Ep 36: The Why Question- With Jacob Wright

00:00That's where the Bible really gets going in interesting ways.

00:04It's, in a certain sense, very real sense, all responses to what makes the people, what

00:11brings us together as the people, how do we survive, you know, what role does a kingdom

00:16play in our, how is that not everything?

00:18What do we do when that kingdom is defeated and conquered?

00:22And the biblical project, I think, is just this magnificent collaborative effort to prepare

00:28for that or to respond to it in very honest ways and also creative ways.

00:34Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:39And I'm Dan Beacher.

00:40And you are listening to the Data Overdogma podcast where we increase public access to

00:45the academic study of the Bible and religion and we combat the spread of misinformation

00:50about the same.

00:51How are things today, Dan?

00:53Things are good.

00:54We've got a great guest today, hawking a book that I have found very interesting.

00:59Why don't you introduce him, Dan?

01:02Yeah, so this is Jacob Wright.

01:04He is a professor of Hebrew Bible at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University down

01:09in Hotlanta.

01:10And welcome to the show, Jacob.

01:12Well, it's nice to be here, Dan and Dan.

01:15And it's not too hot today.

01:16It's actually like maybe 45, 50 degrees, I guess.

01:20Oh, wow.

01:21Yeah, right now it's 31 where I am, so I imagine in Atlanta, the people are walking around

01:28in full on winter parkas at that temperature.

01:30Exactly.

01:31My gloves have to go out.

01:33Well, as long as it's getting toward wintertime and so a few people being carried off by mosquitoes,

01:41I imagine right now.

01:43That's true.

01:44I know I got a call from the exterminator for the mosquitoes and they said this is the

01:49only three months that they're not going to spray for mosquitoes, but they'll pick up

01:52in March.

01:53So.

01:54There you go.

01:55Well, hopefully that's because they're not around and not just not worried about it right

02:00now.

02:01Jacob, you've just come out with a book through Cambridge University Press, Why the Bible

02:06began an alternative history of scripture and its origins.

02:09And we've been Dan and I have been poking around in the book and there've been a handful

02:14of books in recent years that have talked about this kind of thing, both scribal practices

02:18behind the composition of the Bible, source critical theories behind the composition of

02:22the Bible, how the Bible got started.

02:26Can you tell us why you decided to throw your hat into this ring?

02:30What was the impetus for this book?

02:33Thanks for that, Dan.

02:35I mean, the why question I still think has not really received the attention it deserves.

02:40It's a question that we as scholars, I think Dan, you would agree with this to explain why

02:46something happens is a really tricky and messy problem.

02:50We can say what, where, who, when, but why?

02:55That's a philosophical issue.

02:57And it's like, why is there something rather than nothing?

03:00And it's gets really to existential kinds of questions, but also to culturally difficult

03:06questions.

03:07Like, does it say something about the superiority of monotheism or is it about Jewish genius

03:16or all these kinds of really culturally problematic things that we want to avoid?

03:22And we set that aside that question.

03:26And I think to our detriment, because the why, the answers to the why that we have informs

03:34the way we think, but we're not doing it in an explicit way.

03:39And the one, the thing that really informs us is an answer that had been provided long

03:43ago to the why question, it's Velhausen's answer.

03:47And he began, Velhausen was this scholar in the late 1800s in Germany.

03:54And then your work engages it him still, right?

03:57We all are working in the, in the shadows in the following Velhausen.

04:05And what his approach was to this why question is that what emerges in Israel and Jewry is

04:14some kind of transition to religion, right, from a political community to what he called

04:21the student to Judaism, which was a new artificial construct.

04:26And it was a separation of religion from the political sphere, which we might appreciate

04:32in our democracies, but for Velhausen, that was problematic because he wanted a, he didn't

04:40want, you know, the French imperialism of the age.

04:43He was working after that where he wanted Germany to be a spiritual nation and which

04:50religion and nature and all of that came together.

04:54And he kind of was poking his finger, not a Jew, really, he didn't have that much, but

04:59that Christians and that the church, and he did that by showing how the church is really

05:04the inheritance, you know, claims the inheritance of what begins in the Hebrew Bible and now

05:10how that is something that we need to avoid.

05:13So he had this idea of the why question.

05:16Well, the Bible exists because it's scripture for religion.

05:20There was this nation and it was destroyed and something new emerges from it.

05:26And it is what he called a cult, religious cult or religious community or religion itself.

05:32And it's created by imperialism where imperialism wipes out the place for individual nations

05:39to flourish.

05:41And I'll stop there.

05:42But for me, that really gets it wrong in terms of the concept of the nation.

05:47And maybe we should talk about that.

05:49I was going to ask you what you guys make the information.

05:52Well, I mean, in your book, you talk about nation and you talk about how the people that

05:59coalesce around the Hebrew Bible cease to be a nation and you call them a people rather

06:06than, rather than a nation.

06:08Talk about that differentiation.

06:10Talk about why it's no longer, we're no longer talking about nation or or state.

06:18Well, I would say this.

06:20Or there's two different kinds of things.

06:23Generally, I would say like a state is a kingdom or a country in the modern sense, like America,

06:33Canada, Venezuela, those are countries, states.

06:37They may have a nation within them, but we often confuse nation with state.

06:43Why would I say they have a nation within them?

06:46A nation is the people.

06:48And Velhaus had problems with the term nation in my mind too because he conflated nation

06:55with kingdom.

06:56And what I'm actually trying to argue, Dan, is that it's peoplehood is the term I use

07:02to avoid that problem with nationhood because it's so misunderstood.

07:07But really, nation refers to the people.

07:10And I call it a state of mind.

07:12It is a people coming together around memories, around the narrative, around future aspirations.

07:18And it's something that's very difficult for armies to conquer, whereas a state has institutions

07:23and borders and armies and things that are very physical and that armies can actually

07:29destroy.

07:30And what emerges from the destruction of ancient, go ahead, Dan.

07:34Well, no, I was just going to say that the idea of destruction of armies of stuff, this

07:40is central to what happens where you talk a lot about the Assyrian conquest.

07:49And you mentioned specifically the primary factors behind the Bible's formation are political

07:55division and military defeat.

07:58So I wanted to, you know, you started in with the military.

08:01Let's talk about both of those ideas.

08:03Okay.

08:04Yeah.

08:05Good.

08:06Thank you, Dan, for also spending so much time with the book.

08:08We really have gotten it very well.

08:10Do I say Dan A and Dan B, how does this work?

08:14Well, just assume that everybody will figure it out.

08:17It'll be fine.

08:18Dan B, thank you for spending time with the book.

08:20I appreciate also that you've brought these questions to a head like nation and how does

08:28we understand that briefly again, Velhouse and to say, and there is this nation and it

08:34gets destroyed and then this religion forms and I'm saying, no, there's this kingdom or

08:39state.

08:40It gets destroyed and what emerges is properly what we'd call actually nation, even though

08:45that's misunderstood.

08:46So I call it people or peoplehood in what avoid that.

08:51So people really focus on the kind of communal dimension, community, not religious community,

08:57but political community.

08:58Yeah.

08:59If I may interrupt here, I think that's also a little more accurately when we look at

09:03the terminology that's used in the Bible.

09:04I mean, in Greek, the word we translate nation and the New Testament is ethnos.

09:09It's an ethnic identity.

09:11In Hebrew, you have Amim, you have Gohim, you have Mamluchut would be, would be kingdom,

09:17but Amim is used synonymously for nation and that's, and those are peoples.

09:24They're just different ways to kind of organize a sense of identity, a sense of-

09:29Yeah, you're good at Hebrew unity.

09:31What is the word?

09:32It's Hebrew, biblical Hebrew word for religion.

09:34Well, that is the thing, you bring up, you bring up Velhaus in, in my field, in the cognitive

09:40science of religion.

09:42Religion is something that developed between the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment.

09:45That is, this is not something, this is not a, a discrete sociocultural dimension that

09:50existed in the ancient world and so to speak of this becoming a religion is thoroughly

09:54anachronistic on Wellness.

09:56Yeah, I agree with that.

09:57Thank you for that.

09:58And so got to find new terminology to think about what they're organizing, their understanding,

10:02of identity around and I think that's one of the things that you're striking out to do

10:06in this book is, is say, let's, let's not think about it in our modern terms, but in

10:12terms that are a little more native to the text themselves.

10:16And it's not just in terms of being more accurate of, in terms of the Emek versus the

10:24Etik, Emek refers to how the text or the communities describe it themselves and Etik

10:29is how we scholars describe it.

10:32So Emekly, there's nothing, there's no concept, there's no word for religion, but there's

10:36something greater at stake than that.

10:39And that is we miss that the, that the making of the Bible and the why question and more

10:45of the how question should occupy our attention as societies, as communities more than the

10:52what question.

10:53What is the what question is like what the Bible teaches and the, and Dan, you're doing

10:59such a great job in terms of I've watched you grow over the years and I wanted to let

11:03it go, go and you didn't need me to say that because it's just taken off.

11:07What are you doing?

11:08You're addressing that.

11:09What question kind of, what does the Bible teach?

11:11How has it been misinterpreted?

11:14How do we push back against that?

11:16And that's, it's, you see how it becomes a battlefield of biblical teaching in society,

11:23whether it should apply to us or not.

11:25And what we miss by this is not just historically not getting it right in terms of, you know,

11:30the category, but also that what the biblical authors are doing in terms of connecting stories

11:39of rival communities, bringing a community, a defeated traumatized community together

11:44around text and refocusing live, the attention on the lives of average folk, re-envisioning

11:52gender roles, making wisdom available for the whole people, not just for the elites,

11:59all of these things are not, you know, laid out explicitly so that one can argue or quote

12:08a verse, but it requires us to step back and to appreciate the whole.

12:14And when we do that, and I'm not expecting everyone to get on board with this, but what

12:20I really encourage by is that people across the globe find that to be useful.

12:29This began as a Coursera course long ago and there are a lot of students in America and

12:37Europe or maybe from Christian places throughout South America, but there are a lot of students

12:43who were from Muslim countries, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, as well as China and India.

12:51And their interest was that how and why question, why does the Bible exist?

12:54What is this about this literature and they come at these texts with that's quite remarkable

13:01of how you create a community around text and how you don't create a master narrative,

13:06but you connect multiple narratives to bring people together so that they have a common

13:11story and to affirm that we all go back to one family originally.

13:16Those kinds of things are really wonderful for them.

13:19What is not really wonderful or interesting to them is what the Bible teaches.

13:23Like, okay, that should not kill.

13:25We all agree on that.

13:26Great.

13:27We don't need to tell us that.

13:29Some people seem to even more so today, but that's, I think it's a wonderful 30,000 foot

13:37view of, of why that question of why is so important here and in a lot of ways, the question

13:41of why helps us to understand the what a little better interpretation is guided by our own

13:47assumptions about I'm fond of referring to rhetorical goals.

13:51What's the, the function, the, the intended function of the text, but I wanted to go dive

13:57into the book a little bit.

13:59You start off, each of the chapters uses some kind of vignette, some character to kind of

14:05introduce the theme of a given chapter and, and you start off talking about really the,

14:12the history of the rise of Israel, but it's not a, like for, for people who are in scholarship.

14:19This is a history that's is fairly well known, but I was, I was struck by how reading through

14:26this.

14:27There are a lot of things about the history as you lay it out that's would not be, are

14:32not well understood among the general public.

14:34What do you think are some surprising aspects of the rise of Israel and Judah that, that

14:41someone in the general public might not be aware of?

14:43Thank you for that.

14:45Yes, it is kind of a part of the book.

14:47It's 150 pages where I go over the rise in the fall before I get to really the post fall

14:54place where everything starts to happen.

14:56And like so many books, you know, those first chapters, you get into the weeds and you have

15:01to kind of do some boring stuff and people have criticized.

15:05They see that families on reviews are like, why hand those first chapters are difficult

15:11to get into because it's so many facts and figures and so forth.

15:14Here's the takeaway.

15:15I think that's going to surprise people.

15:17There are many different points, but one would be that Israel and Judah would never together

15:21and that these are two very different countries.

15:24They could, it could have easily been Israel and Moab.

15:27There's nothing within Judah that goes back ethnically to a common population or some

15:34kind of monotheistic sensibility that they shared or anything.

15:39It's quite coincidental that Israel had really overshadowed Judah and then placed one of

15:47its own members, Atalia, a wonderful queen who on the throne and really had subordinated

15:53Judah to its interest.

15:55And that then Judah regretted that, resented that, and Judah really probably would have

16:01been very, I call it, Judah's jubilation, would have been happy to see Israel fall.

16:06We see that in various texts.

16:09And this is not, this division is one of the, like you pointed out, Dan A, Dan Beacher,

16:16division is really one of the most important reasons why we have a Bible.

16:23All the, all countries, all kingdoms were defeated.

16:26So why, for me, the question is like, we got to get defeat.

16:29That's an essential component, but it's not sufficient.

16:33This meaning that there's other factors, without defeat, there is no Bible.

16:39But what's the other more sufficient factors and that's the division, this relationship

16:45between Israel and Judah that I'm building here on Dan Fleming's work from NYU, where

16:50he really shows how Judah, it's, it's, he calls his book, The Legacy of Israel in Judah's

16:57Bible.

16:58And the Bible we have is a Judean product.

17:00The difference between me and Dan Fleming, whom I really adore as a scholar, is that he

17:06would say that there is some commonality among the populations.

17:10And I'm saying it's easier to say, no, it's purely political.

17:15And the first move, in terms of affirming some kind of union, was a political affirmation,

17:22meaning that Judah and Israel were once united under David and Solomon, which are you as

17:29totally fictional.

17:31It's an attempt by later Judean kings from Hezekiah, Josiah, to say, what we're doing,

17:37what we're asking you to do as the defeated northern population to join our fold is something

17:42not new.

17:43What we're doing is going back to the way it was and the way it was supposed to be.

17:47Yahweh, our God, chose David and Jerusalem and all of that, and you guys have left the

17:51fold so you can return now.

17:54We're going to make Israel great again, right?

17:56Yes, make it great again.

17:58And it's going to be from our Judean's perspective.

18:00It's not even going to be Israel itself doing that in a real sense.

18:04I would complicate that a little bit by saying that the biblical text that really that we

18:10appreciate most, the stuff about the patriarchs and the matriarchs and the exes and so forth

18:17doesn't come from Judah.

18:19That's the story.

18:20The Judean stories are the Davidic stories and the stuff in the Book of Kings.

18:25It's a very, it's placed way back in the narrative and the stuff that goes back to some older

18:31Israelite stuff is the stories of peoplehood, of liberation and so forth.

18:36And so why we have that kind of, if you would think that it's just a Judean Bible, the

18:43Judean kingdom would have then shaped it by by beginning their narrative with David.

18:48David is the one who brought us to the land.

18:50David, a liberators from bondage, but they have Yahweh.

18:54They're trying to think of their past without a monarchy, a native monarchy, and that explains

19:01how David gets pushed back and bracketed.

19:06So that whatever the kingdom becomes, it also falls and one can have an expectation that

19:14there can be a enduring political community, some kind of identity.

19:19It doesn't depend on our political power.

19:22It doesn't depend on the Davidic dynasty.

19:25So it's very much, I think, an Israelite Bible and the Judeans are picking up on stuff that

19:32had begun among the defeated northern population 130 years earlier and maybe some of the scribes

19:41from the north, I know you know a lot about this Dan had maybe come down after the destruction

19:46and maybe they are continuing to work, even if they're working, these were great scribes.

19:54These were, this is from a great kingdom and I think that they probably would have found

19:58employment in the Davidic court.

20:03This is how I imagine.

20:04They're probably listening all day to the Davidic kings say, you know what this propaganda

20:08and in the nighttime writing their text about we can be a people without a king.

20:14And I know that's speculative, but what do you guys think?

20:20Well, I think that's, well, there's a lot to go off of there, but yeah, I think it makes

20:29sense that, well, the northern kingdom was a much larger, much more complex kingdom than

20:33the south and it only makes sense to me that the south would try to appropriate whatever

20:37resources and experts they could from the north following their fall in 722 BCE.

20:46And I liked how you divided the stories into a people's history and a palace history.

20:54Could you talk a little bit about the origin of that and how that fits into the rubric

20:57you're developing of an identity that can outlast the destruction of a kingdom?

21:02Last, that's right.

21:03Yeah.

21:04Thank you for that word.

21:05So the common approach to the narrative, what's called the primary narrative from David

21:13Noel Friedman and a lot of us still use that.

21:16What is the primary narrative that begins in Genesis with the creation of the world?

21:21It ends not like in Christian Bibles with Ezra Nehemiah the return.

21:27Ezra Nehemiah is in a totally different section of the canon and it's called a late section

21:32called The Writings, the Ketupi.

21:34It ends with this, the destruction of Jerusalem, the exo.

21:39So creation to exile, kind of like the banishment out of Eden, east of Eden, that kind of exile

21:48is then recapitulated on the national level.

21:51So that whole narrative has often but understood as in terms of the Pentateuch and you have

21:56the JEPED stuff and then you have this thing called the Deuteromistic history which begins

22:01in Deuteronomy and it continues on and that's the second section never brought together.

22:07And I find that difficult for various reasons.

22:12I find it also better just for practical purpose to distinguish between a large block of text.

22:19It's not that they all came from the same hand, they're over from the same period.

22:23But the history in Genesis is a history of how we got to this land and building on the

22:29work from some European scholars.

22:32My doctor father included in Germany that Genesis is its own story and I think everybody

22:38kind of agrees that now about this, that it's a separate story, then the Exodus story.

22:44And so we have the Genesis and the Exodus story, what they have in common is thinking

22:49about a people without a king.

22:52And the Exodus story continues into the book of Joshua where they take the land by storm

22:57without a king and the enemy consists totally of kings.

23:02We know all their names, we don't know much about their people and on the other hand there's

23:07this kind of citizens army and militia guided by Joshua who is a non-king.

23:14And so all of that has this orientation away from the palace and I call it the people's

23:21history.

23:22It consists of various blocks.

23:23The palace history is it begins in the book of Samuel and it's a problem because the book

23:30of Joshua ends with this high point of like we conquer the land, choose to stay whom you

23:33shall serve.

23:34We're going to serve the Lord and it's all going to go well.

23:37The book of Samuel begins with the Philistines and the Ammonites, they're in the supreme role

23:43and they're subordinating Judean Israel and Israel and Judah are once again in bondage

23:48in a certain sense.

23:50And who rescues them, Saul and David, they are the Saviors.

23:57So that's a very much a palace oriented history that doesn't replace the deity with David

24:05but it makes in the dynasty but it makes the dynasty to be the instrument of the deity.

24:12And I think that palace history have had to at some level be older than the people's history

24:19because the people's history responds to it in so many ways.

24:24It says the salvation, the word is the same word we have for Jesus, Yeshua, salvation,

24:30the Savior.

24:31The Savior in our history, the primary one was our God and he did it, Yahweh, building

24:37on your doctor mother, Dan, is a male God.

24:41I certainly know it's not God in the general kind of title sense but Yahweh, this personality,

24:49is the one not David who saved us.

24:53He's our primary Savior.

24:55He's also not connected to any kind of political faction so that we can come across our own

25:03divisions and affirm our unity and covet it with this deity and this covet it is going

25:09to take precedence over any kind of covenant that the deity makes with the Davidic dynasty

25:15or the palace.

25:17And so those are the two sides.

25:20You mentioned that you think the palace history probably comes before the people's history

25:26but certainly some of these stories are coming from deep antiquity in the north as far as

25:32we can trace them.

25:34So the suggestion here is that these are collections of stories that have been inherited for generation

25:39and generations that are being given new life by arranging them within this narrative framework

25:46so that they can function to set up a trajectory towards where we want to be when things go

25:53south.

25:54I love that new life.

25:55Yes, it's breathing some new life into these texts that would have been buried in the sands

26:00of time if they had not been.

26:02And why would we say that?

26:04Because the most important inscription that we found for the history of Israel, I hope

26:09you agree with me if it's Andes, is the Mecha Stella, we found it in the ground, right?

26:13We found the archives of Nineveh in all of the great empires in the ground.

26:20Why?

26:21Because they had not undergone that transformation, that breathing new life into them from a perspective

26:27of people, of peoplehood, of a community that had been, you know, faced great destruction

26:35and devastation and it lives on the margins of the civilizations that control the world

26:39and that's, I think, where a great innovation begins is on the margins.

26:44And for me, this is not about trying to say anything about the Bible's authority in society

26:49or its inspiration, but just looking at a great example, perhaps one of the most impactful

26:56bodies of literature ever written and showing its cultural human relevance to communities

27:04on our margins, who are rethinking the way things should be done and doing some of the

27:09most important stuff where our centers of civilization could be eclipsed by that very easily.

27:16And I think for a text that comes from a community that historically has been fairly marginalized

27:21and up in many ways oppressed and was very small in these stories that it's telling about

27:26itself.

27:27But recently, it's survival is a testament that they were on to something, the way they

27:34were structuring their understanding of their shared identity and including taking these

27:38probably independent cycles of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, of others and setting them

27:46up to tell the story of a single lineage that is now what governs the whole national or

27:55people's identity.

27:56And that connection of those like you, I agree with you, those kind of probably independent

28:01cycles that have antiquity of some sort and serve different communities and represented

28:07them that the real biblical move, if you will, what makes the Bible the Bible is the connecting

28:14of the dots, the connection of these texts, the formation of something new from them to

28:19breathing life in them, if you will, but they already were kind of people who had focused,

28:26but what's really remarkable is I had just published a piece on the Sojourners for Thanksgiving.

28:33This is a couple of weeks now after Thanksgiving.

28:36And you know, at Thanksgiving time, I've always find it really weird when we like perform the

28:42pilgrims pageants as if we all go back to the Mayflower.

28:47And that Mayflower narrative has become the kind of master narrative.

28:54And we haven't found ways to like tell the story as the biblical authors did.

28:58And they said, well, it's not the Genesis story or the Exodus story, it's both.

29:03And it's not the David story, it's both what we're going to, it's not all equal, right?

29:07There are some decisions made and that's necessary.

29:11It can't be a narrative without some kind of decisions being made, but what really makes

29:17it so wonderful for me is that the will there to connect, to include, to, we think of the

29:25Bible being some exclusivistic and exclusionary, and there's definitely that other, and the

29:30problem to the other is really present.

29:34But the will there is to say, not this law code or that law code, both law codes.

29:39And you all figured out how it works, and you figured out, because it's all about the

29:45text, it's all about us, and we have to find some modus vivendi from coming together and

29:51overcoming our rivalries if we're going to survive.

29:55I had a question, something that I've been mulling over in my own research that I anticipate

30:02will turn into something at some point.

30:03It strikes me that the diminutive size of Israel or Judah might have been an asset in

30:12its development of this narrative in its preservation of its ethnic identity.

30:19Because I don't imagine-

30:20That's very intriguing.

30:23Because I don't think it would have been possible for a gigantic empire, like Assyria or Babylon

30:28or any of these.

30:29I don't think this project would have gotten off the ground if they were dealing with

30:33such a stratified gigantic empire.

30:36Okay.

30:37Okay.

30:38So I think-

30:39I thought you meant that if it had been the other way around, that Judah had been conquered

30:43first, and Israel would never have- Israel never laid claim to Judah's legacy.

30:49Judah was this small kingdom.

30:51So it had to be the greater kingdom, the north to be conquered first, because Judah had been

30:57in its shadows and it said, "We are the new Israel."

31:00And this is the first supersessionism, although as a Jew, I think this is okay, supersession

31:06of what have you, but it has a longer history.

31:09They're saying, "We are the new Israel," just like the Christian church will say, "We are

31:12the new Israel, what have you."

31:14But you're right about the great empires.

31:16They had only known success, triumph.

31:20They maybe lost some of their provinces.

31:23What they weren't prepared for was the day after.

31:26And when you're small, you already think about- you already think yourself in terms of the

31:31David Goliath mentality.

31:33We are David's, not Goliath's, and we have to prepare for the next day.

31:37And what makes the Bible the Bible also is, like we see in Jeremiah, there are a lot of

31:42people pushing back against that.

31:43Not because they said, "No, we're not small, we're big, but rather our God is big, Jerusalem

31:48is big," in the sense that it's never going to be destroyed.

31:52And that continues on into modern Israeli politics and Jewish politics around kind of

31:57this ferrancy that there's something that's always going to save the day.

32:01Something special and others saying, "We need to figure out a way to persist and endure.

32:07We're very time- by the way, Jews are like 0.1% of the population."

32:11So that kind of- any idea that we have something special on our side can't get us into a lot

32:15of trouble.

32:17And that goes way back to Jeremiah, who says, "Joslem was going to be destroyed."

32:22And he was put in jail for proclaiming heresy.

32:25And I think it's just too relevant to today that it just gives me goosebumps sometimes.

32:33Can I- I'm going to jump in as the non-scholar here in the room and just- I kind of want

32:40to go back to a basics thing, because I know a lot of our listeners don't have the background

32:46in this history that you two have.

32:49So we can get in so much of the weeds.

32:52You know, you're in the weeds, but it happens and believe me, lots of our listeners are loving

32:58it.

32:59But I would like to talk about sort of the history that led up to all of the stuff that

33:06you've been talking about.

33:07You know, I want to go back to this military defeat idea and why you think it's so vital

33:12to the creation of what we now call the Bible.

33:15Good.

33:16Good, good, good.

33:17Thanks, Dan, Peter, for that, because we've focused now on the division.

33:20The stuff that Dan and I have been getting into the weeds about are these relationships

33:24between Israel and Judah.

33:26And that's missed by many readers of the Bible, primarily because the term Israel or the name

33:32Israel can refer to the people of Israel, but also the state of Israel.

33:35So the readers of the Bible just don't get how extensively the division between the north

33:42and south shapes the Bible.

33:46And what defeat, yes, that's the bigger and perhaps more meaningful one.

33:53Although the north-south division, I think is so relevant to what goes on in East and

33:57West Germany and North and South Korea and so forth in terms of real artistic and intellectual

34:03political creativity, North and South and the US too, elsewhere.

34:08But defeat, right, picking up on what we just said about Assyria, when you're not prepared

34:16for defeat, when you're not small, and all you know is really triumph.

34:21Like if America were to fall today, I don't think that it would be possible for it American

34:26people to persist because we're just so, we rest on our laurels in terms of imperial

34:33power and statehood and all of that, that there's not a kind of plan B of what do we

34:41do when we're no longer militarily superior to others.

34:46And that goes for a lot of countries, but it doesn't go for a lot of small countries.

34:50A lot of small countries are much more focused on education like in Europe and elsewhere

34:56where they don't have strong militaries.

35:00So defeat is central and defeat is for me also the most intellectually stimulating part

35:07of this whole project and the Bible.

35:09And there was, there are a lot of communities that were defeated as we noted.

35:14And what the biblical authors are doing is not trying to consign that to oblivion.

35:20And I noted some examples that when people were defeated and conquered, you were prohibited

35:26from speaking about it.

35:29And think about like Trump losing the election, you just deny it.

35:34No, we didn't lose, we didn't lose, it was robbed from us.

35:39And Germany after World War I, they were blaming Bolsheviks and Jews saying we didn't lose

35:46World War I, they sold us out, they stabbed us in the back, this step in the back myth.

35:52And so many countries that just are problematic politically and political programs like Trump's

35:58just have an inability to admit to things and to grow from them and to say, okay, we really

36:04lost what now.

36:08And the biblical authors perhaps are making defeat even more than it actually was historically.

36:14The book of Lamentations, which is like the most graphic description of the devastation,

36:21some of it goes back to the early days, but some of it goes, you know, late is continued

36:27to be written for centuries.

36:29And so why, why are they continuing to make this defeat so central?

36:34It's because they want their readers to know that there was a beginning to something and

36:39an end to it, and that was the kingdom.

36:43That society has been, there's no going back.

36:46We have felt this deep and we have to continue to feel it deep if we're going to persist

36:53in our project of thinking beyond the state, beyond the kingdom.

36:58And that's where the Bible really gets going in interesting ways.

37:01Well, how do you think about beyond the state?

37:05What does it mean to be a people?

37:07People had not asked that question, and I don't know if the biblical authors are even

37:11conscious that they're asked, conscious of the fact that they are asking that question.

37:15But what makes this whole corpus so coherent is it's in a certain sense, very real sense,

37:21all responses to what makes the people, what brings us together as the people.

37:26How do we survive?

37:28You know, what role does a kingdom play in all?

37:31How is that not everything?

37:32What do we do when that kingdom is defeated and conquered?

37:36And the defeat and the reinvention of oneself, I think if the book is getting some traction,

37:42it's because that speaks to people.

37:45That speaks to people saying, okay, I hit a brick wall, we as community hit a brick wall.

37:51And we're facing devastation as a society and as a globe.

37:57And how do we think about the next day after?

38:00And why is it so difficult as Lear writes in his work on the Crow nation?

38:07Why is it so difficult for us as civilizations to imagine our own ends?

38:11Why can't we deal more with that?

38:13You would think, well, there's a lot of kind of sci-fi literature that deals with that.

38:17But yes, and maybe that's something where the most creative stuff is being done in terms

38:21of thinking about the day after.

38:25But as thinkers, as theologians, as philosophers, as biblical scholars, and so forth, we really

38:30spend very little time thinking about what happens when the stuff that we take for granted

38:34is no longer here.

38:35What are we going to do?

38:37And the biblical project, I think, is just this magnificent collaborative effort to prepare

38:43for that or to respond to it in very honest ways and also creative ways.

38:54I wanted to come back to something you said earlier.

38:57You talked about the mission inscription and you mentioned Moab earlier.

39:00It could have just as likely been Israel and Moab.

39:04But they're both what we might call secondary or territorial states that are rising in the

39:08shadow of these larger empires as there are some power vacuums around them.

39:14There's an interesting part of the mission inscription where Misha is explaining why Israel

39:18was able to subjugate Moab to Vassalah, which says Khemosh was angry with his land.

39:26And this is a way to account for defeat, but it's a very familiar one for biblical writers

39:32as well because Dan, you might have been asking for like a fifth grade kind of historical

39:38outline here where we have a Syria comes in and destroys the northern kingdom in 722 BCE

39:45and leaves the south, but then just 120 years later, then we have the Babylonians coming

39:51in and taking out the kingdom of Judah as well.

39:55And each time the authors who are responding to this are appealing to some of the same rationalizations.

40:00God was angry with us and they come up with the things that they were doing wrong in the

40:04previous years.

40:06But once we get into the exile, this is kind of where the rubber hits the road and this

40:11is where we see the Bible really coming together and kind of pointing in a direction.

40:16Could you talk a little bit about when we get to the exile, when we're starting to bring

40:21things together, when the project is taking shape, what are the rationalizations for why

40:25all this has happened and what are the ways forward?

40:27Yeah, thank you for that.

40:30And sorry, Dan, Beecher, that I kind of lost the thread of that question.

40:33You wanted to know that's fine, we'll get to that because we're getting now to this.

40:40I do want to say something, Dan, just right before you answer that, I went to fifth grade

40:46and none of this was covered.

40:48This is not fifth grade stuff.

40:49So in defense of those of us who don't know all of this stuff, but yes, please go on.

40:57I know we assume so much and it's hard for us to write.

41:02I don't know if about you, Dan, to put ourselves in the shoes of people who have not read the

41:07Bible all the lives and know all about that and scholars and stuff.

41:11But thank you for reminding us to keep it straightforward.

41:16So Dan has drawn attention to this.

41:19Asha Stella that was pulled out of the ground and King Mesha from Moab says we suffered defeat,

41:28but it was because our God was angry with us.

41:33And then we look at the Bible.

41:34This was so groundbreaking because when scholars said, oh my God, literally, how has Mesha picked

41:43up biblical theology, the theology of divine punishment for somehow being angry at some

41:53kind of behavior?

41:54And if you think about the Bible as doubt, shout, doubt, shout, and if you don't, then

41:58you're going to face exile punishment and all of that, the prophets, the laws and so

42:04forth.

42:05That's very fundamental to it.

42:08But the Bible has, like Dan says, also various ways of dealing with that.

42:13And what makes the Bible different from the Mesha Stella is that Mesha tells that about

42:20the past and then he moves to the present of triumph.

42:25And the Bible flips that on his head.

42:27So the triumph begins with the Exodus, the salvation that Yahweh brings, but also David

42:35and Saul and Solomon and all the great kings, but it goes down and as if Mesha talked about,

42:44we used to have a great kingdom, but now we're defeated, the end, and made a huge monument

42:52about that.

42:54But the Bible is not just that kind of monument, it's much more massive and it does it on grand

42:59proportions and it develops that theology in many different dimensions and really embellishes

43:06it and makes it grand and all kinds of stuff.

43:09And the reason why is because it's not coming from a palace.

43:13It's coming from a defeated people and they are picking up on things that we can see that

43:20are familiar to their neighbors, but they are taking them in new directions.

43:25And it all emerges in this time between 722 where the northern kingdom, the Israel lights,

43:36not Israelites, but the Israelis we would say, kind of the people of this kingdom called

43:42Israel, the house of Omri, when it was defeated and then 130 years continues where now Judas

43:50left alone in the Levant, southern Levant and it really rises and it takes over a lot

43:57of different kinds of operations that Israel had long performed, but then it too is defeated.

44:04So it had resisted what was going on in the north about defeat, saying we can be a people

44:11even without our kingdom in Samaria and so forth.

44:14That was on the other side of this Davidic dynasty saying you need to join us in Jerusalem,

44:22Yahweh chose the Davidic dynasty and all this territorial power, statehood kind of thing.

44:29And that's kind of this tension in the Bible, but what happens is the Judean kingdom is

44:33itself destroyed and they have to go up and they say, okay.

44:39So what do we do now?

44:40Well, we're going to pick up that project of the northern kingdom and say we don't need

44:45necessarily to have a kingdom, a dynasty, even a temple to persist and to see a future.

44:55And that's why this text becomes this great-grand monument to defeat and something that's portable

45:02and something that people can take with them and to exile and always remain on the same

45:07page whether they're divided and create a public that is interested in reading text and

45:14makes text the center of their lives and on and on and on in terms of just something

45:21that begins in terms of, well, we can be a people to, well, how does it, what does it

45:26mean to be a people in the books of Proverbs and Song of Songs and Psalms and all kinds

45:33of different things like Esther and Ruth discuss these matters from that, that begins with

45:39that question.

45:40Yeah.

45:41You do, you talk about how you say that you have basically two central theses, one being

45:48that the Bible, as you put it, is to be appreciated as a project of peoplehood.

45:54And the second is that it's fundamentally a pedagogical one.

45:59Talk a little bit about how it's meant to be used, how the people who inherited this

46:07project were meant to use it because, you know, we were talking about religion is a

46:14newer concept.

46:15We're not talking about a religion idea.

46:18So what is it?

46:19How are we supposed to use it or how were they meant to use it?

46:24Thank you, Dan.

46:25Thank you for like getting to the larger question that we would otherwise miss.

46:29And that is a big part of the book.

46:31The Bible is, what is the Bible?

46:33It's a curriculum is what I would suggest.

46:37And so how's the book of Psalms a part of the curriculum?

46:41What's a curriculum?

46:42I know that's anachronistic, but I call it a pedagogical project in terms of what shapes

46:48of people without a kingdom without power is some kind of larger narrative, some kind

46:53of education around common text and laws and songs and love poetry and what have you wisdom.

47:04And that what is expected to be in, in, in, in co-cating themselves in that tradition so

47:14that they can be part of a project and education is the key to the kingdom, if you will, right?

47:21And to be able to participate in public life, one needs to be able to like draw on various

47:27traditions and laws and stuff that the public appreciates.

47:33And that then changes the orientation of from the battlefield, where one gets honored by

47:39being just a great soldier to one who is really well educated or scribes or teachers or parents

47:48and families and different kinds of things where they are commanded to teach their children.

47:55And the book of Proverbs, you know, goes back to this ancient curriculum, but it was a curriculum

48:00for elites.

48:02And you know, my son listened, well, what was my son?

48:07Dan knows his very well, you know, in Egyptian wisdom literature, the father was a teacher,

48:12wasn't really the physical father and the son was the student.

48:16And what happens in the book of Proverbs is that they actually become biological.

48:20The father, because it's, well, how it goes is my son listened to the words of your father

48:25and the Torah, the instruction of your mother.

48:30Its mother and father who are now part of this and this wisdom is now being, becoming

48:35part of the family life, not the court life, not the elites who are going to study with

48:40fathers who are going to train them for their careers in some kind of elite activity.

48:49And so this wisdom is being democratized, if you will, it's become an educational curriculum

48:55for average folks that everyone should be wise, going back to Deuteronomy, that what's

49:01going to make us wonderful and honored on the world stage is not our military power but

49:09our wisdom and our devotion to learning.

49:14And I think that just goes a long ways to explaining the coherence of the whole.

49:21And people would say, well, what is song and song, song and songs had to do with education.

49:27And there are some outliers and I, but I addressed those and I think they really are very much

49:32a part of the education process, you know, love poetry.

49:36By the way, I think all of us had in school, like we had to learn Shakespeare sonnets.

49:41But that's not really the point here.

49:43What song of songs is doing is trying to model an idle relationship, a real intimacy between

49:49two individuals in which the woman is equal with the man and lends itself to actually

49:55a non hetero relationships.

49:59But most fundamental thing is that a society cannot exist unless two people can really

50:04come together in some deep intimacy that you can't have between three people.

50:09And that part of learning how to do that through poetry, so much wonderful work to

50:13me and done in biblical studies on the educational capacity of poetry, how poetry shapes us as

50:19readers in a deep way.

50:22And so I think I think I've made a good case for that the Bible is a curriculum.

50:26I will say that I'm building on a little bit of work and a little bit on David Carr's work

50:31at Union Theological Seminary in his book, Right in the Tablets of the Heart.

50:36What I'm pushing back against is that he sees it as a Hellenistic elite project.

50:41So that the Bible is Hellenistic literature for the training of male elites.

50:46And I think that this is a lot of it goes, it's much more, there are parts of it that

50:51are older than the Hellenistic period that have that education.

50:54And we don't have to like explain the idea of curriculum and pedagogical project by always

51:00making it derivative from something else.

51:02I think peoples on the margins are always going to gravitate to the necessity and the

51:09advantages of education.

51:11You think of like colonized peoples and how they turn to educational projects because

51:18they need to come together around something.

51:20And so the point here is we don't need to appeal to the Hellenistic influence to explain

51:25why the Bible is so pedagogically shaped.

51:29Is that an open feature?

51:31I think that's great.

51:32I think that one of the things that you were just, you've been sort of skirting around

51:36the edges of, but your book talks a lot about is the idea of gender, of women in this society.

51:44The last part of your book is very much you have some focus on that.

51:49Talk a little bit about what's going on there and what your points are with that.

51:58Thank you for that again, damn, picture.

52:02Big issue.

52:03Women and why are they so prominent in the biblical narratives, but also like we just

52:07noted in the book of Proverbs and Wisdom literature and the book of Ruth, a whole story about

52:12women and widows ending with Esther, the queen who saves the day on and on, song of songs.

52:20And there are many problematic aspects related to gender.

52:25I teach a course called Text of Terror, and one of the Text of Terror that I deal with

52:32is Genesis 2, or Genesis 1 and 2, the creation of a binary kind of sexuality agenda.

52:42And so there are problematic aspects related to this.

52:47By the way, many people didn't think of Genesis 1 as a text of terror.

52:50It's a beautiful text.

52:52And for non-binary folk, it is problematic.

52:58But the Bible, on the other hand, is doing really wonderful things in terms of gender.

53:03It really shows how women have courage that like Miriam has courage where Moses has none

53:10and who am I?

53:11And I can't do this.

53:12And Miriam had saved his skin as a baby by just going up to the Queen, the Egyptian Queen

53:19and finding a solution, and the midwives who resist the decree of the Pharaoh and save

53:25these babies, and the women in Genesis who are so much more savvy than the men, the men

53:33are kind of orchestrated.

53:34Their lives are pulled to and fro by women.

53:38And the authors are celebrating that, and they will say stuff like in the book of Ruth,

53:46you know, you are like our matriarchs who built the nation.

53:51It was our matriarchs who did this.

53:53And so why is that?

53:55Why do we have all of that going on there?

53:57I think there are two explanations for it, and that is, first of all, these are men,

54:03male scribes writing for males.

54:06And there might be some women writing.

54:09We have evidence that both from Egypt and Mesopotamia that there were girls in some

54:13of the schools, but for the most part, these are men writing for men, male scribes writing

54:20for other male scribes.

54:22They're using women though to show their readers that we have to find a new way of living

54:31in the world.

54:32We have to, first of all, we can't afford to have women in the shadows.

54:40If we're a small people, we can't afford to have 50% of the population just at home.

54:45They need a role in public life, and the home also needs to be a part of public life.

54:49It needs not to be seen as something secondary.

54:52That's the stage.

54:53That's where Genesis begins, in the tents, in the homes, the relationships between mother

54:59and father, and children, and otherwise, in all kinds of problems, right?

55:06That is because you're not a kingdom, you're not an empire that can say the woman's role

55:10is to produce male children to go out and fight for us.

55:14And that is like if Syrian women had a lot less agency than the provinces where they

55:21didn't have all that kind of a aristocratic role of producing children.

55:25And you have women who are farmers who have a lot, even in our societies today, women

55:31in rural areas have a lot more ability to do things that one doesn't do properly in

55:39a more kind of regimented society.

55:42Setting that aside, that second role of women is to show these male readers how to think

55:52of themselves.

55:54But we are David's not Goliath's, we have to find a way of diplomacy, of cleverness,

56:02of indirect approach.

56:04We have to learn how to be Esther's and not Mordecai's.

56:07We have to learn how to be Deborah's and not Gideon's and not Jeff does.

56:12What is Deborah?

56:13Deborah is like a mother bear who comes out and defends her cubs, but it's all about

56:18my name, whereas Gideon is so infatuated with his own name and Jeptha and Sam's, all of

56:24this is just these male egos that threaten to really to swallow up the nation and leave

56:32nothing in a stead.

56:34And if we can refocus our attention on how women have always survived in a world in which

56:40the cause has stacked against them, perhaps we can also survive as Jews and Judeans and

56:48as a defeated population in the world where we don't have that power.

56:53And does that make sense?

56:57No, I think that's great.

57:00I'm holding by the way, not on that second point, on some work by others who have done

57:09some amazing stuff in terms of thinking about women as more of how men should learn how

57:17to behave, learning, meaning, and like, Jacob is a man of the tent and he's a mom was bullied

57:25in real sense.

57:26And Esau is the father's boy who goes out and hunts.

57:29And so what is it about Jacob's personality?

57:33It's his indirect approach.

57:35It's that he lies and deceives and so forth that gives him the trouble, but it's also

57:39he's an underdog and he's a survivor and that one has to learn that the kind of honorable

57:46approach that we're going to march out and duke it out.

57:49We're not going to win doing that.

57:50We have to be Jacob.

57:51We have to find Jacob is identified with his wives and his flocks and so forth.

57:57Esau comes at him with his 400 men and there's no women in the and those two sides so that

58:04many non-Jews have seen Jews as feminized as as somehow their indirect approach.

58:16This is of course much later, it's kind of thing, but it owes itself to the Bible many

58:19ways of kinds of ways of working the world as somehow being more effeminate.

58:26And they've disdain that whereas if they have if there's any truth behind that it's there

58:33is an understanding that not everyone can afford to be just just let's duke it out and and

58:42if we can't then we need to find another way of living.

58:45I think that's wonderful.

58:47That's all we have really, really time for Jacob.

58:50Thank you so much for joining us.

58:53Do tell us how can people find your book where can they where can they go to to grab

58:58a copy and and check it out?

59:01Yeah, it's on Amazon I guess is probably the easiest way it's going to be and this was

59:06not planned by the way this is a Cambridge University book and as Dan knows Cambridge

59:10University books are not you know trade books usually they don't go they don't get

59:14reviewed and shared and I don't get to go on that ever is dogma for some kind of monograph.

59:21But this is something that took off because I think it's I tried to make it more accessible

59:27and now you can go and get it now at borders and perhaps Costco and stuff like that.

59:34And it's on Amazon and leave me a review I read it yes I am hawking the book like you

59:41said in the future but the reason why there is because I put my heart and soul on this

59:46and I think it's I want people to take a look at it and see if it's helpful.

59:51I think a lot of people are finding it helpful a lot of people who are not Christians and

59:54from across the globe who are accessing this and all of the anything I make is going to

60:01the land to mission here and if you can help the land to mission on your own it's a Jewish

60:06and this is a Christian organization but they're doing really amazing work and it's about

60:11for me though also learning about the Bible how to how to read the Bible in a way that's

60:17more helpful than just what the Bible teaches I love that and one of the things I noticed

60:23immediately with the book that I think makes it a lot more accessible is the chapters are

60:27quite short they're like 10 to 15 page chapters they're not incredibly long it's not incredibly

60:32dense and so if somebody's been intimidated hearing Jacob talk about some of the complexities

60:39of this it's very excessively written with pretty short chapters and they're the framing

60:44is very consistent and and simple so no no it's nothing of that just I yeah I do I refer

60:52you to literature like by Dan and other of but I'm not really getting in the weeds of

60:57all that kind of stuff so it is accessible I think thanks for that guys I appreciate

61:01you bringing me on and I hope you read is find it useful I find your stuff useful especially

61:07you Dan McClellan keep up the good work you are doing amazing things and we all in the

61:13SBL the Society of Biblical Literature oh you meant gratitude for bringing scholarship

61:20to life but also answering some really silly stuff out there wow well thank you for the

61:26very kind and humbling words I appreciate it it's been quite a whirlwind since this award

61:33from SBL for public scholarship and I've been very very touched by how many people have

61:38come up to me and told me at SBL and not just this year but the last couple of years that's

61:43that they think this is important work and they think I'm doing a great job that means

61:47it worked to me I was there when the president and coming president Tamara Skenazi Dr. Tamara

61:52Skenazi came over to you and and once to work closely with you now and and bringing you

61:58to help us rethink the future of our field and you're a very creative thinker Dan and

62:04I want to say this you're also a humble person you really I think your success is because

62:10you're it's not about you it's about you know the truth and helping others and and I think

62:16that comes across to people like Tamara and others who are who want you to help us in

62:21a more not just the public facing scholarship but for us as scholars to start to rethink

62:28of how we're how we're doing stuff and why are we not having the impact and how by the

62:34way also how your work with these people inform scholarship right you have so many new ideas

62:40because somebody has a good idea out there who didn't go to didn't write it in an eternal

62:46article or some has a really terrible idea which makes you think of an alternative well

62:52well thank you very much for that that that means an awful lot and I have to stay humble

62:56with this face so I don't really have a choice please have a few dinners and you'll see how

63:01humble he is yeah everybody you have I feel it's like oh my gosh you're such a celebrity

63:07and people are wearing beards just because Dan is wearing a beard and they got all the

63:13stuff love it I love it all right well thank you so much for joining us Jacob friends at

63:19home if you if you would like to become a part of making this show go helping us produce

63:24excellent programming like this we would appreciate it if you if you can to become a patron over

63:31on patreon.com/dataoverdogma if you would like to contact us about anything you can write

63:38to us contact at dataoverdogmapod.com and we'll see you again next week bye everybody.

63:51Data Over Dogma is a member of the airwave media podcast network it is a production of

63:55data over Dogma Media LLC copyright 2023 all rights reserved.