# Kabbalah and the Passion Translation > [!quote] > "Gnosticism is always every time a means of power for a specific group of people. There's never a place where you will find [gnosticism], secret knowledge, where it doesn't exist to make the people sharing the secret knowledge indispensable. You you wouldn't know this without me. You can't get to sod unless I tell you about sod." The Minor Prophets podcast (John Mark with researcher David) asks the question nobody had pressed in fifteen years of Passion Translation controversy: *what, specifically, were the secrets Jesus allegedly revealed to Brian Simmons?* There are three, and each fails differently. **Aramaic primacy** was taught worldwide for over a decade — "one of the cool secrets that I found is the Aramaic piece that has been missing." Simmons has now written privately: "I believe in Greek primacy, not Aramaic. I have scrubbed all those references to Aramaic," and "25 years ago I did get into Aramaic but have renounced it." The clips in evidence date from roughly five to thirteen years ago, not twenty-five. The showcase rendering (Luke 4:15, "offered everyone glory") traces to the website of Victor Alexander, an amateur filmmaker claiming a secret manuscript. **Homonyms** — Hebrew as a language where "every word has multiple meanings," licensing consonantal substitution. Applied to the cross it yields *kala* as both "it is finished" and "bride," hence "the last words of Jesus on the cross was bride. Bride. My equal." But the word in that sense is Hebrew, not Aramaic, which collapses Simmons's own heart-language premise; and in Syriac Aramaic the word also means foreskin and mosquito net. **PaRDeS** (peshat, remez, derash, sod), presented as "a 3,000-year-old acronym" given by the Lord, comes from the Zohar — the foundational text of medieval Kabbalah, roughly a millennium after Christ. It is not the Christian fourfold sense, which is unranked and contains a moral level; PaRDeS as taught here is a ladder whose point is to reach the esoteric floor. Two things make the episode more than a takedown. First, the strongest evidence is forensic and checkable: Andrew Chapman corrected a Greek transliteration in a 2017 letter to Broad Street, made a small accentuation error of his own, and that error subsequently appeared in a printed TPT edition. Second, the hosts note the linguistic claims are not random — each terminates in the same doctrine, that the church becomes Christ's equal. The episode also registers a movement turn: Phil Mason, personally close to Simmons, retracted and published independent verification; and the hosts state that charismatics "owe an apology to those who have been trying to raise the alarm about the NAR ... we accused them of being bitter and jealous or having a religious spirit." ## Caveats The hosts are advocates, not neutral parties. Victor Alexander is repeatedly characterized in mental-health terms ("off his rocker," "having issues up here") where only his lack of credentials is relevant, and Candace Simmons's competence is dismissed more contemptuously than that of male figures with comparable credential gaps. Financial motive is pressed after explicitly conceding there is no evidence for it. The documentary core is strong; the surrounding rhetoric is not disciplined. ## Links - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Esoteric Method Manufactures Dependence on Its Initiator]] — the PaRDeS ladder is the mechanism: a reading method that requires an initiator makes the initiator indispensable - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Divine-Revelation Translation Claims Immunize a Work From Scholarly Critique]] — the Aramaic recantation is new evidence: the immunizing claim was withdrawn in private while the marketing built on it stayed in place - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Single-Translator Scripture Projects Without Team Structure Produce Doctrinal Advocacy Indistinguishable From Translation]] — the editorial thinness here (no editorial control for consultants, a spouse as first editor) is the structural evidence - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/The Passion Translation Is the NARs Scripture Distribution Vehicle]] — "mountains of influence" inserted at Psalm 72:3, Psalm 80:10, and Proverbs 8 is the distribution mechanism caught in the act - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Failed Prophecies Are Reframed Never Retracted]] — partial counter-example worth holding: this recantation is real, though it happened privately - [[3. Resources/Literature Notes/Lit · The high cost of false doctrine]] — companion in the same batch; this episode credits Holly Pivec by name for the "mountains of influence" find - [[3. Resources/MOCs/NAR and Charismatic Authority Critique MOC]] — applies-in: the MOC lists this note under Connected Notes (synthesis 2026-07-24). ## Source - [Reader: Kabbalah and The Passion Translation | Minor Prophets](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kyb61wjrgc3zz6cs3mp8kw0g) *(vault source note pending next Readwise sync)* - Phil Mason, "Statement on the Passion Translation" and "Who is Victor Alexander?" — linked in the episode description