- Have you ever wondered why tens of thousands of First Century Jews converted to Christianity while virtually none do today?
- Why does the Gospel of John start with “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God?”
- Why is there about a 900-year discrepancy between genealogies in the Old Testament—depending on which version of the Bible that you read?
- What or who was Melchizedek?
These are just some of the issues touched upon by Douglas Van Dorn’s book “The Battle for the Bible’s Truth: Genesis 6, Jesus, and the second Century Plot to Deny the Messiah.”
The set-up for the book is this: imagine that you are a Jew in the Second Century.
- In 70 A.D. the Romans sacked and burned Jerusalem and destroyed your center of worship (the Temple) and thus your religion as it had been practiced for more than a thousand years. 1.2 million Jews died in this uprising.
- Then in the Bar Kokhba rebellion, Christians failed to join the Jews in a second rebellion against Roman, 65 years after Jerusalem fell, because they rejected Bar Kokhba as a false Messiah.
At this point in history, the Jews and Christians finally split for good. However, Jews are still losing people to the upstart Christian sect. The remaining rabbis are desperate to consolidate power and stem the tide of converts following Jesus because of their understanding of the Old Testament promises.
In what today might be called a “Hail Mary” play, they decided to change the Old Testament Scriptures to stop the bleeding and erect barriers to any further losses to Jesus.
As Van Dorn shows, the Second Century rabbis did deliberate edits that two centuries later were being adopted by Christians. Today, nobody knows the difference and the falsehoods created by the rabbis are considered in many circles as Christian Orthodoxy today.
By comparing various texts and manuscripts, Van Dorn shows that the errant text is the Jewish one—the Masoretic—which is the basis of many English versions of the Bible including the King James Version (KJV).
I won’t spoil the book—which I highly recommend—however, the rabbi’s edit which is clearly the easiest to see is Deuteronomy 32:8
When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance,
When he separated the sons of Adam,
He set the bounds of the people
According to the number of the children of Israel.
In context, the phrase “according to the number of the children of Israel” is nonsense. In the Table of Nations—which follows the Flood in Genesis 10—Israel is nothing but a glimmer in the eye of Abram’s ancestors. There is no Abram or Israel in existence. Thus, to state that there is a relationship between the Table of Nations and the children of Israel is nonsense. The older translation is “the number of the sons of God.” This edit (the children of Israel) was unknown before the Second Century A.D. This shifts the passage from teaching about principalities and powers (i.e. heavenly, spiritual beings) and instead substituting men.
Substituting men for spiritual beings is a constant refrain in the Second Century edits. They tried to obscure or obliterate references to the pre-incarnate Christ. This was done deliberately to keep Jews from seeing the Messiah in their own Scriptures. Furthermore, the correct textual understandings were anathematized by teachers of Judaism.
By the Fifth Century, the rabbi’s ruse was adopted wholesale by the Christian Church and has been the majority view ever since.
Van Dorn is trying to expose and correct the record. The book is easily read and written at a level that is accessible to the masses. The type is larger than I was expecting and is only about 150 pages. It retails at Amazon for about $20.
A good companion book would be the “Unseen Realm” by Michael Heiser.
Heiser is concerned primarily with the supernatural view of the Old Testament. While there is some overlap, the emphasis of each book is different.
I highly recommend Van Dorn’s book to any and all.