 Hello, hello, hello everybody. Happy Wednesday. Today we are starting a new book on our series on the banned books or heretical books, as some may call them, that belong in the Bible. So again, if this is your first time joining us, I've lost count on how many books we've covered at this point, but we are going to continue to look through all of these books for as long as we can with what we have. If you're new to this, there are allegedly 770 books that are supposed to be in our Bible, but we only got about 60 of them. I have a full playlist called the Dark Outpost playlist that has all of the missing books that we've covered so far, as well as some other episodes that go over the whys, why some of these books were taken out according to the official narrative. Again, we are reexamining that on this series because we know, we know that the church, the organization of the church, generally speaking, is owned by the Dark C-U-L-T, or C-A-B-A-L, and so we know that the church has lied to us repeatedly on purpose. And as we move into this new time, into the age of Aquarius, we are taking this information into our own hands. For each and every individual person to decide for his or herself what these books mean to him or herself. That's what it means to live in a free society with free will. In a free society, there is no censorship. And by taking these books out of the Bible, they have censored them. They have quote-unquote fact-checked them. And they don't want us to know certain things. At least that's what I have gotten, and I think most of you have gotten from our other books we've read through, especially the one we just finished, which was The Apocalypse of Abraham, that there is a hell of a lot in those books that they don't want us to know. To protect themselves, not for our own well-being. People who have nothing to hide, hide nothing. And the church has tried to hide a lot of stuff. Again, this does not change God. A lot of people are having a hard time processing how they, the bad guys in this story, the church, have edited the Bible. That is factual history. They did edit the Bible at the Council of Nicea. They changed some of the stories to suit their narrative. They also, in other times during history, went and edited the Bible again to change the narrative in the Bible to support what they wanted to happen. And of course, they also banned a lot of these books. Most of the books, most of the books that are supposed to be in our Bible, they were banned by the church. And as we've seen, there's nothing in these books of the Bible that are bad. They're all pretty much good books, and they give us a lot of information about our own sovereignty and who we are as children of God. And a lot of people again have a hard time like digesting this because they want to believe that the church is good. Well, we have to separate the church from God. The church is not God. One of my awesome subscribers here on this channel, and if you're listening, please leave a comment down if you made this prior comment because I've used it so many times. I want to be able to give you credit. You wrote in the comment section once that there is a difference between churchianity and Christianity. And I would love to give you credit for that because that was brilliant. And that's what we're seeing. God never changed. God never changed. The powers that be tried to change God and tried to control us. We're really seeing that now in our world today about this push to control the masses. And so the book we're starting today is called The Book of Tobit. Now this is a very, very interesting book from what I gather. And again, this is a recap from what we spoke about yesterday on The Dark Outpost. So again, if you're new to this channel on Tuesdays 1 to 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on The Dark Outpost TV, I do a live reading and a live discussion over these books with David Zublik, who is the host of The Dark Outpost. We do the live reading from 1 to 2 over the banned books of the Bible. And then from 2 to 3 we are looking at some other material. We're looking into the pearls right now, Michael and Debbie Pearl. And we're reading through to Train Up a Child. And as I said, I will not be able to read through to Train Up a Child on YouTube because of the massive amount of A, B, U, S, E that is promoted in that book. So the second half hour of the program with David, we are taking a deep dive into some of these very fundamentalist what I believe are CULTs in the Christian community and trying to kind of unravel them. We started, this whole thing started with the second hour of the show with Josh Duggar and his recent arrest for SA and CP. And so we looked at the IBLP, Bill Gothard. We've looked at Gwen Shamblin-Laura after she, her recent tragic passing. We looked at her Way Down program. And so now we're looking at the pearls and we are reading through to Train Up a Child. After we finished Train Up a Child, we're going to look at the next book of the pearls which has to do with the female's role in a relationship. So if you want to join us on The Dark Outpost, there is a link down in the description box below. It is a live show, so you are welcome to call into the show if you want to participate in the discussion. Again, that link is down in the description box below. David is also on Bitshoot and Rumble. When David used to be up on YouTube, I used to do the shows on Tuesdays with him on YouTube, but his channel was one of the channels that got purged in the great purge of YouTube that happened some months back. Almost a year ago, actually, I believe, is when it happened. So now he has his own platform, which again that link is down in the description box below. It's a private platform, so we don't have to worry about censorship. We can speak freely. But again, he's also on Bitshoot and Rumble as well. So if you're going to read along with us with the book of Tobit, there are many different translations and copies of this book. I started off with one PDF of the book of Tobit and actually went back and changed the copies. I'm going to be reading from the copy that is more aligned with Old English because that has more information in it than the other books that are more modern translations of the book. So that's the only reason why I'm picking that copy, the Old English version, over the more modern ones is because there is more information in that book. Now many people have asked because a few of these books have been translated into Old English when they were found from all the hiding spots where the ancient Christians hid them. The reason why they were translated first into Old English is because a lot of these books were translated into English in the early 20th century, some in the late 19th century. And so scholastically and academically, that was the accepted translation was Old English because of the King James Bible. Now y'all know I'm not a lover of the King James Bible simply because King James himself was a Freemason. He was not a Christian. I feel like I have the right to say that because I am one of his descendants. He was a Satanist. But with that being said, as far as the academics in the early 20th century, they're more closer to our timeline and they were just using the template that they knew academically to use during that time. It has absolutely nothing to do with the book itself. Unfortunately, I don't speak Hebrew or Aramaic, so I have to take the translations we have and work with them and work with what we have. Now again with that being said, the original PDF I had was a more modern PDF and so I was able to kind of look through both copies of the Old English and the more modern. The Old English one again had more information in it which is why I'm picking that one to read from for the series. But I did scan through the modern one as well just to see if there was any discrepancies between the two translations and there really wasn't. There wasn't a whole lot of discrepancies at all. The only difference was that the Old English translation, the older one, it just had more information in it which is again the reason why I'm picking that one to read through. The Book of Tobit is a very interesting book. I actually, as you all probably know from my other deep dives on this channel, I loved studying history. History is super important to understand and there's a lot in the Book of Tobit that has to do with what the Israeli tribes went through during about the 700s in BC times. And it kind of goes into the explanation of the 10 missing tribes of Israel which is something that's kind of resurfacing today in our great awakening, these 10 missing tribes of Israel. So let's go ahead and talk about this book before we get into it. It's the Book of Tobit. The Book of Tobit tells the story of a Jewish family who was living in exile after the Assyrian conquest of Israel. So what do we know about the manuscript? The manuscript, so this is super, super interesting to me guys and again, like I said, they edited the Bible. The first time the Bible was ever edited was the fourth century at the Council of Nicaea with Constantine the Great, otherwise known as Constantine the Conman. That's when they cut a huge chunk of the Bible but over the years they went back and re-edited the Bible, as I said earlier, and took stuff out and changed stuff around to push whatever narrative that they, the powers that be, wanted to control the people. So originally this manuscript was part of the canonized books of the Bible but it was deemed heretical about 150 years ago. It had been canonized by the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church and, get this, the Amish and the Mennonites. Now, this book very well could still be in the canonized books that are read by the Amish and the Mennonites for all I know if it is high five to them. I don't know anybody that's a part of that community so I don't really have a way of asking if that's still a part of their canonized books. If you know the answer to that, please leave that again down in the comment section below because I would love to know that. Now I've put in my notes that I don't know about you guys but I'm getting real tired of someone telling me what I can and cannot read for my own salvation. So again, basically that's what the governmental factions of the Church has done as they have told us, they have told us what we can and cannot read for our own salvation. Now as far as I'm concerned, the whole point, the whole freaking point of Christianity is that you have a direct line to God, no other human being is involved in that direct line to God so why the hell, why the freaking hell are these governmental agencies for the Church trying to intervene in our own personal relationship with God by telling us what we can and cannot read? Now I know the answer as to why they do that because they're not Christians, the Church is not a Christian organization, I'm sorry to tell you that, it is not a Christian organization. The word Church itself, you should do some research on the origins of that word. Once you do find out what the origins of that word means you will understand that this organization was never meant to be a Jesus organization. It was always meant to be a Satanic one. Okay, anyway, so the copy that we have that we had the translation from was probably written between 225 to 175 BC in both Hebrew and Aramaic. Again, that's the oldest copy that we have that we're able to pull from. We don't know that if that was the first copy or if there were copies before that. Now this is something I found really interesting. I was listening to some scholars talk about why they believed this book was deemed heretical about 150 years ago and I learned something. I love learning things. There's something called an isogenical narrative. I hope I'm saying that right, an isogenical narrative. Now basically from what I understand of what an isogenical narrative means it is a narrative that is based in an opinion and these opinions are not found in doctrine in the Bible. So basically to try to explain that it's something that's taken as fact that isn't fact. So basically the governing powers that be in the church have formed a consensus of an opinion of what they think the truth is but that truth is not found in the doctrine. It's just a group of basically people saying we're going to decide that this is the truth even though it's not in the doctrine and anything that pushes up against that truth we're going to deem heretical even if that book is coming from a book that should be in the Bible if that makes sense. And again that's called an isogenical narrative. So it is believed by some scholars that the book of Tobit was removed because of opinions considered to now be fact by the rule of the church that had no basis in doctrine. Again, isogenical narrative. Tobit challenges a lot of these accepted opinions so therefore it had to go. We're seeing that today, aren't we? Anything, any type of science or information, fact-bakes information that goes up against the narrative of the quote-unquote beer virus that the mainstream media is telling us anything that goes up against it the fact-checkers, right? Deem it as false. I hope that makes sense. I'm trying to be very careful with what I say because this is YouTube but I really want to express that that these isogenical narratives that we have been taught in our churches are exactly the same thing as what the media is doing today. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense. It makes sense to me. And so 150 years ago what was happening in the beginning of the Christian faith, not everybody could read and write. So it was really easy to fool people. For a very long time it was really easy to fool people because not everybody could read and write. Well as we start to get further and further and further down our timeline more and more people are learning how to read. We had the Protestant Reformation because of that because they realized the Catholic Church had totally lied to them about a lot of things and then all of a sudden we have Bibles translated into English which calls even more issues because now people really know that we've been duped and we see these different denominations breaking off and going in different directions because of these opinions and then as more and more people take that sovereignty we have to now get rid of more and more work so that the people are fooled again. I hope that all makes sense. For most of you watching or listening right now you probably know what I'm talking about because this whole battle between good and evil has been going on basically since the beginning of time. And yes folks most of the governmental church organizations are 100% evil. I think we know that though. So now that we've talked about that let's look at understanding the story. So the story's main character is a man named Tobit. Obviously this is the book of Tobit. He is in exile in the Syrian megacity of Nineveh with his wife Anna and his son Tobias. Now Tobit and Tobias are technically the same thing. It's like if you have a dad that's named William and he has a son named William the dad might go by Bill the son might go by Will. It's a nickname and a variation of the same name. So when we read the book and we see Tobit we know it's talking about the father or the patriarch whereas Tobias is his son. Now Nineveh is a city that is spoken about a lot in the Bible. Now Nineveh was the largest city in the world until about 612 BC. So we're looking at a family that have been exiled. It would be like coming from your own small country and going straight into New York City. So that's a lot of stress. That's a lot of sense of memory. A lot of triggers for Tobit and his family. So the city of Nineveh is and was located in Upper Mesopotamia outside of modern day Iraq. So I say is and was. It's different names now but you can still see some names referencing the old city of Nineveh. So let's talk about the Assyrian Conquest why Tobit was relocated basically and as you're going to see in this outline of this book is what I try to do when I'm going through these missing or banned books of the Bible especially from the Old Testament is cross reference these stories with information we do have from the Canaanites Bible and there are a lot of cross references to the Canaanites Bible as far as events that happened. So the Assyrian Conquest of Israel and Judah is a huge topic that is covered in the Old Testament of the Bible. The Assyrian Conquest consists of 25 years of different rulers invading different lands in the Middle East. For our understanding of Tobit and its place in the Bible we are going to look at the conquering of Israel and Judah. Okay, so who were the Assyrians? They created one of the largest empires in the world. They had the first professional army and when they conquered lands those who were lucky were deported. Those who were not lucky lost their lives in very unfortunate ways. I can't say a lot on this channel because of YouTube and we did talk about that on the dark outpost. So we also have to go back and understand again the tribes of Israel. So before we read the Apocalypse of Abraham which is the last book we read there we were in the Book of Jubilee and the Book of Jubilee a lot like Genesis goes into great detail over the tribes of Israel. If you've missed that you're not 100% sure about what the tribes of Israel are. So Israel in the beginning was a man but a man. Jacob. Jacob was the grandson of Abraham. Jacob had 12 sons amongst four different wives. His 12 sons became the 12 tribes of Israel. His duty was basically to have a nation. And as time has progressed and his sons had their sons and their sons and so forth we now have these different groups of people in the Bible lying. So when we understand how the tribes of Israel were divided back into the Middle East after the exodus after they left Egypt we have to go all the way back to the Book of Joshua. So the Book of Joshua is the sixth book in the Bible and in the Book of Joshua Joshua divides the land up for the 12 different tribes after they restore the land from the Canaanites. And we see Joshua not Tobit. We still got some time some hundreds and hundreds of years before we get back to Tobit's exile and to Nineveh. But this whole dividing of the land in the Middle East would have been about 1200 BC. So Tobit himself does come from the tribe of Naftali. Now Naftali was the son of Jacob and Bilhan. Bilhan was Rachel's handmaid. An interesting little fun fact toy that I found when I was researching and I don't know how true this is but many people believe that white people so European people might have ties to this tribe the tribe of Naftali due to where they were pushed into exile. So on the dark outpost we did a whole episode with Melissa Redpill the world and Mickey Klon and we talked a lot about the different tribes of Israel at the end of time coming back together in the Bible that you will know them by their flags and if you look all over the world you can see different flags that have little information in them about where they came from in what tribe. And the tribes of Israel again are not just Hebrew people they also now include Gentiles as well. But Jesus also spoke about that happening too in the New Testament. So Naftali actually translates into my struggle and again Naftali's land the land that was given to the tribe of Naftali in the Book of Joshua is land as in the northernmost point of Israel it's the eastern side of Galilee west of the sea of Galilee. Now one of the biggest cities in Naftali was Hazar or Tel Hazar as it's called today. Now this is now a dig site where a lot of archaeologists are working to find remains. And in Joshua 1110 it says at this time Joshua turned back and captured Hazar and put its king to the sword. So again we're moving the Canaanites to allow the 12 tribes of Israel there. As we've said in multiple episodes regarding these lost and banned books of the Bible as well as other episodes regarding what's happening right now in our Great Awakening is literally this whole battle that we're seeing against good versus evil is basically still the battle between the Canaanites and the Israelites. If you were on the side of God if you were on the side of good you are an Israelite. If you were on the side of evil or the C-A-B-A-L then you're on the side of the Canaanites. So again let me read this verse from Joshua 1110 at this time Joshua turned back and captured Hazar and put its king to the sword. Hazar had been the head of all these kingdoms. So we already know from Joshua that before Naftali's tribe moved into the area Hazar was already an established city and continued to be one in the time period where Naftali had the territory. Alright, so now from the time of Joshua, from the book of Joshua where Joshua divided up the land we're now going to fast forward about 300 years, okay? So 300 years later the 12 tribes are divided into now two different kingdoms. So Israel has split. We have Israel of the north and Judah to the south. This is when King David as in David and Goliath comes along and unites them under the United Monarchy of Israel. So you might recognize that from the Bible, okay? David died around 926 BC. By 930 BC a man named Rehobion, I hope I'm saying his name right, Rehobion takes the throne of the United Monarch of Israel. Now, Rehobion is the son of Solomon and the grandson of David. I know you're going to recognize Solomon and David from the Bible, a lot of the books of the Bible are Solomon his philosophies we look at Proverbs, all that kind of stuff. So his son, Rehobion is now on the throne. So two years later in 932 BC the 10 northern tribes once again pull out of the United Nations of Israel. So they again become separated. They become the northern state. And this is when the trouble really starts to brew that will lead to topits, eventual exile and many, many other tribes eventual exile. So from that point, we have a ruler in northern Israel again, as well as the ruler in Judah, the south state of Israel. 10 of the tribes are up in the north. The rest are the other two are down in the south. So from that point we're going to fast forward another 200 years. So now the year 732 BC Pekka again I hope I'm saying that right, Pekka is now ruling Israel. He is now the king of the northern state of Israel. He was the captain of the Israeli army but he removed the 17th king, the king before him so he could be king and by removed, I don't mean that he asked him to step down, he got rid of him in a very violent way. Again I have to be careful about what I say on YouTube. So when this happened the king of Judah was a man named Ahaz I hope again I hope I'm saying that right, Ahaz Ahaz. He was the king of Judah when Pekka took over and became the king of the northern state of Israel. Once Pekka became the king of Israel, he aligned with a king named Rezin. He was the king of Aram which was the Armenian state and together they were going to pursue Jerusalem. And Jerusalem was in the country of Judah. You actually reference to this in 2nd king 1529. So I'm actually going to pull my Bible out here and turn to 2nd king 1529. In the time of Pekka king of Israel Tiglath Pilser king of Assyria came and took Ijon, Abel Beth Makka Jonah Kadesh and Hazar and we're going to get into why in a minute. He took Gilead and Galilee including all the land of Naftali and deported the people to Assyria. So again where Tobit ends up Nineveh which is in Assyria. So this happened because Azar king of Judith appealed to the king of Assyria for help. Let me back up a little bit and review this again. So the king of northern Israel Pekka who was not a good guy aligned with Resin who is the king of Arminian state to basically pursue and take Jerusalem from Judah because Jerusalem was still a very important city even to the northern state of Israel even though it wasn't Judah which we're going to see about that a little bit in the book of Tobit. So that was a very important city for both states even though it wasn't Judah. When that happened when these two rulers were trying to basically pressure Judah the king of Judah then appealed to the king of Assyria for help. Again Haas who is the king of Judah appealed to the king of Assyria for an alliance to help with the pending pressure coming from the northern state of Israel and the Arminian state. And we can find that deal that the king of Judah made in 2nd king 16 7 through 9. And I put in my notes for Azaz the king of Judah this was kind of like an oh crap moment like basically an oh shit moment if you know what I mean like he's got it now act so he's going to make an alliance with the Assyrian king to try to protect the state of Judah from the neighboring state of Israel which is actually they're the same people all the tribes of Israel but there's issues here. Alright so 2nd kings 16 7 through 9 Azaz sent messages to say Tilgath Pilsar king of Assyria I am your servant and vessel come up and save me out of the hand of the king of Aram and the king of Israel who are attacking me and Azaz took the silver and gold found in the temple of the lord and in the treasures of the royal palace and sent in as a gift to the king of Assyria the king of Assyria complied by attacking Damascus and capturing it he deported its inhabitants to Kerr and put resin to D-E-A-T-H so what does that mean so Azaz the king of Judah in order to have an alliance with the king of Assyria he now has to basically sin gold and silver from the temple and basically worship him in a little bit of a way which we are going to get to because you might recognize king Azaz's son who then comes to rule now before we get to that in Judah remember Tobit is in Naftali the northernmost tribe the northernmost land of the northern state of Israel and we just read from the bible in 2nd kings when the Assyrians came in and invaded because of their alliance with Judah I hope this is all making sense I kid you not guys I've said this before a lot of us grew up in Christian homes and we were very much kind of grandfathered into these stories but if you go back and really read the bible this is some major soap opera stuff this stuff is really dramatic and for me reading a lot of these old banned books it brings life to these stories where we can kind of understand what the citizens are going through because of military tactics that affected the citizens so Tobit whose living in Naftali's land is now exiled because of the invasion of the Assyrian king because of his alliance with the king of the southern state of Judah to Nineveh so Tobit lived in a town this is also the birth place of a very famous biblical character named Elijah and we see this birth story of Elijah and Tishbi in 1 Kings, or 1 Kings 171 so that's what I'm telling you guys this whole story is cross-referenced multiple times in the canonized bible so again why is this book heretical? it's heretical because there's something in this book that's why they said it was heretical let's recap one more time to make sure everybody's on the same page around 722 BC there was an alliance made between Israel the northern state of Israel and the Armenian state to threaten Judah by pressuring for Jerusalem Ahaz, the king of Judah then makes alliance with Syria to now protect Judah from the impending attack from the northern state of Israel because there's an alliance made and Ahaz is basically taking the knee to the Assyrian army the Assyrians invaded Israel this is what caused the exile of the 10 tribes of Israel this is when we lost the 10 tribes and continue to refer to them even to this day we refer to them as the lost tribes of Israel the displaced tribes were the tribes of Reuben, Simeon Dan, Naftali Asher, Ishkar Zeblon, Manasseh Ephraim and Gad Manasseh and Ephraim are both from Joseph which we covered again in the book of Jubilee and we did a bonus episode where we dug into Joseph's story into Egypt I will place those links down in the description box below if you want to know more about that the remaining tribes of Israel were in Judah these were the tribes of Judah and Benjamin so again we know the Judah tribe in the state of Judah was the line that Jesus came through it's also interestingly enough in our own time the same line that President Trump came through was the line of Judah and Benjamin there were also a few left from Levi but Levi's tribe didn't have land due to them being the priest group which we saw that in the book of Jubilee where Levi's family became the priest group all right so again in order to protect Judah now from the Assyrians and the northern state of Israel since the Assyrians had his back king had to pay tribute to the Assyrians so we can see this biblically in the story of Isaiah 36 chapters 36 through 39 Isaiah prophesies that the southern state of Judah would be conquered like the northern Israel state had been 20 years before we know this is exactly what happened by notes made by the Assyrian king that were discovered in 1850 these notes are titled the Assyrian attack on Lakish Lakish is a small town that south of Jerusalem these notes now live at the British Museum so the attack of Judah after Tobits were moved after the attack on Israel happened under king Hezekiah that might name might ring a bell from you guys he was a godly and godly king he stopped paying tribute to the Assyrian king which again tribute would have been a cross between extortion and worshiping he said no we're not going to do that anymore in the minute he pulled out because of his religious beliefs and they too were conquered by the Assyrian army I hope that makes sense moving into the book of Tobit so hopefully this gives us a brief understanding of the stress and warfare Tobit and many other Hebrew people were under during their lives due to political moves made by their state rulers we also can use this information when trying to decide if this book is legit or not any cross references in the Bible to confirm the information in this story as accurate alright guys so we're going to do this reading a little bit different we'll see how this goes let me know if you like this down in the comment section below the reason why I'm going to do this a little differently and actually read and show you the text why I read while I read is because of Rembrandt had a lot of interest in the book of Tobit now normally I would not read the introduction of the book that I'm covering because I like to have us look at it pretty rawly I'll talk about some of the findings that a professor like we did that with Professor Box with the apocalypse of Abraham but normally I just want to look at the material you guys so we can have a blank slate when we're looking at this stuff but this is interesting so I'm going to read the introduction which is by Russell C. Walker and throughout this we're going to see illustrations by Rembrandt okay so the book of Tobit is the story of a Jewish man Tobit who is carried away to Nineveh as a captive in his son Tobias Tobit is considered a model of the righteous Israelite and was particularly revered for providing proper burials for the deceased the story was clearly a favorite of the 17th century Dutch painter Rembrandt in this introduction we will consider the origins of the book of Tobit and its recognition or rejection as a religious text then we will consider possible reasons for Rembrandt's interest in illustrating its events we will explore possible influences on Rembrandt's religious convictions and also touch on interests in the main themes in Tobit's story so I want to talk about Rembrandt too because we know that there are a lot of big time artists from the past like Van Gogh that were tied up into these societies, these bloodlines and that's why I kind of just want to look at this because I don't know much about Rembrandt, I know his work but I don't know much about him and if he was a part of these families we'll just say if you know let me know down in the comment section below but I just think it's interesting for us to look at this and even if he was a part of these families it doesn't mean that his interest in this book was nefarious some of these people are born into these families and they're clinging onto any type of light they can find but we'll see as we go through the book and through this introduction so the story is set in the 8th century BC and its author is unknown scholars take the book's composition to between be between 225 and 175 BC we spoke about that in the introduction a reference in verse 713 to the Laws of Moses authorship after the 4th century BC and the absence of the Maccabean revolt in 165 BC helps put an upper bound on the date of the composition we will be reading the Maccabean books eventually dated is also a particularly determined by the fact that fragments of the book were found among the Dead Sea scrolls in a cave at Quran fragments were found in both Aramaic and Hebrew casting doubt on the original language so again we don't really know when it originally was written we just have assumptions okay and we have done for those who are new to the channel we have talked about the Dead Sea scrolls before in Qumran and so I will place those videos down in the description box below as well the book of Tobit has been a canonical book in the Roman Catholic Church in the Eastern Orthodox Church in the Council of Trent in 1546 it is not a part of the Protestant or Jewish canon this is the first time I am hearing about this particular book although we know that the Amish and the Mennonites had this book and possibly still have this book and I would consider them to be a form of a Protestant faith one reason cited for the rejection of it by Jewish scholars is that Raguel father writes the marriage document and so the bridegroom as required by rabbinical law okay I hope I said her dad's name right the Protestant Episcopalian Church United States concluded in 1801 that Tobit could be read for examples of life and instruction in manners but it could not be used to establish any doctrine so this is coming from the organization Episcopal Church in the United States concluded in 1801 that Tobit could be read for examples of life and instruction in manners but it could not be used to establish any doctrine so from my understanding Episcopal Church is basically an offshoot from the Church of England and we know the Church of England was established because Henry VIII wanted to be the ruler of the church and he was going to heads with the Pope so that's why the Episcopal Church is very much like the Catholic Church in a lot of ways the book of Tobit was included in the Dutch Bible as authorized by the sonoid of Dordrecht, hope I'm saying that right probably not in 1618 but Dutch readers were warned about it being possibly unreliable because the angel in it lies by telling Tobit that he is Azarius the son of a relative of Tobit and it felt that it was not likely that seven bridegrooms were killed by evil spirits we're going to get to that, I know I already kind of know the synopsis of this story except skim through it but we're going to get to that and the angel they're talking about here is Raphael I believe which we'll talk about as we get into the story and again if you guys remember the from the Apocalypse of Abraham that's when we decided to go to the book of Tobit because we learned that there were about seven archangels, we learned about Joelle and the Apocalypse of Abraham most of us only are really familiar I believe in my opinion that there's a reason why they didn't want us to understand who all the archangels are right? If we know, we know we don't know, so we don't know who to call on and archangels are God's messengers they're here to fight for us so we know Rembrandt owned a Bible the inventory done in 1656 in preparation for the bankruptcy sale of his possessions list one old Bible many other books were listed but very few but very few were not books of illustration one was identified as one Josephus in high Dutch filled with pictures by Tobias Stimmer whether or not Rembrandt was interested in the text or just the pictures whichever Josephus work it was the topic dealt with first century Judaism background he could use for his biblical pictures Rembrandt was well known for his religious paintings but he left no notes on his work or motivations and little is known about his commissions the dominant sect in Amsterdam was Protestant and did not seek paintings for its churches other than observation that history painting was the most respected genre at the time little else is known of the painter's motivation or his interest in religious art he had an early introduction to Bible from the ages of 7 to 14 Rembrandt attended the Latin school in Leiden the motto over the school door read I don't speak Dutch but that's what it read or an English piety language and liberal arts and the curriculum included the strict teachings of John Calvin alright so I grew up Presbyterian so there was a lot of in the Presbyterian faith that was also big in our discussion in France with the House of Bourbon if you remember King Henry IV of France his mother was a Calvinist or Huguenot as they were called in France students were expected to attend two services on Sunday and were tested on the content of the sermons on Monday when he got to Amsterdam Rembrandt was exposed to a variety of religious views Art dealer Henrik Ulenberg became his dealer and through him he became exposed to the Mennonite community so here we go the Mennonites he did portraits of Cornelius Anzlo a famed Mennonite preacher the Mennonites took their name from Minos Simons I didn't know that that's something for me to know that's where the he taught that the book of Tobit provided excellent examples of patience, piety, charity and morality so some of Rembrandt's interest in Tobit could have come through his Mennonite contacts and for those who are not from the United States I know there's Mennonite communities everywhere but especially here in the Amish which aren't Mennonites but some Mennonite states are probably or groups of people are probably have some similar practices like the Amish but the Amish still do speak European language, German, Dutch a kind of a mixture I believe of the two you guys can let me know down in the comment section below they don't and they refer to us in America that live outside of their community as the English even if you're not of English descent you are considered a part of the English so that's interesting because we know this is coming from the Dutch area Rembrandt's home in Brestrot was near the first synagogue in Amsterdam a Sephardic Jewish community had grown up in the area drawn there from their persecution in Spain in Portugal by the religious tolerance in Holland among the leaders of the community was Mancia Ben Israel who lived diagonally across the street from Rembrandt Rembrandt etched a portrait of him and also provided for etchings to illustrate his book The Glorious Stone or Nebuchadnezzar's Dream among Mancia Ben Israel's friends was Adam Borel Borel's radical teachings deny the existence of a single church but held the view that all the fates possessed a fragment of the revealed truth that's a pretty good I think opinion to have that there's possibly a little bit of truth and everything but also a lot of false ideas and everything whatever beliefs Rembrandt may have absorbed from his Mennonite and Jewish friend on paper he was part of the Dutch Reformed Church he was married in it his children were baptized in it he was buried in it and not long before his death he was also a sponsor of his granddaughters christening the role of a sponsor was reserved for those considered sound in their faith whatever his faith a likely reason for his interest subjects was the status of the Bible in Dutch life in his time for Rembrandt as for almost all Protestants in the Netherlands the Bible is an element of life a current and indispensable as food, drink and air the opinion expressed by Rotermund in it seems an excellent assessment of Rembrandt's relationship to the Bible why then this abundance of drawing on biblical subjects one can answer this question in two ways one can say that evidently Rembrandt's artistic imagination was so powerful that only a fraction of his imaginative energy led to finished works whereas most of it took the form of sketches we're going to see a lot of sketches in this book this is certainly true but the other answer is equally rare apparently Rembrandt's relation to the Bible the biblical narrative was so intense that he repeatedly felt impelled to depict what he read there these sketches of Rembrandt's have the quality of a diary it is as though Rembrandt reading the Bible made marginal notes for himself so I can see this because in our last book the apocalypse of Abraham I put a call out for artists to draw what Abraham described in affirmaments just so we can kind of get visual of what he's saying so I get that I get why Rembrandt would do that and it does sound like Rembrandt was highly influenced by his Jewish friend and of course the Mennonite you know you this book Book of Tobit does come from Jewish culture and Jewish heritage and this being the 17th century we're like only a hundred or so years out from the real big Protestant Reformation when people were learning how to read and so I can understand how for this time period the Bible probably was so interesting to people because generations before them didn't actually know how to read it especially when it was only in Latin and they took that ability from us to learn Latin away from us right so I can get that now for a lot of us I know a lot of us still love the Bible I think the Bible is very fascinating but we're used to it right it's like I keep saying we're kind of grandfathered into it for these people in this time period even though the Bible had been around and they haven't taught these stories access to these stories is different now because now most people can have the access to it for themselves they don't have to go through a preacher so Seymour Slive summed up Rembrandt's relationships of the Bible and judging from his existing of what religious pictures was closest to his heart this is a non biblical motivation for Rembrandt's interest in Tobit the theme of blindness occurs frankly in his work that's true alright so we're going to kind of skip that because I don't want to give away the story too much because there is a big theme of blindness in this story so finally Rembrandt seemed interested in events involving angels particularly as the angels relate to humans in his painting an angel stays the hand of Abraham to save Isaac an angel wrestles with Jacob an angel shows Joseph about the need to flee to Egypt an angel dramatically frees Peter from prison an angel looks over Matthew's shoulder to inspire him as he writes his gospel and there are many other instances of angels appearing in his work alright so here we go the angel Raphael figures prominently in the book of Tobit and even though he is in disguise as a human most of the time Rembrandt shows him with winks apparently he just really liked drawing angels and there were certain moments in the story that were among his favorite you will find six drawings of Tobias being scared by a fish and a painting and seven drawings of Tobias curing his father so again Tobias is the son of Tobit one of Rembrandt's earliest biographers Arnold Howlbreaker commented on frequently with which he illustrated the same event alright so let's go on down so again the Kings James text of the book of Tobit presented here is adapted from the online Bible alright I got this you can just google this online I just downloaded PDF online alright so we got the list of illustrations here so let's read a little bit into the book of Tobit just to start our journey in this story so the book of the words of Tobit son of Tobel the son of Aniel the son of Adjuel the son of Gabyel the seed of Asiel and the tribe of Naftali who in the time of In-Misar king of the Assyrians I probably said that name wrong but there you go was led captive out of Fisbe which is the right hand of the city which is properly Naftali in Galilee over Asir which we spoke about that in the beginning of this episode we kind of went through the geography of the land mass that was the tribe of Naftali kind of like the state you're in the United States it's like the state that you're in the state of Naftali or the province if you're up in Canada I Tobit have walked all the days of my life in the ways of truth and justice and I did many alms deeds to my brethren and my nation who came with me to Nineveh in the land of the Assyrians again they were exiled there and when I was in my own country in the land of Israel being but young all the tribes of Naftali my father fell from the house of Jerusalem which was chosen out of all the tribes of Israel that all the tribes should sacrifice there where the temple of the habitation of the most high was consecrated and built for all ages so remember back in the beginning I told you the whole issue started when the northern state of Israel aligned with the king of Armenia to try to take Jerusalem from the state of Judah because this was a very important very important city for both the northern state of Israel and the state of Judah so for all the tribes of Israel and I believe from what I understand that the citizens of northern Israel could come and go out of Jerusalem to do their sacrifices as it were then we know that when Jesus came he stopped doing that but they took that very seriously now all the tribes which together revolted in the house of my father Naftali sacrificed under the heifer ball so again the cow the calf the god ball or fall this came up in our deep dive into Mardi Gras as well into you know the golden calf right so he's saying that they're revolting and they're not going to Jerusalem anymore they're now once again and I got a ball but I alone went off to Jerusalem at the feast as it was ordained unto all the people of Israel by an everlasting decree having the first fruits and the tents of increase with that which was first shorn and then gave I the altar of the priests of the children of Aaron in the first tense of all the increase I gave to the sons of Aaron who ministered at Jerusalem another tenth part I sold away and went every year at Jerusalem and a third I gave unto them whom it was meet as Deborah my father's mother had commanded me because I was left an orphaned by my father now one of the historians I heard talk about this now again if I think I said it in the introduction so this whole time period of the Assyrians coming in and out of both Israel and the land of Judah was about 25 years so what they believe this means is that when he says I was left orphaned by my father is that they believe this means that his father was captured when he was a child and taken by the Assyrians and that's another reason this verse verse 1 8 of the book of Tobit is another reason why I really wanted to take a good part of the beginning of this story and talk about all the political turmoil because I think for a lot of us we would skim through this and just think oh his dad left or he passed away young or something like that we wouldn't understand the gravity of this verse there is trauma here there is anxiety here there's PTSD here if you put yourself in Tobit's position or any of the people living in both the northern state of Israel and the land of Judah the sheer stress that they were under all the time because of this I mean we're experiencing a little bit of that stress today but we know that the best is yet to come for us they literally were basically at the mercy of all these invasions and so that's a pretty powerful verse there to really understand what Tobit has been through furthermore when I was come to the age of a man I married Anna of mine own kindred and of her got to bias so I believe that she means as kindred probably from the tribe of Naftali as well and we were carried away captives to Nineveh all my brethren and those that were my kindred did eat of the bread of the Gentiles so we saw this with Daniel as well in the book of Daniel a well where they're given the food there's very strict eating rules in the old Jewish faith and I believe Orthodox Jewish people still follow those rules and so when you see eating of the bread of the Gentiles basically they're letting go of the laws that they followed in order to eat and I mean the funny thing is if I was in those positions even though I'm a vegetarian I don't know if I would be under grounded enough to stay firm because it's stressful but I kept myself from eating because I remembered God with all my heart and the most high gave me grace in favor before an abuser so I was in his purveyor so it reminds me a lot of Daniel right like this is kind of very similar crossover stories here and I went to media and left in trust with Gable the brother of Gabriel at Rages a city of media 10 talents of silver now when an abuser was dead Sinashar been his son reigned in his steed whose state was troubled and I could not get into media so he is spoken about in the Bible guys he is a figure spoken about in the Bible and so I'm going to go out a limb and say because we saw this with the book of Jubilee that there are some facts that are going to come up in these books that might not have been known by somebody outside of this time period of writing like the price of things the order of rulers during the Assyrian conquest many many many many rulers came and went and so the fact that we have an actual reference here to the same ruler that's spoken about in the Bible is pretty interesting and in the time of an abuser I gave many alms to my brethren and gave my bread to the hungry and in my and in my clothes to the naked and if I saw any of the nation my nation's dead or cast out of the walls of Nineveh I buried him so again we read that introduction that Tobit has kind of had a reputation for properly bearing the dead in the customs of Jewish heritage even though they're living in Nineveh and if the king sent a sheriff and had slain any when he was come and fled from Judah I buried them privately for in his wrath he killed many but the bodies were not found when they were sought for of the king and when one of the Ninevites went and complained of me to the king that I buried them and hid myself understanding that I was sought for to be put to death I would withdrew myself for fear and when all my goods were forcibly taken away neither was there anything left besides my wife Anna and my son Tobias so he was mad he was mad that he was still obviously following Jewish custom and they're passed not five and fifty days before two of his sons killed him and they fled into the mountains of Erevath and Sarchedonus his son who remained in a seed who appointed over his father's accounts and over all his affairs Antrodinius my brother and our son so I probably reading a lot of these names right wrong please forgive me anyway and Antrodinius in treating for me I returned to Nineveh now Antrodinius was cut bearer and keeper of the signet and steward and overseer of the accounts and Sarchedonus appointed him next to him and he was my brother's son so basically because his nephew was appointed in high standing with the new king Tobias kind of got a little bit of a break from being persecuted right so here's a sketch from Remrant this is Tobit reading the Bible to his wife Anna all right so this brings us to chapter two I'm probably going to stop it right here for the day just because it's been a long episode and obviously next week we'll just pick up with chapter two and go forward we won't have to deal with the introduction and stuff but I know that time is of the essence for a lot of us and so I'll just end it there today so we have an understanding of Tobit and an understanding of where we're coming from with this book all right guys again this PDF is available online if you want to download it for free it's not it doesn't cost anything so you have you can see my copy right here or if you just want to read along with us with my copy that works too so next episode will be uploaded next Wednesday all right guys I hope you're having a fantastic week so far hang in there we've got a lot of shenanigans on the horizon but it's all good hold the line keep the faith the best is yet to come thank you to Josh McCabe for doing our music if you'd like to purchase the opening song as always there's a link down in the description box below and thank you to Todd Roderick for helping me get this out to you well today I will talk to you all later bye