And then it describes the garden a bit and verse 15 says the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it in Jubilees we get a few more details here.
1:12:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah but there's still a lot of the he's and hymns and well at this point in Jubilees Adam and Eve have been separated.
1:12:35
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:12:35
SPEAKER_00: So human Adam has been separated and they are now Adam and Eve and then Adam is put in the garden after 40 days.
1:12:43
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:12:43
SPEAKER_00: So it's elaborating on the story we just read in Genesis.
1:12:47
SPEAKER_00: And that 40 days is the number that represents transformation or transition.
1:12:54
SPEAKER_00: And then Eve was brought to the garden after 80 days.
1:13:00
SPEAKER_00: So 40 days and then Adam goes to the garden 80 days and then Eve.
1:13:06
SPEAKER_00: We know 40 it's transition.
1:13:08
SPEAKER_00: Why 80?
1:13:10
SPEAKER_00: There are a couple of reasons here the first is because there are two periods of transition being represented here it's the time of humanity on earth followed by the time of perfection when true wisdom is presented to humanity upon Christ's return.
1:13:28
SPEAKER_00: And the second reason is that in Judaism 80 represents inner strength and wisdom.
1:13:35
SPEAKER_00: When a Jew turns 80 there's a special celebration because you've reached the age of inner strength.
1:13:44
SPEAKER_00: I'll link some articles some Jewish articles and websites in the show notes if you want to read more on this they have these celebrations sometimes a child or a grandchild would write a story to uh the the person whose birthday it is explaining the significance of turning 80.
1:14:02
SPEAKER_00: When you turn 30 years old you reach peak physical strength and when you turn 80 years old you reach peak wisdom inner strength.
1:14:14
SPEAKER_01: And there was a 41 in there earlier in the episode what was that one again?
1:14:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's when you can fully understand what a teacher is teaching you.
1:14:22
SPEAKER_00: It's the transition it's the spiritual enlightenment basically it's a time of transition.
1:14:27
SPEAKER_00: The physical body slows down and becomes weak at 80 and wisdom gained from your life's experiences shines through it's called the age of Gavera that specific phrase didn't originate until the second century but the concept came from Moses Psalm ninety ten says the years of our life are seventy or even by reason of strength eighty that phrase reason of strength is the word gavera it's age thirteen sixty nine and Psalm ninety is attributed to Moses which would make it the oldest Psalm as well Gavera can also be translated as victory or triumph or power.
1:15:24
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it describes the Son and it's often used to describe God and his mighty acts of strength Job twelve thirteen says with God our wisdom and might he has counsel and understanding that word might is Gavura.
1:15:46
SPEAKER_00: So it's it's seen as a divine thing in Judaism it's channeling strength responsibly rather than impulsively it's a sign of maturity Moses was eighty years old when he first approached Pharaoh so in Jubilees Eve wisdom inner strength and power enters the garden after eighty days like the sun rising or like the strength of God Revelation twelve ten says and I heard a loud voice in heaven saying Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come but as God reminds us in 2 Corinthians 129 is made perfect in weakness just like the elderly those who reach eighty years of age who have wisdom and maturity they are also generally speaking less physically strong weak their strength is in their mind and heart their wisdom which is much more important than physical strength their power is made perfect in weakness and that is what is being represented in Eve here who enters the garden at the eighty day mark weaker generally speaking than Adam but full of wisdom she represented what Adam was missing Adam represents humanity and Eve represented the wisdom of God so now Adam and Eve are both in the Garden of Eden and they are made complete together not because they are literally male and female which they are but because of the spiritual allegories they represent humanity is not complete without the wisdom and power of God which is made perfect in weakness it's a story that tells the history of creation and how things will be in the kingdom of God when Christ returns.
1:18:30
SPEAKER_00: But in the garden in the literal story that is telling this mysterious allegory things are just beginning and they don't get off to a good start because wisdom wants more wisdom.
1:18:45
SPEAKER_00: The serpent tempts Eve with knowledge He tells her that if she gains this knowledge she will be like God Jubilees 319 says Then the serpent said to the woman You will not really die because the Lord knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened and you will become like God's and you will know good and evil so then she eats she wanted to be like God then verse 21 says she first covered her shame with fig leaves and then gave it to Adam Remember what a female's genitalia represents in Judaism?
1:19:32
SPEAKER_00: We talked about it last week it's the dwelling place of the divine the womb or uterus is the inner sanctum.
1:19:42
SPEAKER_00: Eve was covering her shame like the veil at the temple she wanted to be like God and as a result she created a separation from God spiritually not literally Jesus gave us freedom from rules we create around the literal interpretation so then she gives it to Adam and he eats and he does the same thing.
1:20:10
SPEAKER_00: Verse 22 says he took fig leaves and sowed them thus he made himself an apron and covered his shame.
1:20:20
SPEAKER_00: Now an apron is not like a veil it's something that wraps what does a male's genitalia represent in Judaism power and authority Adam recognized that he had taken what was rightfully God's for himself and he covered it in shame.
1:20:42
SPEAKER_00: As a result of what humanity had done they were banished from paradise and there were consequences.
1:20:49
SPEAKER_00: One of the consequences and jubilees that we don't find in Genesis is that the animals were no longer able to talk.
1:20:56
SPEAKER_00: Everyone used to speak the same language both humans and animals but as a result of the fall that changed I found that interesting.
1:21:05
SPEAKER_01: Yes C.S.
1:21:06
SPEAKER_00: Lewis was on to something but it says that God only allowed humans to cover their shame and no other creatures God then made more permanent coverings for Adam and Eve's shame out of skins.
1:21:25
SPEAKER_00: Jubilees 326 said he made clothing out of skins for them clothed them and dismissed them from the Garden of Eden.
1:21:36
SPEAKER_00: We find the same thing in Genesis 321 but notice it doesn't say animal skins it just says skins and without going into graphic detail here are you thinking the same thing I am Eve covered herself with a veil.
1:21:56
SPEAKER_00: Adam covered himself with an apron that wraps around could these skins that covered their genitals be something other than animal skin?
1:22:08
SPEAKER_00: I'll let you use your imagination for the female's veil, but for the male could it have been foreskin?
1:22:15
SPEAKER_00: Foreskin that would later be removed for God's chosen people?
1:22:21
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but I don't think this was talking about clothing the way we think of it.
1:22:27
SPEAKER_00: The words for clothing and clothed them in both Genesis and Jubilees literally means covering and covered them.
1:22:38
SPEAKER_00: God gave us skin to cover our shame, which he later planned to remove bringing us back into communion with him it's yet again a literal story meant to tell a spiritual truth.
1:22:59
SPEAKER_00: In Acts 15 Paul and Barnabas were in Antioch and some of the Jewish Christians from Jerusalem came to pay them a visit and they started teaching all the new Gentile believers that you can't be saved without being physically circumcised because that was the custom of the law of Moses.
1:23:20
SPEAKER_00: So Paul and Barnabas had a very heated argument with them but they couldn't resolve the argument so Paul and Barnabas traveled to Jerusalem to speak with all of the elders they stated their case but they still had no luck convincing them.
1:23:38
SPEAKER_00: But then Peter stood up and reminded everyone of what happened with him and Cornelius, the first Gentile to become a Christian and he said that God cleansed their hearts not their physical bodies you see the elders were focusing on the literal story and not the spiritual point.
1:24:02
SPEAKER_00: But then Peter says why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear we are saved only through the grace of Jesus Christ.
1:24:20
SPEAKER_00: Again these elders were taking the scriptures literally and completely missing the point Peter was reminding them of the point.
1:24:29
SPEAKER_00: Peter, Paul and Barnabas made a little bit of headway that day, but they had to continue fighting for the truth because the elders gave in to the circumcision thing, but they still required other stuff, like abstaining from meat sacrificed to idols, which Paul would later have to fight when he told people that everything is clean if done with a good conscience.
1:24:55
SPEAKER_00: We see that for example in Romans 1422 which says the faith that you have keep between yourself and God blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves.
1:25:08
SPEAKER_00: And 1 Timothy 4 which says for everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving people still today take their literal understanding of the stories God tells and they completely abuse and overanalyze the analogies rather than focusing on the spiritual point.
1:25:34
SPEAKER_00: Galatians 5 1 says for freedom Christ has set us free.
1:25:40
SPEAKER_00: Stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery That's the same wording that Peter used.
1:25:48
SPEAKER_00: He said don't put a yoke that's too heavy to bear He was talking about the literal law Christ set us free from that.
1:25:58
SPEAKER_00: And then verse six says for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything but only faith working through love.
1:26:10
SPEAKER_00: Romans 2 26 through 29 says if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision?
1:26:23
SPEAKER_03: Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law for no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical but a Jew is one inwardly and circumcision is a matter of the heart by the Spirit not by the letter his praise is not from man but from God Paul was saying that people who get the spiritual meaning will condemn those who take it literally don't be someone who doesn't get it let's walk in the light like I did last time.
1:27:49
SPEAKER_01: That's a lot to think about but it's so good.
1:27:54
SPEAKER_01: I feel like a lot of my questions are really I don't know if picky is the right word but Like really maybe stuck on a detail.
1:28:02
SPEAKER_01: So hang in there with me.
1:28:04
SPEAKER_01: It's just like little things.
1:28:05
SPEAKER_01: We're like, wait, what?
1:28:07
SPEAKER_01: So you ready?
1:28:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm ready.
1:28:10
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:28:10
SPEAKER_01: So back in well, you were quoting Genesis 6, and you said all Jews knew that Genesis 6 was talking about fallen angels.
1:28:25
SPEAKER_01: But the Essenes are the ones that valued Enoch and Jubilees.
1:28:30
SPEAKER_01: So did really all Jews think that Genesis 6 was talking about the angels?
1:28:38
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Jews that I was talking about were the Israelites, so I guess technically they weren't Jews yet.
1:28:45
SPEAKER_00: They're Israelites.
1:28:46
SPEAKER_01: Oh, right.
1:28:47
SPEAKER_00: Um, that were around when Genesis was written.
1:28:52
SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
1:28:55
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of history that happened between then and when Enoch and Jubilees were written.
1:29:04
SPEAKER_00: So there were plenty of opinions that had formed and different beliefs, even among Jews.
1:29:11
SPEAKER_00: Like the Sadducees, for example, they didn't believe in any spiritual realm at all.
1:29:17
SPEAKER_00: So I can say with certainty that they didn't believe this was fallen angels.
1:29:26
SPEAKER_00: So they would not have believed this oral tradition.
1:29:32
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:29:33
SPEAKER_00: And really, would the Sadducees have been a good source for truth to begin with?
1:29:39
SPEAKER_00: They were the politicians of their time.
1:29:41
SPEAKER_00: They were the ones that took their religion and fused it with politics.
1:29:47
SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell, did you say they were or they weren't a good source of truth?
1:29:52
SPEAKER_00: They were not a good source of truth.
1:29:54
SPEAKER_00: I was being sarcastic.
1:29:56
SPEAKER_01: Well I know, but I was like, I could still couldn't hear, weren't okay.
1:30:01
SPEAKER_00: They were not a good like you wouldn't go to them to find out what was true and what was not.
1:30:07
SPEAKER_00: To them it was about power.
1:30:10
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:30:10
SPEAKER_01: Because of the lens they're viewing it through.
1:30:11
SPEAKER_01: It's such a political twisted.
1:30:13
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:30:14
SPEAKER_01: Motivated by power.
1:30:15
SPEAKER_01: Got it.
1:30:15
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:30:16
SPEAKER_01: And speaking of power, that's a perfect segue in my next question, because you're talking about the view of male versus female.
1:30:27
SPEAKER_01: And how do you know that the Jews saw the male parts, you know, their genitalia, as power?
1:30:36
SPEAKER_01: How did how do we know that that's how they viewed that as power and authority?
1:30:41
SPEAKER_00: Well, the short answer is you don't know for sure.
1:30:45
SPEAKER_00: We weren't alive back then.
1:30:47
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:30:48
SPEAKER_00: And nobody knows for sure.
1:30:50
SPEAKER_00: But we know what it came to symbolize later on because it still symbolizes it, which was the covenant with God and ownership.
1:31:01
SPEAKER_00: Our bodies belong to God.
1:31:03
SPEAKER_00: It also symbolizes self-control and holiness or sacred boundaries, uh, divine purity, which when you look at the spiritual meaning behind it all, it it still applies.
1:31:16
SPEAKER_00: But in terms of authority, I mean, we look at shame.
1:31:21
SPEAKER_00: Like, why did they cover their shame way back before circumcision was even a thing, right?
1:31:28
SPEAKER_00: Because that's what this story is all about, Adam and Eve in the garden.
1:31:32
SPEAKER_00: And we need to remember who the author and audience were, because you know, Adam and Eve did not write this, they didn't write Genesis, they didn't write Jubilees.
1:31:43
SPEAKER_00: The way the author of Jubilees worded this part is almost verbatim, what is written in Genesis.
1:31:51
SPEAKER_00: That part about covering up and then God creating covers out of skin.
1:31:57
SPEAKER_00: So in terms of authorship of this specific part of the story, we go back to Genesis and Moses.
1:32:05
SPEAKER_00: When this story was written or dictated to Moses on Mount Sinai and then passed down and written later on, either way, what was the situation like for the person who witnessed all of this?
1:32:21
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites had been in Egypt for a few hundred years.
1:32:25
SPEAKER_00: Uh, depending on who you ask, three to four hundred.
1:32:29
SPEAKER_00: Part of that time was in slavery, but not the whole time.
1:32:34
SPEAKER_00: But while they were there, they adopted the Egyptian gods.
1:32:40
SPEAKER_00: And as a side note, Egyptians practiced circumcision too.
1:32:44
SPEAKER_00: That wasn't specific to the Jews.
1:32:47
SPEAKER_00: But the Egyptians had many gods, but only a few of those gods were considered powerful enough to be creator gods, which was also a symbol of fertility.
1:33:02
SPEAKER_00: If you're fertile, you can create.
1:33:06
SPEAKER_00: And these creator gods had the true power.
1:33:10
SPEAKER_00: They had the authority, they were the most powerful.
1:33:14
SPEAKER_00: And the images of those creator gods, so the statues and paintings and whatever, were depicted with circumcised, erect male organs.
1:33:25
SPEAKER_00: That was the symbol of divine power.
1:33:28
SPEAKER_00: The other gods didn't have that.
1:33:30
SPEAKER_01: That's really fascinating.
1:33:32
SPEAKER_01: I didn't realize, like, because that's a really old historic record depicting power, quote, power.
1:33:42
SPEAKER_00: So, what modern Judaism believes and what they believed, say, at the time of Christ, uh, the symbolism that they gave to that body part, it was a little bit different because that part being power and authority was mostly a pagan thing.
1:34:02
SPEAKER_00: The problem is back then, when this story, you know, was learned, they were a pagan society.
1:34:10
SPEAKER_00: They were living in Egypt and worshiping those pagan gods.
1:34:15
SPEAKER_00: And the female gods, they symbolized cosmic creation and spiritual rebirth.
1:34:22
SPEAKER_00: The female body was the womb of the cosmos.
1:34:26
SPEAKER_01: In Egypt, right?
1:34:27
SPEAKER_01: Like, okay.
1:34:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was the dwelling place of the cosmos, the dwelling place of God.
1:34:34
SPEAKER_00: All of that imagery was what the Israelites had been around for longer than the U.S.
1:34:39
SPEAKER_00: has been a country.
1:34:41
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
1:34:42
SPEAKER_00: And the Israelites, the Israelites worshipped these Egyptian gods.
1:34:48
SPEAKER_00: We see that in Ezekiel 20, 6 through 8, where God says that he told the Israelites not to defile themselves with the gods of Egypt, but they didn't listen.
1:34:59
SPEAKER_00: And when Moses was actually up on the mountain, they made a golden calf, a bull, something they were familiar with.
1:35:06
SPEAKER_00: And can you guess what the bull represented?
1:35:09
SPEAKER_01: Fertility.
1:35:10
SPEAKER_00: Fertility and power.
1:35:12
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
1:35:13
SPEAKER_00: The point of Genesis was that Adam and Eve wanted to be like God by lifting themselves up.
1:35:22
SPEAKER_00: They wanted the power that God had, and when they realized what they had done, they were ashamed.
1:35:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, the man who wrote Genesis saw the same thing in the Israelites in the desert.
1:35:38
SPEAKER_00: They were doing shameful things by lifting themselves up and worshiping false creators, rejecting God.
1:35:45
SPEAKER_00: And at that time, the thing that most symbolized the divine creator power, because they had just come out of Egypt, was the penis.
1:35:56
SPEAKER_00: And the womb was the dwelling place of God.
1:36:00
SPEAKER_00: So when Adam and Eve covered their shame, similar to how we avoid eye contact with people when we've done something wrong, they covered their privates.
1:36:11
SPEAKER_00: They covered the part of the body that represented what they had done wrong.
1:36:15
SPEAKER_00: Eve hid it with a veil, just like the veil in the temple, and Adam hid it with a wrap, an apron, which literally probably went around his waist, but we know what he was covering.
1:36:32
SPEAKER_00: Later, God made them coverings of skin.
1:36:36
SPEAKER_00: A literal story telling a spiritual truth.
1:36:42
SPEAKER_00: And as were as a result, we're all born with that skin now.
1:36:48
SPEAKER_00: God removed that skin for people who belonged to Him with circumcision, but He didn't remove the veil because they were still separated from God.
1:36:59
SPEAKER_00: The temple still had a veil, and at the time the veil was removed by Jesus on the cross, and it was torn into the legalism and strict adherence to the law was over anyway.
1:37:13
SPEAKER_00: So I believe very strongly that they understood this to be power and authority.
1:37:20
SPEAKER_00: Spiritually speaking, they wanted to be like God.
1:37:51
SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting to see that thread through Jubilees.
1:37:59
SPEAKER_01: And it really, I've I don't know what I was expecting as we got into Jubilees.
1:38:04
SPEAKER_01: I guess you had told me, oh, it's a retelling of Genesis.
1:38:06
SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of what I was like, okay, we're gonna talk about Genesis.
1:38:10
SPEAKER_01: But I'm really being pleasantly surprised to see that same.
1:38:16
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if beauty is the right word because it's still growing on me, but you know, Isaiah is so, you know, it got handles Messiah, all based off of Isaiah.
1:38:25
SPEAKER_01: It it's interesting to see that beautiful thread of pointing to Christ, pointing to God's big picture plan for all of us in a book Jubilees.
1:38:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:38:39
SPEAKER_00: And it's not just Isaiah, it's the whole Old Testament is Jubilees, it's Enoch.
1:38:43
SPEAKER_01: That's just like the one that came to mind, I think probably because I went and saw the symphony last night.
1:38:48
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
1:38:49
SPEAKER_01: I had Messiah and Symphony on the brain, and oh, look at this.
1:38:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, they didn't understand that it was pointing to the Messiah.
1:38:58
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:38:59
SPEAKER_00: But the it's all this, it all goes back to this concept of God using literal stories and history, all of creation, everything that's happening is designed to show us love.
1:39:19
SPEAKER_00: It's designed to show us this sacrificial love that is embodied in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
1:39:31
SPEAKER_00: The everything, baptism, the Lord's Supper, the Sabbaths, all of the festivals, everything, the calendar, everything that is literal that they wrote down, like they knew eighty, they said it was wisdom.
1:39:49
SPEAKER_02: There's a reason for that.
1:39:52
SPEAKER_00: There's a reason for all of this that they they wrote it down as they understood it, not understanding the spiritual component of it, because the spiritual component wasn't brought about until Jesus breathed on the disciples, uh, gave us the spirit, and all of a sudden they understood what the scriptures were.
1:40:19
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says that the spirit is the only way to understand spiritual truth.
1:40:27
SPEAKER_00: You're not going to find it in the Bible.
1:40:29
SPEAKER_00: What you're going to find in the Bible is the literal story that God is telling.
1:40:34
SPEAKER_00: But in order to understand the spiritual story He's telling telling, it needs to come from the Holy Spirit.
1:40:42
SPEAKER_01: Well, then I need a little bit of spirit right now.
1:40:47
SPEAKER_00: Well, let me back up and say you don't have to read any of this and understand it.
1:40:55
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
1:40:56
SPEAKER_00: You can walk outside, look at creation, and know what God wants.
1:41:01
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit will teach you that without you going through all of this stuff, all of these writings.
1:41:10
SPEAKER_01: But it's there.
1:41:12
SPEAKER_00: It's there in some denominations, their whole everything hinges on what is written down.
1:41:21
SPEAKER_00: So, guys, read it and know what it means.
1:41:26
SPEAKER_00: If if you're gonna base it on the Bible, which is fine, read it and know what it means.
1:41:32
SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna need the spirit for that.
1:41:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:41:35
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm just going back to the sentence that you said about men and power and women and wisdom and well, it was important enough to title the episode.
1:41:46
SPEAKER_01: I know, and I just I know I have my hand on my hip, and I'm like, I don't know if I like it.
1:41:52
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I like the concept of man is power and woman is the wisdom of God.
1:41:59
SPEAKER_01: It makes me really uncomfortable.
1:42:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm glad that makes you uncomfortable because they aren't.
1:42:05
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:42:06
SPEAKER_00: Man is not power, and women or woman is not wisdom.
1:42:11
SPEAKER_00: It's a metaphor.
1:42:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:42:15
SPEAKER_00: Now, God does use our actual differences.
1:42:18
SPEAKER_00: They exist.
1:42:19
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
1:42:20
SPEAKER_00: There are differences.
1:42:21
SPEAKER_00: What?
1:42:22
SPEAKER_00: And God uses those differences to prove a point.
1:42:25
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:42:26
SPEAKER_00: But our differences are not meant to be transferred to religion, other than in a metaphorical way.
1:42:35
SPEAKER_00: We shouldn't overanalyze the analogy.
1:42:39
SPEAKER_00: Because even though we have physical differences, God cares about our spirits.
1:42:46
SPEAKER_00: He only cares about our spirits.
1:42:50
SPEAKER_00: And our spirits are not meant to be over one another.
1:42:55
SPEAKER_00: They they're supposed to be beside one another.
1:42:59
SPEAKER_00: None of our spirits have authority over another.
1:43:03
SPEAKER_00: And together as a community is where we flourish.
1:43:08
SPEAKER_00: Because everyone brings something to the table.
1:43:12
SPEAKER_00: And we don't decide what each person is capable of bringing based on their physical bodies, which is a lot more complicated than you think, but based on their spirit.
1:43:26
SPEAKER_00: Are they someone who gets it?
1:43:29
SPEAKER_00: Someone who understands that selfless love is the key to everything.
1:43:33
SPEAKER_00: That's what we should look for, not a physical characteristic.
1:43:37
SPEAKER_00: In Jubilees, men don't actually have true power, they just have physical power.
1:43:45
SPEAKER_00: Because true power requires wisdom.
1:43:50
SPEAKER_00: And wisdom denies having power over others.
1:43:54
SPEAKER_00: That's the point the author was making when he talked about Eve entering the garden and joining Adam after 80 days.
1:44:02
SPEAKER_00: Humanity is not complete without godly wisdom.
1:44:07
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't making a point about males and females and where we belong on the food chain or in the pecking order.
1:44:15
SPEAKER_01: Okay, good.
1:44:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I figured that, but it's still, you know, that that initial sentence of like There are women that could kick my butt.
1:44:29
SPEAKER_00: So this isn't about all men being, you know, all powerful.
1:44:34
SPEAKER_00: And it's not about women being the only people with wisdom.
1:44:39
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that is open to like physical strength is open to both men and women, and wisdom is open to both men and women as well.
1:44:48
SPEAKER_01: Because together in community, we are adam.
1:44:52
SPEAKER_01: We are one, we are humanity.
1:44:57
SPEAKER_00: And on that note, this week's song is dedicated to the girls, to the women.
1:45:05
SPEAKER_00: Because unfortunately, men have taken their physical characteristics and used them to enforce power over women rather than lifting them up.
1:45:18
SPEAKER_00: Men take the literal story instead of what it's meant to teach.
1:45:24
SPEAKER_00: We have taken the wisdom of God and we have discounted it rather than elevated it.
1:45:32
SPEAKER_00: The song for this week is God Girl by Jamie Grace.
1:45:38
SPEAKER_00: She sings If my eyes light up when I say your name and it's written all over my face, tell me, does it make me crazy?
1:45:48
SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe I've got something that I can't explain.
1:45:53
SPEAKER_00: And the beauty of it never changes.
1:45:57
SPEAKER_00: Hand in hand with the master of creativity, and I won't stop until I know that all of my Facebook friends and foes look at me and only see one thing that I'm a god girl.
1:46:13
SPEAKER_00: That's who I'll be from the top of my head to the soles of my feet.
1:46:17
SPEAKER_00: I can't deny it, wouldn't even try.
1:46:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm your girl in a crazy world.
1:46:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm a loved girl, and I'll always be.