2 Maccabees

But, I mean, I think there is a useful connection there.

I don't know, though, that I would use this, at least not, I wouldn't put a lot of weight on it, as a way to demonstrate the inspiration and the fact that 1 and 2 Maccabees belong in the canon of Scripture.

I mean, that's settled already.

The Church has said for quite a long time that those books belong in the canon.

So it is interesting to note that, but I wouldn't use it personally as an argument to say, therefore, because we see in 1 and 2 Maccabees the Feast of Hanukkah, which is not mentioned by that name in the New Testament, we can therefore assert that those books belong in the canon.

I think that's a bridge too far to make that argument.

They do belong in the canon, and there are other reasons to say so.

Let me put it that way.

We'll get into more of this and how all of this came to be, but in the Catholic Bible, there's a book called 2 Maccabees.

And in it is a really important story from Jewish history about a battlefield, and this is sort of how it goes.

There's a Jewish army led by a commander named Judas Maccabeus, and he had just won a pretty brutal fight.

But regardless, there's a second problem here, and this is a scriptural one.

Remember how we talked like, "Hey, praying for the dead and, you know, offering things for the dead is biblical.

It's in 2 Maccabees"? The story where the guy like offers up the prayers and the payments for the dead soldiers that have like the pagan sort of, uh, you know, like, like, uh, idols on them, well, that book isn't in every Christian Bible.

Yeah, the reformers rejected what is called the Deuterocanonical Books.

The British Israelites believe that this old man was Jeremiah, accompanied by his servant, Baruch, his scribe who wrote down his story.

In the book of II Maccabees, it says that the prophet Jeremiah escaped the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and took with him the Ark of the Covenant and a couple of other temple vessels.

The British Israelites believe that Prophet Jeremiah brought the Ark of the Covenant with Tea Tephi to Ireland.

That's theory number seven.

But I was thinking there's a lot of beliefs here.

that Catholics hold, and I was recently confirmed back in Pentecost, so I'm kind of exploring a ton out here, and there's a lot of stuff that we could point to back in the Old Testament, and I was wondering what in the Old Testament, besides 2 Maccabees, because that's the place where we see, hey, there's prayers for the dead.

That would point to kind of like a post-mortem state where prayers are useful, right, in something like purgatory.

So I'm wondering, are there any other contemporaneous sources in the Old Testament, in any of those time periods in the Old Testament, whole era, where we see in the Jewish belief, and even some of their own sources, non-Biblical sources, Yeah, they believe in some sort of post-mortem cleansing that could either be purgatory itself or something that is pointing to the deeper reality of, I don't know.

Do you hear what I'm trying to ask?

Yeah, yeah.

So with regard to other Jewish sources, Jewish sources outside of the Old Testament, do they attest to any sort of relationship between those who have gone before us and us here on earth? And if that's what you're asking for, as I hear you asking, then the answer is yes, something besides 2 Maccabees, right? And I do point this out in my book, in my section where I talk about how at least some understanding of purgatory is part and parcel of the Jewish theological milieu, as attested to in 2 Maccabees 12, but also in the Tosefta, a compilation of Jewish oral law from the late 2nd century, the period of the Mishnah.

there's a passage in there where it talks about three classes of souls, one of which would be the wicked, like for Gehenna.

The British Israelites believe that this old man was Jeremiah, accompanied by his servant, Baruch, his scribe who wrote down his story.

In the book of II Maccabees, it says that the prophet Jeremiah escaped the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and took with him the Ark of the Covenant and a couple of other temple vessels.

The British Israelites believe that Prophet Jeremiah brought the Ark of the Covenant with Tea Tephi to Ireland.

That's theory number seven.