Refutation of Matthew Nolan's The Mystery of the Melchizedek

This is a list of major errors I found in the introduction to Matthew Nolan's (Torah to the Tribes) video teaching series, The Mystery of the Melchizedek. He has comments turned off, so I couldn't reply there. 

Historical/Manuscript Errors

0:37 - Nolan says the Masoretes began to transcribe the text (presumably only of Psalm 105), but this is false. The Masoretes began ongoing transcription of the Tanakh in the 6th century and continued into the 11th century.

0:37 - Regarding Psalm 110:5 Nolan says "the ancient Hebrew and the Septuagint, which predates the Masoretic by 1200 years has "Yahweh at your right hand". As far as I can tell, all ancient manuscripts of the Psalms, Greek or Hebrew, have Adonai in this verse. I could find no evidence that it ever said YHWH. I don't believe that the Masoretes changed or hid anything in this verse and probably not in any others either.

1:00 - I don't believe Jasher is Scripture nor that it is the book mentioned in Joshua and 2 Samuel. The book known today as Jasher was probably written less than 500 years ago by Joseph ben Samuel and certainly after the New Testament. This can be demonstrated by looking at the Hebrew text, especially the vocabulary and style. In my opinion, Jasher is a book of traditional rabbinic stories, not history.

1:23 - He asserts that "Where in modern scrolls you would find YHWH, in the DSS you would find Melchizedek". This is, at best, a half truth. 11Q13 (The Melchizedek Document) is the only DSS text that I could find in which Melchizedek is substituted for YHWH. The DSS usually put Adonai when they translate to Greek and frequently even put YHWH in paleo-Hebrew script in Greek texts rather than daring to replace it with anything.

1:23 - He asserts that Isaiah 61:2 in the DSS says "to proclaim the acceptable year of Melchizedek", but this is confusing a paraphrased quote from a non-canonical work with the text of Isaiah itself. The quote is from 11Q13, which is a commentary that borrows some phrases from Isaiah and paraphrases them to make its point. The Scroll of Isaiah in the DSS says "the acceptable year of YHWH", and the Gospels confirm this when they quote Yeshua reading, "the acceptable year of the Lord". Kurios, not Melchisedek as in Hebrews 7. Why would Luke record kurios (literal Greek translation of Hebrew adonai), if Yeshua had read Melchisedek?

He says that we don't have the Hebrew of Isaiah that existed at the time of Yeshua, but the DSS preserves the entire book of Isaiah in Hebrew from before Yeshua's time, and it is virtually identical to the Masoretic Aleppo Codex of 930 AD, which also refutes his earlier assertion that the Masoretes changed the text to hide things. We absolutely do have the Hebrew text of Isaiah as it existed in the first century.

Linguistic Errors

0:44 - He says "order" means "in sequence". This is within the Greek semantic range of taxis, but not within the quoted Hebrew of Psalm 110:4 in Hebrews 5:6. Taxis here is a translation of Hebrew dibrah--as Nolan states--which refers to any pattern (e.g. "the order of primates") or arrangement (e.g. "the house is in order"). It doesn't mean "put in a sequential order by speaking it", except, by implication, in the sense of making a logical argument that progresses from one point to another. Taxis is used in the Septuagint to translate Hebrew midah (measure) in 1 Kings 7:37 and Hebrew sum (to set) in Job 28:3. Even more interestingly, Proverbs 31:26 Septuagint translates torah as "ennomos taxis" or "lawfully ordered". None of those are referring to a sequence of items, but to the shape or organization of things. "After the order of" in Psalm 110:4 and Hebrews 5:6 means "according to the pattern of" not "in a chronological sequence of".

0:45 - Nolan says "There is no grammar in Greek". All languages have grammar and Greek is no exception. It is impossible to communicate in any language without it. Greek has a complex grammar involving declensions, tenses, subject-verb agreement, word order, and more, just like other European languages.  "Remove the grammar" is a nonsensical statement. This leads him to misinterpret 2 Peter 2:5 as "Noah, the eighth preacher of righteousness". If eighth referred to preacher instead of Noah, then the word order would be different. Instead of "ογδοον νωε δικαιοσυνης κηρυκα" (eighth Noe righteousness preacher), it would say "νωε δικαιοσυνης ογδοον κηρυκα" (Noe righteousness eighth preacher).

Doctrinal/Hermeneutic Errors

0:58 - I think he's taking Romans 5:14 out of context and so misses the point of "death reigned from Adam to Moses". Paul didn't say death stopped reigning at Moses and certainly didn't say anything about an order of priests. He was pointing out that death reigned during this period when some people insist that there was no law (antinomians) or that the only law was conscience (Dispensationalists), so clearly there was a law, which is what allowed death to reign during that period and all the way up until today. And that law must have been something objective that everyone could know or else a guilty verdict would be unjust.

1:01 - He asserts that Melchizedek has no genealogy because he's not a Levite and so not connected to any of the priestly clans, but this is incorrect. He has no genealogy because he quite literally has no genealogy given in Scripture. He might have been Shem, but that is purely extra-biblical tradition. Melchizedek has no mother or father or genealogy recorded in Scripture. (Jasher was written long after Hebrews.)

1:16 - He says the war of Chedorlaomer was to break the bands of the traditions of the Melchizedek that came before them, but Genesis says he was putting down a rebellion of the cities of Sodom. His name wasn't mentioned because he was a descendant of Shem (all of the invading kings probably were), but because he was the high king of the invading alliance. 

1:26 - Josiah did not remove anything of value related to Melchizedek from the Temple. He did not remove everything "non-Levitical", but everything pagan. He removed the religious relics of Baal, Asherah, and other false gods.

1:49 - He says the order of Levi has been abolished and passed away, but this is in direct contradiction to the promises of God. Until every last male descendant of Aaron has died, the Levitical Priesthood must stand because God keeps his promises no matter what men do.

2:00 - He says that the "royal law" referenced by James is referring to the Melchizedek priesthood, but James himself says it refers to "You shall love your neighbor as yourself", which is a quote from Leviticus.

I didn't see any need to continue watching the series after this introduction. Either Nolan's scholarship consists of just making stuff up or he is caught up in an extraordinarily tangled web of delusions. In neither case would I ever listen to anything else he has to say on scriptural matters.