Ep 135: Should Wives Submit?

00:00As conspiracy theories go, okay, you know, no, definitely not, but like, okay.

00:10Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan and I'm Dan Beacher and you're listening to the Data

00:19Over Dogma podcast where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible

00:23and religion and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

00:29How go things today, Dan?

00:31They go.

00:32Uh, things, things, things are trucking along.

00:34I'm pretty excited about today's, uh, episode because a, we're going to uphold the patriarchy,

00:42which we always love to do.

00:45And B, we're going to, uh, we're, we're going to get into some, some, uh, some, some space

00:51stuff.

00:52We're going to get into some, some conspiracy theories.

00:54I hope everybody's got the tin hats ready to go or tin foil hats.

01:00Yeah.

01:01I don't even know if I can say those notes or if that, but yeah, I like that I've terrified

01:05you enough about copyright infringement or trade mark or whatever the heck it is that

01:11we've built a fence around the law as it were regarding, um, my ability to sing anything

01:16terribly.

01:17Yeah.

01:18Yeah.

01:19And, and I think our listeners also thank me for beating that into your head.

01:24When you said patriarchy, all I could hear was, was Fergie in that, um, tonight's going

01:29to be a good night.

01:30Is that what it's called?

01:31Oh yeah.

01:32Yeah.

01:33Yeah.

01:34Yeah.

01:35Where she goes smash it.

01:36So that's all I thought about.

01:37I don't know why it was Fergie's voice doing it that way.

01:40I like it.

01:41I like it.

01:42Well, uh, why don't we get into our, our chapter and verse and smash that patriarchy.

01:48Let's do it.

01:49Okay, so the chapter and verse that we are, that we're getting to is Ephesians 5 verse.

01:57Oh, what verses it?

01:59You know, well, 22 is the main one.

02:02Yeah.

02:03But like, if you wanted to try to get the whole sense unit, it's really got to be like

02:08verse 18 through to the end of the chapter, but we're not going to focus on all of that.

02:14We're really going to, uh, zoom in on verse 22, which is, yeah, you don't want to start

02:19with 18 because 18 says, do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery.

02:24And we don't want anybody to know that it's in the Bible.

02:26Yeah.

02:27No, no, no, no.

02:28No, no, no.

02:29It's that's actually where the sentence begins.

02:32And this is, this is part of the controversy of, uh, of Ephesians 5 22.

02:38Uh, and if you have heard people talk about this, I'll just read 5 22 just verse 22 on

02:45the NRSVU and then we'll talk about why it's a bit of a mistranslation.

02:49Okay.

02:50It says wives be subject to your husbands as to the Lord.

02:56And then verse 23 says, for the husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the

03:01head of the church, his body and his himself, it's savior.

03:07So, and, and there's a pill crow in the, uh, in the NRSVUE and for those of you who grew

03:16up on the right side of the tracks, a pill crow, uh, is the little backwards P paragraph

03:22indicator basically, right.

03:24And a lot of translations of the Bible present verse 22 is the beginning of a new section.

03:30It's not even its own sentence.

03:31In fact, it doesn't have a verb in it.

03:35The verb is actually a participle that is in the previous verse.

03:40Now this is actually relevant to what's going on here.

03:43A participle is, uh, is like an ING verb in Greek.

03:49So I am running has a subject, a verb, and then this gerund running, but the verb in

03:57the sentence is AM.

04:00You are saying I and then you are connecting it to running with the verb AM.

04:04So doing run.

04:06Yeah.

04:07So that is the AM is the actual verb of that clause and running is, uh, is helping out.

04:15And so in verse 22, we don't even have a participle, it's verse 21 that has the participle and

04:21verse 22 is just, is just, we're going to borrow the, the force of the participle from

04:27verse 21, but even verse 21 is not its own sentence.

04:31We have to go all the way back to verse 18 and I'm going to, I'm just going to interject

04:36here because the thing that my head was bumping up against.

04:40I don't know how Greek, ancient Greek was structured.

04:44And so like, I know that I've seen, I've seen ancient Hebrew texts and it's just letters

04:50without any spaces and definitely no punctuation or anything.

04:54Right.

04:55What, what, what should I be imagining when I, when I, when I'm thinking of an ancient

04:59Greek text?

05:00Well, same thing.

05:01It was, uh, yeah, the just continuous texts.

05:05They didn't put spaces between the words.

05:08They certainly didn't have verses, uh, in the earliest manuscripts.

05:11They didn't have chapters or anything like that.

05:12And no punctuation.

05:14No punctuation.

05:15They didn't even have, uh, the diacritics.

05:17If you look in a, in a critical edition of the Greek New Testament, you've got rough

05:21and smooth breathings.

05:22You've got, uh, acute, you've got grove, you've got circumflex accents all over the place.

05:28One of that is in the earliest manuscripts, it's just the letters.

05:33So when you say it's not even the same sentence, you're getting that or, or that it is the

05:40same sentence.

05:41You're getting that, uh, just grammatically.

05:44You're not getting that from any kind of markings.

05:47Just syntactically.

05:48Okay.

05:49So the, and this is one of the things you learn to do, uh, when, when reading Greek is

05:54you got to go, okay, where's the verb?

05:56Oh, okay.

05:57There's a verb.

05:58All right.

05:59I'm looking for objects.

06:00I'm looking for subjects and all this kind of stuff.

06:02And Greek is very cool.

06:03In English word order, it, it tells you what role certain words are playing.

06:11So I am running the subject frequently comes first.

06:16If I say am I running, that sounds like a question, right?

06:20Because we've switched the subject and the verb, uh, in Greek, the word order doesn't

06:25really matter too much.

06:27Uh, it is a case-based language and anybody who's learned like German or something like

06:32that will know that you use K in a case-based language, the word form itself changes to

06:39tell you what role it is playing in the sentence, whether it's a subject and object, whether

06:44the thing is being done to it or something like that, you change the way the word looks

06:49in order to indicate that.

06:51And which means you can, you can fiddle with the word order all you want and a lot of ancient

06:54Greek poets would fiddle with the word order like crazy.

06:58Interesting.

06:59Which makes it very hard to translate.

07:02But anyway, we got to go all the way back to verse 18 and it starts with this, do not

07:06get drunk with wine for that is debauchery.

07:10And then we get the beginning of our sentence, but be filled with the spirit.

07:15So we have this imperative be filled with the spirit, right?

07:20As you sing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, so one another singing and making melody

07:25to the Lord in your hearts.

07:27So we've got another one of these participles singing, giving thanks to God, the father at

07:33all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, being subject to one

07:39another out of reverence for Christ.

07:42So the being filled with the spirit either is caused by these other things by the singing

07:50and by the giving thanks and by the being subject or it results in the singing, the giving

07:58thanks, the being subject.

08:01And then we get to verse 22, which is again kind of borrowing the participle from the

08:06verse before.

08:07So wives being subject to your husbands as to the Lord.

08:11And an apologist who wants, well, there are actually two people who make this argument.

08:18There are folks who want this to not be misogynistic.

08:24They want this to be something that is not misogyny.

08:28We'll point this out and suggest that the fact that the participle, the verbal force

08:35of verse 21 is feeding verse 22 and verse 21 says, being subject to one another out of

08:42reverence for Christ, you maybe borrow that sense.

08:45And so really what this is saying is wives and husbands, you're both going to be subject

08:49to each other.

08:51So sometimes folks will argue that, but then verse, verse 23 exists.

08:56So right.

08:57Yes.

08:58That's, that's the main problem with this because it then goes on to explain.

09:02Yes, the, the husband is like Jesus and the wife is like the church and, and so the wife

09:10has to submit to the husband as the church submits to Jesus.

09:15But then the other thing that folks who don't want this to be misogynistic will, will point

09:19out is that what, wait a minute, wait a minute, the husband has to love the wife as Jesus

09:24loved the church.

09:25Jesus died for the church.

09:28The husband has to have this self-sacrificing, unending love for his wife, which means it's

09:36fair.

09:37It's okay.

09:38Yeah.

09:39Because while the wife's got to make the sandwiches and got to do the dishes and got

09:43to do the laundry and got to do the, the vacuuming and everything like that, every single day

09:47because the debt, because the husband said so one day, probably not, but maybe one day

09:52he'll have to sacrifice his life for her, but probably not.

09:55And so I, I see that so much in the sort of the Christian Manosphere, you know, when these

10:02guys are talking about how their job is as protector and provider and blah, blah, blah.

10:09And in their minds, when they start talking about this protector role, they bring up scenarios

10:15that are vanishingly small percentage chance that this could happen.

10:20Like, absolutely.

10:21You're not going to get attacked in the way that you're imagining, but they're, you know,

10:25they're making themselves these grand heroes in their own imagination.

10:30Yeah.

10:31It's a power fantasy.

10:33And then, and then their wife is doing very real work labor.

10:38Yeah.

10:39Like continually while he is like, yes, but if this were to happen, you have no idea how

10:47awesome I would be.

10:48Yeah.

10:49I'm going to be over here emotionally masturbating about how cool I'm going to, I'm going to

10:53look when I, when I save everybody's life, I see that a lot of times with every time

11:00there's some kind of mass shooting that, that makes national headlines there.

11:06There are people who are like, I, I conceal carry even where I'm, you know, not allowed

11:11to not to protect me to protect everybody else.

11:15Right.

11:16You know, these things are, are, you know, everybody needs some dude with a power fantasy

11:22about being John Wayne.

11:24Yeah.

11:25Not, not John.

11:26Dirty Harry.

11:27Yeah.

11:28I guess John Wayne too.

11:29Sure.

11:30If men have them.

11:31Yeah.

11:32With gun.

11:33Yes.

11:34I'll come to your college campus and probably end up being the one shooting somebody.

11:41Yeah.

11:4299% of the time being, yeah, I will injure innocent people or kill innocent people.

11:48But anyway, the, that's the idea that they, that they, they run with.

11:52Yeah.

11:53It's like, well, it's okay that I'm in charge of my wife because I'm supposed to love her.

11:59And so, you know, I'm not going to exercise unrighteous dominion, ideally, the realities

12:04that they frequently are.

12:07Well, the reality is that dominion in and of itself is a, is a pretty gross idea.

12:13Yeah.

12:15But what Paul is, not Paul, pseudo Paul.

12:18Pseudo Paul.

12:19Fake Paul.

12:20We should have started with that.

12:21Paul.

12:22Yes.

12:23Oh yeah.

12:24By the way, this is one of the bad epistles.

12:25Well, technically it's one of the disputed ones, like the past Orels, the, the, a good,

12:32strong majority of scholars are like, yeah, that's not Paul.

12:35Okay.

12:36Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, I think it's a little closer to half and half.

12:42Oh, okay.

12:43I think I would still give it to the people who reject Pauline authorship.

12:49But I've, and you know, once I am able to get my survey off the ground, which I'm still

12:55working on.

12:56I'm still working on.

12:57We're going to have a rock hard numbers, but, and abs, rock hard numbers and abs.

13:06Yeah.

13:07I'm going to end the list there and the, the, uh, the, uh, the majority of sc, or a good

13:16number of scholars don't think that Paul was responsible for Ephesians.

13:20Okay.

13:21Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, and there are a number of good reasons for that, but we digress.

13:26So this is probably not Paul anyway.

13:28However, what the author is doing here with this pivot, verse 21 is kind of a pivot point.

13:34We've been talking about the congregation as a whole.

13:38Right.

13:39And then we say, uh, mutually submit to each other and that submitting participle then

13:43becomes the hinge on which we pivot to what's called household codes.

13:49And this is kind of a standard genre in the Greco-Roman period within broader Greco-Roman

13:57literature.

13:58So not just Jewish and Christian, but broader Greco-Roman literature.

14:00In fact, um, what the author is appealing to is a pretty standardized kind of checklist

14:07of the people involved.

14:09And to demonstrate this, I want to read a little something from Aristotle.

14:12Oh, this is Aristotle on government.

14:15Since it is now evident of what parts a city is composed, it will be necessary to treat

14:23first of family government for every city is made up of families and every family has

14:28again, it's separate parts of which it is composed when a family is complete.

14:32It consists of free men and slaves, but as in every subject, we should begin with examining

14:37into the smallest parts of which it consists.

14:40And as the first and smallest parts of a family are the master and slave, the husband and

14:45wife, the father and child, let us first inquire into these three.

14:51What each of them may be and what they ought to be.

14:53That is to say, the hereial, the nuptial and the paternal, let these then be considered

14:59as the three distinct parts of a family.

15:03What are the three things that the author addresses in between verse 22 and the beginning

15:08of chapter six, husband and wife, children and slave people.

15:13So this, this is a pretty standardized way of approaching the question of the household

15:19and how it is governed and we see this in other Jewish literature as well.

15:25So for instance, Philo in some fragments referred to what this fragment is, the hypothetical.

15:32And this is something that you run into a lot when you're dealing with ancient literature.

15:35You'll have authors and you'll have their complete works and then there will be fragments.

15:41And what this is, is this is all the places where we have somebody saying, yeah, so and

15:47so wrote in their text, you know, X, all this stuff.

15:51And it's like, okay, we don't have a copy of X. All we have is whatever this person quoted

15:56from X. And so that goes into the file as a fragment.

16:01But we have a fragment of a text called hypothetical and and Philo says, wives must be in servitude

16:07to their husbands, a servitude not imposed by violent ill treatment, but promoting obedience

16:13in all things. And if we go back to Aristotle and particularly ideas of, of insolment and

16:19personhood and things like that, Aristotle thought a woman was just an undercooked man.

16:24Right. That the gestation just moved more slowly

16:28for women and they were born before they were fully cooked.

16:33Aristotle had an astoundingly weird sense of how a lot of things worked that then was

16:40picked up on and like held as gospel for thousands of years.

16:46And and like the one that there's a there's a friend of mine named Jonathan John. He's

16:51a wonderful psychologist, cognitive scientist of religion. And he in a paper he once commented

16:59the ghost of Aristotle haunts us still. Yeah. Because of how much we rely on definition.

17:07It was so yeah, he's he was a nut that Aristotle. Yeah. And one of the most influential thinkers

17:13in all of human history, obviously, and and actually was profoundly prescient in a lot

17:19of ways about a lot of stuff. And then way off the mark with a lot of other stuff. But

17:25the practice of definition and and our assumptions that everything can can and should be defined.

17:32That's which is the Aristotle. Yeah, don't give me starting in the whole way.

17:36Don't get me started. Don't get me started. So, and then we've got Josephus who is writing

17:46the 90s CE and against Appian. He says, the woman says the law is in all things inferior

17:54to the man. Let her accordingly be submissive, not for her humiliation, but that she may

18:01be directed for the authority has been given by God to the man, which I don't know if the

18:09author of Ephesians would really have a problem with with what sounds that sounds perfectly

18:15in line with it sounds. It sounds quite a fusion, but but yeah, this is very clearly a

18:23systemic power asymmetry, the idea that women are inferior. Therefore, they must submit.

18:29Therefore, they must be obedient. Therefore, the husband is in charge is is misogyny.

18:36I mean, this goes back to the, you know, we talked just a couple weeks ago about the the

18:45ideas of adultery and how and how it's the absolute double standard of like sexual double

18:54standard between men and women. Yeah. Yeah. I, it, I should come as zero surprise to anybody

19:01that, that, that, you know, this patriarchal view is, is what is, is what is being promoted

19:10at that time in this region. Yeah. Like it just, it just seems right. And yeah, and of

19:15course now, as you'd point out, the Greek influence is, is, is permeating the Jewish culture as

19:23well. So you get, you get added and more and perhaps more nuanced patriarchy and, and misogyny.

19:31Well, and, and there are so many different ways. A lot of people don't realize that there

19:35are so many different ways Greek philosophy and Greco-Roman society contributed to Christianity

19:44becoming what it is and contributed to the parting of the ways between Christianity and

19:49Judaism because one of the things that Judaism did, one of the, with rabbinic Judaism, one

19:54of its priorities was trying to divest itself of this influence of the, the Gentile world.

20:03And you know, there are debates to be had about the effectiveness and, and how committed

20:08to it everybody was. But there's a reason that rabbinic Judaism and down to the Judaism

20:16of today is very, very distinct from Greco-Roman period Judaism. And it was precisely a refutation

20:24of that influence. They went back to the Hebrew Bible and said, you know what? We're not going

20:29to do as much philosophizing like Philo and Josephus did. We're going to get back into

20:35the text of the Hebrew Bible and we're going to engage in halochic interpretations, hermeneutics,

20:41which is really just saying, what is the text telling us? And that is one of the things I

20:46think that contributes to Judaism having a lot of positions that are far more closely

20:51aligned with what the Hebrew Bible says than does Christianity, which is far more influenced

20:57by Greek philosophy, not, you know, and not just the Trinity, but the idea of creation

21:02out of nothing, the idea about insolment and abortion, up to and including the enthusiastic

21:13Christian adoption of Greco-Roman patriarchy and, and social conventions. And that's not

21:19to say that rabbinic Judaism was an ally. The, the bastion of feminism that is rabbinic

21:26Judaism. No, no, no, no, no. But it is to say that, that Christianity leaned heavily into

21:34the influence of Greco-Roman social conventions and right and Ephesians, you have it elsewhere,

21:40the pastoral epistles as well appeal to these household code ideas. And really what it is

21:47is it is the authors saying, we like this social convention. We're taking it. This is ours now.

21:54And we're going to come up with a gospel rationalization for it. We're going to explain

22:00it in a Christological way. So you have the author doing that here in Ephesians five and

22:05Ephesians six. But this is the same thing that happens in, in 1 Corinthians 11 with Paul

22:12saying, women have to cover their heads when they're praying in prophesy. Right. That was

22:17just a convention. And Paul's like, well, what if we said that it's, you know, it's about

22:22the Christ is the head of the man. The man is the head of the woman. So therefore, you

22:27know, if a woman's head is uncovered, she's glorifying the man, but she needs to be glorifying

22:31God. So she should got to cover it. Like it's just saying, let's, let's slap a gospel rationalization

22:39onto the Greco-Roman social convention. We're adopting right because we're again lean and

22:46heavy into that. So when, when people talk about, you know, Christians, not caring what

22:52society does, that's the exact opposite of what happens. Right.

22:57We're like, what society does is all that matters. And we're going to come up with rationalizations

23:02for why that's what God wanted all along. Christians were the Jews that, that wanted

23:07to be Greekified and Romanified. And I think that with the destruction of the temple and

23:13with the debates that were going on with the development of rabbinic Judaism with the Christian

23:20following and worshiping of Jesus, those kind of all just contributed to the parting of the ways.

23:26And when exactly that happened, then precisely how is a huge debate that I'm definitely not

23:33going to pretend to be an authority on. You know, since you mentioned these household codes

23:38a couple of times, I'm just going to impress you with my knowledge of Greek because

23:43I was doing some research on this. I did check in with chat GPT. I find it a helpful research

23:53partner, but also I always find good reasons to double check anything it tells me. One of them

24:01being that it said that it quote, it said to me, quote, this passage sits in what scholars call

24:07the household household codes. And then in parentheses, it said Greek

24:12house Tophan, which I'm pretty sure ain't Greek. I know enough German to know that house Tophan.

24:20That's not a Greek word. I'll have to go dust off an old Greek grammar. But but yeah, it doesn't sound

24:27as as Greek to me as as it probably should. Yeah, Greek Greek isn't a Germanic language.

24:36And I just didn't hear about it, is it? No, no, no, no, no. And the Greek word for house is not

24:42house. Yeah. Yeah. We don't go find a gust off to.

24:48Yeah, exactly. So there you go. I, the thing I think that I I like that you were talking earlier

24:58about people who want to try to make Ephesians five, not be misogynistic,

25:10rehabilitated, domesticated, certainly understand that impulse. Absolutely.

25:16Because if you want to be a believing, a Bible believing person who is also respectful of

25:25all of the genders, et cetera, yeah, you're going to not want you don't want that to be

25:31as misogynistic as it sounds. But I think I think we have to we have to just allow that it is

25:38a product of its time and absolutely as patriarchal and misogynistic as as we read it.

25:45Yeah, it is definitely upholding the patriarchy of that that time and place which

25:51yeah, is a problem. And there's a point to be made about the fact that it does makes,

25:57takes some baby steps because in this time period, you know, when we've talked about this before,

26:03how some Roman authors refer to Christianity as a religion for women and slaves because they had

26:11equality. There was a there was a dimension in which they were considered equal within

26:18a Christian congregation. And so you actually for this author to say wives submit to your husbands,

26:26but husbands, you got to love your wives. You have to treat them as not equals, but at least

26:33you have to love them the way Christ loved the church. That's taking a step forward.

26:38And you see this as well with Paul in a lot of different ways tries to assert a kind of

26:45reciprocity, not full reciprocity, but at least gestures in the direction of it.

26:51And, and we've talked about how in some ways that is harmful. So for instance,

26:56the idea that in first Corinthians seven, that the woman's body is not her own,

27:04her husband, it's the property of her husband, but her husband's body is her property.

27:10Right. Like it's kind of saying, well, it goes the other way to right, which is an attempt at

27:15trying to gin up some parody, some reciprocity. It doesn't work, of course, because, you know,

27:22great. What does that mean? It's like saying, you know, the husband is going to beat the wife,

27:27but the wife is free to beat the husband right back. Right. So it's equal. There's no problem.

27:32It's the same. You know, the that passage has been leveraged as an excuse for marital

27:38rape for literally millennia. I was alive when marital rape was not a crime, right, in more than

27:48one state in the United States of America. It's only been since I think like 1993, that it has

27:54actually been outlawed in all 50 states. And I think it's, I think it started in 1971 or 1972.

28:01That's when the first state said, Hey, we're actually going to make marital rape a crime.

28:07Yeah, because people, the patriarchy has always treated marriage as a man,

28:14basically having possession of a woman's body and having rights over her sexual availability,

28:22right, which, yeah, it's sickening. It's not okay. It's not okay. And I think, you know,

28:30one of the themes of our show has been that like you have to reject certain tenets that are

28:38explicit in the Bible, that are explicitly like laid down as though they are laws,

28:45as though they are rules, you know what I mean? And I, but I think one of the things that can be

28:50comforting in all this is that the laws change from Old Testament to new, like the fact is that

28:58laws change, even within the Bible, the law continually changes and modifies itself.

29:05So well, even you can just, and I'll let you finish your point here, but even before you

29:11transition from the Hebrew Bible to the New Testament, things were changing. Yeah,

29:14like you can just look at the, the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible,

29:19already they're reinterpreting stuff all over the place. And that's one of the things that

29:23Jesus was doing too. So I don't want to, I'm just saying this because I don't want to create this

29:28binary between Hebrew Bible versus, versus New Testament. Totally understand that. That makes,

29:33yeah, and that makes sense. The Hebrew Bible actually spans more time and therefore

29:37makes, it would make sense for the Hebrew Bible to actually have more changes even inside of itself.

29:44Yeah. And I think, but I think that that's, that's the key to understanding how a modern

29:49believer should be looking at the Bible, not as a system of laws that apply today,

29:57necessarily, but rather as a snapshot of that time period and the amount that they had

30:05learned up until then. And the fact that it's so, that it's so heavily influenced by Greek culture

30:11and Roman culture, is a, you know, is at very least points out that it's a cultural influence

30:21is important. And as cultures advance and learn more, the laws and the rules of societies should

30:30necessarily change. Yeah. I think there's, there's good reason to be glad that the Greco-Roman

30:40world influenced Christianity. Because I think, I think the collaboration between the two took a

30:47long time to, but ultimately resulted in very good things. I think the Renaissance, I think the

30:52Enlightenment were ways that there were new insights, there were new consensacies. Obviously,

31:02technology changed so much about the world as a result of collaboration between the followers

31:09and the adherence to these traditions and these texts and the world around them. And a lot of

31:15people want to claim that, you know, when it comes to slavery. All the abolitionists were all

31:22originally Christians. Well, that's not totally true, but it was in spite of the Bible, not because

31:28of the Bible. So let's, let's give credit where credit is due. And when it comes to things like

31:33abolitionism, the credit is not to the Bible. The credit is to, is to other things, including the

31:40influence of classical philosophy, which was influential in the Middle Ages and was restored

31:48thanks to its preservation among Muslim and Jewish groups and its translation back into Latin and

31:55all of this stuff. So there's always going, it's always going to be socially contingent. We have a

32:01lot of people trying to insist that it's, it's not that it transcends society. And that's just

32:07demonstrably false. And so don't poo poo on the influence of, of society, because it made Christianity

32:16the many different things that it is today. Yeah. All right, thus endeth my silly little rant.

32:23Our our rants. Yeah, absolutely. All right, we're going to move on to our next,

32:28our next segment. And we came up with a title for this. And it's nerdy and it requires explanation.

32:36And I apologize for it, but it's going to make more sense on the screen. Welcome to the key files.

32:43Okay, so the key files, tell me what the talk, talk to me about what what we're doing here.

32:52So that's just a nerdy Greek joke, right? Yeah, we're just using the Greek character he,

32:58which is written just like the X, the capital he is, is like the X, but this is what you would

33:06see spelled out CHI. So if you're, if you're in a college town and you see somebody going

33:12Cairo or something like that, then they're probably just mispronouncing CHI. But anyway,

33:20it looks like an X looks like X files. Yeah, yeah, it's because we're going to be talking

33:24about aliens. And that's exciting. So we had somebody ask us a few, a few weeks ago

33:34about like aliens and the Bible. And I dove into some stuff. You know, there's that stupid show

33:42on a history channel called ancient aliens, which was a spinoff because they like, they kept doing

33:51like shows about the pyramids or whatever. And this dude with his with this crazy hair would come

33:59on and be like, it was, it had to be aliens because we didn't have the technology to make these things

34:05and blah, blah, blah. And everybody, apparently he was people glommed onto that and him. And anyway,

34:15now it's its own show and has like 200 episodes or something crazy like that.

34:23Okay, but I want, but a bunch of it is to like is about the Bible and aliens.

34:30So let's dive into that, shall we? Yeah. And I want, I want to start by talking about somebody

34:37who this is also depressing that somebody sold millions and millions of copies of books promoting

34:49bizarre ancient alien conspiracy theories, dude by the name of Zechariah Sitchin. Does that

34:56does that name ring any bells for you? I mean, I've got his Wikipedia pulled up right here.

35:00Oh, you do. I'm all over Zechariah. Also, a little bit ironic that Zech that his name is Zechariah

35:08considering that's a that is way one of the texts that we're going to look at is Zechariah. Yeah.

35:13But he, he published a book in 1976. He, he claims to have learned Sumerian,

35:20autodidact, like I'm, that's great if you, if you taught yourself a language like that, but based

35:28on his arguments, he either didn't learn any discipline and didn't learn any method and didn't

35:35learn any theory or didn't really learn Sumerian that well. But he wrote a book, published a book

35:42in 1976 called the 12th Planet. And the idea is basically that we had more planets in our solar

35:48system long, long ago. And one of them was called Nibiru. And this planet is like outside Neptune

35:57or something like that. And it passes close by Earth every 3,600 years. And there was a time when

36:06it collided with another planet called Tiamat. And the idea is that the ancient Sumerian texts

36:14that talk about these gods are actually astronomical metaphors and narratives and things like that.

36:24So Tiamat was an actual planet. The collision resulted in, if, if I remember my 12th planet,

36:31lore correctly, resulted in the creation of Earth. And about 450,000 years ago, the extraterrestrials

36:41from Nibiru, where they had worn out their atmosphere. And they came to Earth in order to

36:50get gold because they could aerosolize the gold. And that could become kind of an artificial

36:59atmosphere that would help them maintain it. Why is it always that like they go after whatever?

37:06It's because everybody's borrowing from Spaceballs. It's all about you're going to be in trouble

37:12because we're going to steal your air. I just feel like I feel like they you choose gold just because

37:18we sort of inexplicably still value gold. Yeah, even though it's not really, you know,

37:25it's just shiny metal. Yeah, but but apparently it's also good for turning into air.

37:33And yeah, it's good for what else you are for what else the Anunnaki anyway. So Anunnaki,

37:39that is a word that that we have in some of these ancient texts that is really just a class of deity.

37:46But for Sitchin, these are to be identified with the Nephilim. Oh, okay. So we're making a connection

37:59between ancient Sumerian texts and the Bible. Yes. And so this is way Sumerian texts and the

38:06Bible and extraterrestrial life forms. So this is an even more expanded scope of univocality.

38:13Right. Where it's it's all talking about the same reality. Right. And the key is to is to get it all

38:21together. And the Anunnaki needed people to work the minds. And so they created through genetic

38:30engineering of some kind, humanity. And so this is and there was some kind of hominid race that was

38:39on Earth. Something went on under the cover of darkness that resulted in the humanity. And so

38:48the Anunnaki DNA ends up in humanity. So and and somehow somehow this resulted in like

39:01eight more books that's where he further fleshes out this theory of the Anunnaki slash Nephilim

39:10and genetic engineering of humanity and all of this stuff and sold millions of copies of this book.

39:18So I just say one of the things that I like about this theory that makes me that at least,

39:24you know, as someone who has read some, I have not studied astrophysics. I have read about

39:31astrophysics. I've learned a lot about astrophysics, but certainly I'm I am no scholar of astrophysics.

39:37But you're a scholar of Dianetics, right? Yes. 100%. But we'll get into that in another episode.

39:43But I like that his thing wasn't interstellar or intergalactic. His aliens were at least

39:51in their galactic, at least from our solar system. And that puts me at ease a little bit because

39:57the the travel possibilities, it makes it that much more plausible, at least physics wise. So I

40:05appreciate that about it. And and unfortunately, there are a lot of people on social media who are

40:11sharing videos, most of them recorded in the 80s and 90s, where people are actually taking these

40:16ideas and running with them and going on TV and talking about, Oh, you know, Elohim is plural. And

40:23and that means it was the gods who created the heavens and the earth. And they and they said,

40:29replenish. What does replenish mean? It means to fill again. It means it was

40:33which it doesn't which it was already punished. And then they replenished it. Yes.

40:40Which is so so misguided. But anyway, that's an example of of one person's

40:47very fecund imagination, just coming up with all kinds of ways to read aliens into

40:55the Bible.

40:56Let's look at some other ways that people have found. Yeah, negotiated aliens into the Bible. And I

41:07think one of the most common ones, one of the most famous is to be found in Ezekiel's vision.

41:15Ezekiel one, verse four, I think is where we ought to start. I'm going to read a little bit of this and

41:22then we'll like, there are 25 verses that that make up the kind of alien part of this, but but

41:30we'll just kind of get a little bit into it. And the thing you have to understand is some of

41:36you are like, just read the damn passage. But the thing you have to understand is,

41:40this is kind of like the book of Revelation, where it's like, and there are, you know,

41:46breastplates were multi colored and like fire and they had the heads of lions and their tails

41:51were like scorpion. Like, and people are like, well, that's how an ancient person would describe a

41:56tank. Yeah, because I didn't know what a tank was. That's exactly like a Apache helicopter,

42:03if you think about it. Yeah, it's exactly like it. They wouldn't know what it is. They wouldn't be

42:08like, well, that's an Apache. So here we go. Ezekiel one for as I looked, a stormy wind came out of

42:15the north, a great cloud with brightness around it and fire flashing forth continually. And in the

42:21middle of the fire, something like gleaming amber. So if you're thinking the movie Independence Day,

42:26where the thing is coming through the clouds, like that's kind of what I think some people imagine.

42:31Okay. In the middle of it was something like four living creatures. This was their appearance.

42:37They were of human form. Each had four faces and each of them had four wings.

42:42Okay. I'm going to just say, that's not a human form. I'm just going to, like, if you,

42:48you can't tell me that they are human form and then, but they have wings and four faces.

42:52That's not how human form is. If the faces look human, then.

42:59Sure. And I mean, you don't, do you have another thing to compare it to?

43:03Just get that. You don't have to say, okay, fine. Go, keep going there.

43:11Their legs were straight and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calves foot.

43:16And they sparkled like burnished bronze under their wings on their four sides. They had human

43:21hands and the four had their faces and their wings thus, their wings touched one another.

43:26Each of them moved straight ahead without turning as they moved. As for the appearance of their

43:30faces, the four had the face of a human being, the face of a lion. On the right side, the face of

43:35an ox on the left side and the face of an eagle. Such were their faces. Their wings were spread

43:41out above. Each creature had two wings, each of which touched the wing of another while two covered

43:45their bodies. Each move straight ahead, wherever the spirit would go, they went without turning as

43:50they went. In the middle of the living creatures, there was something that looked like burning

43:54coals of fire, like torches moving to and fro among the living creatures. The fire was bright

44:00and lightning issued from the fire. The living creatures darted to and fro like a flash of lightning.

44:06And I think we can just pause here for a little bit, but can I just say you've convinced me,

44:11I believe they are aliens. That description to me is sufficient to say, yeah, we're talking

44:19about aliens. I don't know. I don't know why anyone's arguing with this. I mean, what else is

44:24it going to be? Do you have another category for this? Yes, we do. It's apocalyptic imagery.

44:29Right. This is just and and a lot of people, you know, this is this is one of the things

44:34that convinces a lot of people that they were all on drugs back then. Like not every apocalyptic

44:40author was on drugs. Okay. I mean, it wouldn't hurt to come up with this kind of imagery. I think

44:47I think drugs is a perfectly reasonable explanation for what's happening here.

44:51And Ezekiel looks at the living creatures. I saw a wheel on the earth beside the living

44:58creatures, one for each of the four of them. And here's something that gets brought up.

45:02You've heard of Dyson spheres, right? Yes. So and there was a pain to explain what the

45:08it's a sphere, but like it's like a planet, but you live on the inside. It's hollow, right?

45:14Well, the idea is the idea is this is a hypothesized if there were these advanced civilizations,

45:22what would what we would expect to see a lot more energy coming off these planets unless they

45:31created these things around the planets to absorb the energy. And that would explain why

45:38planets of certain mass, certain whatever might be giving off less energy than we expect them

45:44to give off. And there was a paper and I'm sure I'm getting that very wrong. And anybody out there

45:50who is an expert in this is going to be like, I'm so disappointed in you, Dan. Me too. Me too.

45:55But there was a paper published a bit ago that said, if there is such a thing as Dyson spheres,

46:04here are some candidates. Here are some planets we've identified that would be giving off less

46:10energy than we would expect. And and it was just a hypothetical like, hey, if we imagine that these

46:16things exist, these are a handful of planets that are a handful of celestial objects that that

46:22could be and people took that to mean we've discovered Dyson spheres because people don't read,

46:28and so. But can we just say, like for the sake, just for everyone out there, the concept of a

46:34Dyson sphere is impossible. Basically, like you can't as you wouldn't have the materials, you

46:42wouldn't have the it's just impossible. Yeah. But when we get to this part of Ezekiel, a lot of

46:48people are like, that's what the Dyson sphere is so because they looked at artist renderings of

46:54what a Dyson sphere might look like. But as for the appearance of the wheels and their construction,

46:59their appearance was like the gleaming of barrel. And the four had the same form, their

47:03construction being something like a wheel within a wheel. When they moved, they moved in any of

47:08the four directions without veering as they moved their rim, their rims were tall and handsome.

47:13For the rims of all four were full of eyes all around. When the living creatures moved,

47:17the wheels moved beside them. And when the living creatures rose from the earth, the wheels rose.

47:22What you're saying is spaceship. That's exactly what you're saying.

47:26Spaceship. Yeah. And actually, I tend to think that what Ezekiel is actually doing here

47:32is trying to say that God's throne was pimped. We pimped God's ride by mobilizing it,

47:42giving it these wheels that have to be fantastical and have to be grotesque and have to be all these

47:49things. Because there's a throne on top of a platform on top of wheels. So like the idea which

47:57if you just described it like that, not that cool, but if it's like wheels within wheels and

48:01it's going left, right up and down, you don't know which way. And their blinking eyes all over.

48:06And the reason that I think Ezekiel is doing this, Ezekiel's sitting on the river in Babylon,

48:12they're exiled. They cannot access their God that is way back in the temple in Jerusalem that has

48:18been destroyed. What is us? What are we going to do? We cannot sing the song of Adonai in a foreign

48:23land. And suddenly they hear the rumbling of God's new ride because suddenly the throne,

48:29which used to be stuck in the temple, has now been pimped out. And God can just floor it over to

48:38Babylon and ride his throne on his platform on his wheels to come visit.

48:46He's got a new Cadillac and he is ready to rumble. And it's got eyes all over it.

48:51And so, so I'm going to say, I'm going to say something that sounds a little weird.

48:56It's not that far off to think of this as kind of like a flying saucer or a UFO,

49:02because I think Ezekiel was probably thinking, what if God's throne had wheels and could fly?

49:09So I and we're going to go back to the Hebrew Bible. Well, Ezekiel is in the Hebrew Bible, but

49:17we're going to go back to some imagery that is borrowed from Baal. You know how we feel about Baal,

49:23but Baal in the Eucharitic literature is the charioteer or the writer of the clouds.

49:28And this is a title that is taken over by Adonai, the God of Israel, becomes the charioteer,

49:34the writer of the clouds. And we see in Daniel coming, the son of men, you know, coming in clouds,

49:40riding the clouds. So for God to suddenly be like,

49:43and just cruising over to Babylon in the clouds on this platform with these bizarre living wheels

49:55is just kind of like it makes sense. That's what a stoner from Judah exiled in Babylon might come

50:05up with. I am going to mobilize God. I am going to say though, I think God, if that if your theory

50:12holds, God took some extra stops before he came to Ezekiel. Well, you got to get some snacks and

50:19supplies. Because he came out of the north is what I'm saying. Verse four, a stormy wind came

50:26out of the north. So yeah, so I obviously he like did a circle around, did stuff. Well, when you

50:33when you come to Babylon, you've got to go up over and around because you can't just go straight

50:37across because that's all desert. Okay. And so that's the fertile crescent is is a crescent.

50:44And so when when they left, when you left Babylon to go get to Phoenicia, you went north, you

50:51followed the river, you went north and then you came down from the south. So so yeah, that's not

50:56that's not too far off. But but I think God is like, I got to get some beef jerky. I got to get

51:02some caffeine. I'm going to stop in and get a Turkish coffee real quick. And then I'm going to head

51:07over. I just think I think what's funny about this is, it's totally understandable to me to read

51:17all of this, to to hear the things that you've mentioned about the Assyrians and the whatever's.

51:24And to and then to say, like I can't you can't refute the idea that like, like it's

51:35I'm not going to say it's a plausible explanation. But it is a

51:38I get it. I get it. The difference between a valid argument and a sound argument. This is a

51:43valid argument to say these were aliens. Yeah. And the and they had spacecraft. And this is the

51:52best description that these guys could summon for that. Yeah, I think Stargate, I know what's going

52:01on. It's like I'm not defending it. I'm not excusing it. But I understand. But like, but like,

52:07yeah, as conspiracy theories go, okay. No, definitely not. But like, okay.

52:15So here's here's another one that I'm even more entertained by because I have I have heard this

52:22been described, be described, both as UFOs and as fighter jets dropping bombs. Okay. So this

52:32is Zechariah five. And this is I'm just going to jump right into it because there's no prepping

52:39for this. Again, I looked up and saw a flying scroll. And he said to me, what do you see? I answered,

52:48I see a flying scroll. Its length is 20 qubits and its width is 10 qubits. And I'm googling real

52:56quick how 20 qubits is about 30 feet ish. Then he said to me, this is the curse that goes out over

53:04the face of the whole land for everyone who has stolen as is forbidden on one side has gone unpunished

53:12and everyone who has sworn falsely as is forbidden on the other side has gone unpunished. I have

53:19sent it out said the Lord of hosts and it shall enter the house of the thief and the house of

53:24anyone who swears falsely by my name and it shall abide in that house and consume it both timber and

53:31stones. So I gotta say a flying scroll does not sound to me like a fighter jet. I don't know what

53:40these people are talking about. I think of you. Do you remember the meme where the guy finds the

53:45scroll of truth and then reads it and you know, whatever inconvenient truth is on there? And then

53:51he goes, yeah, and chucks it. That's what I think of with the flying scroll, but it gets better.

53:56Then the angel who spoke with me came forward and said to me, look up and see what this is that

54:02is coming out. I said, what is it? He said, this is a basket coming out. And he said, this is their

54:09iniquity in the whole land. Then a leaden cover was lifted and there was a woman sitting in the

54:15basket. And he said, this is wickedness. So he thrust her back into the basket and pressed the

54:22leaden weight down on its mouth. Then I looked up and saw two women coming forward. The wind

54:28was in their wings. They had wings like the wings of a stork. And they lifted up the basket between

54:34earth and sky. And I said to the angel who spoke with me, why are they taking the basket? Where

54:39excuse me? Are they taking the basket? He said to me to the land of Shinar to build a house for

54:44it. And when this is prepared, they will set it down there on its base. And then we've got a

54:53vision of chariots coming out from between two mountains with red horses with black horses with

54:58white horses and with dappled gray horses. And so yeah, this, this is more apocalyptic imagery.

55:05But but you can, this is where people are like, it's a basket and there's somebody in the basket

55:10riding in the basket. And it has a leaden roof. This is obviously an airplane or a UFO or something

55:18like that, obviously, because you can't imagine the apocalyptic imagination of ancient Judaism

55:24having any actual validity or legitimacy to it. Well, it's so funny because I, you know, just think

55:30about the life of people in that time period. If you're trying to describe, you know, a UFO or a

55:38an airplane or something, I don't think you go with basket. They had carts. They had a whole

55:44bunch of other things. I don't think you start with a basket, to be honest, or a scroll. A scroll

55:50is the worst thing to do. I didn't like, I love the idea of a scroll, a fly a scroll.

55:55Well, it's it that's how you would describe a flying carpet, right? Right. I did, I did come up

56:01with one possible potential justification for saying that a flying scroll could look like

56:06could be fighter jets. The only thing I can think of is you know how sometimes when a fighter jet

56:13goes, it goes through clouds or goes through whatever. And it's got the little off off of the wings.

56:20It's got these little vortex things. Little vortex things. Yeah, that's kind of scrolling.

56:25That's like a scroll. Yeah, not really. I'm stretching here. I'm trying to get these guys

56:32free. But I think yeah, I think probably the most plausible thing is that we could we can just say

56:43they were using metaphors. They were coming up with visual metaphors. Yeah. And we don't have to

56:50say that it was actually a reference to any real thing. Yeah, they didn't have manga back then.

56:56They didn't have anime. Right. They certainly didn't have Disney. They they needed an outlet for

57:03all these all this creativity and and they needed something that and I think one of the main points

57:08of apocalyptic imagery is to be like bizarre. Yeah, because it kind of forces you to to think

57:16about this stuff and to kind of wonder what on earth is going on and it makes you dwell on it a

57:22little bit if you're taking it seriously. And and I think that is part of the way that these were

57:28really speech acts. These were ways to achieve a goal. And and the goal was to get these people to

57:34be like, yeah, don't want that to happen. And you know, so I guess I better

57:39shape up and and ship out or or something right or something. I don't don't know what's the straight

57:45up and fly right? Straighten up and fly right. So that we don't have weird scrolls flying around

57:52inhabiting and consuming houses. Yeah, that's that is grotesque. That's bizarre. And that is

58:01what is intended to be achieved. This is why revelation people have spent so they've just wasted

58:07so many years trying to figure out what all these symbols mean to, you know, the 21st century.

58:13Nothing. It was just imagery imagery. Let it do what it's what it's there to do. You don't have to

58:21yeah, we don't have to be scary. Just just let it just let it be scary. Yeah, be scared. Dang it.

58:30Just be scared. You don't have to like think about what it means. Just be scared about it.

58:34All right. Well, I think I think that the the chances that there actually were ancient aliens

58:44are very low. Uh, but but but I don't think we've disproven it but never zero never zero. I don't

58:53think we have disproven the idea even that these texts were influenced by the visitations of ancient

59:01aliens. Uh, you know, it could well be that that it's not a new bureau. New bureau. Uh, what the Anunnaki

59:12from New Bureau, uh, made Adam and Eve. So and they're coming back one day. Yeah, when the last

59:20thirty six hundred year cycle began. I mean, we got it. It's got to be sometime soon, right?

59:25It's got to be happening in a minute now. You would you would think yeah, maybe maybe next

59:28October 23rd boy. Are they going to be disappointed when they see what we've been up to for three

59:34thousand years? They are. They're going to be so mad. Uh, so there you go. All right. Well,

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