 preparation for the gospel, Greek miracle. I love this subject, like I said, I'm animated about it. But, you know, God works about this miraculous transformation, like I mentioned in my little pitch for the talk, because the Jews are supposed to be a separate and distinct people from the nations that was grown into their worldview, that's part of their identity, have nothing to do with the unclean Gentiles. Then when you get to the time of Christ, the gospel spreads throughout the Gentile world. Why? How did we get from there to here, right? And what happens is the Greek miracle. I call it the Greek miracle. Now the thing about the Greek miracle is this, that no one really knows about it. And that's because it's largely recorded in sources like the first century Jewish historian Josephus, or the letter of Ersteas, if you guys like reading, that's a fun read. But, I mean, how many people here read Josephus in the letter of Ersteas, right? Or the Deuteron Canon, the Old Testament Deuteron canonical books. Okay, that's what we were talking about in the previous session. There are seven Old Testament books, and the interesting thing is like no one reads these books. Why? Because the seven Old Testament books are not found in rabbinic Bibles. They're not, so they don't read it. They don't know about this. Actually, I'll touch on that in a little bit. They're not found in Protestant Bibles. Protestantism removed these books from Scripture, so they don't know about it. But these books are found in our Catholic and Orthodox Bibles. The problem is Catholics don't read them because we don't read the Bible, right? Now, that was a huge laugh line when I began ministry in the 1990s. But it's not so funny today because that's not true anymore. In the 1990s, Catholics didn't really read Scripture. It's rare you find a parish that had a Bible study, but there has been a transformation that occurred in the church last 20 years largely due to conferences like this and people like you who are going into their parish and setting the parish on fire for the Word of God. So this is what I want everybody to do right now. This is required. I want you to extend your right hand in front of you, place over your left shoulder, pat yourself on the back. You deserve it. Seriously, you deserve it. So the thing is, even parishes that do have Bible studies, Deuteron can is still neglected. It's still these books that, yeah, they're interesting. They're kind of fascinating. We really don't read them unless you're doing something really rigid like Jeff Cavan's timeline, right? Salvation history. Then he treats it. But otherwise, it's like foreign land, terra incognito. So that's why I'm really excited because it's amazing what God does during this timeframe. And if you don't have it or you don't know about it, it's almost like, you know, magic happens and presto change. Oh, Judaism is different. So what I want to do is I'm going to break down this miracle into five different sections. So we're going to talk about five different aspects of what God does for His people, starting from the time when the Jews come back from the Babylonian exile until the time of Christ. And by the way, like I said, that's roughly covered by the Deuterocanonical books, Josephus, letter of heirs to us. In fact, the Deuterocanonical books not only record things about this miracle, but in a sense, they are part of that miracle. They're part of that miracle. Now to appreciate this miracle, you have to appreciate where it's how things were before the miracle. Take, for example, a miraculous healing. You can't really truly understand the gravity of a miraculous healing unless you first understand the nature and extent of the condition before it was healed. So we read in Scripture, Jesus heals the blind man, right? And that's impressive. We're like, whoa, you healed a blind man. But let's say you lived in the village and you knew that the blind man was born blind from birth and that every day of his life that you seen him, you saw him groping, trying to find his way. Then Jesus comes and it has perfect sight. So you could appreciate that more, right? Or what happened if you found out the blind man was born without pupils? That would really be an eye-opener, so to speak. Sorry for the pun. That wasn't part of the script. See, the beautiful thing whenever I give talks is the added suffering is freeing souls and purgatory as you know it. So if you get through one of my talks, especially during Lent, I'm very popular during Lent for the added suffering. So what I want to do is, okay, let's put ourselves in the sandals of the Jews right when they come back from the Babylonian exile, because that's really the beginning of this period. And I was trying to come up with an analogy that we can relate to. It's funny that Mary Barbara brought this up in her talk. Roe versus Wade, the overturning of Roe versus Wade, I think is a good analogy. It was dropped in our lap on June 24th of this year. And what's interesting about this is, I don't know about you, but quite frankly, I knew it would be overturned. I mean, lawyers, since its inception said this is defective, this needs to change. So I knew it would be overturned, but I just didn't expect it to be overturned in my lifetime. And then out of the blue on June 24th, it's reversed, right? And I think it'll be one of those days that you'll know where you were when you learned Roe versus Wade was overturned. And like Mary pointed out, it occurred in a very interesting time in sacred time, because it's only in the year 2022 where two feasts are celebrated on the same day, the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist. It's only there that they coincide. And the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we focus on the Divine Mercy, God's love for us. And it's interesting, it's not the Feast of John the Baptist, but the Nativity of John the Baptist. And as you know from the Gospel of Luke, that he was cognizant of the Savior in front of him and leaped while he's still in the womb of Elizabeth. Wow. So talk about God's Praying of Prince. In fact, here's one that you might not know. June 24th is also the birthday of Nellie Gray, who's the co-founder of March for Life. So it's also a birthday gift from God, right? God rest her soul. So it's got God's fingerprints on it, and it's just almost out of the blue. It's overturned. Even though we knew it was coming, it happened. And so put yourself back in that moment. How did you feel at that time? I think that kind of corresponds to how the Jews felt, because there's extreme exhilaration. Yes, this finally has happened. Thank God. But there's also uneasiness and worry as well, because it's not like we're ahead of the game. We're only set back some 39 years or 49 years back in the past, right? Before we knew where the boundary lines were set. Now we don't, right? So there's a worry and uneasiness, but also joy as well. Oh, did you feel the same way? At least that's how I felt. And people I spoke to also felt that joy and uneasiness at the same time. And that, I think, corresponds roughly to how the Jews felt coming back from exile. Because they were in captivity in Babylon for 70 years, as we heard from both Mary Healy and Dr. Berg's mom. Sorry about that. Apparently my battery's not plugged in. So we heard that about that. See if I can figure out why it's not working. But Jeremiah prophesied. Camera lady, I'm not sure, but I'm not getting power to my computer. So maybe you could check if it's plugged in or sorry about that. So we heard Jeremiah prophesied that God will bring his people back in 70 years. So we anticipated. But, you know, when it occurred, it was amazing. Because here you have the Persian nation come and basically take over Babylon, who was holding you in captivity. And then the Persians put you back in Jerusalem. And they not only do that, but they restore the implements of the temple that were taken by Nebuchadnezzar. So you're, you're returned enriched. So they're exhilarated. God has been faithful to his promise. At the same time, you're worried. Because you're not any further than you were. You're just reset back to when Babylon came and took you. Not only that, but you're also worried because now you got to rebuild everything. You returned basically this to rocks and weeds. You got to rebuild the temple. You got to build walls. We're surrounded by enemies with no fortification, no protection from them. So how in the world is God going to take us from this point to the point in which the prophets prophesied? How is that going to happen? How is he going to fulfill that? Because the prophets say that the second temple that we're building right now is going to be more glorious than Solomon's temple. How's that going to happen? It's not going to be as glorious as Solomon's. The kingdom of David consisted of 12 tribes. And if you know your Bible or done the Jeff Kevan's timeline, you know the northern 10 tribes were taken by Assyria and they're scattered throughout the nations. They're gone. But God says that there would be a Messiah of the dynasty of David who will reconstitute the kingdom. How is he going to reconstitute the kingdom when the kingdom is spread throughout the known world? And then you have another problem. I have probably a little head here. You have the problem of how is the Messiah going to be of the line of David? Okay, so this is the point in my talk where I go on a digression that probably will lose most people. So if it's helpful, great. If it's not just hit pause, wait till I come back on track, okay? Because there were plenty of sons of David around coming out of exile. So why didn't they restart the Davidic monarchy? The answer is they couldn't. Why? Because the mechanism for the dynasty ran like this. The sitting king would tell one of his queens, because he had a harem, he had many wives. So he picked one and he said, your son's going to sit on my throne. So when the son is old enough, he becomes king and the queen becomes the queen mother of the king, okay? That's how dynastic succession worked. The king and the queen, the queens went into exile and the queen mother. They never come back. So there are plenty of people with the lineage of David, but how does the Messiah come and still be in the line of David? So here is, you know, a little hack for you. This is why the enunciation is so important. Because who is the true king of Israel? God, right? God is the true king of Israel and he sends Gabriel to a virgin to tell her that her son will sit on the throne of David. Hence Jesus is part of the Vinnik dynasty, because that succession has now occurred. Okay, you can take yourself off pause if that was, I know, I always throw these little tidbits. I just, I love scripture, I can't help, but here or there, it's because I'm Polish and if you're Polish and you're having people over, you make enough for 30 times the amount of people there. I don't know. So okay, so let's look at those five points that I mentioned. Okay, the first part of the miracle is that, here we are, we come back in Jerusalem, we hear distant rumors of some leader rising out of Greece who is basically conquering everything in a site. First part is Alexander the Great. All right? Lots of fascinating things about Alexander the Great. Alexander's father, Philip II, had hired a guy who was really up on philosophy to tutor Alexander that is none other than Aristotle. So from the age of 13, Aristotle was his tutor. Think about that. That's a pretty good tutor. Also, Alexander became king when he was only 20 years old and in 15 years of conquest, Alexander never lost a battle. Fifteen years of warfare, he never loses a battle. He goes from place to place, either they capitulate, they give in, or he conquers them. Never loses. And so by the time of his death, when he was only 33 years old, he conquered two million square miles. Think about that. That is amazing. Now, what about the Jews? Was Jerusalem part of the things that were squashed by Alexander? Miraculously, no. We learned this through the letter of Aristias. According to this letter, they were actually, no, this is one of those facts about history, assuming that this is historically true. No, actually, I'm sorry. This comes from Josephus' antiquities. Yeah. Okay, I'm out of power. Well, it's okay. This is one of those interesting things because Alexander is in Damascus and he's sending a letter to the high priest in Jerusalem. And he says, I need provisions. I need troops. Send them to help me. The high priest responds and says, Alexander, I would like to help you, but I sworn out to your enemy, Darius, that I would never wage arms against them. So I can't help you. Sorry. Now, needless to say, Alexander was not happy, right? So he sends a letter back and he says, I'm coming for you, high priest. I'm coming for you and I'm going to show people to whom they ought to keep their oaths, right? Pretty scary stuff if you're the high priest. So when Alexander takes Gaza, guess what he does? He turns his troops and he heads for Jerusalem to get who? The high priest. So what do you do if you're high priest? You call on God, right? I mean, who else is going to stop Alexander? So while he's offering sacrifices, he gets a vision and God tells him in this vision. He tells the high priest, this is what I want you to do. First, stop groveling, stop crying. Everything's going to be okay. Take courage. He's not going to harm you. You need to do this. You need to open the gates of Jerusalem to him. You need to have decorate the city. Everybody dresses in white and I want you to process out to him with your priest and greet him. Now, this is the guy that's coming after you after conquering, you know, every city from, you know, Greece to Jerusalem, right? So the high priest does it. And what happens is the high priest does it and Alexander falls down in his feet and adores him. Yeah, not exactly what he expected, right? I thought maybe he'd take a sword and cut his head off or something like that. And one of his soldiers asked him, why are you adoring the high priest? And his response is, I did not adore him, but that God who has honored him with the high priesthood, for I saw this very person in a dream while in Macedonia. Alexander had a dream where he saw the high priest and the procession of people dressed in white coming to welcome him. And he knew that God told him he's going to conquer. So he honors the high priest. In fact, he gives him all sorts of things they don't have to pay tribute for a while. Lots of, he just passes them by. So it's at this time that the Jews bring out the book of Daniel. I mean, what else would you do, right? Book of Daniel is interesting, has lots of prophecies. One of the most interesting ones, if you ever hear Dr. Bergsmod talk about it, I highly recommend it, is this. He talks about four beasts. He's given us the Nebuchadnezzar, that there will be four beasts. The first one's Babylon. The second one's Persia. Then the third beast is very interesting. It's a leopard. And as you know, leopards are incredibly fast, incredibly fast. But it's a leopard with four heads and four wings. So imagine that. A super fast animal that has wings. So it's a leopard. Okay. I thought I'd try it. Yeah. So it's fast. Now, it had the slides been working. I'd show you those 2 million square miles, 33 years of age. Yeah, he was fast, right? And so they say, hey, look, Alexander, got it already prophesied that you're gonna be conquering people. So the third of the fourth beast is Greece. And Alexander was impressed. Okay. So by the way, that's in Daniel 76, if you want to look at it. So what about the four heads and the four wings? Well, when Alexander died at the age of 33, the empire was divided into four parts because there were four generals. Interesting enough. And so the the empires divided into the Macedonians, the Ptolemaic in Egypt, the Seleucids in Judea and Pergamum in modern day Turkey. So we're gonna focus on the Seleucids because those are the people that the Jews have to deal with from Alexander onward. Okay, the Greeks, the Greeks. All right. So that's the first miracle. Alexander to great. Or first aspect in miracle. Let's go to the second point. The international language of Greek is now the lingua franca of Alexander's empire. Now, this might seem like, yeah, that's not really, you know, an eye opener, I don't know, eyebrow razor, you know, so what? So we spread Greek around the ancient world. Well, what really happens is, since now everybody is speaking the same language, or at least has access to the same language. Alexander to great ushers in the super information highway, the highway of super information, the internet in antiquity, but in antiquities terms, right? Now, like the internet, when you're on the internet, you can access all sorts of information very quickly. Now, before Alexander, if you wanted to learn things about other cultures, you had to learn their language and their culture, have somebody translate it, it was very difficult, right? But now that everybody knows Greek information can flow from territory to territory, geographic location doesn't mean too much, as long as everybody speaks Greek. Everybody follow? Amen? All right, I'll do the amen. Yeah, amen. Common language. That's awesome. Praise the Lord. You know, the other thing too is the internet is also good for storing information as well, retrieving stored information. When I first started in apologetics, if I wanted to research a topic, I'd have to get in my car, drive down to Sacred Heart major seminary in Detroit, go to the library, spend several hours going through the stacks, spend a couple hours at the photocopier, copying things, bringing it back home. It was a day affair just to do research. Today with the internet, I could do all of that and more in five minutes, right? I can access all this information very quickly. And so along, since he makes the information super highway possible, guess what? Now you can store information as well. You ever hear of the library of Alexandria? There you go. That's the primitive ancient internet. Now, of course, it's not as fast as ours, but nevertheless, that's a very important development. Keep that into back pockets. Okay, let's move on to point number three. So we have the first point, Alexander, the great second point, the international language, the ancient version of the internet, third aspect, the Greek Septuagint. Now here's where the letter of Aristias comes in. A funny thing happens. After the libraries established, Ptolemy writes a letter to the high priest. Now this is from Egypt, right? And he, of course, if you have a library, what do you need to do? You need to acquire books. Otherwise you have empty shelves and that's not really a good library. So we want to fill it with wisdom from all over the place. He sends a letter to a high priest and he says, we want you to copy the Torah, the first five books of the Bible in Hebrew, into Greek so we could read it and we can have a nice copy of it in our library. Amazing thing is the high priest actually says, okay. And so according to the pseudo Aristias, you know, this letter, he sends 72 translators and they complete the first part of the translation in 72 days and miraculously the translations are identical. Pretty impressive. Especially when you think of how many Bible versions are there in Bible translations today. So Ptolemy was impressed and he considers, well let's finish the Torah and who knows, maybe we'll have more. So that's the beginning of the Septuagint which is a Greek translation of the Old Testament done about 200 years before Christ. It starts around then, it takes a while for books to be translated in a Greek. Why is this important? For the first time in salvation history, the word of God can be accessed by the nations. Before, if you didn't know Hebrew or you couldn't get somebody to translate it for you, you could not access God's wisdom. Huge, huge change. So the word of God now is open to the nations and notice, it wasn't the Jews putting this about. What was it? It was the Gentiles. They were asking, hey, can you do this for us? We want this wisdom of God that you have. Now, everything wasn't all Pop-Tarts and Coca-Cola because I know those are the two things I like the most. You can put whatever you want. Roses and you know. There was some bad things as well and this brings about our fourth point. So we have Alexander the Great. We have the common language of Greek. You have the Septuagint or the word of God. It's now accessible in Greek so everybody can access it and it's funny. I mean, it circulates very well. In fact, there comes a time where both Jews and Christians accuse the Gentiles of plagiarizing off Moses. It's very interesting that you get these charges that these Greeks are now ripping off Moses. The fourth of the five points is the Jews meet Greek philosophy. The Jews meet Greek philosophy. So Alexander not only spread the Greek language, he also spread Greek thought, Greek philosophy. And unfortunately, Greek philosophy was very good. It represents possibly the highest development of human reason. I mean, they actually get some very important points about God correct but it also is filled with error. Okay, so it's not perfect and not only that but you also get Greek culture which is pagan, right? So you have Greek culture. You have this Greek philosophy. All of this is being fed to us as Jews. It's kind of being rammed on our throat because the solucids are like be Greek, join the Greek bandwagon or get run over by it. Okay, and a lot of Jews, including high priests, jump on the bandwagon. They go Greek, right? Even though Greek culture is antithetical to God's word, God's prescription on the Torah. So Judaism is confronted by this paganism. Okay, and thank God we don't live in a culture like that, right? Yeah, we don't live in a culture that, you know, things are being rammed on our throats. That's antithetical to God's word. Okay, yeah, okay. Do you have the slide or not? Okay, yeah, I sent it to a hospitality student bill. Okay, yeah, sorry about that. We'll get it. We'll get it. So you're being confronted by culture, so we can learn a lot from this. Because here we have Greek philosophy encountering Hebrew revelation. Okay, I gotta stand for this. I can't, I'm sorry. It's time to get excited. Now you're probably thinking yourself, hold on, that doesn't make sense. Greek philosophy, Hebrew, you know, Hebrew revelation, they don't go together. There's pagan error filled in there. In fact, Certolian says it very well. What does Jerusalem have, what does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? Right, what does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? What does Hebrew revelation have to do with pagan Greek philosophy? Well, at first glance, it seems like divine revelation really doesn't have anything to do with it. Like I said, it's filled with errors and so on. But get this, I'm going to read from Paul. First Corinthians 1-22 and 24. Paul says, for Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom. And then he goes on to say, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. What do Greeks look for? Wisdom. What is wisdom? Christ. Christ is the wisdom of God. So what the Greeks are looking for, in fact, not only are they looking for wisdom, but they love wisdom. By the way, the fancy Greek word for love of wisdom is philosophy. Okay, so they love philosophy. So what does philosophy have to do with Christianity? What does philosophy have to do with Hebrew revelation? Peanut butter, meat jelly. What you have is reason and revelation. Fides at Ratio. Faith and reason go together. And in a very interesting way, because Hebrew revelation is able able to purify the errors of pagan philosophy, and pagan philosophy is able to give us the precision to explain and expound revelation. Okay, so, all right. So in the midst of this course of Hellenization going on, the Jews react. So I think this is a good example for us in this part, because we're kind of in the same boat. And it's exemplified by two Deuteron canonical books, the Book of Sirach and the Book of Wisdom. I love Father John Lau's analogy. He says these two books are like a tree. Okay, a tree. The Book of Sirach is like the roots of the tree. When you're confronted with this pagan culture, you dive into Jewish history. You remind the people of where they were. You remind that God is faithful to those who are faithful to him, and that those who oppose God are destroyed. Okay, so Sirach goes deep in the Jewish history. He reminds the Jews where you've been, where you come from, and God is faithful. Okay, that's the roots of the tree. Okay, so Sirach buries down in history. The Book of Wisdom is like the branches of the tree. It branches out into the heavens, and it takes the Greek language, it takes Greek philosophical terms and ideas, and it takes Hebrew revelation, and it raises it up in a beautiful manifestation of wisdom that wouldn't be possible in Hebrew. So you have this tree, and those two things work together to combat this horrible Hellenization, Greekification, if you will, of the Jewish people. And like I said, since philosophy means love of wisdom, it's interesting that both Sirach and wisdom do something very interesting. They explore, get this, the relationship of God's wisdom to himself, and the relationship of God's wisdom to creation. Very interesting. So the Jews now, for the first time in salvation history, is really looking at what is the relationship of God's wisdom to himself and to his creation. Now, this might seem all academic, and maybe it is, but it has practical uses. For example, not long ago I received an email from a Jewish person in England, and I do apologetics, I defend the faith. And this Jewish person said, how in the world can you Christians believe the Trinity comes from Hebrew revelation? It's pagan, it's pure paganism, right? You guys just ripped off the pagans with this Trinity stuff, and I said, you know, here's the problem. You have a huge hole in the development of Hebrew revelation. See, remember how I said that Jews don't have the Deuteronical books? Their Old Testament ends like Protestant Bibles with Melachi, Esther, like around that time, and then it sips 400 years to the New Testament. But for Jews it's even worse, because then there's another century before rabbinic Judaism picks up when their oral tradition is written down, and that's really the Judaism that's today. It's a religion of the book, it's not a religion of the temple like it was in Jesus' time. So there's 500 years, half a millennia that Jews can't access, they really don't have knowledge of. So of course, when you end way back then, and then you zip to the second Christian century, it seems like, wow, paganism, the Trinity can't possibly be true. But if you have a Catholic Bible or an Orthodox Bible, guess what? You see, no, it's in the Deuteronical Canon that Jews, not Christians, start looking at the relationship of God's wisdom to himself, and some very interesting things come out of this investigation. For example, in Syrac 24 and Wisdom 7, we learned that God's wisdom was there in the beginning, from the very before the beginning. Not only that, but God's wisdom is also alongside God in Proverbs. It's very interesting. Wisdom is like his helpmate in creation. So, and then you also have passages in Syrac and wisdom where God's wisdom is God. Okay? Everybody follow me? So in the beginning, there was wisdom, and wisdom was with God, and wisdom was God. Now, in the Book of Wisdom, God's word is identified as wisdom. It makes the connection. So if you replace wisdom, and if I had slides this would be great, replace wisdom with word, guess what we get? John 1-1. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, the word was God. This was known by the Jews hundreds of years before Christ. They just didn't know who the word is. Christ, the word had to be incarnate in Jesus Christ. So, so you have this weird duality of personality. By the way, if you're interested in this and you're nerds like me, please don't do that. That would be very sad, but if you're nerding out, there's actually books written by Jews, modern books that explore this. I'll give you a couple of titles. There's one title called Two Powers in Heaven by Ellen Siegel. There's also Two Gods in Heaven by Peter Schaefer and the Jewish Gospels by David Boyern. I always mispronounced his last name. These are Jews today who look at Deuterachanonical texts, pseudopagraphical works, and they say, you know what? In Jewish thought, before the first century and in the first century, there seems to be a duality within God. So I told my friend, you know, you need to, you need to go old school, you need old time religion. This new fangle to knock that you're using, you got to get to the Christian Bible, the old stuff, the Septuagint. All right, so let's see. All right, so the confrontation of philosophy or reason and revelation produces this beautiful response in the Word of God. So that's the fourth point. Now let's go to the final point. The Maccabean Revolt. The Seleucid's forced Hellenization with arms. You know, this is a hot persecution of the Jews. And so they're trying to force pagan idolatry, sexual license, and the worst of all, they build a gymnasium inflicting horror on millions of teenagers if they have to go to high school gym class. No, I'm just joking, but yeah, they bring Greek culture which involves the gymnasium which, by the way, involved pagan practices. It wasn't just exercise. I mean, kind of like today, you know, sports is now becoming kind of politicized, it's becoming politically correct. That's kind of how it was. So not everybody jumps on the, let's go Greek bandwagon. There was a group of Jews who said, oi, we're not going to take this. And that is the Maccabees. The Maccabees have this arm revolt against this group that's so much more powerful than them, there's really no way they could succeed outside of God's help. It's during this that this confrontation produces some very interesting fruit. And by the way, you could read about the Maccabee and revolt in 1st and 2nd Maccabees, aptly titled. For example, in 2nd Maccabees 6 and 7, now if you, we find Jews who were willing to be tortured, refused release in order for the better resurrection. In other words, it's better to be faithful to God and be raised again and live forever with God than to eat pork, violate the law, and be condemned forever. For the first time in Jewish history, you have Jews who are willing to lay down their lives, that their faithfulness to God would lead to the resurrection, and although their bodies die, they will live on earth again. You find that in 2nd Maccabees 6 and 7, with the Maccabee and martyrs. By the way, I mean, that was, I was basically quoting Hebrews 1135 about the torture of refusing release for the sake of better resurrection. So God's people has reached a point in development where they're willing to die rather than eat pork. Now there are plenty of people who are willing to die, but not to the extent of fidelity to God. You also have another interesting development because the book of Maccabees, especially 2nd Maccabees, focuses in on the afterlife. And since 2nd Maccabees, we find all sorts of interesting things about those who die, where before death was in Shio, it was a kind of shadowy place that we didn't really know much about. There's comfort for the righteous, there's suffering for the wicked. That's about it. In 2nd Maccabees, we find out that they're part of our community still, even though they died. So you find things like in 2nd Maccabees 1246 where Judas Maccabees, some of his soldiers, die and all the dead had these amulets that they stole. They weren't allowed by the law to have. So Judas takes up a collection and sends it to Jerusalem for expatriate sacrifice to be made for the dead soldiers and he offers prayers. And it concludes saying it's a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins. So death, according to this development, now this is maybe 100, maybe 50 years before Christ, this development that the dead aren't cut off from us, the dead still part of our community, we could offer prayers and sufferings for their souls in order to atone for their transgressions. Very interesting. By the way, Jews today pray for the dead. I don't know if you know that. There's a famous photo shop in New York that's run by Hasidic Jews, right? Those are the Jews with the beards and everything. This fellow told me this after one of my talks. I thought it was so funny. So they sell appliances, right? And camera equipment. And he is a Catholic. Apologize. He was really fired up. So he wanted to evangelize the Hasidic Jews. He called them up and he's talking to them about things and he's talking about purgatory. He didn't know that they don't believe in purgatory or they believe in purgatory, excuse me. They have a rough approximation of what we understand as purgatory. So he says, you know, but you guys don't have purgatories. Yeah, we do. Actually, here's this. This is the actual words from the Hasidic Jew. He says, yeah, we have a washer and dryer as well. I love that response. So the time of Christ, they were praying for the dead. They were offering suffragists for the dead. The afterlife now is visible. In fact, in 2nd Maccabees 15, you learn that the high priest Onias and the prophet Jeremiah, even though they died, they appeared to Judas in a vision where it says that Jeremiah is continually praying for the people of God. So we even see in the Old Testament the prayers of the saints, right? Except this is the Old Testament righteous. So the afterlife now is like it becomes more and more clear. And you can see how that clarity gives the Jews the confidence to be faithful and actually suffer and die rather than disobey the law. There's also other things as well. You know, in the Maccabees you find a feast of the dedication, Hanukkah being established. The festival of lights, you find this in 1st Maccabees 556-59. Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the temple that was defiled by the Greeks. It's an eight-day celebration and it's known as the festival of lights. You guys have seen menorahs, right? Are you familiar with Hanukkah? Yeah, festival of lights. That's a fascinating feast, isn't it? Because Christ, what's his body likened to? A temple. When was Christ raised from the dead on the eighth day, Sunday? So it's eight days. The temple of Christ's body is raised and what is the light of the world? So Hanukkah fits perfectly with Jesus. By the way, it's also one of those Jewish feasts that the Jewish Bible doesn't have any recollection of, since it doesn't have Maccabees, Jews celebrate Hanukkah but there's nothing in their Bible to establish it. Okay, also you find in Maccabees, enter to the theme of Jaws, the Romans. The Romans begin to appear. The Romans are the fourth beast in Daniel, the ones who overtake the Seleucids, the ones who are the last and the most terrible of the fourth beast, or the four beast. So you see the Romans and actually if you read Maccabees, it's kind of scary because the Maccabees are like, hey, these are nice chaps. They enter into alliances and so on. We should ally with them. Yeah, that's going to work out really well, right? And it ultimately ends up with King Herod, okay? So you have this interesting phenomenon of all these trials during this period bearing fruit and preparing the way for Jesus because it's because of this false king of the Jews, Herod, by the way, the Roman Senate in 40 BC proclaims Herod the king of the Jews. Who's supposed to be the king of the Jews? Son of David, right? Herod's an Edomite. He's not even Jewish, yet he's pretending to be the king and he's a wicked king indeed. So Herod sets the stage for the true Son of David, the true Messiah, Jesus, right? And if you think about it, you look around, it seems like something else amazing happens. I had slides, I'm sorry, but I would have shown you this. It's amazing. On the map as you go through starting with the first Judas Maccabees and going through the successors of the Maccabees, what happens is it starts off with a little patch of land and it begins to grow and it begins to grow and it grows more until finally you get to almost the time of Christ and amazingly the land that's under Jewish control is almost identical to the kingdom of David. It's truly amazing. So out of nowhere we're in the land where David was ruling, but we have this false king. Things aren't kosher, it's not good. So you can see where the Greek miracle starts paying dividends because it's not by accident that the earliest copies of the Gospels are written in Greek, right? Do you know that? Why? Because that plugs into the information superhighway of antiquity. Now everybody can read about the words and deeds of Jesus no matter where you are because of the Greek miracle. It's not by accident that the New Testament quotes the substitution, that Greek translation of the Old Testament as its preferred text. Why? Because now since God's Word has gone out to the Greek-speaking people, guess what? The apostles and those who followed the apostles now have a text that they can show the Old Testament prophecies that the Gentiles have access to. That would not be possible if it wasn't for the Septuagint. It would not be possible if Alexander did not spread the Greek language. It would not be possible without Alexander. It's not by accident that when the early Church Fathers are approaching the Gentiles with the Gospel that they proclaim Christ to the Gentiles by introducing them to wisdom, right? Because the Greeks love wisdom, they're philosophers. All they have to say is you know that thing that you love? You love this wisdom? Let me tell you his name because his it's not an it. It's a him. It's a person and this person came to us. He conversed with us. He lived with us. He worked miracles and he wants you to be part of his covenant family. It's not by accident that the people of God reached the point where their faithfulness that they're willing to endure suffering, torture, and death in hopes of the resurrection. Why? Because wisdom incarnate demonstrates his faithfulness by suffering and dying and being raised from the dead. So in a way the Maccabees foreshadow the Christ that they're being faithful to God and ultimately await the resurrection. What Christ resurrection proves it's already here. What you hope for will happen. Why? Because I have been raised from the dead. So that's the Greek miracle folks. It took centuries and like I said nobody knows about it. I shouldn't say nobody. Now you guys know about it and a few other people outside of the group. So let's change that, right? We've changed the way parishes have Bible studies. We changed how Catholics now love the word of God. Let's fill them in on this Greek miracle. Right? Let's take the stuff that we learned and apply it to this culture that in many different ways. I mean in many ways it really does mirror what we're going on today. People need to hear about the faithfulness of God in the midst of trials and how those trials produce the fruit by which the gospel spreads throughout the entire world. So why don't we close with a Hail Mary. Name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace. So Lord's with you. Blessed are thou on the fruit of thy one Jesus. Holy Mary, Father of God, pray for us sinners. Amen. The Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.