Ep 31: The Ten (ish) Commandments

00:00The idea is basically you're paying money so that you don't have to sacrifice this animal

00:07or this child.

00:08It's a nice donkey you got there, I hate for anything to happen to it.

00:13You know, you give us a little bit of money, where we'll let it go.

00:18Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:22And I'm Dan Beecher.

00:23And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast where we seek to increase public access

00:28to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about

00:34the same.

00:35How are things today, Dan?

00:38It's grand.

00:39It's all decalogue all the time today.

00:42And I'm having a screaming good time.

00:45It's a beautiful fall day here in Salt Lake City.

00:48Yep.

00:49It's commandments, commandments, commandments.

00:51You can run into a whole seat, but you'll only need the edge.

00:55Well, we've been hinting at it.

00:57We might as well just launch into our first segment.

01:00It's the law.

01:02It's the law, dang it.

01:05Okay.

01:06We are.

01:07We're talking about the 10 commandments today, that specific segment of the law, except we

01:12get a bit of a problem here.

01:14Yeah.

01:15Which is that?

01:17Which 10 commandments are we talking about?

01:19Yeah.

01:20It's funny because, you know, you get, you know, there have been controversies in the

01:26last, you know, 10 years about people wanting to put the 10 commandments up in the courthouse

01:32here in the United States or in, you know, in the state capital of whatever, you know,

01:38Arkansas or whatever.

01:40And then people are like, yeah, no, separation of church and state.

01:43But then what nobody's yelling about is like, but which 10 commandments though?

01:48Which is funny.

01:49And you don't think that there could be any question about that until you look up the

01:53Wikipedia article on the 10 commandments.

01:57And there's a table that's like showing you all of who thinks which is, you know, who

02:04thinks what is which commandment and all sorts of stuff.

02:08And let me tell you something.

02:09They don't agree.

02:10Yeah.

02:11Yeah.

02:12We've got several different verses, in fact, and in order to get 10 out of them, you have

02:17to kind of combine some and divide some a little bit and are you including the very

02:24first or the second verse of, of Exodus 20, if that's your 10 commandments or is verse

02:32three the first and is 10 about coveting all these things plus someone's wife or is that

02:40a separate commandment?

02:41And then the biggest problem though, I want to start off pointing out those that Exodus

02:4520, this is traditionally where we get the 10 commandments from, okay, right.

02:50It's nowhere referred to as the 10 commandments.

02:54And we get an almost identical list of laws in Deuteronomy five, again, nowhere referred

03:01to as the 10 commandments.

03:04So where we get in this 10 commandments title from, well, it actually comes from another

03:09set of 10 commandments that is found in Exodus 34 at the end of Exodus 34, 28.

03:16And this is after the commandments are listed.

03:18You had this statement that Moses wrote all these things down.

03:25He wrote the tablets or he wrote upon the tablets, the words of the covenant.

03:30And then in Hebrew, it says, a set at Hadvarim, which would be the 10 words.

03:37And in the ancient Greek translation of this, the Septuagint.

03:40It's to Zekalos or the Decalogue.

03:45So it's in later translations of this into other languages that we go from 10 words to

03:51like 10 principles, 10 concepts.

03:57And then ultimately we get the 10 commandments, commandments.

04:01Not a great translation of Devatim, which just means words or issues, concepts, if it

04:06were meets vote, that would be a little easier as commandments.

04:11Okay.

04:12So we've got our 10 words, but I think that if people are looking at Exodus 34, they're

04:17going to be surprised by what the 10 words are.

04:21Yeah.

04:22It's missing what we generally associate with the 10 commandments, which is our little,

04:27our little listicle that we are so fond of, of quoting.

04:32Yeah.

04:33It's got like, you shall not make cast idols.

04:36That sounds familiar.

04:37That seems like in there.

04:39But then immediately after that is the commandment of that everyone's familiar with, you shall

04:44keep the Festival of Unleavened Bread, which doesn't feel like one of the ones that Roy

04:54Moore wanted on the courthouse back in the day.

04:59Yeah, and depending on where you start the, the commandments in Exodus 34, which by the

05:06way, are usually referred to by scholars as the ritual decalogue because it's a lot more

05:11focused on ritual and festival than it is on what we might label ethical issues.

05:18So a lot of people refer to what we find in Exodus 20 and in Deuteronomy 5 is the ethical

05:23decalogue, whereas here we have the ritual decalogue, but it starts off with in verse

05:2911, 34, 11, if you're following along at home.

05:34God says, you know, observe what I command you.

05:37I will drive out the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Parazites, the Hivites and

05:41the Jebusites.

05:42Don't make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to where you're going.

05:45It will become a snare among you.

05:47You've got to tear down their altars, break their pillars, cut down their Asherim, and

05:52then parenthetically, we get this statement for you shall worship no other God because

05:57Adonai, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God.

06:01So we're just kind of telling a bit of a story.

06:04It's commandments kind of embedded within God seemingly wagging their finger at the people

06:11of Israel.

06:14And you will take wives from among their daughters for your sons and their daughters who prostitute

06:18themselves to their gods will make your sons also prostitute themselves to their gods.

06:22So it's kind of warning about all these things.

06:25Oh yeah, don't make cast idols.

06:27So suddenly we it's almost like they're pulling from the traditional 10 commandments and just

06:32kind of sprinkling them in amidst these comments.

06:37Yeah, the first the first commandment feel in this particular Decalogue feels very xenophobic.

06:45It feels it feels it's like everybody else is bad.

06:48Only we are good.

06:50Also no cast idols, really.

06:54And don't forget the festival of unleavened bread and you can't forget that one when and

07:00then we get into probably what what is a secondary version of something that we find in the covenant

07:09code and the term covenant code is some that scholars use to refer to Exodus 20 verse 22.

07:16So immediately following our traditional 10 commandments to Exodus 23 verse 33.

07:22And a lot of scholars consider this to be the oldest layer of legislative material in

07:28all the Hebrew Bible and the language is a little idiosyncratic.

07:33It's kind of technical, it's it's basically an adaptation of some other ancient Southwest

07:40Asian law codes and specifically the laws of Hammurabi from about a thousand years earlier.

07:46And a great book that discusses the relationship of the two is a book by David Wright called

07:50inventing God's law.

07:52But in the covenant code, we have this commandment to sacrifice your firstborn child.

08:00The text literally says, you will give them to me and then immediately says, and you'll

08:05do the same thing with the first born of your oxen and your sheep.

08:09They'll be with their mother for eight days and then you will give them to me.

08:14And here.

08:15It's an awkward one.

08:16It's an awkward one.

08:17And we've talked about this one before on the channel and or on the channel on the podcast.

08:22Excuse me.

08:23And podcasts have channels.

08:25Is it a channel?

08:26Okay.

08:27I don't know.

08:28Who knows what anything means anymore?

08:29You know, this channel is, it feels like it's an old school TV reference and suddenly,

08:36and that feels impossibly antiquated at this point.

08:39So in in Exodus 34, we have a similar statement, all that first opens the womb is mine, all

08:46your male livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep, firstborn of a donkey, you will redeem

08:51with a land.

08:52So a lamb.

08:53So we get into this idea of redemption and it says, all the firstborn of your sons, you

08:57shall redeem.

08:59And so some scholars think the ritual decalogue is earlier than the Exodus 20 ethical decalogue.

09:06And this is based on this idea that Israel kind of evolved from being more concerned

09:11with ritual and cult to being more concerned with ethics.

09:16This is kind of an outdated model that that sees like the prophetic literature as kind

09:22of proto Protestants, faith alone kind of material and that trajectory is not taken too

09:29seriously by many scholars these days.

09:32Most would probably say Exodus 20 is earlier.

09:35Yeah, it seems hard to me to make the claim that like redeeming your firstborn son is

09:42less ethical than sacrificing your firstborn son.

09:46Not that I know, help me understand what redeeming means.

09:48I don't understand what redeeming, like redeeming a donkey with a lamb I'm lost.

09:56Does that mean we sacrifice the lamb because a donkey is too valuable to sacrifice or what?

10:01So it's, yeah, the word there is padah in Hebrew, which means to buy out.

10:10And so the idea is this is owed, but you can exchange rather than giving that you can give

10:17money instead so you can buy it out.

10:21And so the idea is basically you're paying money so that you don't have to sacrifice

10:28this animal or this child.

10:31It's a nice donkey got there.

10:32I hate for anything to happen to it.

10:34You know, you give us a little bit of money where we'll let it go.

10:38Yeah, there are some parts of this that sound an awful lot like a shakedown and it seems

10:42like just don't require the child to be sacrificed to begin with and there would be no need

10:48for a redemptive stop gap.

10:52You would just not have to sacrifice the child.

10:56Hey, look, the Lord works in mysterious ways.

11:00And well, particularly when it comes to these commandments because according to the narrative

11:04right before Exodus 34, the ritual decalogue, this is the second copy of the law because

11:10Moses broke the original copy and then God is going to re-inscribed the exact same thing

11:18onto this second copy, but it doesn't really match up with what we forgot some stuff.

11:24That could happen to anybody.

11:26And there's an interesting commitment in here that I've always found fascinating.

11:31This is Exodus 34, 23.

11:34Three times in a year, all your males shall appear before Adonai, the deity, the God of

11:41Israel.

11:42And this is found in a couple of other places.

11:43It's found in Deuteronomy 16, 16.

11:45We have references to it in places like Isaiah 1.

11:49I think it's verse 12 and elsewhere where it talks about how three times a year the males

11:56are going to go up to and it's always translated appear before God.

12:02But the funny thing is that in Isaiah's reference to it, we have the word for appear in the

12:10infinitive form and the consonants of the text are not the right consonants for understanding

12:18this word to mean appear, which would be the passive form of the verb to see.

12:23The consonants indicate that the verb there is an active verb and so do the prepositions

12:29and just the syntax of the sentence indicates that at least according to Isaiah, this commitment

12:36was not to appear before God, but to see the face of God.

12:40If you look in the Hebrew, it says, "Etpanai Adonai" or "Adon" or "Elohai Israel."

12:50And this means literally to the face of God.

12:54And according to the traditional understanding, reading it as a passive, it would be be seen

13:01to the face of God.

13:04But many scholars argue that that is a later alteration of what the text originally said,

13:11that it was intended to refer to seeing the face of God.

13:14And the idea here would be you go to the temple and you see the divine image and that is gazing

13:21upon the face of God, which is something that in the Psalms and elsewhere you have authors

13:26yearning for when we see your face.

13:29I mean, considering that you've said that they found evidence of cannabis on the altars

13:34of the temple, maybe they didn't see the face of God, you know, maybe that was an interesting

13:42way of wording that.

13:43Yeah, it's that and also I put some Biskov cookie butter and some Nutella together in

13:52a sandwich, and I saw the face of God, and I'm going to tell you.

13:55That'll do it, man.

13:56That'll get you there.

13:58Yeah.

13:59You'll either see the face of God or have to deal with diabetes for a while, one or the

14:04other.

14:05But no lighter required.

14:08So that's that's an interesting commandment that is probably reflective of this tradition

14:13that we find in Deuteronomy 1616.

14:16So there are folks who think that some of Exodus 34 is reflecting a Deuteronomistic perspective

14:22or at least is kind of riffing on a Deuteronomistic perspective.

14:26And I think this is one of the passages where we see that Deuteronomy 1616 probably is the

14:32original version of that commandment.

14:35But yeah, then we go and so this is a ritual commandments and then your favorite prohibition

14:42in the ritual decalogue is what?

14:45Yeah.

14:46Look, it's just common sense.

14:48You can't boil a kid in its mother's milk.

14:51Yeah.

14:52Everybody knows that, which is a there's not a lot of detail there.

14:57I assume we're talking about a goat in this case, not an actual child.

15:01That would be correct.

15:02You can't do that either.

15:03You can't boil a human kid in its mother's milk either, but yeah, we're talking about

15:07goats.

15:08Yeah.

15:09And that's covered elsewhere.

15:10But and it there's not a lot of detail here and we've had a lot of commentators over

15:15the over the millennia trying to figure out what on earth is the concern here?

15:20Why is this a problem?

15:21And then how is how far is the scope does the scope of this prohibition extend?

15:28And so this is the reason that anybody who offers to take a Jewish friend, a Burger King

15:35might be surprised by what they do and don't order.

15:38But you will not find on a lot of kosher menus, you will not find cheese being served with

15:45meats as a part of kind of a hermeneutic extension of this issue right here.

15:52That comes from this verse? Well, trying to contemplating what is the concern here and

16:00if if and then whatever we identify as the concern, does that impact anything else that

16:06we're doing?

16:07So no, no dairy with meat comes from just not boiling a kid in its mother's milk.

16:13It is is it is an extension of that within a broader kind of hermeneutic context.

16:18But yeah, that's where that comes from.

16:23The idea being don't cook meat and cheese or milk together.

16:29Okay, that really cuts out a lot of really delicious cuisine.

16:35I'm just going to say it.

16:37And then we get into verse verses 27 and 28, the Lord said to Moses, write these words in

16:44accordance with these words, I've made a covenant with you and with Israel.

16:47And then we get at the very end, these are the, uh, ah, set at Hadavadim or the 10 words.

16:54And so if you're going by what the text says, it seems like the 10 commandments, uh, refer

17:00specifically to Exodus 24, we have no such statement in reference to Exodus 20 or in

17:05reference to Deuteronomy five.

17:08So this should be what we're referring to, but this has not is not right because, uh,

17:15this Christianity took over, uh, the Hebrew Bible and decided we're going to rearrange

17:22things.

17:23We are going to figure out what we want to keep and what we don't want to keep.

17:26Uh, and primarily this served their own structuring of, of power and values, uh, so that they

17:33could do what they wanted to do and, uh, not feel bad because there's some commandment

17:38against this in the Hebrew Bible.

17:40I feel like it was a culinary choice.

17:42I feel like they wanted cheese and meat and, uh, well that surprisingly made some, some,

17:49some decisions based on that.

17:51There is an awful lot that has to do with, uh, with, uh, culinary conventions, uh, when

17:56we get into the book of Acts, for instance, we have the, uh, the idea of, uh, all foods

18:02being clean come is a metaphor for, uh, taking the, the gospel to the Gentiles in the book

18:10of Acts, but we have at the end of the Jerusalem council when, uh, in Acts 15, when they're

18:16trying to decide if things like circumcision are still going to be necessary for someone

18:20who joins Christianity, not from Judaism, but from the Gentile world.

18:24Uh, and when they, uh, get down to the end, they say, okay, great.

18:29That settles it.

18:31We're only going to require four things.

18:34And this is like the four commandments of Christianity that resulted from the Jerusalem

18:39council.

18:40They wrote a letter, they're sending it out to all the churches.

18:44And those four things are abstained from idolatry, from fornication, from eating blood and from

18:51eating things strangled.

18:54So you have, you have idolaty idolatry and, um, fornication.

18:59And then you have two, uh, prohibitions on eating certain types of food.

19:05Yeah.

19:06Uh, so we're carrying on one of some part of this kind of ritual ceremonial ideology,

19:12but then you get Paul in Paul's own writings who are like, none of that matters.

19:17Uh, Paul says, you know, and idol, we know that an idol is nothing in this world.

19:21And, uh, the only reason you should ever like avoid eating meat, sacrifice to idols as if

19:26it might, um, scandalize one of your weaker brothers or sisters.

19:32And so Paul doesn't care about that.

19:34And when we look at how Christians interpret the Bible today, who do you think they side

19:39with the Jerusalem council who said Christianity has four commandments.

19:43These are they or Paul who said, man, let's just do the, the first two.

19:49They side with Paul.

19:51And so now there aren't really any dietary restrictions for most Christianity, uh, even

19:57though if we go by a, the Bible says, so that settles it ideology, the Bible explicitly

20:04and emphatically says Christians should not eat blood or things that have been strangled.

20:10And if you go back to, you know, the Hebrew Bible, which Christians still revere, you

20:15got a whole bunch of other things that they're going to have to deal with too.

20:18Yeah. And those get, those get rationalized away, uh, in a variety of different ways.

20:23Some people say, well, uh, a law from the Hebrew Bible is only still in effect for Christians

20:27if it's repeated in the New Testament.

20:29Well, the whole blood thing is something that is in the Hebrew Bible and is emphatically

20:34repeated in the New Testament.

20:36And that is, uh, nobody cares about that anymore.

20:38Uh, other people say, well, there were ceremonial and moral laws.

20:44And so the ceremonial laws are done away with the moral laws we keep.

20:47And then later they added a, oh, they're also civic laws.

20:50Right.

20:51Um, and no such divisions are identifiable anywhere in the Hebrew Bible or in the New

20:56Testament.

20:57That is a second and third century Christian innovation.

21:00They said, well, we could say the ones we don't like are this and the ones we do like

21:05are this.

21:06Uh, so these are much later, uh, rationalizations of why we should hold on to the things we want

21:12to hold on to, which for some reason have an awful lot to do with what other people are

21:19doing together in the privacy of their own beds or the backseat of their Chevy novas

21:24or whatever.

21:26And a lot less to do with, uh, things like what you're eating, uh, or, you know, who you're

21:32oppressing or who you're, or yeah, or what to do when your ox falls in a hole.

21:38Uh, yeah.

21:39Yeah, I mean, picking and choosing seems to be the, uh, the, like there's nothing wrong

21:43with that.

21:44There's nothing wrong with like each group, each person finding what rules, what laws

21:50make most sense to their ethics, but you got to acknowledge that that's what you're doing.

21:56Yeah.

21:57Yeah.

21:58And it's inevitable.

21:59You have to.

22:00The Bible is, is not a consistent unified, univocal text.

22:02Uh, and if you want to leverage it as something authoritative, then you are going to have

22:08to say we're listening to this side and not the other side.

22:11But yeah, I think people ought to acknowledge that that's what they're doing and have the

22:15cards on the table regarding the methodologies that we're using and be consistent about it.

22:21And unfortunately, that's not what usually happens usually because people want the authority

22:26of the Bible, which is the highest authority ever.

22:29Nobody trumps the Bible.

22:30Uh, and so they're going to pretend that, well, this is what the Bible says, um, which

22:36is problematic indeed.

22:38Let's take a quick break.

22:39Uh, and then we'll come back and talk more about the decalogue.

22:43Absolutely.

22:44All right.

22:45All right.

22:46So, uh, we, we've talked a bit about picking and choosing.

22:50We've talked about the thing that the Bible calls the 10 commandments.

22:56Let's zoom in on the thing that we all call the 10 commandments, which is something totally

23:01different and has nothing to do with, uh, who's boy, what, what's boiled in who's milk.

23:07Yeah.

23:08So we, we find the, the traditional 10 commandments and Exodus 20.

23:11And then it's also repeated in Deuteronomy five.

23:14It's mostly the same, but there are some small differences.

23:17And this is one of the reasons, uh, Deuteronomy five is generally ignored in favor of Exodus

23:2220.

23:23Oh, so now we have what we understand today as the 10 commandments.

23:29Um, depending on what tradition you like and what text you like because the, uh, different

23:36traditions in the different texts, number them differently.

23:38Uh, and even if we go back to the Samaritan Pentateuch, which has a, a verse at the end

23:44that represents their 10th commandment, which is, uh, you shall set up these stones, which

23:49I command you today on Mount Gerazim.

23:52So yeah, I was surprised to see that one.

23:54I was, I was, whoa, whoa, we got a whole, the Samaritans are coming in hot with their

23:59own thing.

24:00Okay.

24:01Yeah.

24:02Which means they have to, uh, kind of move everything down, uh, a commandment so that

24:06the 10th can be, uh, this, uh, this verse that is, uh, that is coming in.

24:11So they're, their first commandment covers the first six verses of Exodus 20.

24:19And there are other traditions that, um, that agree with that as well.

24:23So when we line up what we have in the Septuagint, what we see quoted by, uh, early Jewish writers

24:30like Philo, uh, what we have in the Targumim, what we have in the, uh, the Syriac version,

24:37uh, what we.

24:38There's the Talmud.

24:39That's another.

24:40That has another.

24:41Yeah.

24:42Uh, we have, uh, traditional, uh, Christian version, uh, the difference, different denominations

24:49within Christianity will divide it up a little differently as well.

24:52For instance, within Catholicism, you have verse two, which says, uh, I am Adonai your

24:58God.

25:00That's a commandment or part of the first commandment according to, uh, Catholicism and, uh, the

25:07Talmud, but most don't consider that a commandment.

25:09They consider that kind of an introduction to just a, that's just a, an opening statement.

25:14Yeah.

25:15The preamble.

25:16If you will.

25:17Yeah.

25:18If you will.

25:19Yes.

25:20For, uh, the second commandment is thou shalt have no other gods before me.

25:26So I am Adonai your deity is a self contained single commandment.

25:31And then we move right on to commandment number two, uh, which includes, uh, you shall have

25:37no other gods before me and you shall not make any graven image.

25:41So these two are lumped together, whereas other traditions will, uh, divide them, no

25:46other gods before me is one commandment, you shall not make any graven image is a second

25:52commandment.

25:53Uh, and all, all these are efforts to make sure the number we arrive at is 10.

25:58So that tradition that we have yanked from Exodus 34 and brought over to Exodus 20 is

26:05governing, um, how we divide up these sense units, which I think is interesting.

26:11It's not letting the text operate on its own terms.

26:13Right.

26:14It's imposing this interpretive lens upon the text and it's not really changing a ton

26:19of things, but it is indicating that the tradition is what is most authoritative rather than

26:25the text itself.

26:26Yeah.

26:27Because when I read this, when I first read this, you know, you've got Moses goes up on

26:32the mountain and God says all of this stuff to Moses, it, there's nothing that indicates

26:39like this is one commandment and this is the next, as a matter of fact, you know, the way

26:43that I'm used to seeing these presented is a succinct little nuggets, but there's like

26:50a whole bunch of like stuff.

26:52It's not just, uh, you shall not make for yourself an idol.

26:57It's you shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in form of anything that is in heaven

27:02above or that is on earth beneath or that is in the water underneath the earth, like

27:06it goes on and on.

27:07And I had no idea that that was the case.

27:09Yeah, and this is because we're used to seeing them in kind of a condensed abbreviated form.

27:15Right.

27:16In fact, a lot of times you'll see people try to represent how this would have looked

27:20alike on, uh, on the tablets and they just have this, uh, abbreviated Hebrew that isn't

27:27even complete sentences, but yeah, the don't make a, um, a carved image, uh, or any likeness

27:34of anything that is in heaven above on earth beneath or that is in the water below.

27:38And this has been interpreted, interpreted historically as a prohibition on just any

27:43representation of animals and humans and buildings and things like this, which is why you have

27:49kind of an aniconic, uh, tradition within Judaism.

27:53Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, but let's save that for the, for the second segment

27:57because I do want to get into that a little bit because that when I first read it, uh,

28:02it reads very differently in like the, the King James version versus the, you know, the

28:08NSR V and I, I, and RSV, I get those letters mixed up, um, but yeah, I mean, and then as

28:16I was reading it, not only does it not specify the number 10 or, or like easily delineate

28:24out these different things, like if you move on to the next chapter, a whole bunch more

28:31commandments appear. So it's just, it just feels like it feels almost arbitrary that

28:36we've set aside this group and we've chopped it up to 10 when, you know, thinking, looking

28:43at how these various traditions have, have cut it up and stuff, you could easily have

28:4912, uh, and they would, and, and that would be, you know, that, that would be defensible.

28:56Yeah. And you could have, uh, 12a and then you could have, uh, uh, XO's 34 would be your,

29:05your 10b or whatever your JV squad of commandments. But within Judaism, I think the traditional

29:11number is 613 total commandments, but they get reduced down to 10 because they, these,

29:18the 10 here tend to have this kind of generic ethical tone to them. And so it's, uh, as

29:25we get into the Greco-Roman period and early rabbinic period, you have a desire to kind

29:30of systematize, uh, distill things down to underlying principles. And so the 10 commandments,

29:38uh, kind of encapsulate everything else that we find. And then we go even further and in

29:44the New Testament, and this is something you see within Greco-Roman period Judaism as well,

29:48it gets distilled down to the two greatest commandments. Love God and love your neighbor.

29:52And if you look at the first few commandments, this is about your relationship with God.

29:56If you look at the last five, six, however you number them, those are about your relationship

30:01with your neighbor. And so we've further distilled it down to just two commandments.

30:06All the law and all the prophets hang on these two commandments is a way to say we've got

30:12our 613 and then we can, um, whittle that down and down and down to 10 and we can even

30:19whittle it down further to two. Uh, so it's, it's a way of consolidating, uh, what we find

30:26in there. And they function as, as kind of mark keys or they function as, as proxies

30:32for the more detailed, um, commandments that we find elsewhere.

30:36That's, um, yeah, I find it interesting when you look at these, these 10 commandments,

30:41you find both ceremonial and moral, uh, commandments. So this later idea that, oh, everything that's

30:50moral is still in force. Everything that's ceremonial is, uh, has gone away would kind

30:57of, uh, tear apart the 10 commandments, but folks don't like to do that.

31:02That's true. Don't, don't chop it up like that. The six commandments. We'll just, we'll

31:06just whittle it down to the six, seven, seven chipmunks sitting on a branch, eating lots

31:11of, what is it? Peanuts? I don't know. You don't know where reference is. That's, uh,

31:18um, listeners will get that reference. Um, I'm sure, I'm sure somebody knows what you're

31:23talking about. Uh, one thing I find interesting is that Fylo, uh, is a Greco-Roman period Jewish

31:30philosopher and writer, uh, and Fylo changes the order of the thou shalt nots. Uh, once

31:38we get to you shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not, shall not

31:43steal. Fylo puts committing adultery the first. And so as you shall not commit adultery,

31:49you shall not steal, you shall not kill. And comments that this, I, the idea of adultery

31:56for him is kind of foundational to the rest of the law that everything else is kind of

32:01encapsulated in this, because he's, he's kind of, uh, analogizing, uh, and, um, Metaphorizing

32:09what's going on here. So switches up the order a little bit to serve his own, uh, rhetorical

32:14interests. Interesting. It seems like a sneaky move, uh, to just, to just flop things around,

32:22but okay. Well, yeah, and, and that's not the only time that Fylo, uh, fiddles with, uh,

32:29with the text a little bit. And so say, let's move this over here. Let's say this thing

32:33over here, uh, and even low. He's such a fiddler of that guy tradition. Um, and then, uh, Josephus

32:42is, uh, Josephus kind of retells a lot of the, uh, the biblical narrative as well and

32:47does similar things, uh, moving things around, uh, and in the Targumim, uh, the Aramaic paraphrases

32:54of the Bible, uh, they do the same thing in order to try to make it a little more relevant

32:59in order to gloss over inconsistencies in order to harmonize things. So this is not something

33:06that was unheard of at the time and, and for folks like Fylo, the, the text was not the

33:12locus of the authority. And so the text was not inviolable. It was the ideas and the text

33:20was just an iteration, a materialization of the ideals, but the authority was located

33:27in those concepts, not in their textual manifestation. Well, that just sounds crazy.

33:33You're saying that the ideas are the most important thing instead of just sort of whatever

33:39the words say that seems. Yeah. Imagine that. But today we think of, of the text as, as

33:45like our guarantor, that this is how the idea was articulated, but anciently, uh, that was

33:54the authority was opposite. The idea was most important, uh, because these are primarily

33:59oral cultures. These are cultures where most of the information was being exchanged orally

34:04rather than through text. And so that was just what was considered to be most authoritative.

34:11Interesting. Yeah. And, and the, you see kind of the transition toward the text within

34:17early Christianity in the first and second centuries. That's where you see a lot of this

34:22kind of switching where it's no longer the words of Jesus, but the writings about Jesus

34:28because, uh, the graphy, uh, were considered subordinate to the, the scriptures were considered

34:35subordinate to the words of Jesus because they were living words. The scriptures were

34:39dead letters. Right. And then as you get a few generations away from Jesus and there's

34:44not really a plausible case to make that you have heard the words of Jesus directly from

34:49Jesus or from one of his followers. Suddenly we need to write these things down. Yeah.

34:54Um, this needs to be less living, less living. Yeah. And so then, then we get the gospels,

34:59then we get, uh, things being written down, uh, although the agratha, the unwritten things

35:06still have authority for a couple generations, but eventually they go away as well. And the

35:10text becomes the locus of authority within Christianity. Well, I, I think this is all

35:16great. I'm loving it. Let's move on to our next segment, uh, so that we can actually

35:21zoom in and talk some about at least the first few of these, uh, commandments with a chapter

35:28and verse. All right. So I assume the chapter we're going to be doing is Exodus 20 since,

35:35I mean, those are the real 10 commandments since you already rejected the other one.

35:40You already told us they were wrong, poor dude, ironically. So, so yeah, I mean, here's,

35:48so one of the reasons why I thought that it would be a good idea to talk about, uh, what

35:53most people consider the first four commandments in the 10 in our top 10. Okay. Uh, is because

36:02it's the part that is kind of non transferable, non translatable. Uh, so when somebody like,

36:09this is the part that most people secular people like me, when someone like Roy Moore

36:15wants to put the 10 commandments on, you know, on the courthouse wall, these are the parts

36:22that don't apply to me. Like I can, I'm down with thou shalt not kill. That's fine. Some

36:26of the other things that, you know, I, I, you'd have to convince me why coveting is so bad,

36:32okay. But then there are these and I, you know, they're, they're very, very specific to the

36:40audience, uh, for which they were written. And they're also very, uh, there's a couple

36:48of them that I find that I think aren't as cut and dry as people want them to be as Roy

36:54Moore would make, would make them out to be. Yeah. So I'm excited to get into these. Yeah,

36:59talk to us about what we got here. So I remember in the movie, oh gosh, I watched it with my

37:04kids, uh, like a year ago and they were like, this is awful. Um, the Zora with, uh, Antonio

37:10Banderas, um, and even your kids rejected it. Oh man. They like the second one better,

37:18which I don't get. Um, but, uh, there's a part where he's, uh, he's hiding out in the,

37:26in the church and she comes into do confession and it's Antonio Banderas on the other side of the

37:32screen. And she says, uh, uh, I've broken the fourth commandment and he goes, do you kill somebody?

37:39And she goes, no, father, that is not the fourth commandment. Um, and, and I, I remember, uh, she

37:46says she, uh, dishonored her, her mother and father or something like that. And I went and

37:51looked it up and I was like, one, two, three, right? One, two, I was like, this doesn't seem to me

37:58to be the fourth commandment. Um, for some, uh, traditions, it's the fifth for others. Uh,

38:03it's the fourth. Okay. So, um, we'll, we'll throw it in, um, just because I think, I think it is

38:09interesting what's, what's going on in, uh, this, uh, particular commandment.

38:15Well, and, and, and if Banderas says it's so, then it must be so. Yeah. Who less than a 40

38:22than the Zorro movie is claiming this? And, uh, and the, he's pushing boots too. So, yeah. Um,

38:29although I don't know that there's a reference to the 10 commandments in, in Shrek, uh, and

38:33pushing boots. Um, so in order to get the fourth commandment to be honored, uh, father and my

38:39mother, the first commandment has to be two things. You shall have no other gods before me.

38:43You shall not make any graven images for yourselves. And the, the, have no other gods before me is

38:50an interesting one. Uh, a lot of folks will point out right off the bat. This seems to suggest that

38:54there are other gods out there. Yeah. Um, but this is making kind of ambiguous use of this word for

39:01God, Elohim, because anciently you use the word to refer to the deity itself, wherever it may be

39:09located and whatever form it may take, but you also use the word to refer to any, uh, material

39:17indices or material manifestations of that deity. So an idol, a divine image could be referred to as

39:25a God. Uh, and so you see this, uh, kind of pejoratively, you see mockingly, um, idols refer to as gods.

39:33Ooh, he's got his gods with him. Um, and, and that's kind of rejecting the fact that there are gods,

39:38but then within the biblical texts, they're, uh, the narrative also refers to idols, uh, and, uh,

39:46divine images, terra theme and things like that as gods in kind of an unironic, totally straightforward

39:52way. So the Bible itself seems to refer to divine images as gods. And so we could interpret this

39:58to mean, uh, you will not have any gods in the sense of divine images. And then the before me,

40:05um, actually in Hebrew is al-pani, which means over or against my face. And so one way to interpret

40:13this is to mean in our holy of holies where you have my divine image set up, you won't have any

40:19other gods on the other side of the room. You won't have any other divine images in front of me

40:26across from me by me. That's one way. I just don't, I just don't like looking at them. It's fine for

40:32you to have them. I just don't want to see them. Yeah. Get them away from me, kid. They bother me.

40:36Um, yeah, this is, uh, this, if we understand this to be primarily a commandment about worship,

40:46and I mean, it obviously is, then this has to do with the cultic centers and the sacred precincts.

40:54And in the sacred precincts, you had benches and rooms where you set up divine images.

41:00And this is true of the Israelites as well. We have uncovered Judah height temples

41:05that contain bench rooms and places where we have found different kinds of, uh, divine images.

41:13Uh, we have found, uh, at a rod, the, uh, holy of holies that had a standing stone set up

41:20in the holy of holies and had two, uh, incense altars in front of it. And so the earlier we go

41:27in time, the more and more sense to me, it makes to understand this to mean don't put any other

41:32divine images in my holy of holies. So it's kind of a, sorry, would that mean that it would be okay

41:41to have other divine images, ashra poles, for example, outside of the holy of holies.

41:47So this is, this is an interesting question. If it depends on what you think the scope of the

41:54commandment is, because we could say, you know, not in this room, but you could also understand that

41:59to mean, um, you're not supposed to do this at all, but it might not. We don't get any, uh,

42:06vilification of the ashra poles until the seventh century BCE with Josiah and Josiah's

42:12campaign of cult centralization, where it's not just ball who's being demonized and ball is being

42:18demonized because ball is the direct competitor to Adonai as the Northwest Semitic storm duty with

42:25home court advantage. Uh, and so prior to Josiah, it seems like they were worshiping, um, ashra as

42:34the consort, the partner of Adonai of the God of Israel. So it depends on when you date this. This

42:41does not go back to Moses. This is eighth, seventh, maybe ninth century BCE. And so if this predates

42:48Josiah, they might have been like, eh, not worried about ashra. Um, so it may, I mean, so it's a

42:56plausible interpretation of this commandment that it just means, yeah, go ahead and worship

43:03other gods, but like not in my room. Yeah. That is a, that is a plausible interpretation. However,

43:09when we get to the next commandment, uh, or actually, uh, commandment one B, uh, you shall not make any

43:16graven images. Oh, right. That seems like, uh, that is kind of, uh, cutting that off. It does. Never

43:23mind. That seems like a very big, uh, a very big no, uh, on that one. Although it says make for

43:29yourself in this one, it says they'll show you, you shall not make at least in man and man, the wording

43:35is so different between like the KJV and the NRSV. It is. Yeah. Yeah. And, and let's see, we got

43:42Lotha Salah, Pessel. So do not make for yourself or to yourself, uh, Pessel, which is, uh, an idol,

43:50a graven image, uh, or any, uh, Tamuna, which would be a form image likeness, uh, which is in the heavens

44:00above and which is in the earth beneath, uh, and which is in the seas beneath the earth. Yeah,

44:06the waters beneath the earth. And so the question then becomes, is commandment one B, uh, does that

44:14originate at the same time as commandment one A or does it come afterwards? Is it expanding the scope

44:20of commandment one A or was, uh, or is it clarifying the way it was always understood? Was it always

44:28there? Uh, we don't have enough data to answer that question. I want to stop on the, the graven

44:34image thing, because I don't know, uh, I don't know what it means. I don't know what a graven

44:39image is. Really. Um, you know, the NRSV has, you shall not make for yourself an idol. It doesn't

44:45use the term graven image. But the other thing is that it seems like it says no pictures. Like,

44:52if that's what it feels like it says to me is, uh, is, is you, you're not allowed to make pictures.

44:57And we know that that's, you know, I know, you know, the, uh, the, the Muslims have, have

45:04prohibitions against or used to have prohibitions against any, any imagery. Now it's sort of been

45:10interpreted to mean at least you can't make images of Allah. But you know, if you go into the Alhambra

45:18or something in Spain, you won't see, you'll see very pretty writing because they wanted to be

45:24decorative, but no portraiture of any kind, no, no paintings of any kind. So could this be a

45:33prohibition against, you know, paintings against imagery? Well, it seems, it seems unlikely in light

45:40of the fact that we have a commandments as they're building the tabernacle and later the temple

45:46to create images of cherubim to adorn the, the walls of the temple, which ostensibly are things

45:56that occupy the heavens. So it's, uh, this is a point of contention. Uh, it's all about what the

46:04scope of this commandment is because if it means in that holy of holies, then, you know, the cherubim

46:10would not be a violation of that. Well, I shoot, I don't remember if the cherubim are inside the

46:14holy of holies. At least it's very confusing. Yeah. Um, so graven, uh, means engraved. Right. So

46:24something that is carved chiseled cast. So it has to do with a divine image that has been produced.

46:31That's the whole idea that whether, uh, it is something that is cast or carved or, um, however,

46:38you are going to do it tatted. Um, you know, you just, uh, you don't want any such, uh,

46:45images being produced and whether or not this means don't make anything that is conventionally

46:51used in worship, like, you know, an image from the, don't make a deity, whether it's in the skies,

46:56whether it's in the seas beneath the earth, whether it's on the earth, don't make that thing,

47:00or whether it's don't make anything at all, um, is not clear from the text itself

47:06and is not clarified by the context given, uh, that we're making images of other things later on.

47:12And then within Greco-Roman period Judaism and late antique Judaism, you have a tradition of,

47:17including a lot of imagery in, uh, mosaics, uh, the altar that was found in Magdala,

47:25uh, in the synagogue there, uh, depicts, like the temple and depicts other things like that.

47:32It's not, it's not depicting a bunch of deities or anything like that. At least not in this part

47:37of town. The Dura Europa's, uh, synagogue is doing those kinds of things. And so it's,

47:44the history of interpretation is mixed, but I don't think we can, um, delineate a clear scope

47:51based just on the text alone. All right. That's, uh, that's very confusing, but I guess we'll just

47:58keep going. And then, um, in verse five says you will not bow down to them or serve them, uh,

48:04two different, uh, verbal roots that are conventionally translated worship, uh, for I,

48:09Adonai, your God, I'm a jealous God. And here we have the accurate use of the word, well, I'm not,

48:15I'm not going to be a, uh, prescriptivist, but I was going to say, are you defining things, Dan?

48:20No, no, that's, um, uh, so the word jealous, a lot of people, um, use jealous to mean envy,

48:28which is fine. I do it all the time, but I used to get harassed a lot, uh, by people who'd be like,

48:34Duh, doesn't mean envy jealous means you, you have something and you don't want anybody else to have

48:39it either or to take it from you or something like that. But that's exactly what this means. God

48:44has your worship and does not want you worshiping anyone else. So God is a, is a jealous God,

48:51therefore don't worship, uh, other deities, which is interesting because it does seem like

48:57the, uh, the implication here is that there are other gods who are less jealous. But yeah,

49:03I'm particularly jealous. You got it. You get, and since I'm your guy, you got to go with, with,

49:09with my rules here. And, uh, and I think there are a lot of scholars who would argue this,

49:13this idea of a jealous deity kind of begins with Josiah, where Josiah is trying to centralize worship

49:20and consolidate power and say you can now only worship in the one temple. You can only worship the

49:26one God. You can only use the one priesthood, all of which happen to be under my control.

49:32So it, it makes an awful lot of sense for the idea of the jealous God to arise within a deuteronomistic

49:39context. Authoritarianism is, is at very least simple. It's a hell of a drug, um, to quote the

49:47great poet. Um, yes. Yeah. And then, uh, let's see how we're, uh, we're numbering them. Uh, and then we

49:54have, uh, you shall not take the name of Adonai, your God in vain, which is something that gets

50:02quoted an awful lot that a lot of people think means you can't use naughty words. You know what?

50:09Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to say, let's take a break and we'll come back and talk

50:14about what it actually means to take the name of the Lord in vain. Good tease. Okay. All right.

50:21So we're back. Uh, KJ V says, take the, don't take the name of the Lord in vain. That is not

50:27what the NRSV says. Uh, the NRSV says, uh, let's see, do, do, do, do, do. You shall not make wrongful

50:35use of the name of the Lord, your God, which makes a lot more sense to me, uh, as a, as a translation.

50:44Yeah. I don't know. Uh, talk to me about what scholars believe this is actually saying,

50:50because yeah, you mentioned earlier that like, it's probably not about, don't say swears.

50:56Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely not about that. Um, but the, uh, the Hebrew here is interesting.

51:01Low T saw at Shem Adonai, Lohaka, uh, La Shav and, um, T saw is, uh, the verbal root there is nasa,

51:11which means to lift to bear or to carry. And so it's literally don't lift up. Don't bear, don't

51:18carry, uh, the name of Adonai, your deity. And then, uh, La Shav means falsely, um, empty vein.

51:29So with, uh, with, to no effect, uh, in a way that's worthless, something like that.

51:36And so I, a lot of scholars have, have commented that this seems to be coming in a, in a time when

51:42the, again, going back to the ritual context in what ritual context could the name of God

51:49be lifted up or born or carried? And, uh, a lot of scholars would point to the use of the name in

51:56oaths where, um, frequently there was some kind of gesture, some kind of, uh, lifting up

52:03that took place, um, alongside the pronunciation of the divine name. And so this may be, I would

52:11argue if we place this very early in time, the idea here is probably don't use God's name in an

52:19oath that you don't intend to keep or, um, don't do it flippantly. And there are a couple of reasons

52:26that, uh, additional reasons that this makes sense. One is based on something that I argued in my

52:31book from last year, uh, the divine name carried power and efficacy and to speak it was to materialize

52:40it. And that is to evoke the divine presence. And so to do so flippantly, uh, repeatedly over and

52:49over again is to kind of waste what is supposed to be holy, what is supposed to be special. Uh, and,

52:56and in that sense, you're not supposed to be engaging in these oaths flippantly or with no

53:03intention of keeping them. So what we're talking about is the difference. We're not talking about

53:08someone saying, Oh my God, look at that. But we are talking about someone saying, I swear to God,

53:14I will have this, you know, returned to you by Sunday and then not actually do it. Like if you,

53:21if you actually swear an oath using the Lord's name, you're, that's supposed to be on the hook.

53:29Yeah. Yeah. You're on the hook for that. So, um, and, and, you know, depending on, on how we

53:35interpret the scope that could be extended to, uh, things like the, the word God here, the, it's

53:41specifically the divine name. It's specifically the tetragrammaton that is being referenced. Um,

53:47and so no, you cannot say that piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah, uh, according to, uh,

53:54this passage. Now, um, a couple of things happen historically. It became inappropriate to use the

54:02divine name ever. And I think this is particularly happening in, um, late second temple period. So,

54:10second first century BCE, it becomes kind of a taboo. And particularly after the temple is destroyed,

54:17because it, for a time, you could only, it was only appropriate to pronounce the name in the

54:25temple. And then it was only one person who was allowed to do it. And then they were only allowed

54:30to do it on one day of the year. So this ideology developed that it's so sacred. It can't occur

54:36outside of our sacred space. And then when that sacred space no longer exists, it's not appropriate

54:43anywhere. And so now we're not supposed to use the name at all. And even when it's being written,

54:48it's being there is care being taken with the, the divine name. Sometimes it's written in older

54:54letters. Uh, there are, uh, and later Judaism, you get, uh, this idea that you can't just throw

55:02away a text that has the divine name on it. It has to be disposed of according to a certain process.

55:08And that's where we get the development of, uh, what's referred to as a, um, ganesa,

55:12uh, which is basically a storage room for texts that have the divine name on them.

55:19And I know that you've mentioned that, uh, that name in, uh, in English, uh, translations is

55:28frequently switched to the word Lord or to the word to a different word. Yeah. How often would

55:34we see that name in the text if that switch wasn't made? And is there a, is there a moment

55:42in like, you know, in, in the, uh, the Hebrew Bible where it stops being used as much?

55:49It's not, uh, so much avoided in text. It's, um, it's avoided in speaking. Now there are

55:55examples of this in, uh, Kumran literature and elsewhere. You do see other words kind of

56:03more commonly used in place of where the divine name should be. Uh, and then in contemporary

56:10Judaism, uh, and this is a practice that goes back quite some ways. You would use abbreviations

56:15for the divine name in order to avoid writing the divine name because, uh, any, and particularly

56:20like writing, uh, uh, something on a computer or on the internet, uh, you don't want it to be

56:26destroyed. And so, um, some people will write G dash D or something like that as a way to avoid

56:33writing out the divine name. So depending on the, uh, the strictness of the tradition,

56:39it might be something that, you know, people pronounce with no problems. It might be something

56:43you don't pronounce, but that you would write. It might be something that you would not even

56:47write. Uh, and, and this goes back pretty far, but once you get to the point where there's no

56:53appropriate place to pronounce the divine name, then this commandment takes on a difference.

56:57Me. Oh yeah. Um, because you're, you're not supposed to bear it, uh, or lift it up anywhere.

57:04And the first seven of chapter 20 does in the Hebrew, does it actually have the name? Yes,

57:10heterogrammaton. Yes. So it doesn't say the wrongful use of the name of the Lord, your God. It's

57:16the name of Tetragrammaton, your God. Yes. Okay. Yeah. That actually changes things a lot to me.

57:24Well, yeah. And in English translation, we've kind of, uh, deferred to this tradition of using

57:29Lord as a substitution. So in the, in the King James version, you'll see Lord in small caps.

57:35And when you see small caps, that's usually an indication. This is a substitution for some,

57:40some version of the divine name. That's, that, that means, that means something very different to

57:46me. That's interesting. Yeah. Because I think of the phrase, the Lord, your God, as its own phrase,

57:51but yeah, if it's actually naming the name in that, that's a, that, yeah, that feels very different.

57:57That's interesting. Yeah. And, and the phrase, that phrase, the Lord, your God, is almost always

58:01Adonai, or it's almost always the Tetragrammaton fault. Okay. Elohiecha or Elohiecha, or something

58:08like that. Interesting. All right. Yeah. We got to get through the rest of it. And so, so after

58:13verse seven, we got verse eight, which gets us to remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy.

58:20To keep it holy to, um, and we have an infinitive, uh, of this verbal root kadash, which means to

58:26consecrate, which probably, uh, derives from this notion that, uh, people and instruments and vessels

58:35that were being used within sacred spaces needed to be clean, needed to be pure, needed to be, uh,

58:43from certain materials so that they could be used within these sacred spaces without bringing in

58:48any kind of contamination or anything like that. And so the idea is, uh, it needs to be clean,

58:55pure, consecrated for a specific use. Uh, some people will say set apart for that specific use.

59:03And so the idea here is that the Sabbath day needs to be set apart. And there are some folks who

59:09suggest that this is, uh, this became important, uh, during the exile when they did not have the

59:16temple because they did not have the sacred space where they could worship. And so the Sabbath perhaps

59:23is a way of demarcating sacred time. So we worship using sacred time rather than the sacred space

59:30that is no longer available to us. Uh, but that is, I think the Sabbath day one is probably one of

59:37the later passages from the, the 10 commandments. That's really, that's really interesting. And

59:43not only does it say that you're not allowed to work on the Sabbath day, but your son, your daughter,

59:50your, your slaves, your livestock, nothing is allowed. Nobody's allowed to work on that day.

59:57That's one that, uh, that I think modern believers have kind of,

60:02especially the Christians have kind of like glide over that a little bit.

60:08Yeah, the gear, uh, which is, which could be translated as, uh, the migrant, the refugee,

60:15the immigrant, those, those are all concepts that align with this, this idea of the, the

60:20the gear, the resident foreigner, also not supposed to work. So, um, you know, there are, yeah, a lot

60:26of ways that this prescribes, uh, a standard that is just rejected by the overwhelming majority of

60:35Christians today. Right. Yeah. Uh, and then, uh, and then we finally get to the Zorro, uh,

60:44commandment, which that's how it's going to be referred to in my mind forever. Uh, and that is

60:49honor your father and your mother. Uh, yeah. Okay. That your days may be stretched out or may be

60:56long, uh, upon the land which Adonai, your God, is giving to you. Yeah. Uh, and there is an

61:05argument to make here that, um, the honoring has to do primarily with, uh, land inheritance.

61:12Your days in the land being long doesn't necessarily mean you have, uh, a lot of time hanging out in

61:18your property. It means that your property is, uh, continues down your line. And so your family,

61:25their possession of the land, uh, is, uh, lengthened is long because property, uh, rights in Israel

61:35have always been one of the central, uh, issues, uh, one of the, um, sites of contention. And, uh,

61:44and so I think this probably originally is a promise about the fact that your, uh,

61:50your property will stay in the family line for a long time provided you maintain those, uh,

61:57relationships and, uh, don't, you know, go off and, uh, marry, uh, too many foreign wives or, uh, or

62:05anything like that. It's, it's a bit of an ironic commandment to give to a group of people who

62:12have been wandering property lists in the desert for however long they have been. Well, and that's,

62:17and that's if you place the, uh, composition of the commandments in, uh, such a time period and

62:23there are the data don't really support the notion that any such time period existed,

62:27uh, but it is kind of serving that narrative. Uh, but it is, it is something that there are a

62:35number of places where you, when you look through the, the texts that are talking about the wandering

62:39period, it frequently reflects the perspective of a sedentary group, not a group that is, uh,

62:48that is wandering. Right. Um, but yeah, so the idea is, uh, be nice to your dad. Uh, so he doesn't

62:56kick you out or kill you. Uh, and that way you will inherit the land and that way you will have

63:00land to, to pass on. Uh, and my, uh, my dissertation supervisor Francesca Staricapulu wrote a wonderful

63:07book called the land of our fathers, which is about the property, uh, inheritance and how establishing

63:14possession of land was so central to the development of the notion of Israel. Um, and so I think

63:22in light of how important that was, uh, I think this commandment is, is best interpreted as having

63:29to do with, uh, possession of the land and a long stay in it. Well, you ain't no kind of man if you

63:36don't have land. All right. Well, uh, this was fascinating. I love it. Maybe we'll get to the

63:44rest of the, uh, of the decalogue at a later date, but for now, I think that's a great place to cut

63:49it off. If you, uh, would like to write into us about anything, please feel free to do so.

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