Customer Reviews

Lost in Translation: Rediscovering the Hebrew Roots of Our Faith

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I found it difficult to know where to start with this critique so I'll begin with the sub-title "Rediscovering the Hebrew roots of our Faith". If this is what you really want to do then this book is not the one you should be starting with. To do that read Marvin Wilson "Our Father Abraham"; Oskar Skarsaune "In the shadow of the Temple" and Brad Young "Meet the Rabbi's". Also investigate the excellent material from "First Fruits of Zion", "En-Gedi Resource Centre" and other serious but accessible academics and speakers like David Bivin and Dwight Pryor.

This book which is written in a very easy to read style began with much promise, but I quickly grew uneasy as it progressed. It makes some very interesting statements as facts, but there were not adequate references (to my satisfaction) to back up or support what was being said. I was therefore never really sure that I could trust what they were claiming. This became more important as the book developed and moved into areas that the authors themselves admitted were controversial. They also make extensive use of the Book of Enoch to support their ideas. I know both Peter and Jude selectively quoted from Enoch, but that does not mean that we can do so freely and uncritically.

The book starts dealing with the language and culture of the second Temple period, and rightly stresses the importance of understanding this when reading and interpreting the scriptures. The next chapters on various types of Covenants and Betrothal are all very interesting but I would like to have known more about their sources to confirm and support the ideas that they were developing. This is important as their covenant themes are referred to throughout this and the following books.

I was very uneasy with the next chapter on "devils, demons and the nephilim". They admit that they are being controversial but I do not think that their case for demons being the departed spirits/souls of the nephilim is at all convincing or safe. I also felt that they were on dangerous ground with their treatment in Myths and Legends from around the world and what they call "counter-covenant". Moses was emphatic that we were not to enquire into how the pagans worshiped "their gods" and not to apply their principles to our faith (Deut 12:29-32). I am unhappy with a perspective which suggests that everything satan does has been copied from the true God, so there must be some truth in it. Even if that were true, it ignores the possibility that the truth has been so distorted that it is impossible to discern what that truth was. Best stick to what God has chosen to reveal than guess through what satan has "copied". Given that caveat I realise that some legends can be helpful in the corroboration of biblical stories like the flood, but I believe caution is advised where the bible is not so explicit.

There is a chapter on the Menorah and the tabernacle in which they blend in their thoughts on the various covenants. Without more references it was difficult to discern what was from an overactive imagination, and what was from genuine research. I understand the menorah theme will return in volume 2 as they attempt to expound on the Book of Revelation.

The book's chapter on the Festivals is too superficial for my liking and leaves too many gaps. I would advise anyone interested in the Festivals to read several of the many other books which are dedicated exclusively to them instead. The authors do concede that they have been unable to go into as much depth as they would like in all their subjects and suggest that more will be revealed in volume two.

There is also a chapter which tries to marry the science of colours and what is claimed to be their meanings in the scriptures. This is then linked with the different covenants God made with various men and mankind, and interpretations are made from this. Hmmmm.

Some of the statements made suggested that the authors' outlook and research was restricted. For instance they refer to the days of the week being named after Hellenistic or Scandinavian deities. This is true in English, but not all languages. In Spanish and Portuguese for example, "Saturday" is named "Sabado" -from the Hebrew Sabbath. This meant that some assumptions applied to Anglo-American culture, but not for others. In this internet age when book markets are now truly "global", I think we should take more care. It can undermine your argument when you are read by people who live where what you say is not true.

Overall I felt the scholarship in this book was amateur. When making new and controversial claims, you really have to have better references from kosher sources to support your position. I intend to read volume two, but am going to be on my guard. I certainly would not recommend this book to any one new to Christianity or to the Hebraic roots of the Christian faith. I am reminded of the advice of the sages concerning the first two chapters of Ezekiel. These are read at Shavuot/Pentecost which includes celebrating the giving of Torah. The advice is not to seek mystical experiences or revelation until you are first firmly grounded in Torah or scriptures. In line with this I would counsel leaving this book until you had several years of reading other foundational sources such as mentioned at the beginning of this review.
Review

I could not recommend this book more highly. The authors give convincing evidence and argument demonstrating that the bible originally composed in Hebrew rises to over 90 percent. Their are several scripture verses discussed in which the depth of the meaning just doesn't come over from the Greek translation, and it makes much more sense in context when explained from the Hebrew language and the cultural background. The study of the Hebrew betrothal to marriage process is so very interesting and it is impossible to really understand many of the things Jesus said and the book of revelations without understanding that. They discuss the four cups of wine involved in the betrothal process and what they mean. How much meaning does the words of Jesus in the garden, 'if it were possible let this cup pass from me, however not my will but yours be done.' In reference to the cup of suffering, one of the betrothal cups! Nothing Jesus said or did was without great meaning, if we understand it as He meant it. The Lord's words, 'I go to prepare a place for you' are another milestone in the betrothal process! There is teaching regarding the menorah, the Festivals, & Color. All of these subjects are brought out richly through how God instructed the ancient Hebrews and Israelites. There is also a good teaching on the book of Enoch, which was part of the Hebrew scripture's cannon at the time of Christ, and was referred to by many other book of the bible. The book of Enoch was found intact with the Dead Sea scrolls, the old manuscript of the old testament ever found. The Menorah becomes a literal framework for the book of Revelation. If you are a serious student, or just a lover of God wanting to understand His revelation to us in a deeper way, you will want this book.
It is a wonderful, deep and balanced teaching. I appreciate the work of the authors, and can not wait for the next book in the series.

I read this book and was impressed with its remarkable insights into ancient Hebrew perspective, culture and biblical exegesis. The authors' focus is not only about devils and demons; they also cover topics from the Bible's Hebrew origins, to the understanding of covenant, the Jewish Feasts, as well as a refreshing look on ancient mythology. What's more, they profide great historical and scriptural evidence to support their views. I would highly recommend this book to all my friends! Buy it!! Understand however, that this is a new and improved revision of the authors book "Devils and Demons and the Return of the Nephilim", published with a new title and cover.

This book is absolutely incredible but let me get straight to my complaint. I was so thrilled with it I ordered the book ,"Devils and Demons, the return of the Nephilim" by the same authors. ITS THE SAME BOOK! So I would recommend the book but don't think you are getting a different book with a different title. Buy only one with whatever cover you like best.

I bought volumes One and Two of this series with a good deal of anticipation, but regret to have to admit that I have been greatly disappointed.
The Prophetic Word has been my special area of study since 1974, when I experienced the spiritual rebirth after reading Hal Lindsey's LATE GREAT PLANET EARTH. What a difference that simple act made in my life! But it did nothing to diminish my natural German skepticism. I scripturally verified every claim Hal made in LATE GREAT.. and have been "verifying" and "double checking" all End-Time prophecy literature I've encountered ever since!
The two overriding impressions these volumes left me with were boredom and confusion. The authors have a tendency to repeat themselves, over and over again. These books could easily have been cut by at least two-thirds if the writers had just stated their points (the covenants and the ancient Hebrew betrothal/marriage traditions) once and then kept referring the reader back to this section whenever necessary.
Volume One, to begin with, is replete with theories and allegations that have little or no bearing on any solid Biblical support. They seem to be adrift between the realms of allegory and just plain old wild leaps into fantasyland. There is not enough space in this revue to cover all the points of contention in this Volume, so I will only touch upon a sample or two.
In Chapter Four, where the authors' foray into their fantastic theories begins in earnest, Klein and Spears claim that in the end times demons will even mate with human women to produce a population of baby demons, the Nephilim, as touched upon in Genesis Chapter Six, and described in considerable detail in the book of Enoch, which book, by the way, was not included in the official canon of Scripture. Why not included? Because the Holy Spirit didn't want it there!
One must keep in mind the Biblical admonition of, "...having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof..." ( 2. Tim. 3:5, KJV). God's Holy Word was neither written nor compiled into any canon by mere men. It was dictated by the Holy Spirit to human scribes and compiled into the "official church canon", also by Him, exactly the way God wanted it compiled. The Church, again, only did the "legwork". That is why, among other things, this so-called "incomprehensible" book of Revelation ended up in the canon anyway, despite opposition -- and the book of Enoch didn't.
Timeframe is the problem with this allegation. Seven years - not the twenty or so it would take these Nephilim to be conceived, born and grow up. The Holy Spirit would not allow the earth to be populated with significant numbers of Nephilim before that, I wouldn't think. The Biblical evidence Klein and Spears set forth for this theory are Jeshua's words in Luke 17:29 (NAS)
"... These will keep on eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, buying and selling, until ...it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all." (Luke 17:29, NAS).
Instead of following the basic Scriptural tenet of Context, in their zeal for hidden Hebrew meanings, they see demons mating with humans -again! - when the Lord's listing of common human activities clearly means "business as usual" in the context of this discourse.
In the lovely passage of Matthew 23:37, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling," Klein and Spears try to force a secondary meaning of a Hebrew marriage ceremony metaphor into it; like a square peg into a round hole it fits. What has the impending destruction of Jerusalem to do with a marriage feast? Again! Context is being ignored. Hebrew metaphors are terrific, but they need to fit into the subject matter of the passage.
I would not recommend this tedious, confusing, poorly written book to anyone. The best in-depth analysis ever written - yet - on the book of Revelation is Hal Lindsey's THERE'S A NEW WORLD COMING. It's available from Amazon. For a solid grounding in the Prophetic Word I would recommend it.

First the good - there are some interesting facts in the book regardng Jewish practices and so when you first begin to read it, you begin to think that it is going to live up to the promise of its sub-title.

However as you get further into the book, facts are replaced by opinion and theory. There is of course nothing wrong with opinions and theories but particularly in regard to theology, you need a lot of reference material, especially scriptural, to support your particular theory and interpretation over and above those of others.

As has been remarked by another reviewer, the substantiation for the theories is often somewhat sparse and as many of them are very well defined and precise but also very contraversial, the requirement for support for them is so much greater. This applies especially to the distinction between types of angels and the definition of demons. There seems to be a desire to distance God from the death of people as in the explanation that all the people killed in the flood were actually tainted by Fallen Angel genetics and therefore not really human. A suggestion is also made that such 'nephilim' still exist today and although they look like people, they really are not human but essentially demonic. This seems to be going towards some very dangerous territory.

As you go on through the book, you find factual errors, which begins to undermine yout confidence in whether the earlier information was accurate or not, as well as giving even less confidence in the poorly supported theories. Examples are that Abadon (who is described as a fallen angel from the top rank of angels along with the Satan) actually killed the first born in Egypt, being given the title of 'Angel of Death' to support that. This again appears to be an attempt to distance God from death of people but Exodus 11 and 12 are quite clear that it was the Lord himself who did the killing, so this assertion is scripturally quite wrong.

There is an assertion that Enoch was included in the Hebrew Canon as part of the Tanakh and this is then used as support for using Enoch on the same basis as scripture. Enoch is a very interesting book and does throw more light on many things and it is true that it was regarded highly in Jewish history but it was not considered to meet the necessary criteria for inclusion in the Tanakh and thus never was included. There are in fact no books in the Tanakh that are not included in our Bible. This factual inaccuracy is very misleading.

The section on colours was the part which totally destroyed my faith in the book. If you are going to relate physical things to spiritual meanings, you do need to get your physics right! The primary light colours are listed as Red, Yellow and Blue in the book whereas of course anyone with any elementary knowledge of Physics will know that they are actually Red, Green and Blue. The book states that Green light is composed of Blue and Yellow Light (and thus a secondary colour). This is of course completely the wrong way around and yellow is actually the secondary colour produced by a mixture or red and green primary colours. Their rainbow also has purple in it which I presume means violet but these are actually two different colours. As the proposed theological significance is based on this totally incorrect primary and secondary colour definitions, no credence whatever can be placed on it. That you could publish a book with such elementary and easily checkable errors does the authors no credit at all.

I have awarded one star as some of the early material in the book relating to fact rather than opinion is quite interesting but there are so many better books around on the Jewish basis of the Christian faith. I was convinced to buy this book at a Christian festival by a man who was very confident about its merits. I should have known better. My advice in regard to buying this book is don't!

This is an amazing book! The authors explore the covenants of the Old Testament, and the continued covenants in the New Testament. They were covenants, not testaments. Legally, quite different. And the difference between the way a Greek mind was trained to analyze writings vs. the Hebrew mind is very revealing as to why the Hebrew parts have been passed down through the ages much better than the Greek parts. An exciting read that will explode your faith!

I was very disappointed in this book. Having studied Covenant in great depth for many years I was excited to see that there was a lot of information on the topic in this book. The author/s quote H Clay Trumbull at the start of the book. That was a good start because Trumbull, whose books were written over 100 years ago, is the best author on the topic of covenant. After that, however, this book went downhill. According to the authors a blood covenant is only a covenant of servanthood, not of friendship. They give Abraham as an example of such a covenant relationship. Yet, if they actually read all of Trumbull's books they would know that in the days of the Patriarchs, and even up to the days of David - and probably even the days of Jesus - they called someone 'friend' only if they had entered into a blood covenant with them. This is why the Bible calls Abraham God's friend. And I won't even start on their take on the Nephilim ... their bad handling of covenant was enough to turn me OFF.

By the way, the Product Description says, "relies 100 percent on the Bible as the ultimate authority" ... I did not find that to be true... They take much of their opinions of demons and nephilim etc out of the book of Enoch, not the Bible. And the Scriptures they are using from the New Testament for the Nephilim are Scriptures about people in the Early Church who were false teachers / causing trouble. Well ... 20 years ago there was a wave of people accusing others of being undercover Satanists in churches... if this book catches on you will see a similar wave - except people will be calling their brothers and sisters in the Lord "Nephilim" instead.

Too bad I bought BOTH of their books... what a waste.

Lost in Translation: Rediscovering the Hebrew Roots of Our Faith is one of the best treatments of the issue concerning the "Nephilim" (Heb. "naphal": cast down, to fall) giants, or men of "renown" (in Heb. "shem", or base character) listed as adversaries of Israel in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Old Testament. The first instance of these beings is in Genesis 6:4.

Klein and Spears are both known as teachers of the Hebrew scriptures, and in "Lost In Translation", the reader will not only find a wealth of practical knowledge, they will be endued with a new (or renewed) appreciation for the Hebrew language. The authors are obvious scholars, but unlike the majority of scholars who publish to inform, the authors haven't lost the sense of joy, the eagerness that comes with learning and discovery; their love for the subject is infectious. That mix of scholarship and joyful exuberance came through for this reader with each chapter and each turned page. Klein and Spears present for our benefit an understanding of the high premium that God, the Lord, places on confirming His covenants. Considering both of the Testaments from an exclusively Jewish perspective is the key to experiencing the text's fullness; appreciating it a lavish gift given by a supernatural Source, God Himself. "Lost In Translation" is an accomplishment, because it does all I've described, without being overbearing.

Believer's, I don't mean to preach, but: Jesus Christ is Jewish! So many Christians today often find themselves perplexed, when some aspect of their Christian life and service draws the hostile fire of God's avowed and terribly vicious enemies. The Bible indicates that effective ministers and practitioners of the Truth, should be prepared to encounter harassment from the world, the flesh, and likewise, the devil (Ha Satan). We (including myself) should be proactive in prayer and well-armored up for longterm siege; spiritual warfare. Knowledge of even the basics of the Hebrew language dramatically enlarges one's biblical understanding, concerning the identity of our "unnamed" false accuser (his name is not "Lucifer": buy the book and be informed...)- what motivates the devil and his fallen armies, and why these once glorious beings are employing every means and stratagem to effect mortal harm to us and to those tied to us.

This book isn't wartime propaganda, it is invaluable truth; heavenly weaponry. The better we understand it-- fully and exactly, what God has already given in His Word, the more liberty all believers in Yeshua will know. It was given for advancing the conquest and cause of Yeshua! We who love Him really must seek to arm ourselves as fully as possible, especially in this latter day. It is knowledge that is our primary weapon; it is the lack of knowledge that destroys the people of God, and He laments over it.

["Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know." Jeremiah 33:3 NASB]

This book told me things I did not know, much of it due to my own passivity. I had not chosen to avail myself to search out what can be known. I pray the Jeremiah 33:3 promise myself every day, and "Lost In Translation" became an answer to that prayer, the first resource God made available to me in the process of assimilating the unknowns that can be known, if you simply search for them, and start reading. I came away from "Lost In Translation" thinking: "Wow, no wonder Jesus loved the Torah, and no wonder He always quoted from the Tanakh!"

We really should love the Jewish culture. We should want to understand, even participate, in Israel's feasts and festivals. We should make it a personal quest to grasp, as best we can, the mindset of the common Israelite. He's still calling Israelites today! It is from a Hebrew mindset that Yeshua taught His students, who called Him their beloved "Rabbi". "Lost In Translation" identifies by its own title, what believers indifferent to Hebrew, are missing out on; it could enlarge their devotional time, needful for complete apprehension of scriptural promises, and in counseling one another-- all of these things are enhanced with an understanding of Hebrew.
I really could go on, but people disdain reading and preaching; I'll tie this baby up.

It's all about how much Truth you want to apprehend-- how much you want to know Jesus.

Hebrew scripture, the Bible, is a ready study for the simple (which applies to me...); and simultaneously, it is food for kings (or aspiring kings) who intend to fully search out matters; to plunder the Word, so to speak, as much as they find they are able. There are myriad truths as yet uncovered, still preserved therein, in living letters and prophetic pictures. God will go as deep as you want to go! The first step is simply knowing: Through the Hebrew, God still speaks the same truths that have been before our faces the whole time, though certain steps are necessary to fully appropriate it. How can one live something he has not understood?

Read (more than once) "Lost In Translation". Klein and Spears provide insights that are worthy of consideration, retention, and deep reflection. I am eagerly anticipating the release of Klein and Spears' next book...

I highly encourage everyone to recover what has indeed been "LOST IN TRANSLATION" with this book and following volumes in the series. The only thing that makes me sad is that so many preachers have mislead so many people because they did not focus on what the Word of God really says and talked so long based upon what they were also mis-taught. This book and series will open your eyes and clear away a lot of fiction and misguided theory we have all heard. A great study for those who believe in a perfect God who lives, loves us, is all knowing and told us the Truth.