Ep 9: The Mark of the Best

00:00(upbeat music)

00:02- The Mark of the Beast.

00:03Now, if you've read the book of Revelation,

00:06which I assume Dan, that you have.

00:08- A long, long, long time ago.

00:10- Yeah.

00:11- You have to admit that what happens in chapter 13,

00:14bears a striking resemblance to Gates

00:17putting cell phone enabled nanobots in our bloodstream, right?

00:21It's basically verbatim, it's word for word.

00:24- As long as you ignore the details

00:26and just genera size it so that it becomes

00:30very, very fuzzy, then yes, so the exact same thing.

00:33- Right?

00:34All you need to do is fuzzify everything.

00:36(upbeat music)

00:39- Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:41- And I'm Dan Beacher.

00:42- And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast

00:46where we combat the spread of misinformation

00:48about the Bible and religion

00:50and try to increase public access

00:53to the academic study of the same.

00:56How are you doing today?

00:57- We do, that's true, that's what we do.

00:58That's our whole thing.

00:59(laughing)

01:00That's all we have.

01:01- That's what we got, so we're gonna do that.

01:04- And we've got a great one for you today, I think anyway.

01:06- Yeah, absolutely, I'm gonna start us off

01:10with conspiracy watch.

01:12- Don't don't don't.

01:13- We're gonna talk about some.

01:14- I need a keyboard or one of those little button things.

01:18- Little sound board that I have a little.

01:20- Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, something like that.

01:22(blows raspberry)

01:24- Yeah, we'll have a whole bunch of things.

01:25Anyway, yeah, we're gonna talk about a conspiracy

01:29and this one's one of the good ones, it's juicy,

01:31it's meaty, it's the mark of the beast.

01:35- Boi, boi, boi, boi, boi, boi, boi, boi, boi.

01:36(laughing)

01:39And then you're gonna do some amazing stuff.

01:42You're gonna introduce us to some of the things

01:45that made you a doctor.

01:48- I am gonna talk about some of the linguistic principles

01:53that I bring to the Bible that helped me

01:56when I was writing my second master's thesis

01:58on my doctoral dissertation and things that I think

02:02any close reader of the Bible or person concerned

02:06about how the Bible is interpreted should know.

02:09And it also has application to contemporary discussions

02:14today about how we categorize things, so.

02:18- And I am going to do my damnedest to make sure

02:21that I understand everything that you're saying

02:25and thereby hopefully we'll all understand

02:27everything that you're saying 'cause you're a smarty pants.

02:31So you might lose me, you might lose me,

02:33so we're gonna make sure, I'm gonna make you define

02:35literally everything.

02:37- Well, by the end of the segment,

02:39you're gonna know why I don't like definitions, so.

02:42- Ah, no, okay, so well, I'm gonna make you clarify things

02:46then, fine, fine, whatever.

02:48- And if this doesn't let everybody know

02:50that we have not talked about this beforehand, I said,

02:53oh, I'm gonna talk about this and Dan said, okay, whatever.

02:57And so he does not know what's coming

02:59and part of the segment is going to meet me

03:02putting him on the spot, so.

03:03- Okay, that sounds exciting.

03:05- Yeah, we'll get there in a moment.

03:07- You will all learn exactly how dumb I am later in the show,

03:11but for now, let's get on conspiracy watch.

03:14(upbeat music)

03:17All right, Dan, it's conspiracy time.

03:20I know that on your TikTok,

03:23you delve into a lot of different conspiracies,

03:27that is what inspired me to launch into this one.

03:30We kind of live in the golden age

03:32of conspiracy theories, actually.

03:35Literally, there has never been a moment in human history

03:38more primed for the rapid and widespread dissemination

03:43of garbage thinking.

03:44- Unfortunately, you would think that access

03:46to all this information would help people

03:48be more critical about stuff and--

03:50- Oh, what a wonderful, idyllic world it would be.

03:54(Dan laughs)

03:55But alas, the internet turned out to be more than just a way

04:00of getting good information out there.

04:05- Yeah.

04:06- Now, there have always been nutballs in the world

04:10screaming that the world was out to get them

04:13or that the establishment view is wrong.

04:16And the fun trick of it is that every once in a while

04:19on extremely rare occasions, the nutball happened to be right.

04:24You know, Galileo jumps to mind.

04:26But just like today, the conspiracy minded among us

04:30have throughout human history been largely full of it.

04:34The dots they were sure, they were connecting,

04:38or the dots that they were sure were connected weren't,

04:43and the apocalypse that they were sure was coming didn't.

04:47Now the modern era has unfortunately brought together

04:49many amazing technologies that are now being used

04:53in concert with each other to magnify and enhance

04:56the conspiratorial worldview.

04:59Whereas before, the conspiracists were largely unable

05:02to find each other.

05:04Now, the internet has provided incredibly easy ways

05:07for them to bounce bad ideas off of each other.

05:11Before, when they wanted to share their terrible theories,

05:14the media that they produced looked like the kind of media

05:18you'd expect from the crazed, you know,

05:21from the lunatics that are out there.

05:24Now, with relative ease, anyone with some tech savvy

05:28can produce slick professional looking media

05:30that is largely indistinguishable

05:33from billion dollar news organizations.

05:35This is a problem.

05:38And it's led to some very silly,

05:41but also alarmingly widespread Hui.

05:45Hui that you, Dan, are forced to debunk over and over again

05:49on your TikToks.

05:51- Yeah, and sometimes it gets ridiculous.

05:53Somebody tagged me in a video a couple of days ago,

05:57and it was someone, a creator I had never seen before,

06:00but their script, I had heard multiple times.

06:04In fact, I had responded to another creator's video

06:07that said word for word, the exact same thing.

06:10It was like a two-minute video,

06:11and it was verbatim, the exact same script.

06:15And I was like, these people are just feeding off each other,

06:17like, and I've done videos on that before

06:20where I've showed side by side,

06:22the two people saying the exact same thing.

06:25And yeah, the conspiracy theories

06:27are just feeding off each other, and they--

06:30- Well, apparently they're ripping each other off.

06:33They're stealing from each other.

06:34- And then with AI art now,

06:36everybody can just say, give me an image of this,

06:39and then now the production quality seems to be higher

06:44because they have all this fancy artwork,

06:47and they can create this imagery,

06:49and sometimes they even try to pass off that imagery

06:52as the evidence.

06:54Like, I've seen, I don't know how many times

06:56I've seen somebody say in the Euphrates River dried up,

07:00and then there was this massive statue

07:03of one of the Anunnaki or something like that

07:07buried in the sand, and it was like,

07:08yeah, but look, the guy has three arms

07:10that's standing right next to it.

07:12This is AI-generated art, and yeah, it's a mess.

07:17- Just don't believe anything here here on the internet,

07:21including this show, I don't know.

07:23I suppose we're on the internet, too,

07:25so we can't be too--

07:27- I don't know much about the internet, but--

07:29- I know it's bad, that's all I know.

07:32Today we're going after a pretty big load of Huey,

07:37and that, you know what, it's not really

07:40even its own single conspiracy theory.

07:43It's actually more of a parasite

07:46that attaches itself to other conspiracies

07:48to lend a little Christian credence to the idea,

07:52and that is the mark of the beast.

07:54I wanted to remind people, do you remember only a few years ago

07:59when COVID was still pretty new,

08:00and we were all anxiously awaiting a vaccine,

08:03and then suddenly there were, you know, rumblings,

08:06there were worries, fears.

08:07What happened was Alex Jones, the grand Puba,

08:13the pope of modern American conspiracists,

08:17started talking about Bill Gates,

08:20and Gates had poured a bunch of money

08:22from his charitable fund into accelerating the vaccine.

08:25You remember this?

08:26And Alex Jones saw that,

08:29and the fact that Gates was a computer guy,

08:32and apparently he had also funded some research

08:35into some sort of electronic ID system,

08:38and boom, it was suddenly a certainty

08:41that Bill Gates was gonna put microchips into the vaccine

08:45to control us using like 5G towers,

08:48because that was all new,

08:50and all of this was the mark of the beast.

08:53Now, if you've read the book of Revelation,

08:56which I assume, Dan, that you have.

09:00- A long, long, long time ago, yeah.

09:01You have to admit that what happens in chapter 13

09:05bears a striking resemblance to Gates

09:09putting cell phone enabled nanobots in our bloodstream, right?

09:13It's basically verbatim, it's word for word.

09:15- As long as you ignore the details,

09:18and just generalize it so that it becomes very, very fuzzy,

09:23and then you can allow the boundaries to overlap

09:27with the fuzzy boundaries of the other thing,

09:30then yes, they're the exact same thing.

09:31- Right, all you need to do is fuzzify everything.

09:34- I wanted to share something before you get further

09:38a friend of mine who's a sociologist of religion,

09:40shared a paper that was just published

09:43in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,

09:45just released today, it's called

09:46Christ Country and Conspiracies.

09:49Question mark, Christian nationalism,

09:51biblical literalism, and belief in conspiracy theories.

09:55And basically what this article that was written

10:00by Brooklyn Walker and Abigail Vector,

10:02what they find is that Christian nationalism,

10:06plus biblical literalism, both amplify

10:09conspiratorial thinking in combination.

10:12So on their own, they both amplify conspiratorial thinking,

10:15but when you put the two together,

10:18it's even more powerful.

10:20There's some synergy going on there

10:22where the two of them together make that conspiratorial

10:25thinking exponentially more powerful.

10:29And so-- - Interesting.

10:30- Yes, that is where we get into the folks who,

10:33I recently did a video on the flat earth conspiracy theory,

10:39and I had about a dozen comments on the video

10:44to the tune of, I like most of your stuff,

10:48but you're wrong on this one, it's like no one.

10:51I promise you, I'm not wrong on this one.

10:54And I don't-- - You had this figured out--

10:56- Literally centuries ago. - Yeah, and I was like,

10:59I didn't know you were following me,

11:00but please stop following me.

11:02If you're like, I like what you're saying

11:05about biblical Hebrew and all this stuff,

11:07but you lost me at the earth is round.

11:10- Wrong.

11:12- It's tricky, man, you know, the Bible does seem

11:15to indicate that it's got four corners this earth above.

11:19So it can't be round, it's literally square, obviously.

11:24So before the whole, all of this stuff,

11:30before the Bill Gates vaccine theory, et cetera,

11:35it was implantable RFID chips, which has come back.

11:39You just, now that the vaccine thing has happened

11:42and the zombie apocalypse has failed to materialize,

11:46you've had to do, they're reviving the RFID chip business.

11:51- Evidently. - That's fun.

11:54- Yeah, and-- - That's a lot of fun.

11:56- They haven't, I haven't heard about keys and coins

12:00sticking to people's implanted things again.

12:04Or what was it the other day?

12:05Yeah, somebody was saying that you buy ground beef

12:09from the supermarket and stuff sticks to it.

12:14But yeah, it's a mess.

12:17Well, the whole UPC codes-- - That's right.

12:20- Were thought a long, long time ago to be--

12:24- Back in the 80s. - Yeah, the mark

12:26of the beast and a lot of people said,

12:29oh, that's why Hobby Lobby does not use UPC codes.

12:33And somebody went out and verified that.

12:35They went all throughout Hobby Lobby,

12:37could not find a tag with a UPC code on it.

12:39And it means that they have to type in the number every time.

12:44Like it costs Hobby Lobby a lot of time

12:47to not have UPC codes.

12:49And as far as anyone can tell,

12:52it's because they still buy into this notion

12:54that UPC codes are the mark of the beast.

12:57- So there you go.

12:58And this kind of thinking has literally been going on

13:02for centuries.

13:04So let's get to the relevant scripture

13:06and figure out what it actually says.

13:08- Let's do it.

13:09- All right, so we're in chapter 13 of Revelation

13:12verses 16 through 18.

13:14So those verses reference a beast.

13:20Though it's, I'll be honest,

13:22it's not actually 100% clear to me which beast.

13:26There are two beasts mentioned in the chapter three.

13:29If you count the dragon that gave authority

13:31to the first beast, got two beasts and a dragon.

13:35Beast the first is a sea beast with seven heads

13:40and ten horns, it looked like a leopard

13:44with the feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion.

13:48Sound like anyone we know?

13:49As a dead ringer for Bill Gates, am I right?

13:53It's exactly who it is.

13:54If there's anyone with a lion mouth, it's Gates.

13:59- Well, and scholars would say the seven,

14:03the horns and the crowns and things are representative

14:06of leadership, kings, emperors, things like that.

14:10But the seven heads would be representative

14:12of the seven hills on which the city of Rome was founded.

14:17And so when you see this reference to seven hills,

14:19seven heads, stuff like that,

14:21it's usually coded reference to Rome, the city of Rome,

14:25but that is a reference to the city

14:28as a reference to the broader empire, so the Roman empire.

14:32- Using synecdoche.

14:35See, I know some big words too damn.

14:39- I wasn't gonna use the words, the big words, 'cause--

14:42- 'Cause I keep being told.

14:44- All right, beast number two.

14:49- Beast of the second. - Beast of the earth beast.

14:51- That's right, which doesn't seem to have as many heads

14:54or resemble as many critters, but it does have

14:56the horns of a lamb, so that's good.

14:59And it speaks like a dragon, which I assume means

15:01that it sounds somewhat like Benedict Cumberbatch.

15:04- Or smog, smog, smog, smog.

15:07- That's right.

15:08- And beast number two, his job is to make everybody

15:13worship beast number one, he's the hype man.

15:16- Yep.

15:17- And so, the part that, so let's get to the part

15:23that gets a lot of people really worked up,

15:25which is at the end of the chapter,

15:27and I'll just read it, just gonna read it,

15:31and then we can sort of move on from there.

15:33- Okay.

15:35- And so, the second beast is, you know,

15:40there's a whole thing about giving breath

15:43to the image of the first beast

15:45and all this other stuff.

15:46Anyway, verse 16 says,

15:48it also, and I assume it is the second beast,

15:51it also forced all people, great and small,

15:55rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark

15:58on their right hands or on their foreheads

16:02so that they could not buy or sell

16:04unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast

16:08or the number of its name.

16:10And then verse 18 says,

16:12this calls for wisdom, let the person who has insight

16:16calculate the number of the beast,

16:19for it is the number of a man.

16:21That number is 666.

16:26But it's not, I actually wanna stop there,

16:28because it's not 666, the number is actually 666, right?

16:33- Yeah, it is a sum, 666, it is not 6, comma 6, comma 6, right?

16:38- That's right, and that seems like an arbitrary distinction,

16:45but it's actually not, because you're right,

16:50because like you say, what we're referencing here is a sum,

16:54and 666 makes sense in the way we as English speakers

17:00using Arabic numerals talk about the number 666,

17:05like we can use both of those nomenclatures

17:09kind of interchangeably,

17:13but that doesn't make any sense

17:14when we get to Hebrew or Greek number,

17:19numerical systems, is that right?

17:23- And particularly when people talk

17:24about the conspiracy theories,

17:25I think one of the most famous ones

17:27that I have seen online is the monster energy drink label.

17:31- Oh, I love that lady.

17:33- The monster lady is amazing.

17:36- Well, I made a video about that,

17:40I knew some of that video,

17:41and it got taken down as a copyright violation,

17:43so somebody has copyrighted that video.

17:48But anyway, she says that the three claw marks

17:51that represent the M for monster energy drinks,

17:54the claw marks look just like the Hebrew letter Vav,

17:57and Vav is six in Hebrew,

18:00and so vah, vah, vah, six, six, six,

18:03and that confuses how this all works,

18:07'cause it's 666 in Revelation,

18:10and in Hebrew, when you use the characters

18:14to represent numerical values, you add them all up.

18:19So vah, vah, vah is not 666, vah, vah, vah is 18,

18:24because it's six plus six plus six,

18:27and 18, another way to write 18 would be high,

18:31which is the word for life.

18:34So monster energy drink, life, in Hebrew.

18:39- It's life, you guys, come on.

18:41And interestingly, now you said the word Vav,

18:47and then you said a number,

18:48but Vav is also a letter.

18:50So talk about Gomatria.

18:53- So Gomatria is based on the fact

18:56that most of the time,

18:58recently, when they wanted to indicate a number,

19:01they would just use one of the characters of the alphabet,

19:05and the different characters

19:07have different numerical values.

19:09Alif is one, Beit is two,

19:12Gimmel is three, and so on,

19:14and then you get to 10, and then you get 20, 30, 40, 50, 60,

19:19100, 200, 300, and so on and so forth.

19:23And so in order to create large numbers,

19:27you would just put a bunch of these characters

19:30next to each other.

19:31Now you can also spell them out,

19:32and that's generally how it's done in the Hebrew Bible.

19:36You have the actual numbers,

19:39the words that stand for the numbers, shallosh is three,

19:44shashe is six, and so forth, you spell them out.

19:48So that's how it's frequently done,

19:49but in some manuscripts,

19:51and particularly in Greek, it works as well,

19:54you can just put the characters themselves there.

19:57And so Gomatria is this idea that

20:00you can derive significance based on taking words

20:07and particularly names and things like that,

20:09and finding out the numerical value of those characters

20:14if you interpret them numerically.

20:16And then so that's a coded way to refer to somebody's name.

20:21However their name is spelled in Hebrew,

20:24you add up the numerical values of the individual characters,

20:28and then their name represents that value.

20:31And so if we were to take the name Dan,

20:35I don't know how to spell that in Hebrew,

20:36but you just take the letters

20:39and then you take the corresponding number

20:41to each of those letters, you add them up,

20:43and then you've got a code, you know, suddenly.

20:45- You've got a value, yeah.

20:47- Our name is now 46 or whatever.

20:49- Yeah, and so that's the verse 18.

20:52You've got these references to the author is winking at you.

20:57This calls for wisdom.

20:59Let the one who has understanding calculate

21:06the number of the beast for it is the number of a man

21:09saying this number is,

21:11they're just hitting you over the head

21:14with the fact that this value is

21:18the numerical value of somebody's name, of a person's name.

21:22- And it's a person that you can't talk about openly.

21:26You gotta talk about in some sort of coded language

21:29if you're going to be critical of this person.

21:32- Well, and so we're gonna get a bit later

21:35to who this person is,

21:37but yeah, this person is actually dead

21:40when this text is being written.

21:42But you still kind of,

21:44it's almost a he who must not be named kind of situation.

21:48This is the Voldemort where you speak about them

21:52in hushed tones because like in Russian, for instance,

21:57they don't, they have a word for bear,

22:01but they don't use the word.

22:02They use a substitution based on this traditional idea

22:07that if you name the bear,

22:08if you say the word bear, you invoke the bear.

22:12And so you refer to it indirectly.

22:15And so it's--

22:18- Look out, there's a big furry guy with claws behind you.

22:21- Yeah.

22:23- Feels a little clunky, I'm just gonna say it.

22:25- Well, and it doesn't work for most

22:29of the other scary things in Russian.

22:31It's a tradition that developed,

22:33but that's kind of what's going on here.

22:35They're kind of speaking about it in hushed tones.

22:37And so it's being put between the lines,

22:41but it's pretty clear who this person is.

22:46- That's right, it's Barack Obama.

22:49Or at least that has been fronted as a possible thing.

22:56I do wanna say the beast that we're talking about

23:02is not the devil, which some people say.

23:05- Right.

23:06- Is it the antichrist?

23:08Is that the same critter,

23:10or is that a different entity?

23:13- So it's most likely a different entity,

23:16but we also, we talk about the antichrist,

23:19but throughout the New Testament,

23:22and it's not used very frequently,

23:24it's used as an adjective, not as a proper noun.

23:28So usually it's, this person is antichrist,

23:31the way you would say this person is grabby,

23:35or this person is kind of annoying.

23:39It is an adjective, so anybody could be antichrist

23:43in the sense that that is an adjective

23:45that describes that person.

23:46So we're not talking about, go ahead.

23:50- You're saying that the head of the United Nations

23:53is not the antichrist, just is antichrist,

23:58or they are antichrist.

24:00- If someone were to call them that, yeah,

24:03the idea would be that they are antichristian,

24:07would be how we would use the adjective these days.

24:10- In case anyone's unclear on this,

24:13many of the conspiracy theories involve the UN,

24:15I don't know why, that's a big scary thing.

24:18- Yeah, it's been going on for a long time

24:20since they first got the United Nations together,

24:24and before that, I forget what a League of Nations,

24:26I think, is what it was called after World War I,

24:29and yeah, this idea that they're trying to form

24:32a one-world government and take everything over

24:35has become comfortable bedfellows

24:39with a lot of the conspiracy theories about the beast

24:44and the end of times and all that kind of stuff.

24:48- So if the beast isn't Barack Obama

24:50or the head of the UN, who is the beast?

24:53Let's not be coy about it, let's just go to it.

24:55- Well, there are two ways that we know this.

24:58One is that our earliest manuscript of this passage

25:03in the book of Revelation, a manuscript,

25:06I believe comes from around the middle of the third century,

25:09CE, actually doesn't say 666, it says 616, 616.

25:14So what, we have-- - How dare they?

25:18What's going on?

25:19- We have an alternate reading.

25:20- Like a mantra is all messed up now all of a sudden.

25:22- Somebody didn't carry the six.

25:26And so when you look at 666 and 616

25:31and you also look at some of the traditions

25:32that were in circulation within early Christianity,

25:35but also within the broader Greco-Roman world,

25:38it seems clear that this is a reference to Nero.

25:41Now Nero died before the book of Revelation was written

25:46or so the story goes.

25:48There was a rumor going around that Nero had not died,

25:52had faked his death or had managed to survive

25:54and had run off into exile or into hiding.

25:57Or had died, but was going to come back to life

26:01or come back from exile or come out of hiding.

26:04And this is called the Nero Rydevivus theory.

26:08This is something that is found

26:11in a couple of different places in early Christian

26:14and even in non-Christian literature.

26:18And Nero's name can be written two different ways.

26:20You can write it in Latin or you can write it in Greek.

26:22If you write it in Latin, you get Nero Kaiser.

26:26And if you transliterate that into Hebrew,

26:29so if you write the Latin name Nero Kaiser

26:32in Hebrew characters, you get noonreshvav

26:36and you get Kof-Samekresh.

26:39And that's according to Gomatria would add up to 616.

26:44So we see that in our earliest manuscript,

26:48witness to this verse.

26:50Now, if you write Nero's name in Greek

26:52and we have some coins that have, most of them are Latin,

26:56but we do have some coins that are in Greek.

26:58And there are a couple of different ways

27:00to write his name in Greek.

27:02Some people put an S on the end of Caesar.

27:04So it's Kaiser's.

27:06But Nero is spelled Neron Kaiser.

27:10And if you take the Greek spelling of Nero's name

27:12and transliterate it into Hebrew characters,

27:15Neron Kaiser has an extra N, an extra noon

27:18on the end of Nero, noonreshvav, noon.

27:22And noon has a value of 50.

27:25And so if you add 616 to 50,

27:28my math is out of date, but you get 666.

27:34And so-- There you go.

27:36And-- Or rather 666.

27:38666, excuse me, I don't want to mislead there.

27:42Or if you want to get fancy with it, like King James did,

27:45you can say 600, three score, and six.

27:48666. And but the coins are not irrelevant here

27:53because this is somebody has to have the image or the mark

27:59in order to buy or sell.

28:02And the image would be the coin with Nero's face on it

28:07and Nero's name on it in Greek or Latin.

28:10So either way, you've got these names that add up to 616

28:14or 666 necessary in order to buy or sell.

28:19And so the idea here is most likely that the author

28:24of the book of Revelation is suggesting to Christians

28:28that we've got persecution coming,

28:30that Nero is going to come back this grand beast

28:33that is going to force us to use their image,

28:36their mark in order to buy and sell is Nero Caesar

28:41who is going to come back out of exile

28:43from hiding or from the dead or whatever.

28:45Take over the Roman Empire again

28:47and then subject Christians to untold torture

28:52and persecution.

28:54And so the beast, the number of the man, 666,

28:59is almost certainly a reference to Nero.

29:03- And that's widely accepted in the scholarship, right?

29:06That's, this isn't something that's very controversial

29:09as a concept.

29:10- Not incredibly, you have some naysayers,

29:12but I think it's pretty clear the scholarly consensus

29:16is that this was a reference to Nero.

29:18There's some debate about how widespread

29:21this Nero read to be this myth was if we can even use this

29:26to provide a backdrop or context for this text.

29:33I think most scholars would say you can

29:35and this is why that's the consensus view.

29:38But there are some other folks who read different things

29:42out of it and I don't find them particularly convincing.

29:46- This all goes back to our conversation with Bart Erman

29:53about revelation in general and the fact that none of it

29:56was meant to be a prediction of the distant future.

30:00This was all relevant, meant to be relevant

30:02to the age of John the Revelator,

30:07a weirdo in a cave on an island in Greece.

30:11Like this was not meant to be about now, is that right?

30:16I mean, how confidently can we say that?

30:18- Well, from the perspective of someone

30:23who takes a methodologically agnostic approach

30:26to the Bible, the most likely explanation

30:31is the explanation that accounts for all the data

30:34and requires the fewest assumptions.

30:37And I think the idea of true prophecy

30:40is an enormous assumption that I just

30:43don't even put on the table.

30:46I don't think that a critical academic approach

30:51to this can allow for that

30:53because once we allow for it anywhere,

30:55we have to allow for it everywhere.

30:57People give me a hard time sometimes about that.

30:59You don't allow for real prophecy.

31:00Well, you don't allow for real prophecy in the Quran

31:03or in the Book of Mormon and the tools that you use

31:08to deny that real prophecy are the same exact tools.

31:12You're telling me I'm not allowed to apply to the Bible.

31:15So from a critical scholarly point of view,

31:18we have to take these things as relevant

31:20to the context of its original authorship.

31:24And we can explain very easily how this was meaningful

31:28to Christians in the late first century CE.

31:32And we can explain very easily how these symbols fit

31:35into a late first century CE Greco-Roman context.

31:40And so there's just not a reason to say

31:44this is about the far distant future.

31:48The only reason is that you want it to be relevant to you today.

31:52You want it to be a prophecy about the future

31:55and you want it to be particularly about your future now

31:58because why can't it, if it's about today,

32:01it could just as easily be about 5,000 years from now.

32:05But you want it to be about today

32:06because you want it to be relevant to yourself,

32:08which is precisely why we should think of these authors

32:12as writing precisely for themselves for their circumstances.

32:17If it's about today, why wasn't it about the year 1666,

32:22which looked apocalyptic if you lived in London,

32:28that was the year of the Great Fire,

32:29that was a horrible plague year,

32:32this has been going on throughout history.

32:35Christians have been doing this all the time.

32:37So far it hasn't turned out to,

32:39it's never panned out yet.

32:41- Yeah, and every generations like this is the one.

32:45- Here it comes.

32:46- But every time it also gets fuzzier and fuzzier.

32:49You have to move further and further away

32:51from what the text actually says,

32:53a video I responded to recently talked about some,

32:56there was a clip from an individual

32:58who was talking about in Australia,

33:00you can get a chip implanted in your arm

33:03that is the key to your house

33:06and let you buy groceries,

33:08instead of tapping the card, you can just tap your forearm.

33:11And they were like, this is 1,000%.

33:14- This is a technology.

33:16- That leads to the mark of the beast.

33:17It's like, well, the mark of the beast

33:19is supposed to be the right hand, not the left forearm.

33:23And it's also supposed to be in the forehead.

33:24And we didn't really talk about that,

33:26but there's only one other place in all the Bible

33:28where the hand and the forehead are mentioned together

33:31in terms of some kind of sign or symbol or something like that.

33:34And that's Deuteronomy 6.8,

33:36which is talking about the text of the law

33:39and write this down and keep it in your hand

33:42and on your forehead.

33:44And this commandment, this instruction leads later on

33:49to the practice of tefline or philacteries,

33:53where you have some text of the law

33:55put in a little box that gets wrapped around.

33:58And sits on the forehead and then wrapped around the arm.

34:01And so the idea for the author of the book of Revelation

34:04is this is like a counterfeit philacterie.

34:07This is, they're trying to,

34:09it's going to appear to be like

34:12or it's trying to be like genuine Judaism, early Judaism,

34:17but it's going to be counterfeit.

34:20- Yeah, and so every time something reminds somebody

34:20- It's a trick.

34:25of something in your hand or near your hand

34:28or in your forehead, they immediately want to make it

34:33about the mark of the beast.

34:34And it causes, you know, I didn't grow up around this.

34:38So it didn't cause me any trauma in childhood.

34:40But my understanding is that this kind of

34:43terrorizing children causes untold trauma.

34:48- So much, so much worrying about the end of the world

34:52and they're going to be surrounded

34:54by all this death and destruction and it never happens.

34:58- It's a metaphor, people, come on.

35:00It's, you're going to be fine.

35:02That said, if you see a dude walking around

35:05with seven heads and he's got the feet of a bear

35:08and a mouth of a lion, maybe, you know,

35:11maybe be a little bit worried at that point.

35:13But until then, I think you're going to be okay.

35:16Let's move on to our next segment.

35:18(upbeat music)

35:18- All right.

35:21- All right, Dan, I'm going to do a, what does that mean

35:24segment and the word or phrase that we're going to be

35:28looking at today is prototype theory, which is something,

35:32yeah, it gives you the shivers, which is something

35:34that I incorporated into my first master's thesis

35:38as well as into my doctoral dissertation.

35:39But I want to start with a question.

35:40- This isn't like critical race theory, is it?

35:43We're going to get in a lot of trouble.

35:44- No, no, I don't know if they would have allowed me

35:46to write a dissertation about that.

35:48But no, actually my dissertation was in England,

35:50not in Texas, so.

35:52- Okay.

35:52- Yeah, they had no problem with actual data.

35:56Now--

35:58- Oh, by Texas listeners.

36:00(laughing)

36:02- Well, it was here in Utah that they passed

36:07these silly resolutions too, so.

36:08- Yeah, that's right.

36:10- But I want to start with a question for you.

36:12Now, here's where I'm putting you on the spot.

36:14- All right, I'm excited.

36:15- I'm going to get fun.

36:17Give me the official definition for furniture.

36:22- Aha, I can do this.

36:25It is squishy stuff upon which you sit

36:30unless it's hard, or you're lying down,

36:33or maybe it holds you up your books.

36:36I'm pretty sure that's directly,

36:38I lifted that directly from Webster.

36:40- Yeah, not even close.

36:44- No, I've asked crowds of people when I've given papers,

36:48when I've spoken in small groups and stuff like that,

36:51if people can tell me what the definition of furniture is,

36:54and no one has ever come even remotely close.

36:58Most of the time people are like--

36:59- Samuel Johnson is dead, he can't answer you.

37:02(laughing)

37:03- Yeah, Samuel Johnson died a long time ago,

37:06and I don't even know if furniture ended up,

37:08and then the appreciation was like,

37:10I did not look up how they define furniture in 1755.

37:14But this raises an interesting point,

37:19because a lot of people think in order to understand a word,

37:21you have to be able to define it.

37:23But I ask everybody, not everybody ever met,

37:27but when I'm in situations where I'm talking about

37:30prototype theory and linguistics,

37:31I will frequently ask about this,

37:33and nobody has ever come up with an answer.

37:37And there is a good reason for this.

37:39It's because nobody learned what furniture is

37:42by memorizing a definition,

37:45and the concept of furniture did not develop

37:48around a definition,

37:50and nobody uses furniture with any reference to a definition.

37:54Now, let's say you were tasked with coming up

37:58with a definition for furniture.

37:59Can you tell me what thought process,

38:01what you would go through to try to come up

38:03with a definition for furniture?

38:05- I mean, yeah, I think the first thing I do

38:09is just look around my house and ask myself

38:11what I think qualifies as furniture.

38:14I mean, it seems like you start with

38:16a general, very broad idea of it,

38:22and then move to, yeah, it's a hell of a task.

38:27So I'll say that.

38:30- Would this sound like a rational way to approach it?

38:33Gather all the instances you can come up with

38:36of things that qualify as furniture,

38:39and then try to find the feature

38:43or the shortest list of features

38:46that are shared by all of those members.

38:48Does that sound like a rational way to approach defining it?

38:51- Yeah, you figure out the sort of necessary condition

38:54for something to be that thing.

38:56- Right, and so we refer--

38:58- And then you, yeah.

38:59- And then when you what?

39:01- Well, and then you say it's anything that has this

39:06is furniture plus maybe some other stuff.

39:10- Right, so this is a traditional approach to definition

39:13where you take all the members of a category

39:15and you try to reduce them down to their essence,

39:18down to the shortest list of necessary

39:21and sufficient conditions or features.

39:23They're necessary for inclusion in the category

39:26and they are sufficient for distinction

39:28from all other categories.

39:30And in that way, if you can identify that essence,

39:33you have a simple black and white way

39:37to draw a line between everything

39:38that is part of this category and everything that is not.

39:41And so we refer to that as a dichotomy or a binary.

39:45It is one or the other.

39:46It is yes or no.

39:47It is 100% in or it is 100% out.

39:51There's no in between.

39:52There's no third category.

39:54There's no nothing but in or out.

39:57And that derives from an Aristotelian idea

40:01of categorization, of essentialization, of taxonomy.

40:06But it is wildly distorting

40:11because categories like furniture are categories

40:15that I refer to as conceptual categories

40:18because they are not categories

40:20that occur naturally in nature.

40:22In other words, you can't just look at nature

40:25and say nature has conveniently carved out these things

40:30and we can demonstrate that nature

40:33considers them separate and distinct

40:36in their own categories.

40:37Sui Generous is the Latin phrase that gets used a lot.

40:42If our--

40:44- What does sui generous mean?

40:46- It's like it's own category basically.

40:51- Sort of defined unto itself.

40:52- Yes.

40:53- Like self-evident as a category sort of thing.

40:55- Yeah, so there are things in nature

40:58that are self-evident like and you know,

41:01this does have some fuzzy boundaries

41:04but we have a pretty good idea of what birds are

41:07and nature kind of has a distinction between things

41:12that are birds and things that are not.

41:14You can just observe that.

41:16But if there was an apocalypse

41:20and everybody was destroyed in 10,000 years

41:23from now aliens visit Earth and they're archeologists

41:26and they uncover all this stuff,

41:29there's no way for them without being able to decipher texts

41:33to be able to say, ah, all of these things here,

41:36these were all part of a category called furniture

41:39because that category does not exist

41:41outside of our communication about the category.

41:44It's only in oral communication,

41:46in written communication and things like that.

41:49- And because of that, there could be disagreement

41:52about what actually belongs in that category

41:54and what does it?

41:55- Absolutely, and I'm gonna get to that

41:57if you would stop getting ahead of me.

41:59(laughing)

42:00- That could be smart sometimes too.

42:02- But the idea here is that these conceptual categories

42:06are not produced outside of discussions about them,

42:10they are produced by discussions about them.

42:12And when we look at these discussions,

42:15we see that conceptual categories almost never,

42:17there are some exceptions but almost never form

42:21around necessary and sufficient conditions or features.

42:24They pretty much never are learned

42:28with any reference to necessary and sufficient features.

42:31And they are almost never used

42:34with reference to any necessary and sufficient features.

42:37Nobody learns what furniture is by memorizing a definition

42:40and then going and saying, ah,

42:41does this have the necessary and sufficient features

42:44of furniture?

42:44It's the same way you learn what an apple is, as a kid.

42:47Apple?

42:48Yes, that's an apple.

42:50Apple? No, no, that's not an apple, that's an apple.

42:53We see things being called that.

42:56And then intuitively, subconsciously,

42:59our brain starts to connect dots

43:01and we develop an idea of a cognitive exemplar

43:06or a prototype.

43:08We have in our minds, subconsciously developed an idea

43:11of what this thing called furniture or fruit or game

43:16or whatever is.

43:20And then with each potential member of that category,

43:23we subconsciously judge the proximity of that thing

43:28to the prototype.

43:29And this is not just me making stuff up.

43:34We started, some psychologists started doing research

43:38in the 70s.

43:39They were looking into how colors were perceived

43:42across different cultures and they started doing experiments

43:46with how people conceived of categories like fruit,

43:49like game, like sport, like furniture, things like this.

43:53And they found some interesting things.

43:55They found that people consistently ranked certain items

44:00as particularly good examples of, for instance, fruit.

44:04And apple is a particularly good example of a fruit.

44:08An olive or an avocado was consistently ranked

44:12a poor example of fruit.

44:15So there is gradation in category membership.

44:20And they also found that there were debatable members

44:23of categories, things that were on the periphery.

44:25And some people thought they were part of the category,

44:28some people thought they weren't.

44:29And so based on this research,

44:31they came up with this idea that membership in a category

44:36is based on some kind of proximity to a prototype.

44:40What is the essential fruit furniture, whatever,

44:44is object A close enough to be considered furniture.

44:49And so it radiates out to these fuzzy boundaries

44:51where membership is debated.

44:54And so with furniture, for instance,

44:57when you try to reduce this to necessary

44:59and sufficient features,

45:00the Oxford English Dictionary says,

45:03"Oh, it's movable articles, whether useful or ornamental,

45:06"in a dwelling house, place of business or public building."

45:09And that includes an awful lot of things

45:13that no one ever refers to as furniture.

45:15That's because they looked at the things

45:17and they tried to reduce them down

45:18and they're like, "This is the best we can do."

45:20And it's not incredibly accurate.

45:23Pretty much anything that is inside a building

45:26and is to be used is technically furniture.

45:29- Yeah, a sponge is not furniture, OED.

45:32Come on. (laughs)

45:34I have a mug on my desk that's holding scissors and pens

45:38and things like that.

45:39- This mug is a movable article that is in my house

45:44that is useful.

45:46And so that technically,

45:47according to the Oxford English Dictionary,

45:49would be furniture,

45:50but nobody ever refers to that as furniture.

45:53Miriam Webster calls it movable articles

45:55used in readying an area such as a room or patio

45:58for occupancy or use.

46:01Dictionary.com says large movable equipment,

46:04such as tables and chairs,

46:05used to make a house office or other space suitable

46:08for living or working.

46:10So they're kind of--

46:11- What's delightfully ironic about all of those definitions

46:14is the word movable.

46:16Okay, except that we've all been to a restaurant

46:19where the stuff's bolted down,

46:22but it's still considered furniture.

46:24- Yeah, and so does a bookshelf become not furniture

46:29once it's embedded in a wall or something like that?

46:34Does my sofa become not furniture

46:37if I put it, okay, not my sofa.

46:41When I was in college,

46:42everybody had furniture in the front yard.

46:45All of the frat houses had furniture out in the front yard

46:49down on the sidewalk even.

46:51Is that not furniture?

46:53Is this like Jim Carrey in "Liar, Liar?"

46:56It's like, look at the--

46:57Like, can you not call it furniture?

47:01If I refer to the love seat in the backyard,

47:07is furniture or people are gonna be like,

47:08what are you talking about?

47:09I can't see what you're talking about.

47:11No, these definitions are attempt to try

47:14to distill these things down,

47:15but they were not formed, they were not learned,

47:19and they are not used with any reference

47:21to these necessary and sufficient features.

47:23So dictionary definitions for conceptual categories

47:27fundamentally distort.

47:29They are inaccurate and they primarily only exist

47:32to help people structure values and power.

47:35Now, furniture is not a particularly important term

47:39when it comes to values and power,

47:41but how many times recently have we heard people

47:43challenging others to define woman?

47:46Yeah.

47:46And that's another situation where

47:50they want to distill it down to an essence,

47:52a necessary and sufficient feature,

47:54because if I can say it has to have that feature,

47:57then a trans woman who may not have feature X

48:01is now not a woman.

48:03And so it's a way to structure power and values.

48:07Racism is another term where is there a power differential,

48:13a power asymmetry involved in racism?

48:17If you look at the historical usage of the term

48:20all the way up to the civil rights movement,

48:22it was always used to refer to a more powerful group,

48:25exercising or expressing or operationalizing

48:31some kind of racial prejudice against a less powerful group.

48:35So there was a power asymmetry involved,

48:37but if you take that away,

48:39then you can now accuse racial minorities

48:42of being racist against racial majorities.

48:46And now I can take the power away from that.

48:49I can now say, well, you're doing the same thing to me.

48:52That means what I'm doing is not so bad

48:55and what you were doing.

48:55It's reverse racism.

48:56Right.

48:57And that kind of gives away the game

49:00when they first started saying, oh, it's reverse racism.

49:02They were saying racism has directionality.

49:06And but we want to be able to go the other direction

49:09and say, what you're doing is just as bad.

49:11And so this is, it's about structuring power and values.

49:16And when we talk about the Bible,

49:18because if I recall this,

49:22this is a podcast about the Bible.

49:24I was really hoping you'd come around doing it at some point.

49:26(laughing)

49:28When we talk about the Bible, my second master's thesis,

49:31my doctoral dissertation,

49:32we're on conceptualizations of deity.

49:34And a lot of people when they sit down

49:36to talk about gods in the Bible,

49:38they want to define deity, but you can't define deity.

49:43'Cause once you start to,

49:45you're doing that distortion

49:48of trying to reduce it down to some kind of list

49:51of necessary and sufficient features.

49:53And overwhelmingly, people define it in ways

49:56that serve their interests.

49:57So when I was going to try to write about monotheism,

50:00well, what is monotheism?

50:01Ooh, it's the belief that only one God exists,

50:03which is a definition, one.

50:07But two, that leads to another question,

50:09well, what is a God?

50:10And so if you go look in the Bible,

50:12you see other gods being referenced all over the place

50:15from beginning to end.

50:16And so if we can define the word God,

50:20so that there's only one,

50:22and that all the others are counterfeit or fake

50:24or not real gods, then we can maintain that monotheism.

50:28And so what you'll see in a lot of the scholarship

50:30that looks at the concept of deity in the Bible

50:33is attempts to define it in a way that draws those lines

50:38so that they can preserve a monotheistic outlook.

50:42And one of the reasons that scholars do that

50:45is because they want to be able to maintain

50:50an ideological continuity with the Bible.

50:53So Christians today want to believe that,

50:56they believe the exact same things

50:58that the authors of the New Testament believed.

51:00And so they need to find things like monotheism

51:03in the Bible.

51:04And so definition becomes a way to shoehorn those things in

51:09and say, well, now we can find it there as long

51:13as we define it a certain way.

51:16And what my approach was was to say,

51:19we're not gonna define it because that's distorting

51:22and we've already gone over examples of why that's distorting.

51:26And so from a prototype theory approach,

51:29we have to try to understand what their cognitive exemplars,

51:34what their prototype of a deity was

51:36and then talk about proximity to that prototype.

51:39And in the Bible, a prototypical deity

51:42was one anthropomorphic.

51:44So human sized, human shaped, looked like a human.

51:49Usually they were, if not immortal,

51:52at least they could live a lot longer

51:56than a normal human and had some degree of invulnerability.

52:01And they also had what cognitive scientists of religion

52:06refer to as full access to strategic information.

52:09In other words, they had access to information

52:12that we need in order to make decisions.

52:16And usually that takes the shape of knowing the future,

52:18knowing how things are gonna turn out.

52:20And so when you look at these prototypical features

52:25of deity, immortal, or at least lives a lot longer,

52:31has full access to strategic information.

52:33Those two are probably two of the most central ones.

52:35And when we look at the Garden of Eden story,

52:38those are the two things that are provided by the trees.

52:43You have the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,

52:45which is probably what we call a merism.

52:48In other words, it's a reference to two ends of a spectrum

52:51as a way to refer to the whole spectrum.

52:55So night and day does not just mean the middle

52:57of the night and the middle of the day,

52:58it means night, day, and everything in between.

53:01And so good and evil would, as a merism,

53:04would mean all knowledge from the good to evil.

53:08And so this is probably understood as a way to refer

53:11to full access to strategic information.

53:13And what does the other tree offer?

53:15Tree of life makes them live forever.

53:18And so they eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge

53:21of good and evil.

53:22And in Genesis 3, 22, the deity says, oh, shoot.

53:27They've become like one of us.

53:30Whoopsie.

53:31Didn't see this coming.

53:34So now we got to kick them out.

53:35Need more access to some of that knowledge is what I needed.

53:38Well, it's a bit of a McGuffin.

53:41You got to have a way to advance the narrative.

53:45And so what do they do?

53:46Do they set up a guard to prevent them from accessing

53:50the other prototypical feature of deity?

53:52And we see it in Isaiah as well.

53:55The gods of the nations, Isaiah is challenging them.

53:59Tell us what is to come hereafter

54:01so that we may know that you are gods.

54:04In other words, to show us that you are gods

54:07that you have this prototypical feature,

54:08tell us the future.

54:10Show us you have full access to strategic information.

54:14And we can look throughout the Bible

54:15and there are a bunch of different ways

54:17that the Bible demonstrates a conceptualization of deity

54:21that aligns with these prototypical features.

54:26But once you do that, you also see that these other things

54:30that are referred to as gods,

54:32but maybe sit a little further away from the prototypes

54:36are there as well.

54:37So divine images have, they can be consulted

54:42for this full access to strategic information.

54:47And so they have one of these prototypical features of deity.

54:51They don't have all of them.

54:53So they are a little further away.

54:55They're a little down the ladder.

54:56There are a couple of rungs lower on the ladder

54:59than your anthropomorphic sentient deities,

55:03but they're still gods.

55:05They're referred to as gods in the text.

55:08And then you have things like human kings

55:12in the Psalms that refers to, the Psalm says,

55:15I'm writing about the king

55:17and then refers directly to the king as God.

55:20Oh God, your God said this.

55:23And so the king has special access

55:26to divine knowledge as well.

55:30And they're not quite immortal,

55:31but they are also referred to as gods.

55:34So again, these are deities that are a little further away

55:37from the prototype, but are still members of the category.

55:41And then Psalm 82 is an interesting one

55:44because we have the de-deification of these deities.

55:48They get, they get mortalized or made mortal.

55:52That's the sentence that is passed on them.

55:55You are gods and children of the most high,

55:58but you will die like men and you will fall like any prince.

56:03And the idea there is we are taking away

56:06this prototypical feature of deity from you

56:10in order to render you mortal again.

56:13And so you can have movement in the category.

56:16You can go from inside the category of deity

56:18to at least being shoved to the periphery,

56:22if not shoved right outside the category.

56:25And so prototype theory.

56:27- And it seems like there's, sorry,

56:29but just on that idea, like it seems,

56:31if you jump to the New Testament,

56:33it seems like Jesus actually, depending on how you view it,

56:38he seems to enter and exit or end or exit

56:42that category of deity.

56:43- Yeah, this would be somebody who is not all the way,

56:47not right in the center, not right in the heart

56:49of the category, but is definitely participating

56:51in the category.

56:52They have special access to strategic information

56:57and Mark II, Jesus knows what they're thinking.

57:00Actually, I don't remember if that's how Mark II does it.

57:03Mark II may have them mumbling to themselves.

57:05I don't remember which story it is,

57:07but Jesus perceives their thoughts and things like this.

57:11And this is something that a deity does.

57:13And so Jesus exists at the overlap of the category

57:18of humanity and deity.

57:21And that's the other thing about prototype theory,

57:23is you can have two categories that are next to each other

57:26that are overlapping.

57:28And so you have somebody who can occupy

57:30both categories at the same time.

57:31And so in traditional taxonomy,

57:35you have to be in one category,

57:36you can't be in two related categories at the same time,

57:40but with prototype theory, yes,

57:42there can absolutely be overlap.

57:44And the membership is debated,

57:47but a lot of rhetoric, and particularly in ancient texts,

57:50like the Bible, a lot of rhetoric builds on that overlap

57:55and wants to explore what we can do with this overlap.

57:58And so you've got the demigods that are conceived

58:02by the sons of God who come down and sleep

58:05with the daughters of humanity in Genesis six.

58:08You got a bunch of examples of this overlap

58:11between humanity and deity.

58:13And so I think prototype theory is,

58:16and you can go out and look up things on prototype theory.

58:19There was a book written by John Taylor

58:23on categorization that does a really wonderful job

58:27of going into a lot more detail on this.

58:30And Eleanor Roche is one of the pioneers of prototype theory.

58:34But this is, I think, an effective way

58:37to think more critically and think more accurately

58:41about how they categorize things in the Bible,

58:43because when we rely on definitions,

58:45and when we try to reduce things down

58:47to necessary and sufficient features,

58:49we're distorting the categories.

58:51We're not honoring the use of these categories

58:54the way the authors were using them.

58:57And that's one of the things that,

58:59one of the problems with dictionaries

59:00is they're supposed to be following after usage

59:03and just reporting on usage,

59:05just saying this is how they're using it.

59:08But we've kind of flipped that on its head.

59:10And now we use dictionaries to say,

59:12this is the only way you're allowed to use it.

59:14If you use it another way, that's wrong.

59:17Yeah, that's right.

59:18And that is putting the cart before the horse.

59:20Dictionaries do not adjudicate meaning.

59:22They report on usage, but they do so

59:25using a fundamentally distorting framework,

59:29this idea that we can reduce.

59:31You are blowing people's minds right now, Dan.

59:33I'm making a lot of people angry, I know that,

59:35because every time I talk about this,

59:37I make people angry.

59:39You know what you're doing?

59:40You're ruining a perfectly good framework

59:42for a bad public speaking gig,

59:45because everybody wants to start with Webster's dictionary

59:49to find the term blah as,

59:52and now you're ruining it.

59:53I've got to give a talk where I start with

59:55Webster's dictionary defines this and then go,

59:58now here's why that's complete another garden.

60:01Webster's dictionary defines the word definition.

60:04This definition is wrong.

60:07People are like, you're challenging the dictionary?

60:08Yeah, I'm challenging the dictionary,

60:10'cause it's wrong.

60:11'Cause all definition is fundamentally distorting.

60:15Yeah, yeah, interesting.

60:17So when I, that's the cognitive linguistic framework

60:20that I bring to my scholarship on the Bible

60:23and my discussion of how words,

60:26how people use words to create meaning and stuff like that.

60:29So you'll frequently,

60:30if you stick around with this podcast for any longer,

60:33which I don't blame you if you decide not to,

60:35but if you stick around with this podcast for any longer,

60:38you're going to hear me say,

60:39a lot of times that I don't define that,

60:42or that can't be defined productively,

60:45or that a definition is distorting.

60:48And this is the reason why is 'cause it is distorting.

60:52Yeah.

60:53We will refer you to here.

60:55(laughing)

60:56Yeah.

60:56Episode, whichever one this one ends up being.

61:00Yeah.

61:01Well, thanks Dan for that.

61:02I think that's actually a very helpful way

61:04of thinking about things as we go forward.

61:07I think so.

61:08If you friends would like to yell at Dan

61:12for taking away the dictionary from you

61:15and for ruining categories entirely,

61:18you can do so by writing into us.

61:20The email address is contact@dataoverdogmapod.com.

61:25If you'd like to become a patron of our show,

61:29we'd sure love for you to do that.

61:31You can go to patreon.com/dataoverdogma and do that there.

61:36And we will talk to you again next week.

61:39Have a wonderful week.

61:40(upbeat music)

61:48(upbeat music)