Ep 3: Why is She Salt?

00:00As Lott and his family are fleeing, and the Lord is raining down, sulfur and fire on these other cities.

00:10Lott's wife turns around, she turns into a pillar of salt, and there's no expla- I was so ready for the explanation.

00:19Dan, help me out, I do not- why is she salt?

00:22Hey everybody!

00:28Hi friends, and welcome to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we bring you the latest in biblical scholarship.

00:34And we do our best to combat the spread of misinformation.

00:38With me is Dr. Dan McClellan, Bible Scholar, and TikTok Star, and I'm non-scholar, and TikTok nobody, Dan Beacher.

00:47Hi Dan, how are ya?

00:48I'm doing well, how are you doing today Dan?

00:50I'm doing great. Coming up on today's show, I'm gonna do a little chapter and verse.

00:55We're gonna stick in Genesis, skipping over some stuff, here's what I thought.

01:01I thought I was gonna talk about Abraham, but you know what, Abraham is a long and sort of stretched out thing,

01:07and there's this thing right in the middle of it that caught my eye, so we're gonna go with that.

01:12And then you are going to do a- what does that mean?

01:12Okay.

01:17Yeah, is that right?

01:18Yes, gonna talk about the word provenance, which some people pronounce "prevenience," but I prefer to pronounce it.

01:26Providence, we're gonna talk about what that means and some things that have been in the news recently

01:31that relate to why provenance is such a big deal for scholars, and particularly for archaeologists.

01:37Can I call it provenance?

01:39Uh, yeah, if you're nasty, I guess you can- you can do that.

01:43And nasty, I am.

01:45All right, well, let's dive in.

01:49I wanted to talk about, as I said, I was looking at Genesis, I was looking at Abraham because I thought,

01:59you know, Abraham's a big deal, kind of the biggest deal, the godfather of the whole of the,

02:07you know, the religions of the book, you will.

02:10Yeah, yeah.

02:11But right there in the middle, there's this story about his nephew.

02:16And I thought we would check in with that.

02:19Because the Abraham, the Abraham/Abraham story is rudely and kind of inexplicably interrupted

02:29by this cute little chapter right in the middle about Lot.

02:33Now, back in Genesis 13, we reveal Lot, Lot is traveling with Abraham at that time.

02:41Is that how you would say it?

02:42Abraham?

02:42Abraham.

02:43Abraham.

02:44And then they find that there's not enough grazing ground for both of their flocks.

02:51So Abraham takes the high road to a gated community called the Oaks, very fancy.

02:56And Lot takes the low road to Sodom, and anyone who's heard of Sodom knows what's coming.

03:07So we get to, fast forward to Genesis 18, where Abraham, who is now Abraham,

03:13but that's a story for another day, is talking to some fellas.

03:18You don't really know much about these fellas.

03:20And the Lord jumps in and decides to reveal that Sodom is going to be destroyed.

03:28Because it's wicked.

03:31And these guys start negotiating.

03:34There's a very interesting negotiation that happens with the Lord, where they're like,

03:40hey, what if there are 50 good people in Sodom?

03:44Would you save it then?

03:46And the Lord's like, all right, if there's 50, if there's 50, it's okay.

03:51I'll let them live.

03:52And they're like, okay.

03:53I'm thinking upon stars here.

03:56Best I can do is 50.

03:57But it's not because they're like 45.

04:01What if there's only five less than that?

04:0445, come on.

04:05And the Lord's like, okay.

04:0645, they keep going.

04:08It is the weirdest thing.

04:09They just talk him down.

04:1245, 40, 30, blah, blah, blah.

04:14They get down to 10.

04:16If there are 10 good people in Sodom, and here's the interesting part.

04:21Correct me if I'm wrong here, Dan.

04:23The Lord doesn't seem to know how many good people there are in Sodom.

04:28He has to go and check it out.

04:30Yeah, and this is something we find in Genesis a bunch.

04:33Like when the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, the story starts with them going,

04:39hey, let's go see what's going on down there.

04:42And so, and this is one of those first-person plural verbs,

04:47probably a reference to the divine council, but they're like,

04:49I heard a weird noise.

04:51Let's go check it out.

04:52They don't really know exactly what's going on.

04:54Just like Adam hiding in the garden and God's walking around,

04:58like I thought he was.

05:00Where are you?

05:01He doesn't really know where the what's going on.

05:03It does see.

05:06Yeah.

05:06So, okay, the Lord, the Lord doesn't know.

05:09The Lord doesn't really have a said idea what he's working on here.

05:12And so, yeah, they'd negotiate him down to 10 people.

05:15And then we launch into-

05:17And I think I'm sorry to interrupt real quick,

05:20but I think it's also interesting to note.

05:21Not only is Adonai, God, the Lord here, not omniscient,

05:28but the last verse of chapter 18 says,

05:31and the Lord went his way.

05:34Yeah.

05:35A reference to the fact that in this time period,

05:38God was very much conceptualized as an anthropomorphic

05:42corporeal being limited in a specific time and space,

05:47and also not like clearly superhuman.

05:52We have stories where divine beings are confused for regular old humans,

05:57and that seems to be what's going on here.

05:59So, God is very much a human-sized and shaped and looking entity

06:05who is just chatting with Abraham,

06:08and they're kind of out on the veranda,

06:10taking a look over at that city over there,

06:12and haggling over how much to save the city.

06:15And so, it's a different concept of God than what we are.

06:20God seems to be like walking around and stuff.

06:22Yep.

06:23But on his feet, he's not floating on a chariot in the clouds or anything.

06:27Yeah.

06:28All right.

06:29So, speaking of divine beings walking around,

06:32chapter 19 opens with two of the guys who apparently were two of the guys that Abraham

06:40was talking to have now journeyed into Sodom, but the first three words of chapter 19 are,

06:49the two angels came to Sodom in the evening.

06:52Now, what's going on with the angels?

06:55So, in the beginning of chapter, what's that?

06:57Do we know what an angel is in this case?

07:01What's going on?

07:03So, very much like God, the Hebrew word is just malach,

07:07which means a messenger literally,

07:10and it is used to refer to human messengers in a number of instances.

07:16So, the word angel as we know it is an interpretation that we're imposing on the text,

07:23because if you're reading this in the Hebrew, it just says two messengers.

07:26Oh, weird.

07:28And, you know, we have in the books of Samuel, you have and David sent messengers.

07:33And it's the exact same word in Hebrew.

07:35And so, the idea of a divine messenger is an interpretive lens that we're putting on the text.

07:41But there are enough stories within the Hebrew Bible

07:45where it's very clearly a divine messenger and not a human messenger

07:50that we're kind of comfortable with this notion

07:53that angel is an appropriate way to refer to these entities.

07:57But the very second verse of verse 18,

08:01so it starts off, "The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre,"

08:04as he sat at the entrance of his tent.

08:06Verse 2 starts off, "He looks up and he saw three men."

08:10And so, here, and in a number of other places, both God and these angels are referred to as

08:16an ish, as a man.

08:18And there's a wonderful book on this by Esther Hamori called "When God's Were Men."

08:25And it's an academic discussion of what she labels the ish, theophany,

08:31or a story about God appearing to someone and the narrator explicitly referring to God as an ish,

08:38as a man. Well, you know, some people think of them as a man,

08:43some people don't to each their own is what I'd like to say.

08:46Oh, that was very cheap. There you go.

08:50Hey, man, low-hanging fruit is still fruit. All right, so, here we go.

08:57These two angels, messengers, whatever. What's interesting to me about,

09:01I'm going to stick with the angels thing because I'm curious about this.

09:03What's interesting to me is that nothing else in this story says to me,

09:09that these angels are divine. They clearly have knowledge from God.

09:15They have the knowledge that the town's going to be destroyed,

09:18and maybe they have the ability to sort of check in with God,

09:21and maybe it is just that they are the ones who are in, who, like, later on,

09:28are kind of in charge of when the destruction happens and kind of negotiating with a lot about

09:35when the destruction happens. So maybe they have some, okay, okay,

09:39I'm talking myself into them having some divine power.

09:41Well, if you've seen the movie Dogma, you will know that raining down fire and brimstone from

09:49heaven is one of the most physically taxing activities in the world, apart from soccer, so.

09:54Yeah, I haven't seen that movie since the 90s, so I'll have.

10:01You and I were talking about it. Yeah, I can't track it down. It's nowhere.

10:05Yeah, anyway, but yeah, here they're just like, hey, God's going to destroy the city.

10:09So there's not, it's not like they're playing a role. They're actively engaged in this. They're

10:13just kind of, you know, waltzing in to say, hey, you should probably get out of here.

10:18Right. Right. Okay. So these, these two guys come into town.

10:24Immediately they encounter a lot who jumps up and says, hey, come and stay at my house.

10:31And they're like, no, no, we're going to sleep in the square.

10:33And he's like, no, no, no, I insist, I insist. Come, you'll, you'll sleep in our house.

10:39You'll wake up early in the morning and you'll get out, which is what I always want to tell

10:42my guests. You'll get up very early and leave. Yes. You're very welcome until tomorrow.

10:49Anyway, so he, I'll interrupt you real quick to just suggest that this is kind of the

10:57rhetorical point of the story is that unlike the people of Sodom, and previously when

11:03it referenced a lot, uh, pitching his tent towards Sodom or alongside Sodom, it talked about Sodom

11:10being wicked. And so, uh, and, and part of this may play on kind of a, uh, uh, a

11:17contrast between agrarian living folks and city dwellers. There's a part of it that may be

11:26suggesting city dwellers are problematic. And you know, uh, that farm living is for me kind of

11:33perspective where we prefer folks who live off the land who live in tents rather than folks who live

11:39in cities. And, and that may be part of the message is that Sodom is bad because it's this, uh,

11:45city that's filled with all these city dwellers and, uh, you know, they have a apartments in these

11:51high rises and you don't get a yard or anything. And they just don't like cities. And so part of

11:56what is going on here is they're representing a lot as being very hospitable. And this is something

12:03that was, uh, a, an ideal in this time period is hospitality to strangers. And so they're like,

12:11now we're just going to sleep on the ground. And he comes out and says, no, no, come into my house,

12:15take whatever you need. I will provide for you. And then I will not stand in your way. I will let

12:20you go do whatever it is you need to do afterwards. So a lot is being shown as kind of the ideal,

12:26um, offer of hospitality, which stands in, as we will see, marked contrast to the rest of

12:34the people of Sodom. Yeah, indeed. And that actually spoiler alert will

12:42comes into play much later in the mind. Is it in Ezekiel where they talk about what the sin of?

12:50Yes. And in Ezekiel. And spoiler alert, it ain't the, uh, the rapin.

12:56No, they're, um, because it is, it's, it's the hospitality, right? They say that the sin of

13:03or something on those eyes. It's an overabundance of bread and a failure to care for the orphan and

13:11the widow and the needy. Basically this, uh, city was not taking care of its own. It was

13:17contributing to social inequality. Uh, and then at the very end, it talks about abominations,

13:24which is, uh, can be a pretty vague term, which can be used to refer to, uh, wearing two different

13:32kinds of fabrics at the same time. So eating shellfish, eating shellfish. Uh, it's not exactly

13:38clear what is being referred to with this reference to abominations.

13:44Well, I mean, there's something coming up that's, uh, that's pretty abominable.

13:49It's pretty bad. Yeah. Uh, so yes, uh, in they go to Lot's house and suddenly out of the blue,

13:56kind of the whole town gathers outside of Lot's house and starts yelling about, Hey,

14:04you know those two guys that you have in your house, send them out to us. And you know,

14:10in different, uh, translations, it says different things. Uh, for instance, in the, uh, NSRV and

14:17RSV, what is it? It's an RSV, uh, that I have in front of me. It says, uh, bring them out to us

14:26so that we may know them. Uh, other translations are more explicit, but the idea is they want to

14:33rape these men. Yeah, this is, uh, an attempt to violate these men. And I think it's, it's

14:39significant that the narration tells us that it is every man old and young in the city down to the

14:46last man. And I think this is interesting for two reasons. The first is that this is kind of, uh,

14:51a callback to Abraham's negotiations with God where I think it goes down to if there are five

14:57in the city. And, and so the story is telling us here. Lot's the only one every other man

15:05in the city, whether young or old is wicked. Now the other interesting thing is that when God

15:12talks about righteous people in the city, it seems to only care about the men. And in this time period,

15:20when you talk about full personhood, men were really the only ones who exercised

15:25a full personhood, full agency. Uh, and in some of my social media in the past, I've, I've talked

15:33about how some biblical authors, uh, think of women as kind of NPCs. They are there to play a role,

15:40but they don't have full autonomy. They don't have full agency. They don't have full personhood.

15:45And so here 95% of the time they don't have names. Exactly. Yeah. And they, there are stories where

15:52they are, play critical roles in, uh, particularly in genealogy and things like that. But for many

16:00authors, they're not just a concern. And I think this is one of those instances where it's telling

16:05us, Hey, remember how God said that they were going to look for five people? Well, here's every

16:10single man in the city down to the last man kind of making the point that when we mentioned people,

16:16you know, we really, we were talking about just the men. And there's not a single one in the city,

16:21apart from a lot who is righteous. Yeah, really, which is strange because, well,

16:28we won't get into the, the sons in law. Were they in the crowd? I don't know. Yeah. You tell me.

16:34Anyway, uh, to as if the Lord wanted to illustrate your point about women not mattering much, uh,

16:42the next thing that happens is one of the most horrific thing. I have no place in my brain to

16:50put this, which is Lot's answer to the crowd, which is to beg them not to rape the guests in his house.

17:01But here's what I'll do it just because I don't want you to have nothing. I'm going to send out

17:07my two daughters to you and you can do with them as you will. Yeah. And this is, and this is a way to

17:15again kind of hold up Lot as the ideal, um, patron, the ideal, uh, offer of hospitality because it,

17:25it is hyperbolic. It is rhetorical, but it's saying Lot cares so much about the safety of anyone.

17:33He brings in under his roof that he's willing to sacrifice his two daughters, uh, in order to

17:40protect them. And, and this is not just in addition to being a, uh, a denigration, a, a, um,

17:48subjugation of their personhood, their autonomy, their agency. It's also, uh, again, showing Lot

17:53as willing to give up something because having two daughters is, um, means you have some money

17:59headed your way because you're going to basically sell them off when they get married. There's a

18:03bride price that's going to come to you. Uh, and this is if they have been violated, if, uh,

18:10they're no longer, uh, from the perspective of these authors, if they're no longer, uh, potential

18:18wives, if they're not wife material, then Lot is also sacrificing that future income. So in a

18:25few different ways, it's presenting Lot as willing to sacrifice his own resources, his own goods,

18:31uh, members of his own family in order to protect these houseguests. And now this story has a parallel.

18:38This is not the only place in the Bible where we hear almost the exact same story. Judges 19

18:44tells almost the exact same story. And this is with, uh, a, a gentleman in Israelite who is

18:50traveling with his concubine, uh, and very similar situation. He's in, uh, a town. It's supposed to

18:57be a town that is full of Israelites. He chooses not to stop at the closer town, but to go onto this

19:05other town where there are Israelites because he trusts his own people. He's within, you know,

19:10he's among his people. And, uh, he stops in and someone offers to, to let him stay in his house.

19:16And it's the very same thing. This is a very hospitable, uh, house owner. And the same thing

19:21happens. Men's around the house. And they say, send this dude out. We're going to violate him.

19:26And it's important. It's important to note here as with, uh, sexual assault today, it's not about

19:32sex. It's about power. It's a way to, uh, exercise control over others. It's a way to make yourself

19:40feel more powerful. And here it's a way to shame and denigrate and humiliate another male Israelite.

19:49And so some people think this is a, uh, a judgment on a criticism on same-sex orientation or same-sex

19:58intercourse. And it's really not. These men are playing a role where they are trying to humiliate

20:05someone from the outside who is staying the night, uh, trying to exercise power over them.

20:11And a very similar thing happens, uh, where the man says, no, I'm not going to send out my house

20:18guest. I'm going to protect him. And the house guest says, well, I'm just going to shove my

20:23concubine out the door and the concubine. And you know, and we'll see what happens in the

20:28Genesis story, but in the judges story, the concubine gets shoved outside and is violated all night

20:34long and then ends up dying from her injuries on the very doorstep. And in that story, the man

20:41comes out the next day and, and it is a horrific story. When you read it, the narrative is like,

20:46he stepped outside and he was like, come on, get up. We got to go. And then realized she was dead.

20:51And, uh, in the story, actually dismembers her, cuts her up into 12 pieces, sends one to each

20:57of the 12 tribes of Israel, basically to say, look what they did to my, my concubine. You know,

21:03I was supposed to be in Israelite territory, but the, the houses of Israel are just in disarray.

21:10So it's a shocking story. Um, it is parallel in many ways to what's going on in, uh,

21:17Genesis 19, but I just wanted to make that point that this is, this is not saying these guys really

21:22just wanted to have sexual intercourse with other men. That's not the point of the story in any

21:28way, shape or form. It is the locals were trying to abuse and humiliate and shame someone from the

21:36outside. And just to be clear, there's no equivocation here, right? There's no way around

21:42the facts of this, like, where this isn't an interpretation problem where like,

21:48you could interpret it a different way. Like, no, the crowd is here to rape these two guys.

21:53He, uh, lot then offers just like, is going to send his daughters out to the crowd to be raped.

22:02Yeah. Okay. Fortunately, uh, unlike, uh, the concubine in the other story,

22:09uh, the angels stop him, uh, or from sending the daughters out, close, they pull him back in,

22:17close the door, and then somehow blind all of the crowd so that they can't come in

22:25and, uh, and save the day. Uh, and then they tell, so that, that little, uh, escapade is over. Right.

22:34Um, uh, so then, uh, it's time for the cities to be destroyed. The city, multiple cities actually

22:43get destroyed in this. Those sodom is sort of the, the center of this thing. Um, and, uh,

22:51the, the men say to lot, hey, do you have anybody else in town that you want to save? Because

22:56we're going, uh, right now. And, uh, a lot goes to his daughter's boyfriends. They're not really

23:04married yet, right? These are these, they called sons in law, but it seems like they're not married

23:09yet. So, so marriage, anciently was a lot different. Once they got engaged, they were

23:13basically treated at, or they were referred to as if they were already married. So that

23:19engagement was like step one in a two step process. And so, uh, it can refer to them

23:25as sons in law because there's already a contract there. It has not yet been consummated. Uh, and so

23:31that's yeah. And, um, and that's why a lot can offer these two women who are virgins in the story

23:39because they have not yet consummated the marriage. Interesting. All right. So he goes to the sons

23:45in law. He says, Hey, we got to get out of here. The Lord's going to destroy the entire city. And

23:50they go, ah, nah, they think he's joking. They think it's a, they, they don't come, uh, which

24:00that's an interesting thing, uh, to do your potential father-in-law. You've also got to get to, uh,

24:06a lot of this is an etiology for some, uh, some ethnic groups that are going to be, uh,

24:14going to get quite the zinger at the end of the story. And part of the point there was that there

24:19are no other men available. And so they're, they're kind of a MacGuffin in the story. They're just

24:24there to be able to, uh, for the narrators to say, and then these two idiots were like you.

24:30Surely you just. So, uh, and one of my favorite little tiny moments in, in this story is that, uh,

24:41you know, so a lot can't get, uh, his sons-in-law. So it's just him, his daughters, and his wife.

24:46Uh, morning happens. The, the angels say, all right, let's go. And let's,

24:52Dilly Dally's apparently a little bit. And the angels grab everybody by the arms and just say,

25:00let's get out of here. So they all get out of there and, uh, here, here's what the angels say to them

25:07when they are outside of the city. They say, quote, flee for your life. Do not look back or

25:14stop anywhere in the plane, flee to the hills or else you will be consumed. Uh, and then a lot,

25:21again, with the negotiation, lots like, ah, the hills. I don't know about the hills. Can I go to

25:27a city? There's another nice little city over here. You can just not destroy that and I'll go to that.

25:33And the angels are like, fine, go to that city. Uh, and they start destroying

25:38Sodom and Gomorrah and sort of most of all of the plane. Uh, uh, and I was excited. I was excited

25:49when I was reading this to get to a part that I've always heard about and never understood.

25:56And that is that as Lot and his family are fleeing and the Lord is raining down sulfur and fire

26:03on these other cities, it's napalm all the way. Uh, lots wife turns around

26:12and turns to a pillar of salt. Now I had heard that story since I was a little kid. Yeah. When I was

26:19excited to read it now as an adult because I thought, okay, I'm finally going to understand

26:25why Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt. Like the, the crime of turning around does not seem

26:32to be a large crime. Yeah. Like when they, when it's being explained to them, it just sounds like

26:38you don't want to dilly dally. You want to run. Yeah. You want to, you want to get going.

26:43Uh, it doesn't sound like, and by the way, if you do turn around

26:49catastrophe. Yeah. Yeah. On you. It's not saying don't turn around or else. It seems like it's just

26:55good advice. Right. Get going. Yeah. It's like don't look down when you're on a high thing. Yeah.

27:01Yeah. Whatever. But it turns out, no, she turns into a pillar of salt and there's no, I was so

27:07ready for the explanation of what is happening here. Dan, help me out. I do not. Why is she salt?

27:15So again, a lot of this story is just accounting for why we find things the way we find them now.

27:22And the, the region of Sodom and Gomorrah is supposed to be around the Dead Sea, which is a very low

27:27lying, uh, see, I think, I want to say it's a couple hundred meters below sea level. Right. And

27:34there are salt deposits all over the place. And so there are just natural pillars and deposits of

27:41salt all around the Dead Sea. And so this is a way to account for why that is. And so it's not,

27:48it's not telling a story because there's something significant to the, the thrust of the story

27:54about this detail. It's telling the story in order for people to go, oh, that's why there's all these

28:00pillars of salt down by the Dead Sea. Oh, well, um, it all looked. Yeah. They, um,

28:09everybody loves, every pillar is a somebody who turned around and looked. Right. And so one of

28:13the things I see a lot on social media is people who are talking about, uh, you know, proving the

28:19Bible true. There's a specific pillar, a very old one that is referred to as Lot's wife, kind of

28:27colloquially. And so people will say, look, that's Lot's wife right there. She even know where it is.

28:34And, and these people don't realize that this is on the top of a mountain and that pillar is like

28:40over 50 feet high. So it's definitely not Lot's wife. And so there are aspects of the story that

28:49the original rhetorical intent, the rhetorical goal is lost on people who are trying to understand it

28:57as verbatim history, as an account of history as it actually happened. This is, you know, in some

29:05way you've got to consider this, like the story of the alligator who grabbed onto the elephant's nose

29:11and pulled and pulled and pulled until it stretched out. What's the point of that story? Oh, well,

29:16it is an etiology, a folk etiology for why elephants have long noses and very similarly,

29:23Lot turning around and turning into a pillar of salt is an etiology for why there are pillars of

29:27salt around the Dead Sea. Okay. Okay. Well, we're out of the bad cities and, you know, briefly,

29:39Lot and his family are in a little town called Zoar. Then they leave Zoar and run up into the

29:47mountains. And his two daughters decide to do the most inexplicable thing I've ever heard of in my

29:54life. Yeah. They say to him, our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come into us

30:03after the manner of all the world. Now, I've read up a little bit on the geography of what we're

30:09talking about. They would not have to travel far to find husband, right? Like there are men about,

30:18but they decide there aren't going to be any men for them. The only guy in the world, it feels,

30:25it feels like they think they're the only ones who survived of anybody who survived the firebombing

30:34of Sodom and Gomorrah. Yeah. Even though they just came out of a town. Yeah, it says they came out of

30:39Zoar, which is kind of a word that means little, so this little place. And it doesn't say anything

30:48about anyone living there as far as I recall. But yeah, they flee into the mountains and they

30:55must have thought of this as some kind of apocalyptic event. And surely no one is going to be left.

31:00And so it is down to us to carry on the human race. To repopulate the earth. Yeah. Unfortunately,

31:08the only dude is dad. Right. Dad is. So they so they come up with a plan because apparently

31:15Lot wouldn't be up for this if they presented to him. So on subsequent nights, they get their

31:22father drunk and they lie with him. Right. So and and both of them get pregnant.

31:31Yep. And and so here we've got another etiology, another way to say this is why the world is the

31:38way it is. And the story here is that one of them gives birth to the eponymous ancestor of the

31:46Moabites and the other gives birth to the eponymous ancestor of the Ammonites, people who would be in

31:52conflict with the nation of Israel in the first half of the first millennium BCE. And it's basically

32:01a way to say these two people that were not really fans of, they're both the result of incest.

32:08Right. It's not just a way to tell this story and say, look at the pillars salt. And this is why

32:14this city was destroyed. And oh yeah, our neighbors are also the children of incest.

32:19So it's like kind of nuts. Yeah, it's like because we've just we've just told our told this whole

32:27story about this good man lot about, you know, he is he is Abraham's kin. He is like, you

32:35he is the only good man in the entire plane of Jordan or whatever it is. And yet we're going to

32:46just besmirch the crap out of all of that. And his entire lineage for the rest of time

32:51is is is tainted by incest. And in part, it kind of absolves him of the responsibility a little bit

33:00by saying this was the daughter's intentional decision. And they tricked him by getting him

33:04drunk. So he is not responsible for this. So in a way, it tries to tie off lots righteousness

33:11and say this wasn't his issue. But still, the Moabites and the Ammonites are, are, you know,

33:16gross people. And this is part of one of the main rhetorical thrusts of the book of Genesis is to

33:24create a single lineage for all the peoples on earth so that we can account for where everybody

33:31came from. And it all goes back to a single individual. Initially, Adam and Eve, and we're

33:37going to get then Noah and the flood. And then we're going to get all these peoples and the

33:42peoples we like, which are not really many people except for Israel and and the people descended

33:50from Israel. But the people we don't like everybody else. Oh, we got some zingers in store for them.

33:55This is where they came from. And including, you know, Hagar, whose son, this is Genesis 16,

34:03Hagar gives birth to Ishmael. Ishmael is going to be the eponymous ancestor of the Ishmael lights.

34:09But but this is a an enslaved woman who only was able to have a child by Abraham because Sarah

34:20was barren. And so right, these are ways to kind of rhetorically taint all these other folks around

34:27them that's they had different degrees of hatred for. Yeah, not. I mean, it's an interesting device

34:35to use. And I get why they did it. They let's not talk about the fact that they score a bit of an

34:40own goal on themselves when Sarah and Abraham turn out to be half brother half half sister.

34:46But we'll get to that another time. That's a story for another time. Yeah.

34:51As for that, that's the end of the lot story. That's all we get. And so, you know, ends with a

34:59middle finger to the Moabites and the Ammonites, the end. And then we're back to the to the Abraham

35:08story, which we'll get to at some point. Yep. But for now, let's take a break. All right.

35:17Welcome to this installation of what does that mean, the segment where we try to talk about some

35:23terms, some concepts, some frameworks from the worlds of biblical studies, study of religion,

35:30archaeology. And today I wanted to talk about a word that I pronounce Providence, but that some

35:37people will pronounce convenience or something like that, particularly if they're of a European

35:42bent. But this is a word that fundamentally refers to the origins of something or when

35:47something began to be the way it is. And this is used a lot in archaeology to talk about where we

35:54found things. And so in you will hear archaeologists distinguish provinanced artifacts from unprovinanced

36:03artifacts. And this is a big deal. An unprovinanced artifact is something that does not have a secure

36:13provenance. We don't know precisely where it was first discovered. Because at some point,

36:18everything that we find archaeologically was left somewhere. And then some point later,

36:23someone dug it up out of the ground, tripped over it, discovered it somehow. And that point of

36:30discovery is the provenance. Now, with unprovinanced artifacts, a lot of them will turn up on the

36:37market. Somebody will be offered something for sale. And they don't know exactly where it came

36:43from. And the big problem with this is without a good provenance, you don't know if it's a forgery

36:49or not, you don't know where it came from, you don't know when it came from. And so there's a limit to

36:55the utility, the usefulness of such artifacts for scholars. Part of what we're talking about is

37:02kind of like, like the legal concept of chain of custody, where, where like, if we know whose hands

37:11a piece of evidence has been in, and we can try, you know, we can definitively track where it's

37:18come from and who's handled it and stuff, then legally, then it has much more force than if it

37:27just shows up somewhere. Yeah. And similarly, in scholarship, something has much more force and

37:32more utility for the scholarly discussion. If we can say we were digging in this place, we kept

37:41careful notes at this depth, we found this, it was found right next to this other thing, it was

37:47found with these other things inside it, or it was found inside these other things. And that

37:52all helps us to provide context so that when we're trying to reconstruct the history of this

37:57artifact, if we can say this bowl had a bunch of charred seeds in it, and we can carbon 14 tests

38:08those seeds, and we can say they came from this time period. And this bowl came from a level,

38:14a stratum that also had these other artifacts in it that we can also date to a given time period,

38:22and we can say this bowl almost certainly came from this time period, or at least it was deposited

38:28in this time period. It may have been made earlier, but when it had these burnt seeds put inside it,

38:34when it fell into disuse, when it was covered in dirt, this is when that happened. And that

38:40helps us because other scholars are going to look at it and say, what does this mean? What was this

38:44use for? What does this tell us about the world in this time period? If we can say this came from

38:51this decade, maybe even this year, then it is a lot more useful to us as scholars. But if somebody

38:59shows up, if you see on eBay, I don't even know if eBay is still a thing, but if you see on eBay,

39:04somebody selling a bowl, and they said, Oh, this came from 5000 BC. You know, we have no idea

39:12if that's the case, and we can try to compare things, what kinds of designs are on it,

39:17how is it made, what shape is it in, we can try to fit it into things, but we may only be able to

39:25get within maybe 500 years, we may even not even be able to get into the right millennium. And so

39:32Providence is so important. And these days, there's an entire industry around creating fake

39:39artifacts. No, yeah, you don't say believe it or not, there are people willing to create fake

39:46artifacts to make money. And some of them can make a lot of money. The Dead Sea Scrolls,

39:52we know that the Dead Sea Scrolls that were initially purchased way back in 1947 and in the

40:01years following, we know that those are authentic. And then we had archaeologists who went out to

40:07Qumran in the surrounding area and dug and discovered a bunch more. We have the provenance for those

40:13things. The original ones were found on the market, so they were initially un-provinenced,

40:18but we were able to trace them back to the caves from which they came from and were pretty secure

40:24in that. But since 2002, there have been a handful of fragments of texts that were associated with

40:32the Dead Sea Scrolls that were sold at auctions or sold privately by people who just showed up

40:41with these fragments and said and probably said, oh, yeah, they came from here. And that influenced

40:46the scholarship for many years. In fact, one of them that I found fascinating was a fragment of

40:52Deuteronomy 27, which suggested. So there are we have the in Deuteronomy, the blessings and the

41:01curses one from Mount Ebal and the other from another mountain. But the Samaritans, the ancient

41:10Samaritans claimed that it was Mount Gerazim that was where one of these two things was pronounced

41:18from. And this fragment of Deuteronomy 27, where it should have said Ebal, it said Gerazim.

41:25And this was like, oh, no, or oh, yeah, it the Samaritans may have been right. And this excited

41:33a lot of people and me included, I was like, this is this is fascinating. This is so cool.

41:38Fast forward almost 20 years, we had a lot of scholars who were starting to do research on these

41:47fragments and look closely at them who decided it seems like these are forgeries that these aren't

41:53real. And a friend of mine was involved in that Kip Davis, Dr. Kip Davis, that I worked with at

42:00Trinity Western University 13 years ago, was one of the scholars who did a lot of really great

42:08work looking at these things under microscopes, looking at the ink, looking at the, it's not the

42:17animal skins that were used. And concluding with a high degree of certainty that these were not

42:23produced anciently, these are forgeries. And a lot of money changed hands regarding those fragments.

42:30So and some of these are in that were in the hands are probably still are in the hands of like the

42:35Museum of the Bible. But there were also some universities that got involved as is a Pacific,

42:39for instance, university purchased at least one of these fragments. And so it influenced the

42:44scholarship. It caused a lot of money to change hands. And it also brought prestige to a lot of

42:51these places that, you know, boasted of having fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls. And it turns

42:57right. They were fake. And so obviously there are a lot of folks who would rather not accept the

43:04findings of Dr. Davis and other scholars who still think they are genuine, but they're almost

43:11certainly forgeries. Well, especially when like your when, you know, you've got some scholar whose

43:16work is dependent on these and really cool things, you know, and they've put in a lot of effort and

43:23they've put in a lot of time on this thing to then have to turn around and say, Oh, you know what,

43:28just disregard. Yeah. All of my books, all of my pieces, all this other stuff. That's a painful,

43:36painful moment. Yeah. And you know, we don't want anyone to have to go through that. And we don't want

43:42universities to be spending hundreds of thousand dollars of dollars. We don't want folks like the

43:47Museum of the Bible spending even more than that. I'm trying to maybe even smuggle in some of these

43:53things from from other countries. Yeah, they've been in some trouble that Museum of the Bible. Those

43:59Greens made some sketchy purchases over the years. Yeah, there are issues there. But I think the I

44:07recently heard that rather than trying to purchase antiquities and things that are more or less

44:14relics, they're starting to fund independent archaeological excavations. And when I say

44:20independent, I mean, they're paying money so that other people who are not associated with them and

44:24are not under their thumb can go dig in places. And I think that's a much better use of money. So,

44:31so that I think they are starting to learn their lesson in that regard. But yeah, they have done

44:38a lot of stuff incorrectly. They had a whole bunch of Dead Sea Scrolls that turned out to not be

44:44authentic. They had, they've they've had a lot of their of their collection turned out to be

44:51phonies. That that's been one of the issues. One of the issues has been that they've purchased

44:57antiquities and brought them into United States when that was against the law. Some of that has

45:03been repatriated. So yeah, there's there's an issue with that. And and this is one of the reasons that

45:08a lot of scholars are calling for a complete moratorium on publishing any scholarship that is

45:15based on or that is presenting unprovinanced artifacts. Oh, wow. And and this would be a pretty

45:22significant step. But there are there are folks who have taken this step. For instance, biblical

45:27archaeology review was still is a very popular magazine that seeks to democratize biblical archaeology

45:37for folks. You can get a subscription to this magazine for not a lot of money. And you know,

45:41there will be articles talking about recent discoveries and scholarship on artifacts and

45:47places and things like that. And a friend of mine used to be the editor in chief. And while he was

45:51editor in chief, they wouldn't even talk about unprovinanced artifacts. That was a high standard

45:59that was briefly set for biblical archaeology review, just so that they would not be contributing

46:07to problematic scholarship that could be erased tomorrow, that they would not be contributing to

46:14this industry that is profiting from the production and the sale of these fake artifacts. And then

46:21he left that publication a few years ago. And now they are back to discussing and publishing

46:28unprovinanced artifacts. But there are other publishers who are trying to take seriously

46:36this discussion about should we completely avoid publishing any discussion, any scholarship on

46:41unprovinanced artifacts? Well, because there is this question of like, okay, so we have

46:47an artifact that is unprovinanced. That's problematic. But it could be real. And if it's real,

46:54it's telling us something. Yeah. And there are cases, there are some artifacts where

46:59that could be the case. This could be groundbreaking. If this is real, and it could just be something

47:05that some dude made in their garage 10 years ago. But now wait a minute, it can't be that easy.

47:12Well, to trick people into seeing a piece of an artifact as real, that very clearly wasn't in it.

47:21There are suddenly giving the motion to leadingly. Yeah, well, yeah, two things. So this industry

47:33is getting very, very sophisticated. And a lot of people with a lot of expertise are

47:40moving into this area. And so it's getting harder and harder to decipher forgery from authentic.

47:47But that does raise something that just happened just a few days ago, where this was a discovery

47:53that was supposed to have been made by the media advisor to the president of Israel late last year,

48:01who was hiking at Tel Lakhish. And Lakhish is this city in central Israel, the ruins of this city.

48:10It's a tell, meaning it's a big hill and the city was built on top of the hill. And this was

48:15one of the cities that was besieged by the Assyrian king, Sennacherib. Back when Hezekiah was king.

48:22In fact, it is memorialized the destruction of Lakhish on some bar reliefs that were set up in

48:29Sennacherib's palace in Nineveh. But he was walking around the tell and he said he picked up a pot

48:35shirt. So that's a broken piece of a clay pot and saw writing on it and noticed that he could

48:42read it very easily. And then it said 20th year or maybe it said second year, Darius or Darius.

48:50And this would be a reference to Darius the Great, the Persian king. And he said he looked around

48:55thinking that this was a prank that was being played on him. But nobody seemed to know anything

49:01about this. So they took it to the Israel Antiquities Authority, the IAA who ran some analyses on it

49:07and came back and said, and this is a quote that this is authentic. No modern hand could do this.

49:14Wow. Unquote. That is that's a bold statement. And so it is very bold. And on March 1st,

49:21now this discovery was supposed to have been made late last year. They sat on it until March 1st.

49:27So just less than a week before the beginning of the celebration of Purim, the Jewish holiday

49:35that derives from the story of Esther. And they released this story on March 1st announcing the

49:42discovery of this inscription. And I saw this early in the morning on Twitter and I made a video

49:49about it, shared it on TikTok. And I said, feels rather convenient that this is coming out

49:55shortly before Purim. And I'm sure there are some epigraphers who are going to have things to say

50:00about this. But this is an unprovinanced artifact. Now, this individual ostensibly just found it

50:08laying on the ground at this site. But this site has been trod for decades and decades by thousands

50:16and thousands of people. Archaeologists have dug all over this site. And so for a pot sure to be

50:22just be sitting on top of the ground means it was probably left there recently. It has been moved

50:28from some other place. So this is an unprovinanced artifact, meaning that just the ground doesn't

50:36count as provenance. When it's when it's supposed to be 2700 years later, probably not anything that

50:45was deposited in its original state, 2700 years ago is going to be under something. And so to have

50:52it just be sitting on the surface of this tell that has been dug up for decades and decades is

51:00an issue. Now, sometimes people will, you know, kick over a rock or turn something over and dislodge

51:08something. But if it is found just kind of sitting unconnected to anything, not embedded in anything,

51:16but loose on the surface of the ground, that is probably you probably cannot say you have a good

51:23provenance on that. So that story breaks a bunch of scholars start talking about this. And I have

51:30a friend who lives in Israel who was saying on Twitter, by like four PM that day, that there are

51:39rumblings that this is going to be announced as not authentic. And it was just if it was not the

51:46next day, it was the day after that the Israel Antiquities Authority came out and said, turns out

51:53this is not authentic. And how could they know? Well, they knew because the person who ostensibly

52:01made it caught in contact with them after the story broke. And the what they shared was that

52:09someone who was part of an excavation that was taking place at Laquiche the previous August had

52:16taken that pot shirt and inscribed it with that text as part of a demonstration to a class regarding

52:25inscription techniques, which means this person is is quite an expert in these kinds of inscriptions

52:33if they could just offhandedly to demonstrate to a class how people inscribed pottery created an

52:39inscription that the Israel Antiquities Authority said no modern hand could do. So there are still

52:47question marks about this story. But the idea is basically that they created this inscription to

52:52demonstrate this technique to students. They left it at the site. A couple of months later,

52:59someone stumbled upon it on the ground. And so it was was this sorry, was this shard actually an

53:05ancient shard that he just had lying around that this person just had lying around and that they

53:09then inscribed a most likely that's what it sounds like. And if interesting been to Israel, a lot of

53:16these sites do have a lot of broken pottery just scattered around part of the shard. I can get

53:22you a shard. I get you a shard by three o'clock. And there's a there's a site called a Azekah,

53:30which is near the valley of Allah where David was supposed to have fought Goliath. And it's just

53:36there are just shards strewn all over the place. And some of it is kind of like decoration. Like

53:43somebody had a bunch of pots made in shattered them all and just kind of scattered things. And

53:47some of it is, you know, it's part of the ambiance. And and some of it is ancient pottery where this

53:55has already been, you know, we found a bunch of shattered pots. We got what we needed. We've done

54:02all the research. We've documented everything. So we're just going to scatter the stuff on the

54:06ground. And so it's not unusual to find pot shirts, but you can't really date a pot shirt. You know,

54:13you can't carbon 14 date it. You know, if you don't find it in context, you either have to date it

54:21based on techniques that are used images that are painted on it or inscribed in it or something

54:28like that. So just a random pot shirt could be from 1000 years ago could be from 3000 years ago

54:34could be from last week. It is not easy to tell. I guess they're just made a dirt. So dirt from

54:41the same place. Who knows when it was made? Yeah. And so that's a that's a difficult thing for the

54:49IAA the Israel Antiquities Authority to to acknowledge they did the right thing, though, they rather

54:55quickly came out with this press release saying stop the presses. We made a mistake. And there is

55:01some some egg on their face. But at the same time, there are still some question marks to this

55:06story. But this is an illustration of one of the dangers of publishing, publicizing, publishing,

55:14unprovidence artifacts. As if this was just created by somebody illustrating this technique

55:20for their students, if they never found out about the story being released, or if they decided not

55:25to come forth, that artifact could be used in who knows how much research. Now, in this particular

55:33instance, the inscription second year or 20th year, whatever, of Darius, that doesn't really change

55:39much. We know a quite a bit about Darius. It would be the first direct attestation to Darius

55:46that is found in Israel. So in that sense, it would be noteworthy, but it wouldn't really change any

55:51of the scholarship. But if they had said something that would be groundbreaking and then kept their

55:56mouth shut, that could you know, there could be doctoral dissertations written about that conference

56:01as held books published. And all based on something that somebody may have just scribbled and

56:08kind of absentmindedly left behind. And that could change the shape of scholarship. And so

56:15because of just how serious those things can be, I think we need to take the, we need to take

56:22seriously the problem of unprovidence artifacts. And people need to be aware of what artifacts

56:30that are being talked about in the public have provenance and which do not, because that those

56:35that do not tend to generate a lot of problems. I feel like the next thing you're going to tell

56:41me is like, the Noah's Ark that they found in Turkey isn't legitimate. Well, that one's still

56:47in the ground. But it's definitely not legitimate. Oh, darn it. All right, fine. That one's, we'll

56:56talk about what wishful thinking means in another segment. But motivated reasoning. Yeah. All right.

57:05Well, thank you, Dan. That's fascinating. Another another word in our pocket as we journey forth

57:11in the scholarship that's useful. If you would like to contact us about that or anything that

57:19we've talked about on today's show listener and viewer at home, you can write into us. The address

57:25is contact at data over dogma pod.com. And you can, you can write to us there. Find us on all of our

57:35social media. And, and if you are become a patron of our show, then we will not have to go forth

57:43and start forging things for people to find just to support ourselves. So that's, that's a good

57:50thing to do. Or will we? There's some question there in this economy. Can't rule it out.

57:57No, we can't rule it out. We can rule nothing out. Anyway, thanks for listening, everybody.

58:01And we'll talk to you again next time.