Ep 109: The Heart of Pharaoh

00:00- My favorite of the trick city was like,

00:03"Okay, hey, put your hand in your robe.

00:06"Okay, pull it out, leprosy."

00:08(laughing)

00:09He was like, "Wait, why did you do that?"

00:12And he's like, "Okay, put it back in your robe.

00:13"Now it's cured.

00:14"That is not a good trick.

00:16"Don't do that."

00:18(upbeat music)

00:20- Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:23- And I'm Dan Beacher.

00:25- And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast,

00:27and I'm gonna give it a little podcast voice.

00:30- Where we increase public access to the academics,

00:32I don't know if that's public, podcast voice, but--

00:35- We increase public access to the academic study

00:37of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread

00:39of misinformation about the same.

00:42I feel like I'm supposed to speak softer and--

00:44- I think your voice is technically a podcast voice,

00:48'cause you've been doing a podcast for two years now.

00:51- It's been that long?

00:53- Well, there's a joke that for whatever reason

00:59I heard like four or five different times

01:01when I was a missionary in South America,

01:04and Uruguay specifically, folks would say,

01:06"We've been married for 10 years,

01:09"but it really only feels like one year underwater."

01:13With my head underwater, or something like that,

01:16and I was always like, that's a dumb joke, but--

01:20- You know that that's your wife you're talking about, right?

01:23That's your spouse.

01:27- All right, well today coming up on the show,

01:30we're talking about a couple things, we just had Easter.

01:34- We lived through it, we saw the other side of it.

01:40- I still got the Reese's Easter Egg thing back on my camera.

01:43- That's insane.

01:45You haven't eaten those yet?

01:46- No, no.

01:47- I'm rationing them because I've got a,

01:50I'm trying to, so I had non-alcoholic fatty liver disease

01:54for a while, lost 30 pounds, got rid of it,

01:56and gained 40, so now I'm having it back again.

02:01So, I've got to, I've gotta try to pull it back a little bit.

02:06- Well, I only have two fistfuls at a time, so.

02:11- Fair enough, fair enough.

02:13Anyway, what we're gonna be talking about this week

02:16on our taking issue is the issue of it's not anything

02:21to do really with what is celebrated on Easter,

02:25just when is celebrated on Easter.

02:29- When?

02:30So, yeah, that's, we're gonna talk about,

02:32about the dating of Easter.

02:35- This was a question that was a,

02:38you dated somebody named Easter.

02:39- I dated her sister for a little while.

02:41- You see, okay.

02:42(laughing)

02:44- I had an uncle who, who was, who used to mean like,

02:49you know, I always love that Garth Brooks song

02:51if tomorrow never comes.

02:53- By the way, did I ever tell you about my girlfriend tomorrow?

02:56(laughing)

02:58- But, (laughing)

03:00- Boom, yeah.

03:01- We'll just glide right past that and move on.

03:05In the second half of this week's show,

03:07we are going to be talking about a heart,

03:11speaking of, speaking of love.

03:13We're gonna talk about the heart of Pharaoh,

03:16and it is, and it's hardening, the hardening thereof.

03:21- Yes, it's actually a fascinating topic

03:24that I, I'm really glad we're talking about

03:26because it's something that has gotten at me,

03:30ever since I read that book of Exodus.

03:35- And it hardened into chocolate, which is why on Easter,

03:39which is based on Passover, which is based on the,

03:42- It sounds like God is hardening your liver,

03:47so that's what's happening.

03:50- Anyway, should we just, should we do our thing?

03:53Let's dive into taking issue.

03:56(upbeat music)

03:58All right, the issue at hand is the dating of Easter,

04:03and here's the thing about Easter,

04:05is that I remember as a kid being a little weirded out

04:10by Easter, 'cause I could never figure out

04:14when it was supposed to happen,

04:16and it always snuck up on me.

04:17Now, most, I look, I was a kid with ADHD.

04:20Most things snuck up on me.

04:22I, like many times there would be everybody,

04:25I'd get to school, and they'd be like,

04:26"You excited about the field trip?"

04:28And I'd be like, "What, the what now?"

04:30There's a what, where are we going?

04:32- I'm exactly like this, like when I had a nine to five,

04:36and I had to go into an office and everything,

04:38my wife would be like, "Remember, Monday's a holiday,

04:42a federal holiday, you don't have to go into work on Monday."

04:46I'd be like, "Well, all day is it."

04:49Or she'd be like, "We got something on Memorial Day."

04:51And I'm like, "What month is that in?"

04:54So, yeah.

04:55- But Easter is especially tricky,

04:58because it moves around, it's like got a whole month

05:01that it could be anywhere in the middle of.

05:04And then add to that, no, I didn't know this growing up,

05:09but there's two Easter's in the world, calculated differently.

05:15- Yes, although not this year. - I discovered this

05:19with my old nine to five,

05:21when I was making plans to take my first trip to Athens

05:26to go start work on the translation of the Book of Mormon

05:29into modern Greek.

05:31And I was talking with some folks over there

05:35who were gonna help me identify translators

05:38and reviewers and stuff like that.

05:40And I was like, "Well, what about this date?"

05:42And they were like, "Well, that's the week of Easter."

05:45And I was like, "No, it isn't."

05:47And they were like, "Idiot."

05:49- Yes, it is.

05:50And they were like, "You have to experience Easter in Greece,

05:55"but don't come out here and expect us to work."

05:59So yeah, I have not been out there during the week of Easter,

06:03but yeah, and I was like, "Oh, I didn't know

06:06"that they did things differently out there."

06:08So there's an island that has a lot of Catholics in it.

06:15- Okay.

06:15- And the Catholics have been like,

06:17"We will adopt the Orthodox date for Easter

06:19"so we can all get along."

06:21- Just so we can all be friends.

06:23- Yeah.

06:24All right, well, I think that's fine.

06:26It doesn't seem like I'm sure that there are Catholics

06:31and or Eastern Orthodox Christians

06:34who would argue with me about this,

06:36but the date that you celebrate it

06:38doesn't feel like it should matter.

06:40It feels like the thing that's being celebrated

06:43should be the important thing.

06:45- Yes.

06:46- But no, the date is very important.

06:51So let's talk about like, first of all,

06:54should we talk about how it's calculated first

06:56or should we talk about why it is tricky to calculate?

06:59- Well, I wanna talk about how it has changed.

07:01- Oh, yeah, so I'm gonna go back

07:03to prior to the Council of Nicaea.

07:07Now it is, I am wont to get very upset when people say,

07:13this happened at the Council of Nicaea.

07:15- Because no, it didn't almost every time.

07:18- Oh, right.

07:19- This is one thing that did happen, yeah.

07:21This is one thing that did happen at the Council of Nicaea.

07:24They established a new mechanism

07:26for calculating the date of Easter.

07:28So before that, there were two main,

07:31like main traditions for calculating the date of Easter.

07:35And one was based on the Jewish Passover.

07:39And they called these folks the Corto Decimans

07:43because they always celebrated Easter

07:47on the 14th of Nissan,

07:50which is the name of the Jewish month

07:52in which Passover is celebrated.

07:53Because Passover is closely connected

07:56with Jesus' resurrection,

07:58Easter is supposed to celebrate Jesus' resurrection.

08:02We're just going to celebrate it on the Passover.

08:06Irrespective of what day of the week,

08:08it might fall on.

08:10So if it's on hump day, we're going to celebrate it on hump day.

08:13If it's on Friday Eve,

08:14we're going to celebrate it on Friday Eve.

08:16Doesn't matter.

08:17And then you had other folks who were like,

08:20no, it's got to be on the Lord's Day.

08:24'Cause he resurrected on a Sunday.

08:26Sunday is the Lord's Day.

08:28Sunday is the Christian Sabbath.

08:30We have to celebrate it on a Sunday.

08:33Which means usually it would be the first Sunday

08:36after the 14th of Nissan.

08:39So after the Passover.

08:41So it was different for different people.

08:43And then you had people in different areas

08:45who would be like,

08:46"We're going to do our own calculations."

08:48And particularly in places like Alexandria and Egypt

08:52where that was a kind of hub

08:55of a lot of the Greco-Roman science at the time.

08:57And so you had a lot of people

08:59who were into the astrology and stuff.

09:02So the Alexandrian church was, you know, they were the nerds

09:06when it came to how to do this.

09:08And this was a controversy because, you know,

09:12you might think, who cares?

09:15But it has a lot to do.

09:18Well, in their mind, it had a lot to do with, you know,

09:23recognition of Jesus's resurrection.

09:27And, you know, some people were like,

09:28"Oi, we shouldn't be celebrating the Passover.

09:30It's not about the Passover.

09:32It's about the resurrection."

09:33And then the other people would be like,

09:35"But the resurrection happened on the Passover.

09:37So let's do it."

09:38And so it was a big fight.

09:40And then at Nicaea, Constantine came in

09:43and, you know, just locked the kids in the room

09:45and said, "Figure it out."

09:46And what they decided was,

09:50and there was another problem as well,

09:52is that if you were following whoever's method,

09:57you might have to wait for them to send you a letter

10:00and saying, "This year we decree

10:02that it should be celebrated on this day."

10:04And they wanted a way, one, to unify the church,

10:08but two, they wanted it to be something

10:11that people could figure out on their own

10:14without having to wait for a fester letter

10:17or something like that.

10:18And they were solving the problem of,

10:21this is not difficult enough to figure out.

10:25So let's find a way, this is nowhere near convoluted enough.

10:29Let's solve that issue.

10:31And an additional issue was they wanted to decouple it

10:35from the celebration of Passover.

10:37They did not want to celebrate Easter on the same day

10:39that Jewish folks were celebrating the Passover.

10:42And so what they came up with

10:46is it must be celebrated on a Sunday.

10:49So they sided against the quarto decimals.

10:54They said, "You guys are wrong, we're doing it on a Sunday."

10:58It must not coincide with the Jewish Passover.

11:02And what they sided on was the Sunday after

11:05the first full moon after or on the equinox,

11:11the spring equinox.

11:15And they had this ecclesiastically authoritative date

11:20for the equinox, which I'm pretty sure was March 21st

11:25was the date.

11:27So it was basically, we hit the 21st,

11:31next full moon, it's the Sunday after that.

11:33- Right, how did they make sure

11:36that that avoids being on Passover?

11:39I don't know when Passover is.

11:40I don't know, is that just that date

11:45of the March 21st or whatever,

11:48that's just after Passover every year?

11:50- I'm pretty sure I would have to go back

11:54and look at exactly how they determined Passover.

11:58But the Jewish calendar was Luna Solar.

12:02And so Passover was based on the phases of the moon.

12:05So I think it was a way to guarantee

12:06that it would always be after-

12:11- So like Passovers on the new moon,

12:13Easter's after the full moon, something like that.

12:16- Well Passover would be on the full moon.

12:20So I think that by saying it's the Sunday after,

12:24they're saying, it's the Sunday after Passover.

12:28- Okay.

12:29- Or something like that.

12:30- Okay, so Passover is on the full moon

12:32and then this is like the Sunday after the, okay.

12:35- Yeah.

12:36And so that was what they decided at Nicio.

12:39And everything was just working grand

12:44until we had something called the Gregorian Reform,

12:49Calendar Reform.

12:51Do you recall the story of-

12:55- Pope Gregory.

12:56- Pope Gregory was like,

12:59I am getting really annoyed with the time slip

13:03that happens every four years.

13:06- Got slippage.

13:07- We're slipping.

13:08Jerry.

13:09(laughing)

13:11- Yeah, it was something like that.

13:11- It was a slippage.

13:13What they were discovering,

13:14they were discovering the problem of days,

13:17things not working out to exactly a number of days

13:21every year, so you were losing days

13:24or you were gaining days or whatever it is.

13:26- 'Cause the Julian calendar counted exactly 364.25 days

13:31for the year and had a leap year every four years,

13:38no matter what.

13:40And the reality is that it's something like 364.2415

13:46or something like that, days in a year,

13:49which means you lose a day every,

13:53what is it, it's like four or five days

13:56every 400 years or something.

14:00Like there, I think today,

14:03the difference between the Julian and the Gregorian calendars

14:06is 13 days.

14:07- Okay.

14:08- So things have-

14:08- Meaning that-

14:11- Kept on slip and slip and slip and slip and,

14:14so that now there's-

14:15- So the Julian calendar, people have kept following that.

14:19That's still rolling.

14:20And then the Gregorian calendar and since they,

14:23like they started and it was the same day.

14:26And now it's been long enough that they are 14 days different.

14:30- Yeah, so the Eastern Orthodox churches were like,

14:35we're not doing that silly Gregorian thing,

14:37we're sticking with the Julian calendar.

14:39I'm a Julian man.

14:40- Right.

14:41- And so slowly the date of Easter has slipped away.

14:46- Right.

14:48- So that now it's like 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar.

14:53So I think 1582 is when that reform was instituted.

14:59- Okay.

15:01- Yeah, so, and I think there might be a difference

15:04in when they identify.

15:06- Well, because of that,

15:07the equinox is on a different,

15:10is calculated to be on a different date.

15:13- Yeah, so what that means is that many times

15:18there the Orthodox Easter and the Western Easter,

15:25the Catholic/Protestant Easter, fall on different days.

15:30- Yes.

15:31- But not always as we learned this-

15:32- Not always, but last year, you know how far apart they were?

15:36- No, I don't.

15:37Over a month. - Oh, wow.

15:39- I'd have to look it up.

15:43But I think that in 2024, Orthodox Easter was on May 5th

15:48and Western Easter was on March 31st.

15:56- Wow.

15:57- So they were over a month apart

15:58because of that little difference.

16:01- Well, and I read a thing that said that,

16:04and I wish I had it pulled up, but I don't.

16:06But I read a thing that said that there will be,

16:10you know, in the next X number of years,

16:14there will be two or three more occurrences

16:19where they overlap, where they're on the same day again.

16:22And then it won't happen again for like a thousand years.

16:25Just as a quirk of like how things are slipping.

16:30- Yeah, yeah.

16:31- So that's interesting, but that's only if,

16:36everybody sticks to their guns

16:38and stays on the calendar that they're currently going on.

16:42- And there are campaigns to reform the date of Easter.

16:47And there are institutions who've been like,

16:51this is just, this aggression will not stand.

16:56We've got to fix this.

16:59What do we, in the United Kingdom,

17:01Parliament's passed the Easter Act in 1928,

17:05which says that date of Easter will be the first Sunday

17:10after the second Saturday in April.

17:13- Oh.

17:14- Although that legislation was never implemented.

17:16- Interesting.

17:17So that was just, we're gonna just,

17:20we're just gonna go completely rogue.

17:22- Yeah.

17:23I guess Parliament was like, everybody listens to us.

17:28We rule the world.

17:30So we'll just do this, and everybody was like,

17:31- I mean, you'd think in a country that has a state religion,

17:36they might be able, they might, you know,

17:40it's plausible that they could have pulled it off,

17:42but apparently they weren't able to.

17:44(upbeat music)

17:46- Let's see, there was a summit in Aleppo and Syria in 1997.

17:52The World Council of Churches proposed a reform,

17:57and the reform was proposed

18:02for implementation starting in 2001,

18:05but it was not adopted by any member body.

18:08(laughing)

18:10I feel bad for whoever was so excited

18:12about getting their reform in front

18:14of the World Council of Churches,

18:15and everybody was like, oh he, no, no, thank you.

18:20- In January 2016, Anglican Communion Coptic Orthodox Church,

18:26Greek Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church

18:31considered agreeing upon a universal date for Easter.

18:34That evidently fizzled.

18:37November 2022, the patriarch of Constantinople

18:41said that they had been in conversation

18:43with the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox Churches

18:46to try again, and they, it says the agreement

18:49is expected to be reached for the 17th hundred,

18:541700th, 1700th, and you can see why I have,

18:59I ditched like a hundred takes

19:02for every TikTok video I put out.

19:04The agreement is expected to be reached

19:05for the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea in,

19:10what, 1700 years after 325?

19:15- Yeah, this year.

19:16- 2025, this year.

19:18- Yeah, okay.

19:19- So we may get a change.

19:21- Interesting.

19:22- This year, I mean, it's one of those things where,

19:26again, like to my mind, it shouldn't matter

19:31what the actual date is.

19:32We don't know the date of the actual resurrection,

19:37the date of his, of the killing of Jesus

19:42and then the subsequent dates.

19:44- Yes, and it was not April 3rd, 30 CE

19:48because a lunar eclipse does not cause darkness.

19:52- We've been through that one, we've been through that one.

19:54- Yeah, but because we don't know the actual date,

19:58it seems silly to me to worry too much about it.

20:01Other than, now there's like an identity thing.

20:05Like they're, you know, part of how an Eastern Orthodox

20:10Christian sees themselves is,

20:12well, we do this other thing that separates us

20:16from these other guys and that's important to them.

20:20You know what I mean?

20:21- That could be important to them.

20:23- It's our thing.

20:24- It's our thing.

20:26So I can see why it has been and may continue

20:30to be an intractable problem.

20:34So if the patriarch of Constantinople,

20:38and my understanding is that the Constantinople Patriarch

20:42is first among equals in the Patriarchate

20:47of the Orthodox, which is one of those phrases

20:52that I don't, that doesn't make any sense.

20:55- Does it make any sense?

20:56- Yes, because it's an attempt to connect

20:59to incommensurate dots.

21:01- Right, yeah, square the circle.

21:03- But if that guy's gonna come to the table,

21:08that's an interesting question, it does seem like,

21:13and you can correct me if I'm wrong here,

21:16but it seems like you go to the Gregorian.

21:20You know what I mean?

21:21They're the ones who should be taking the step,

21:25'cause the Gregorian's just the more accurate calendar.

21:28- Yeah, and I think that maybe a way you offer a compromise

21:33is just come up with a whole new system.

21:36- And not just say you adopt our system,

21:36- Right.

21:38but say, scrap the system, let's come up with something new

21:41that we can all agree to.

21:44What do you think, what would you do, what's your proposal?

21:48- The Dan McClellan official proposal

21:51for how you calculate Easter.

21:53- I would just pick a date.

21:56- I would too.

21:57- I feel like, yeah, April's sixth is whatever.

22:02- Or just say the, you know, the last Sunday

22:06in April or something like that.

22:07- Right, yeah, if you wanna keep it a Sunday, that's fine.

22:11- Yeah, I think everybody's moved past the,

22:16the other one was a little outdated,

22:19I think everybody's on Sunday now.

22:21- Okay.

22:22- Moving away from the Sunday might be a bridge too far.

22:24- There you go.

22:26- And the first council of Nicea convened on May 20th.

22:30- Okay.

22:32- And adjourned at the end of July.

22:36- So the theory is that these guys could do the same.

22:40- They could be, yeah, depending on when they decide

22:43they're gonna celebrate the anniversary

22:45of the council of Nicea, Dan Brown.

22:47- Somewhere in May, June or July.

22:52The Nicene Creed was formulated on June 19th,

22:57on June 10th of 325 CE.

23:03So maybe they picked that day and, or maybe they go,

23:08let's not step on too many toes here,

23:10let's find another date, we'll see.

23:13And maybe those, those talks broke down.

23:16Maybe they got upset and stormed out of the building

23:20and said, yeah, we can't tolerate this.

23:24This aggression will not stand.

23:25- Well, and also I guess not for nothing,

23:28but there will be a different pope at the table.

23:33- Yes, there will be.

23:34- So who, so that might throw a spanner in the works as well.

23:37- Who knows?

23:38- I, that's always a fun, interesting experience

23:43watching the, at least being around during the conclave,

23:48maybe not watching it, but I read something today that said,

23:52like the streaming of conclave like shot up

23:56after the news of the pope's death made it around the world.

24:00- Yeah, 'cause it's, that's the new hot thing now.

24:04So did they stream it, do they live stream what's going on there?

24:07- No, no, no, no, no, the movie.

24:09- Oh, the movie conclave, oh, okay.

24:11I'm like, that would be fascinating if they were like.

24:16- Yeah, but no, it's all very, very private.

24:18- So Rafe, and I, I probably need to see that movie.

24:24- I haven't seen him either.

24:25- I like, I like Rafe fine Caesar.

24:27- Yeah, I like him a lot.

24:28- He was a, I don't think, I think it was,

24:30it was one of his brothers, Joseph.

24:33Who was, who played Martin Luther.

24:36- Oh, okay.

24:37- In the movie Martin Luther, which was,

24:41I thought it was, it was interesting.

24:43- There you go.

24:44- Yeah, it was, it was my first kind of glimpse

24:47into all of that history, but it was fun.

24:50- Yeah, conclave would be, did it win any Oscars?

24:54I don't remember.

24:55- I don't remember.

24:56- I think it was, I think it was nominated for a handful.

24:58- Yeah, but.

24:59- All right, well, there you go.

25:03Do we have anything more we need to say about Easter

25:06and the dating thereof?

25:07- I don't think so.

25:11I think we've covered most of the stuff I wanted to talk about

25:14and even found some stuff that I didn't prepare to talk about.

25:16- Yes, indeed.

25:17- To talk about.

25:18- All right, well, there you go.

25:19That's the Computus Pascales for you.

25:22If you want to get fancy.

25:26- That's a deep cut.

25:27- Yeah, yeah.

25:28Let's move on to our chapter and verse.

25:30- Let's do it.

25:34- And I'm excited about this one, as I said earlier,

25:36as I teased in the opening of the show,

25:40because when I read Exodus,

25:43there's this thing that keeps happening over and over again

25:48in chapter four and chapter seven and chapter 10 and chapter 14.

25:53And if I read it, the way I see it on the page,

25:58it's mystifying.

26:02It's infuriating is what it is.

26:05So let's talk a little bit about what.

26:11Okay, so what we've got, we've got Moses, we've got Pharaoh.

26:14- We can read Exodus four, verse 21.

26:18- Yes, okay.

26:19- I think that kind of introduces what we're talking about.

26:22- So this is Moses.

26:23He has left Egypt and God is sending him back into Egypt

26:31to go and free his people from bondage under the Pharaoh.

26:36- So this is Mount Horeb.

26:40This is Burning Bush.

26:42This is I am that I am the, you know, the Val Kilmer,

26:47flowing robes.

26:50- Sure, gracious.

26:51- All that stuff.

26:52- Get all of that in your head.

26:54You're a Val Kilmer guy.

26:56I of course was, I'm a--

26:59- Charlton Heston. - Heston, fella.

27:02- Who played God in that?

27:04Was it also Charlton Heston?

27:06- It might have been.

27:07It was just a voice.

27:08- Yeah, well, and that's what it is in.

27:10- Yeah, anyway.

27:11- That's what everything is in Prince of Egypt.

27:13- Yes, exactly.

27:14In animated films, it's all just.

27:17Anyway, so verse 21 in chapter four says,

27:22"And the Lord said to Moses, when you go back to Egypt,

27:26see that you perform before Pharaoh,

27:28all the wonders that I have put in your power."

27:30He gave him a whole bunch of tricks,

27:32a bag of tricks to go and do.

27:34- Staff of tricks, you might say.

27:35- Indeed.

27:37Including the one, my favorite of the tricks that he was like,

27:40okay, hey, put your hand in your robe.

27:43Okay, pull it out, leprosy!

27:45(laughing)

27:46He was like, "Ah, wait, why did you do that?"

27:49And he's like, okay, put it back in your robe.

27:50Now it's cured.

27:51That is not a good trick.

27:54Don't do that.

27:56Anyway, that was one of the tricks.

27:59Anyway, so he says, "When you go back to Egypt,

28:02see that you perform before Pharaoh,

28:04all the wonders that I have put in your power,

28:06but I will harden his heart

28:09so that he will not let the people go."

28:12- That is, I think we've mentioned before

28:17that if you're Moses and guns like,

28:20so here's what you're gonna do at great personal threat

28:25to your bodily safety and I'm gonna make it

28:29so it doesn't work.

28:30- Yeah.

28:31- And Moses is like, what?

28:34- Yeah, you know that you're all powerful, right?

28:37Why don't you do the opposite and make it work?

28:40'Cause I thought that was the goal.

28:42- Yeah, it's like, I'm trying something, hang on a minute.

28:46I just wanna see what happens, it's gonna be funny.

28:49- Yeah, you're supposed to know what happens.

28:52(laughing)

28:54- So what's going on here?

28:56Well, first of all, talk to me a bit

29:00about what the original Hebrew has to say.

29:03Like what are we reading here?

29:05- Yeah, so it says heart

29:08and the first thing to keep in mind

29:10is that the heart was the seat of both emotion

29:14and intelligence and cognition in the Hebrew Bible.

29:19The brain was like, there's no word

29:21in the Hebrew Bible for brain.

29:23Every time you see mind in a translation

29:27of the Old Testament, that's heart.

29:30Like they located everything in the heart

29:34and then your kidneys or your bowels

29:37were the seat of like passions and fear and stuff like that.

29:41So, and then the verb is kazak

29:44and it is probably the PL, yeah.

29:48So the PL would be to put in a state of being hard.

29:54- Okay.

29:55- So I will put his heart into a state of being hard

29:59and the idea there, the imagery,

30:02is that he is not soft-hearted.

30:05It's hard-hearted in other words, he's, he's-

30:07- He's verb, he's-

30:08- He's mean or he's and he's, and he's,

30:10and he's probably like hard in the sense of like,

30:15unmovable or a stoneless.

30:16- Yeah, not gonna show compassion, in other words.

30:21And it quite explicitly says, I will harden his heart.

30:25- Wow.

30:26- Yeah, which is, and then when we get to chapter seven,

30:31which is when Moses finally is having to do all this crap

30:36that God told him to do, even though he also told him,

30:39and none of it's gonna work.

30:41And I'm gonna make sure of it.

30:43- Yeah.

30:43- I imagine it would take the wind out of your sails

30:47and Moses would just be like, let my people go.

30:50- Please let them go.

30:51- Okay, there you go.

30:53- Yeah, I knew that was gonna happen.

30:55And then again, in Exodus seven, verse three,

30:58and I love Exodus seven, verse one, God tells Moses,

31:01I will make you a God to Pharaoh.

31:05- Yeah, but I'm not gonna let Pharaoh let your people go.

31:09- Well, and it's not very much of a,

31:11I will make you a God because what he's about to do

31:14is the rod into a snake trick, which is a good trick.

31:19- That's really awesome.

31:21But then like, yeah, Pharaoh's guys can do the same trick.

31:25- Yeah.

31:26- So, I don't know how God like Pharaoh sees him

31:30in that moment.

31:31- Yeah.

31:32But, and God says again in verse three,

31:34I will harden Pharaoh's hearts,

31:36and I will multiply my signs and wonders

31:38in the land of Egypt.

31:39And this is kind of the theme,

31:41is that God is like, wait, no, I'm doing something here.

31:47I want all these, I want him to say no all this,

31:50all these times, so I can fiddle

31:53with all these signs and wonders.

31:55- So I could do more tricks.

31:56- Yeah, I wanna, I'm gonna put, I'm putting on a show.

31:59- And if he says yes at any time,

32:02then I don't get to do all of my whole,

32:04my whole list of things that I want to prop comic.

32:09I got a whole bunch of props I work with.

32:11And, you know, this one's a frog and ruined life.

32:14- Yeah, look at all the locus, ta-da.

32:17Got a whole set here, and it's ruined

32:21if Pharaoh is like, yeah, sure, whatever, go.

32:24- Yeah, it's fine.

32:25- So God, so, so really what's going on here

32:28is God wants to show off because God wants this reputation

32:32that's going to spread around the world.

32:34Look what God did, and God is like, I have fixed the deck

32:38so that I get to show off.

32:42But after that, you get a couple of Exodus 7.13.

32:47It just said, and here's a peculiarity.

32:52It's just a call, and he hardened the heart of Pharaoh.

32:57And so maybe God is supposed to be the subject of that verb,

33:02but like the NRSVUE says, however, Pharaoh's heart was hardened.

33:07- Right.

33:08- Makes it passive, takes away the subject.

33:11- Yeah.

33:12- Doesn't say who's doing it.

33:13So--

33:14- But I mean, just 10 verses ago,

33:19we learned who's doing it.

33:22Like he literally said, God literally said,

33:24I'm going to do this, and then in verse 13,

33:27it says, however, his heart was hardened.

33:30So, I think we can safely infer who's doing the act.

33:35- Yeah, it's still, the antecedent is still active here.

33:39But then we get into chapter eight,

33:41and things shift a little bit.

33:44In verse 15, it says, when Pharaoh saw

33:49that there was a respite,

33:51well there it says, he made his heart heavy.

34:00You have the hyphil, which is the causative

34:02of the verbal root kavad, which means to be heavy.

34:06So, Pharaoh caused his own heart to be heavy

34:10and would not listen to them.

34:12- Okay.

34:14- And then in verse 32, we have,

34:18and does it again, and Pharaoh caused his heart to be heavy.

34:24Let me see if Hazak is ever used with Pharaoh as the subject,

34:29because they're using different verbs here.

34:35I don't think I picked up on that.

34:38- What does Hazak mean?

34:40- Hazak means to be strong or firm or something like that.

34:45It's frequently used to mean to grab hold of somebody

34:49or something or something like that.

34:51And here in the, it can mean to be hard

34:56to put in a state of being hard.

34:58- Okay.

34:59- Yeah, so it looks like when God is doing it,

35:03it's one verb, and at least so far,

35:07when it's Pharaoh doing it to himself,

35:10it's a different verb.

35:11- Interesting.

35:12- Yeah, doesn't say whether he uses his left or right hand,

35:15but--

35:16- I was gonna say, yeah.

35:19The jokes are all there.

35:21- We hear it too.

35:22We're just trying not to make the jokes about--

35:26- We're gonna leave them on the table,

35:27but-- - Making himself hard.

35:28We hear it, don't worry about it.

35:31- It's his heart, you guys, grow up.

35:34- Yeah, so then we got in chapter nine.

35:38Yeah, so they're using two different verbs here.

35:41Sometimes it's God, sometimes it's Pharaoh.

35:44And I think that the idea here is probably

35:47to create some narrative tension

35:50and say it's a give and a take.

35:54There's God has their sovereignty,

35:58which they're going to exercise,

35:59they're going to get what they want,

36:01but it's also showing that Pharaoh is also

36:05taking action himself.

36:06Pharaoh is taking some responsibility himself

36:10for hardening his own heart.

36:12So it's not all God.

36:15Again, we're trying to square a circle here

36:17and eat our cake and have it too.

36:20If you say have your cake and eat it too,

36:22by the way, on social media,

36:24you will get dragged to hell.

36:27- 'Cause it's supposed to be eat first.

36:29- Yeah, that's the idea.

36:32I think, and so every time I say it,

36:37I make sure to say eat your cake and have it too,

36:39even though it's not because of the internet pendants.

36:43- Yeah, but every time I do it,

36:45I get a bunch of people who are like,

36:46"Thank you for saying it right."

36:49- I mean, I understand.

36:52- Yeah, anyway.

36:53- Anybody who feels strongly about that,

36:54I don't feel strongly about that.

36:56- Yeah, and if you do feel strongly about that,

36:59consider not.

37:01You don't need to.

37:02- Yeah, same thing for I could care less

37:04versus I couldn't care less.

37:06- Yeah, it means the same thing.

37:07- I could care less.

37:08- And I couldn't care less, so there you go.

37:12- Yeah, so there you go.

37:13Yeah, and then we've got God says in chapter 10 verse one,

37:18then the Lord said to Moses,

37:20"Go to Pharaoh for I have hardened his heart

37:23and the heart of his officials."

37:26I love that he keeps, like just don't tell Moses.

37:31If you've done that and you're sending Moses in,

37:34just don't tell him,

37:36I'm sending you on this futile endeavor.

37:38- Yeah, yeah.

37:39- It just seems mean.

37:40- Yeah, at some point he had to have been like,

37:43kind of taking the wind out of my sails here.

37:45Lord of the universe.

37:49- Also just going through the motions now.

37:51- It feels like a shallow victory when I,

37:56you know, for the Lord--

37:58- The puppet master is just playin' their game and--

38:01- Yeah, I mean, it just seems like you're not,

38:03like you're not getting, yes,

38:06you get to do your signs and wonders.

38:09But like, it's not like the Pharaoh

38:13was supposed to be this really nice guy

38:15and God is tricking him into being mean.

38:20He was already mean, right?

38:21Like it just seems, or was he?

38:25That's the other question.

38:27Maybe he was kind of a cool dude

38:29and the Lord just kept messin' with him.

38:31- Well, we do have, let me pull up what's going on here

38:36because if this is the same Pharaoh,

38:41now Moses took off for 40 years.

38:44And I think when we look at,

38:47I think when God visits Moses,

38:51He says that there's a new Pharaoh.

38:56There's a new Pharaoh that arises that enslaves.

39:01- Okay.

39:02- Yeah, 'cause it's the old Brenner now.

39:05- Yeah.

39:06Now in Exodus 1, 8,

39:10now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.

39:13And Moses is supposed to be wandering for a bit

39:20before he shows up at Horeb and God's like,

39:23I got a job for you.

39:25It's not gonna work, but I still got a job for you.

39:28- You have to do it.

39:29It's just going to be a failure.

39:32- Yeah, over and over and over.

39:35- I wanna say it's a different Pharaoh

39:40because if it's the Pharaoh that Moses split from,

39:44then one, the Pharaoh should know him,

39:48but two, I don't know how harsh that Pharaoh was,

39:53but probably wasn't very nice.

39:55- Well, Cecil B. DeMille had it be the guy

40:00that was raised as his brother because it's the old Brenner.

40:05But it is like he ascended to the throne

40:08while I think while Moses was in the wilderness.

40:12So yeah, who knows?

40:14- Yeah, so I have not read through the entire story

40:19of the Exodus for a bit.

40:22So Exodus specialists are gonna be ashamed of me.

40:26- Yes, that's true.

40:27I'm ashamed of you.

40:29- I'm pretty sure it's different.

40:31It's a different Pharaoh.

40:32By the way, I looked it up.

40:33It was actually Cecil B. DeMille who voiced God.

40:37- Yeah, perfect.

40:38- And it says, evidently some people suggest

40:42that Charlton Heston's voice was overlaid also

40:45to give it that tenor, that tone.

40:49- You gotta have multiple voices for God.

40:52- Yeah.

40:54- And because he's actually three people,

40:56so that all makes a sense.

40:59- Three persons, yep.

41:01(upbeat music)

41:03- Okay, are we to chapter 14 yet or in the plagues?

41:13- You got in, so basically, I have an article

41:18that has a whole roundup of the various plagues.

41:20- Okay.

41:21- And in the first, I think five,

41:24the wording is that Pharaoh's heart became hard

41:29or hardened, he hardened his own heart, as you said,

41:33all of that sort of thing.

41:34And then we're back to, by plague six,

41:40this is chapter nine, I think.

41:42The Lord hardens Pharaoh's heart.

41:45And then Pharaoh hardened his own heart.

41:50And then locusts, he hardened,

41:54so God announces that he hardened Pharaoh's heart.

41:59And then chapter 10 in the darkness,

42:03God hardened Pharaoh's heart.

42:04So we're getting back to God hardening Pharaoh's heart.

42:09- Yeah, and it looks like 934 is when

42:13the last time Pharaoh hardened his own heart.

42:16And after that, it is God every time.

42:18- Right.

42:19So, I guess the question is, what are we to make of this?

42:25Like, what's going on here?

42:27- Yeah, a lot of people don't like thinking of God

42:32as playing puppet master with the lives in the agency

42:36of their creation.

42:37But that's what the text is saying.

42:40And I think, literally, rhetorically,

42:43the idea seems to be to kind of play

42:46from both sides of the plate,

42:48to attribute this partially to Pharaoh,

42:51but also partially to God,

42:52because again, God's got signs and wonders

42:56that he's just burning to get out of him.

42:58And God wants the world to know about all of this.

43:03And so if that means livestock got to die,

43:06if that means firstborns got to go,

43:09this narrative has some things that's got to get to.

43:15It's got to achieve certain things.

43:19So those have to be elements of the story.

43:22But I'm sure that whoever was writing this was like,

43:27"Well, let's have a little from God.

43:28"Let's have a little from Pharaoh."

43:30And then we create some tension.

43:32We help people realize that it's a joint effort

43:37between deity and humanity to save the Hebrews from Egypt

43:44or to provide the resistance to the saving

43:52of the Hebrews from Egypt.

43:54- You know, sorry to interrupt.

43:56But it suddenly occurs to me

44:01that maybe the narrative structure here

44:05is that those first five plagues, blood, frogs, gnats, flies,

44:10you can kind of believe that that's not enough

44:16to convince Pharaoh on his own.

44:19But then when you start to get to like all of the livestock

44:22dying or the boils, the hail, locus,

44:26like when it starts to get like really nasty,

44:29God's like, "Uh-oh, Pharaoh's losing his resolve.

44:31"I got to get in there."

44:33- Or at least the author is like,

44:34"People are not gonna believe that this guy was like okay,

44:37"like was still saying no to this."

44:42So they got to come up with a way to make it believable

44:46that Pharaoh is still not letting these people go,

44:50even though like seriously insane stuff is happening.

44:54- Yeah.

44:55- And I'm sure that plays into it.

44:59I'm sure there's a lesson about obstinacy

45:04and a lesson about obedience

45:07where Moses is doing everything God says to do,

45:10and Pharaoh is the one who is not,

45:13even though sometimes it's someone else pulling the strings

45:18namely God, so.

45:23But it is troubling for a contemporary reader of this text,

45:28someone who thinks of God a certain way

45:31as a respecter of agency,

45:34and as someone who would not toy with people's lives

45:37and just arbitrarily destroy them

45:40just for the sake of showing off,

45:43or showing off the actual taking of the lives.

45:48- Yeah.

45:49- 'Cause the signs and wonders are

45:51all the things I'm destroying and the firstborn children.

45:56- Yeah, that culminating in that firstborn children thing,

45:59like that's horrific.

46:01- Yeah.

46:02- So it does seem like it'd be a lot nicer

46:06if God softened Pharaoh's heart,

46:08went the other direction and Pharaoh just,

46:11after the first trick, Pharaoh's just like,

46:14"Oh, yeah, you better take these people,

46:16let's do this."

46:18- I got more sense in that.

46:19(laughing)

46:21And then you get the institution of the Passover

46:24where it's like, "Remember all this happened."

46:26And from a mortal perspective,

46:30it's like, "Okay, we're remembering that things sucked

46:33and we were delivered."

46:34But if you're thinking of this from God's perspective,

46:40he's like, "I want you to remember

46:42when I did all this cool stuff."

46:44When I remember the show I put on,

46:46when I had all those kids killed,

46:52which I think makes it clear

46:56that this is a narrative that was constructed

46:59to serve certain rhetorical purposes associated with

47:03with identity markers and a sacred past

47:09that we've got to keep in mind

47:11in order to construct and curate our boundaries today.

47:16Keep in mind who we are and all that kind of stuff.

47:20- Right.

47:21And so I think it definitely originates

47:23in the human literary imagination

47:27and with the curation of social memory.

47:32- Yeah.

47:33- In other words, this was not written by God.

47:36- Right.

47:37- Nor was it written about an event that actually occurred.

47:40- It's a pretty narcissistic megalomaniacal deity

47:44who sacrifices all of these humans

47:49for the sake of putting on a show.

47:51- Not to mention the livestock.

47:53I mean, we don't even have to go into all of the livestock

47:56that had to die for this story to occur.

47:59- Jonah got that message where the end of Jonah,

48:02God was like, "In the livestock."

48:04You can't remember the look.

48:05- That's some good cattle.

48:08- Yeah.

48:09- And here, yeah, they totally missed out on that.

48:13- Yeah.

48:14- All right, well, there you go.

48:16I'm going to harden my heart

48:20and say that that's enough of that.

48:25I'm cutting it off.

48:26- I didn't get to use the line though.

48:27- Oh, please use the line.

48:30- Hard-hearted, harbinger of haggis.

48:32(both laughing)

48:35- Yes, if we didn't have enough 90s pop culture references,

48:40well, it wouldn't even be our show.

48:44- I think we haven't gotten to the,

48:46so I married an axe murder for a while,

48:48so-- - Yeah, it was due, it was time,

48:51it was time. - Yeah.

48:52- Heat, punch, no.

48:55- All right, friends, thank you so much for tuning in.

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