In this episode, Hebrew Voices #210, The Lost Book of Gad the Seer: Part 1, Prof. Meir Bar-Ilan tells Nehemia about how a Hebrew manuscript from India is connected to the book of Revelation.

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Meir: The Words of Gad the Seer has so many affinities with the Book of Revelation, I assume that both books come from the same time and even from the same area, which is from Israel, the Land of Israel.

Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I’m here today with Prof. Meir Bar Ilan at Bar Ilan University. He’s a professor in the Talmud Department and the Jewish History Department. Shalom, Prof. Bar-Ilan.

Meir: Shalom, shalom, Dr. Gordon.

Nehemia: I have to start with the question; how is it that your name is Bar-Ilan, and you’re at Bar Ilan University, and the university was founded by a man named Meir Bar Ilan, but not by you? This can’t be a coincidence!

Meir: This is not a coincidence. Both me and the university… me first, because I’m older, we are named after my late grandfather. I was born in 1951; the university was born in 1955-1956.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: So, I have the privilege to be a lecturer at Bar Ilan University, and believe me, not because of my nice eyes!

Nehemia: Okay. Well, Bar Ilan University is my alma mater, where I earned my PhD, my doctorate, so there’s a place in my heart for it.

I want to talk to you today about a book that’s certainly not known in the English-speaking world and frankly, isn’t really even known in the Hebrew-speaking world, which is a book that you researched and worked on, the book of the Words of Gad the Seer. Or for my English-speaking audience, it’s Gad. Not G-O-D, but G-A-D, Gad Ha’chozeh, Gad the Seer. Tell us, what is this book? Where was it found? When was it written? And how did it reach us?

Meir: Okay, these are too many questions, some of them are…

Nehemia: I know it’s a lot.

Meir: It’s a lot of questions, and some of them are highly complicated. So, we will begin first with the things that are easy to understand. So first, who was Gad? Gad, as you said, G-A-D, was a private prophet, or a seer, to King David. So, we are talking about a person who lived about 3,000 years ago. Period, that’s it.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: So, he and King David are the protagonists of the book, The Words of Gad the Seer. Now, in the Bible…

Nehemia: So, he’s mentioned in the Bible. For example, First Chronicles 29:29, it mentions the words of Samuel the Seer, and Natan the Prophet, and Gad the Seer.

Meir: But what is more interesting is the fact that, in the Book of Chronicles, at the end of 1 Chronicles, it is stated that the prophet Samuel wrote his book with… He makes kind of a reference, like in modern studies, and he said that one of the books he was using was Divri Gad Ha’Chozeh, Words of Gad the Seer.

Nehemia: So, it’s one of the sources of 1 Chronicles.

Meir: It’s one of the sources of the Book of Samuel.

Nehemia: Ah, the Book of Samuel, okay. So, Chronicles is mentioning that there’s this book…

Meir: Now, first, there are certain people who do not believe this colophon, or this statement, which is one of the problems to understand the sources of the Book of Samuel, which is beyond the scope of this discussion. Furthermore, some scholars think that most of the attributed books that are mentioned in the Book of Chronicles, because there are many others… that one shouldn’t believe them. It’s a kind of a virtual library. But this is, again, not the issue here. In any event, we never heard… after the Book of Chronicles that mentioned Words of Gad the Seer, we never heard anything about it until the 18th century. It’s kind of a lost and found, kind of. We do not know.

Nehemia: Okay. Let me take a second here for the audience to read this verse, because I’m not sure they understand what we’re… So, this is in 1 Chronicles 29:29. I’ll read it from the JPS. “The acts of King David, early and late, are recorded in the History of Samuel the Seer, the History of Nathan the Prophet, and the History of Gad the Seer.” And you’re saying that some scholars look at that and say, “Chronicles is just making up sources. It didn’t really have a book in front of it called The Book of Gad the Seer.”

Meir: Right.

Nehemia: Some scholars are saying that. You’re not saying that.

Meir: Furthermore, you shouldn’t believe most of the Book of Chronicles. This is not the issue.

I’m not going to discuss the issue here, but we should think…

Nehemia: You’re saying that’s the view of many scholars. Okay.

Meir: Yeah. Well, it depends. In any event, we are talking now about a person that lived in the times of King David, that is the 10th century BCE, and in the Bible itself a book was attributed to him, and that book disappeared.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: So, we, the Jewish people, and anyone who knows anything about the classical world of literature, we know that most books from antiquity were lost during the ages. Some claim that it’s about what we have at hand. For example, if we are thinking of Aeschylus or Aristotle or any classical work that we have at hand today, some say that we have only about two percent of what was circulated in antiquity. We do not know; it’s a surmise. We do not know. But the Jewish people, since we had a lot of tragedies during the ages, it is most understandable that books could be lost. It’s very simple to understand that.

Now, we have no idea… nothing like that is mentioned in the Talmud or the Midrashim. So, we cannot verify, we cannot say anything about that book. So, after a long, long silence of about… according to this scheme, of about 2,800 years or so, here it comes that in Cochin, India… That is, if one thinks of India as the subcontinent, as a kind of a triangle, it’s down, down and west of India. There is a place named Cochin, south of Goa or in the land of Malabar, and there was a Jewish community that lived there for many centuries. At the very least, if they are not from the days of the Talmud, that is the Roman period, then at least in the 10th century the Jewish community was established there.

Nehemia: Wait a minute. So, you’re saying they could be from Talmudic times? Could they be older than that? Like, for example, it talks about how Solomon sent merchants to Ophir, and some people said Ophir is Sri Lanka.

Meir: Okay. Now first, let’s make it clear. Ophir is not Sri Lanka.

Nehemia: Ah, okay. Where is it?

Meir: Who said it’s Sri Lanka? I’ll tell you privately.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: But the bottom line… here’s another coincidence I’m talking about. I have been looking for Ophir for decades. I began my studies on this subject ever since I discovered this manuscript in 1981. And now I can assure you… and I’ll send you my paper on it, that Ophir is Sopara, or Nallasopara, which is about 30 miles north from Mumbai.

Nehemia: So, it’s in India.

Meir: It’s in India, I’m sure.

Nehemia: And the significance there, again, for people, is that Solomon sent out some kind of a trade mission with boats from Eilat to a place called Ophir to get gold.

Meir: Absolutely.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: Absolutely. And we are talking about northern India, not southern India.

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

Meir: It makes a lot of difference during those times.

Nehemia: So, is it possible that there were Jews in Ophir, or Israelites in Ophir? Meaning, maybe not a lot, but that there was at least a trade mission or something that might have permanently been there.

Meir: There’s no doubt there were Jews there, but I do not think that these Jews… Well, some say that the community that is called Bnei Yisrael are descendants of these mariners who went there. The Judeans and people from Phoenicia that came together in a joint venture to Ophir, that is, as I told you, around Sopara north to Mumbai, that there could have been Jews there. But we are not talking about a community or a Jewish community there, we are talking about a much different community.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: Just as there is no connection between Jews or non-Jews, whoever, in New York and Dallas, there is no connection whatsoever between Jews in Cochin and Mumbai.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: So, let’s go to Cochin. In 18th century Cochin, there was a community, and among these people lived their leader, a rabbi and most of all a merchant. And whoever knew him, all of them non-Jews, described him as a very unusual person and said very nice, unusual things about him. His name was Yechezkel Rachabi.

Nehemia: How did you say?

Meir: Rachabi. Reish-Chet-Bet-Yud, Rachabi.

Nehemia: Ah, Rachabi.

Meir: Rachabi was probably a descendant from Yemen, where there is a district, or a county named Rachaba.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: By the way, there are many people… the name Rachabi is well known among Yemenites until this very day in Israel.

Nehemia: Okay. And it wouldn’t be surprising that a Jew would come from Yemen to India because that was part of the international trade route.

Meir: Definitely! That’s not surprising at all. I want to explain it very simply. Because if you take a ship at that time, in the Middle Ages and even before that, from around the 4th century BCE until the 16th century and even later, if you take a boat from Aden, which is in southern Yemen, and you don’t do anything, just make sure that the sails are well enough, after about… you don’t do anything, after about 40 days you land in the land of Malabar. It’s very simple. And if it’s not Cochin, it’s a bit north or a bit south of Cochin. So, there were connections. Not only that, these connections were not only of trade, but of marriage and even more, and even Torah.

Nehemia: I’m sorry, what was the word?

Meir: Marriage, they married each other.

Nehemia: Marriage, okay. And by the way, there’s a Torah scroll at Cambridge that I’ve personally examined, which also came from the Malabar coast. And it’s 100 percent a Yemenite Torah scroll.

Meir: That’s it!

Nehemia: If it wasn’t written in Yemen, it was written by a scribe from Yemen…

Meir: Absolutely!

Nehemia: But probably it was written in Yemen.

Meir: Absolutely, because many people in Cochin… not all of them, but many of them, came from Yemen. And we know that from their names, like Saidi, for example, is definitely a Yemenite name.

Nehemia: Okay. So, a lot of the Jews in Cochin have roots or connections with Yemen.

Meir: Absolutely. And not only that, during the 18th century, the people in Cochin and people in Mocha… that is Mocha, after which the well-known coffee is named…

Nehemia: Oh, really?

Meir: Yeah. This is today’s Mocha in southern Yemen. They were kind of twin towns.

Nehemia: What towns?

Meir: Twin towns.

Nehemia: Twin towns, okay. They were sister cities, you’re saying, Cochin and Mocha.

Meir: Yes. And they even made a kind of a festival in Cochin in memory of things that happened to their forefathers in Mocha.

Nehemia: So, we have this Yechezkel Rachabi, who was a Yemenite Jew in Cochin in the 18th century…

Meir: He was a leader and a financier, and also a Talmid Chacham, and he held in his hands many books. One of them was the Divrei Gad Ha’Chozeh.

Nehemia: Okay, so he has this book, The Words of Gad the Seer.

Meir: But he said nothing about that scroll, probably because he was too busy with his business. So, two generations passed, and in about 1806, an Anglican missionary by the name Claudius, the Reverend Claudius Buchanan, came to Cochin and he bought several manuscripts. He went there twice, by the way, in 1806 and in 1809, and he bought there about 15 manuscripts.

Nehemia: He bought there, you’re saying, he bought. And then he brought them back to England.

Meir: And then, a few years later, he came back to England. And he donated his manuscript to his alma mater at Cambridge.

Nehemia: Okay. So, for example, the Torah scroll I mentioned says on it that it was brought by Buchanan from the Malabar coast.

Meir: That’s it, that’s the person. And by the way, he went there on purpose. He was sure, he was a learned person, and he was sure that he’s going to find texts among the Jews and among Christians, because there are Christians in southern India, Christians from antiquity, not from the Portuguese. They are called St. Thomas Christians.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: Buchanan was sure he would find there manuscripts highly valuable for scholarship of the New Testament, or the Old Testament. I cannot recall what he preferred, but in any event, he brought all the manuscripts to Cambridge, and one scholar at Cambridge even wrote his master’s degree… it’s a kind of anachronism. It wasn’t a master’s then, but he wrote a project on the book, a scroll of Chashi Aresh, or Megillat Achashverosh, and I can give you the bibliography if you are interested in that. It’s kind of an addition to the scroll of Esther.

But nothing happened with the manuscript he brought to Cambridge. They were there for about 80 years, almost 80 years. They were taking dust, waiting for a scholar to be learned. And then came Solomon Schechter. Solomon Schechter came to Cambridge; he came there in about 1890, around that year. He came there from Berlin, if I’m not mistaken, the time after he finished his… No, I think in Wien, he finished…

Nehemia: He came from Vienna. And for those wondering where they remember this name from, I’ve done programs on the Cairo Genizah, and Schechter was one of the great catalogers and discoverers of the Cairo Genizah.

Meir: But before he discovered… so to say, he did not discover the Genizah, by the way, but…

Nehemia: No, I know. He popularized it.

Meir: Let’s put it this way. Before he was affiliated with the Genizah, he was looking for manuscripts, a Jewish manuscript at Cambridge, and wrote a series of papers on Hebrew manuscripts at Cambridge. And he also paid attention to this scroll, Divrei Gad Ha’Chozeh, that came from Cambridge, and he dedicated about…

Nehemia: And just to be clear, today, what he had access to is a codex. I mean, a book form. It’s not an actual scroll, right?

Meir: That’s correct. It looks like a codex. No, not looks, it is a codex. But it looks as if it was copied from a scroll, which is very unusual, very unusual. It looks very unusual, and I’m telling you, even after 40 years of study, more than 40 years, it is still unusual. I’ve never seen anything like that.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: But if you look at it, you have the impression that it was copied from a scroll, which is highly probable. At any event, Schechter wasn’t impressed by this manuscript. I mean, he said, “Well, it’s nothing from the Middle Ages.” All he had to say was something like that. That is, he degraded it, so to speak. He couldn’t say anything in particular about it.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: Now, about a generation passed, and his student, his name was Israel Abrahams from England, he wrote a paper dedicated to his beloved teacher. He published it in a postscript to somebody else. In any event, it was published posthumously. And because of that, his paper, according to my eyes, suffers from several errata. And by the way, it should be mentioned, because I want to say something good about Abrahams. In the years before his death, the last years before his death, he lost his eyesight. And he had people to help him for looking at his academic work, so all I can say is that we have to excuse the errata in his paper. But the bottom line is that Divrei Gad Ha’Chozeh is a book from the Middle Ages, and we can see that it continued the thought line of Schechter, which is that the book reflects the Kabbalah of the Middle Ages.

Nehemia: Okay. So, both Schechter and Israel Abrahams are saying that The Words of Gad the Seer are…

Meir: That it’s nothing, don’t look at it.

Nehemia: That it’s not important. It’s influenced by Kabbalah from the Middle Ages.

Meir: Something like that.

Nehemia: Okay, alright. And by the way, this is part of a broader prejudice in Jewish studies against Kabbalistic literature before Gershom Scholem.

Meir: Absolutely.

Nehemia: Because you tell me, “Oh, it’s a 12th century Kabbalistic proto-Kabbalah.” Well, that’s kind of really interesting!

Meir: I’m sure! I want to tell you something. First of all, until this very day it’s not easy to grasp and to tell for sure the date of this manuscript, so people are a bit frustrated or a bit… how should I say that? They are like, “Well, it’s only from the Middle Ages.” Listen, even from the Middle Ages, it’s an actual letter, so don’t underestimate the manuscript. Now, in any event, this is not my line of thought, and I want to tell you the difference.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: When I found the paper of Abraham’s… kind of serendipitously… that is to say, I went to look like King Saul, who went to find the ass and found the melucha. He went to find the ass and he found the kingdom. So, I went to find something else, and it occurred to my heart…

Nehemia: This is referring to Saul searching for his father’s donkey.

Meir: Correct, correct.

Nehemia: And he ends up being anointed as king.

Meir: But in my case, I never found any kingdom! All I found is a manuscript that had already been noted, but not correctly understood. So, what I did was, first of all I copied it, to have all the text on my computer. And I already put it on my computer in 1984, on my first computer. Yes.

Nehemia: What kind of computer was there with Hebrew in 1984?

Meir: Oh, that’s a very good question! It’s a name that you have never heard; its name was a Pied Piper. You never heard the name, I’m sure, and all those who are more affiliated with computers, all I can say right now is that it was on 7-bit. That is before DOS. DOS is 8-bit, and later it was 64-bit and 128-bit, but I’m talking about 7-bit, which is the level of, so to speak, of the Dragon. Some of the audience may ask their grandfather, “What is a 7-bit?”

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: So, first of all, I copied all the manuscript. And at the time, it took me a lot of trouble, a lot of time. At the time, I only had a microfilm in black and white, and it took me many years to study the text and to make all the comments and then to realize what I’m going to do with it, how to publish it and so forth. And after, to make a long story short, because it was a really long story, it took me more than 34 years of study until I published the manuscript with all the commentary and everything that is needed to understand it, and even with the English translation. Of course, with the English translation, because I wanted the audience, people who do not necessarily know Hebrew might find interest in this book, especially because it’s a book on apocalyptic… It reflects an apocalyptic movement. If not a movement, at least a community of people, of Jews, that had visions. And this community… I can say more than one author wrote this book. All I can say about that community is that they were non-Rabbinics. What it is exactly is a question, but let’s put it this way. Today we are aware of Judaism, so we think that in antiquity there was Judaism. The exact word, to have a better understanding, is, according to Morton Smith and Jack Neusner, the exact word is Judaisms. There were several kinds of Judaism, and the book of Words of Gad the Seer came from such a community, which all I can tell you for sure… they were Jews, for sure. They believed in the Torah and the commandments, et cetera, et cetera, but they were non-Rabbinics.

Nehemia: So, what century are we in? We’re not talking about the actual Gad the Seer from the time of David, are we?

Meir: So, now we are talking about pseudo-epigraphy. What is interesting about this book is that, in the third chapter, the author writes about himself, “I am Gad the Seer.” He names himself as if he lived in the 10th century. Unfortunately, I can tell you for sure after studying the text that the text is not from the 10th century BCE.

Nehemia: Then when is it from?

Meir: Some may say, “Wow. If it’s not, you can close the book, and I have nothing to say about the book.” But from my point of view, this book belongs to such a library, a virtual library, of pseudo-epigraphy because we know we have, from antiquity, all sorts of books that are attributed to biblical authors or biblical heroes or whatever. And this book, the only difference is that the other books came to us only through other languages; translations to Greek, Latin, Armenian, and so forth, and in this particular case we have the book in Hebrew. So, this is very unusual. And the Hebrew is also very unusual, which makes it so difficult to realize and to make a definite conclusion concerning the question when this text was written. So, let’s put it straight; it’s not from the 10th century BCE.

Now, I think… well, in my book, I made a long discussion of this subject, and I do not want to repeat myself. Let’s put it this way. I prefer to think that the book comes from the 1st century of the Common Era.

Nehemia: In the 1st century CE, or AD, as Christians say.

Meir: After the destruction of the Temple.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: And what really kind of persuades me is that it’s heavily affiliated with the Book of Revelation, the apocalypse, which was…

Nehemia: So, the Book of Revelation of the New Testament, which is from roughly…

Meir: It’s not roughly… well, some scholars say they know exactly, and they think it’s from 96, the year 96.

Nehemia: That’s very specific.

Meir: And if you do not want it from that year, it’s also good for me to say from the end of the 1st century, let’s put it this way.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: So, since The Words of Gad the Seer has so many affinities with the Book of Revelation, I assume that both books come from the same time and even from the same area, which is from Israel, the Land of Israel.

Of course, the Book of Revelation wasn’t written in Israel, but the author originated from Israel.

That’s for sure, from the Land of Israel. That’s not the issue. The issue is that The Words of Gad the Seer was written for sure in the Land of Israel, and for many reasons, but it’s not 100% persuasive it comes from the 1st century or the beginning of the 2nd century. But both authors of the Book of Revelation and the book of Words of Gad the Seer have a very similar background, and their Judaism is a Judaism of apocalyptically Judaism.

Nehemia: Tell us what that means. What does it mean that it’s apocalyptic?

Meir: Apocalyptic is that they have…

Nehemia: I have an idea, but let’s assume the audience doesn’t know.

Meir: It’s very simple, very simple. Gad the Seer describes himself as looking and seeing a vision. In his vision, he sees a shepherd, that is God. He looks like a shepherd. And on his head, his head is a kind of sun, and on his shoulders, he holds a lamb. And the lamb praises the Lord. What is it?

Nehemia: Praise what?

Meir: It praises the Lord.

Nehemia: So, he’s holding a lamb on his shoulders, and the lamb is praising God.

Meir: Not as you did it, on both your shoulders. Only on his right shoulder.

Nehemia: Oh, on one shoulder. And by the way, it’s reversed on Zoom.

Meir: Later I’ll send it to you. After we finish the Zoom, I’ll send you the text.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: So, what is interesting about it is that it’s a whole world of sea mines. Both books use the same treasure of apocalyptic literature. And so, here is one vision. In the vision, God tells the seer about the future, and there are another two visions in the book, so the book has three different visions. Not only that, but the book, part of the book, was written by a professional scribe. And what’s interesting about this specific chapter, chapter 7 of The Words of Gad the Seer, is that the author was aware that the story in the Book of Kings and the parallel in Chronicles are not the same text. What he did was a kind of harmonization of both texts, making two texts into one.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: So, what is interesting about this is that, until now, when we talk about the Bible and its sources, we never saw any sources like that. It is just a kind of learned scholar who projects that they were sources. In this case, in The Words of Gad the Seer, you can see it in your own eyes. You can see the source. We do know the source of Samuel and the source of Chronicles, and here you can see how he intermingles and makes harmonization in each and every verse, which is so unique. There is nothing like that in the whole of Hebrew literature.

Nehemia: Wow.

Meir: It is wow! It is wow! That’s it. You see?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Meir: So, what I have to say to Schechter and to Abrahams is, “Before you degrade it, or before you make your statement about its affinities to Kabbalah, or to this date or another date, first you have to study the text. You never saw anything like that. There is nothing like that in the whole of Jewish literature. First, look at it, and then make your observation, or your comments, or whatever.” What they did was vice versa; first they made their comments, and then they moved away because they were busy to study other things. I wasn’t like that. I admit it took me many years, but I think that my study is a bit thorough. That’s it.

Nehemia: So, when you say it’s apocalyptic, tell me if I’m understanding this right. You have an author who’s describing a vision of… sort of like he’s taking a tour of heaven…

Meir: I’m sorry, I want to make it more precise. The book has 14 chapters. Each chapter is a different literary unit, unlike the Bible. Unlike the Bible. So, you have to discuss and to study each and every chapter from the very beginning.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: And I can approve, if you want me to, that the book was written by more than one scribe, more than one author.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: Which tells us that we are talking, not about one person; rather, about a kind of community. Let’s talk about Jeremiah the prophet with his student Baruch, who committed to writing his prophecies. So, we are talking about Nevi’im and Bnei Nevi’im, the intellectual “children of the prophets”. So, here we have the same phenomena. And it is clear because, for example, the fourth chapter in the Words of Gad the Seer is a folk story. It’s a very interesting story. It is not apocalyptic. It’s very interesting, but those who are interested in apocalyptic wouldn’t find any interest in this chapter, and the other way around.

Nehemia: So, parts of it are apocalyptic, where there’s someone who’s describing sort of like a tour of the heavens or something like this, right?

Meir: No, no.

Nehemia: Because some people hear apocalyptic, they say, “Oh, the world’s coming to an end…”

Meir: No, no, not necessarily.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: It’s true that some of the visionaries are related to heaven and hell, but this is not the case.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: And by the way, there is another vision. There are two different visions. Another one is about seeing the archangel Michael, translated literally, “who is like God”, who makes a war against Samael and defeats him.

Nehemia: Wait. So Michael, or Michael, is fighting against Samael, which is like maybe some demon or something.

Meir: He’s a kind of a devil, kind of the antichrist, or whoever you want to call him. And there is another third apocalyptic vision where the seer is in heaven. He sees the heavenly tribunal, the Lord, as a judge on the day of Rosh Hashanah. But it’s a bit different than the Rabbinic one; it’s a bit different, it’s not Rabbinic. It’s similar, it is close, but it is not.

Nehemia: So, the point I was trying to make is, when the layman says “apocalyptic”, what they sometimes understand is the end of the world. But scholars are talking about a prophet who sees things in the heavenly realm in a vision.

Meir: “Apocalyptic” is not necessarily the end of the world, it is more…

Nehemia: Right.

Meir: …because the origin of the word is something that is hidden or concealed, that we are able to look, to see. This is the meaning. So, here this is really what happens.

Nehemia: So, how do you know it’s non-Rabbinic? That’s very interesting to me. Give us some examples of things that wouldn’t be Rabbinic that are in The Words of Gad the Seer.

Meir: First of all… okay, I’ll give you… first of all, it works on retelling the Bible, which is definitely not Rabbinic work. Then he makes a statement that he hears a prophecy from the Lord. Once again, this is not Rabbinic. Apocalyptic is non-Rabbinic. Pseudo-epigraphy is non-Rabbinic. Hagiography, which means we will describe a holy man and see his deeds during his lifetime, which is typical to Christianity, but is very different in Judaism. We don’t know of any hagiography before the Middle Ages. So, this hagiography about King David is very unusual and it’s not Rabbinic. He also used…

Nehemia: So, you’re saying the entire genre, the entire type of, for example, paraphrasing the Bible, is not a Rabbinical thing. For example.

Meir: Definitely.

Nehemia: Okay. And you have that, for example, in The Book of Jubilees, where it’s retelling the Bible in a paraphrased sort of way.

Meir: Correct.

Nehemia: But to some extent, isn’t that what the Targum does? It kind of paraphrases the Bible. Well, I guess not.

Meir: It’s not, it’s definitely not.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: And if you feel that I didn’t persuade you, it’s okay with me. I’ll send you my paper and you may take sides. Yes, please.

Nehemia: So, for example, you said there’s something where it reflects something in Jewish law and it’s contrary to what’s in the Mishnah. That was the example you didn’t want to give.

Meir: Suppose one…

Nehemia: It’s probably very technical.

Meir: Well, it’s a rule in Mishnah and Bava Metzia. It’s really beyond the scope here.

Nehemia: Okay, it’s probably too technical.

Meir: But also, let’s say an epitaph of the Lord; how one is supposed to call the Lord. In this book, there are all sorts of nicknames, so to speak, of the Lord that are not known elsewhere.

Nehemia: Like, for example, what?

Meir: I’m sorry… not known in the Rabbinic world.

Nehemia: Okay, what would be an example of that?

Meir: Shaddai and Tzva’ot are known, but they are Rabbinic. They are known in the Bible, but not in the Rabbinic world.

Nehemia: So, in other words, nobody…

Meir: … a list of epitaphs of the Lord, which is definitely non-Rabbinic because the rabbis prohibited that.

Nehemia: Wait. So I’m really interested in that, because that’s kind of one of my areas of study. Where is that? I have your book here in front of me. Do you know where that is?

Meir: I’ll send you my paper. I’ll send you my specific paper.

Nehemia: But the list of epithets or titles of God, where is that in Gad the Seer?

Meir: I think it’s chapter 8 or 9. Let me open it and I’ll tell you in a minute.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: The book is here; the book is about 5,227 words. And it’s not…

Nehemia: So, for example, I’m looking here at chapter 8 of your translation. I guess it’s verse 183.

Meir: Wait a second until I find it.

Nehemia: Okay. Because that really is interesting to me. And while you’re looking for that, is part of what you’re saying that the Book of Revelation in the New Testament is Jewish…

Meir: It comes from Jewish origin.

Nehemia: …but the way it’s written is non-Rabbinic. What’s that?

Meir: It comes from Jewish origin, but non-Rabbinic. We assume, we think, that since Judaism as we know it is Rabbinic, and we make a kind of a reduction, all Judaism in antiquity was the same, and it wasn’t.

Nehemia: So, the Book of Revelation is a certain type of literature that is non-Rabbinic. We don’t find that in Rabbinical literature, is what you’re saying. Okay.

Meir: But it comes up in antiquity.

Nehemia: But then parts of Gad the Seer are the same genre. Sorry to put you on the spot, but that’s really interesting to me.

Meir: Chapter 8, as I told you, verse number 183.

Nehemia: Okay. Let me read that from your translation. Guys, I’ll put a link. This is page 9 in Roman numerals. He has the English translation of The Words of Gad the Seer, and it says here, “Hear O Israel, your God and my God is one, the only one, and unique. There is no one like His individuality, hidden from all. He was and is and will be.” Ooh, that’s interesting. “He fills His place, but His place doesn’t fill Him. He sees but is not seen. He tells and knows futures for He is God without end and there is no end to His end. Omnipotence, God of truth, whole worlds are full of His glory.”

Meir: Yes.

Nehemia: Wow. Oh, wow! What’s that? Keep reading. Alright. “And he gave each one free choice. If one wants to do good, he will be helped, and if one wants to do evil, a path will be opened for him. For that we will worship our God, our King, our Lord, our Savior with love and awe. For your wisdom is the fear of the Lord and your cleverness is to depart from evil.”

Meir: Also, Nehemia, please open chapter 12, verse 267.

Nehemia: Okay, let me find that. Alright. So, this is on page Roman numeral 12, 267. So, it starts out in 266. “These are the words of David before his death, and he spoke unto the Lord and Israel and he spoke, saying,” verse 267, “God, the blessed, the great, the only one, guileless,” that’s one of the titles of God here, “just, dreadful, benefactor of the miserable, darling, the senior, Shaddai, holy, have mercy upon the vine, thine good inheritance. The Lord will answer us in the day that we call.” So, there’s all these different titles for God, is what you’re pointing out here. So, that’s unusual. That wouldn’t be found in Rabbinical literature, that you have these series of titles.

Meir: That is correct. Not only that you cannot find it, it is forbidden!

Nehemia: Ah, tell us about that.

Meir: Okay. There is a story in the Palestinian Talmud where it is stated that the two rabbis went to southern villages in the Land of Israel to “la’asot shalom”, that is, to judge between people, and they heard a chazan who said,”Ha’el ha’gadol ha’gibor ve’ha’norah ve’ha’amitz,” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and they stopped the chazan and told him, “You are not allowed to do so.” And therefore, what one says in his prayer is just the biblical epitaph, “Ha’el ha’gadol ha’gibor ve’ha’norah,” because one is not allowed to make more epitaphs that are not found in the Bible.

Nehemia: So, if God has certain titles in the Bible, you can’t just start adding your own titles.

Meir: Correct.

Nehemia: And so, in the Jerusalem Talmud, they’re rebuking this cantor for making up his own titles. Which, by the way, shows somebody did it, right?

Meir: Of course!

Nehemia: But it was rejected by the rabbis, this type of thing. Fascinating, wow, really fascinating.

Meir: By the way, the verse we just mentioned, 267, if I’m not mistaken, was found after I published my book with a special merit. That is to say that the words make an acrosticon, an acrosticon that is the initials of the ineffable name in Hebrew.

Nehemia: Okay, so the first letter of each word or something spells Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey.

Meir: Correct.

Nehemia: Wow!

Meir: It’s a kind of a secret concealed in the text.

Nehemia: Okay, that’s very cool. Wow.

Meir: For that, there is another paper.

Nehemia: Well, this has been fascinating. Thank you so much, Professor Bar-Ilan. This is absolutely fascinating. We’re going to have to have you back on to talk about stylometry and some of the other topics.

Meir: No problem at all. I’ll be honored.

Nehemia: Because there’s so much more. Fascinating stuff.

Meir: Thank you.

Nehemia: Thank you so much. Shalom.

Meir: Shalom, shalom.

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VERSES MENTIONED
1 Chronicles 29:29
1 Kings 9:28; 10:11; 1 Chronicles 29:4; 2 Chronicles 8:18; 9:10
1 Samuel 9-10
Words of Gad the Seer 8:183-185
Words of Gad the Seer 12:266-270
Jerusalem Talmud Berakhot 9:1
Words of Gad the Seer p.97 v. 153
Revelation 2:11, 20:6, 20:14, and 21:8
Isaiah 22:14; 65:15; Jeremiah 51:57 (Aramaic translations)

BOOKS MENTIONED
Words of Gad the Seer
by Meir Bar-Ilan

Targum and Testament: Aramaic Paraphrases of the Hebrew: A Light on the New Testament (1972) (pages 76, 123, 148, 156)
by Martin McNamara

Leopold Immanuel Jacob van Dort, a learned Jewish-Christian man from Dordrecht
by Mascha van Dort

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OTHER LINKS
Meir Bar-Ilan on Academia

(PDF) The Words of Gad the Seer: The Author's Opponents and the Date of its Composition

(PDF) THE DATE OF THE WORDS OF GAD THE SEER

(PDF) מקורו הגיאוגרפי של ספר דברי גד החוזה

(PDF) The Discovery of the Words of Gad the Seer

Substitutes for the Tetragrammaton
by Jacob Z. Lauterbach

תחליפים לשם ההוויה בכתבי יד עבריים מימי הביניים בעלי תאריך עד 1300 (עם תוספת לביזנטיון עד 1350 ותימן עד 1400), תפוצתם הכרונולוגית, האזורית והסגנונית

דוקס, קרינה; ירושלים : האוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים; תשס"ג 2003

https://huji.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/972HUJI_INST/9os3m6/alma990013502760203701

Immanuel van Dort's Hebrew Translation of the Qur'ān and its Arabic Sources
by Basal Nazir

The post Hebrew Voices #210 – The Lost Book of Gad the Seer: Part 1 appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.