Ep 137: It's a Jubilee!

00:00"Somebody listening to this is going to be like, 'Dan, you moron.'"

00:04"Ah, got him. We got him, everybody. He didn't know which one it was. Ah!"

00:10"Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan. And I'm Dan Beacher."

00:19"You're listening to the Data Overdogma podcast where we increase public access to the academic

00:24study of the Bible and religion and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same

00:30and how are things today, Dan?"

00:31"Ooh, it's been a long day for me. I had some family emergencies of the pet variety

00:39that were harrowing. It's been a harrowing day. But I'm--"

00:45"All everything copacetic."

00:48"Everything's okay. We've got a cat with significantly less hair now because the vet

00:53had to shave her and all sorts of crazy stuff. Anywho, other than that, things are great."

01:00"So let's dive into some Bible stuff, shall we?"

01:03"Let's do it."

01:04"Okay, so today on the show, we are going to-- we're going to first have a-- is it canon?

01:11We're going to talk about a book that is canon, I understand--"

01:15"And an X-man."

01:16"Yes, it is."

01:17"To put it out there. Just put it out there."

01:19"Oh, okay. There you go. So we'll get to Jubilees and then in the second half of the

01:26show, we'll be asking ourselves-- we'll be taking issue with a bunch of correlations.

01:34We're going to correlate and see if it means everything and something and anything."

01:40"Probably not."

01:41"Probably not. But first, is it canon? Alright, so we said it. We're going-- we're getting

01:50into Jubilees here and that--" The word Jubilee is interesting. I myself attended the diamond

02:01Jubilee of Her Highness, the queen of England back in her days.

02:08"I didn't attend it. I sat on the banks of the Thames and watched as the giant flotilla

02:14floated by, which sounds super exciting, the largest flotilla that has ever floated the

02:19Thames. It sounds very exciting until you realize it's just boats going slowly past you."

02:25One of which contained the queen, who waved in my direction.

02:29"I hear she's good at waving, but she was good at waving."

02:32"Not as good anymore. And the other Jubilee that I know of is that this year, the year

02:39of our Lord 2025, is a Jubilee year for the Catholics, the pope, before he died, declared

02:48this year to be a Jubilee year."

02:51Indeed. So, I don't know what that means. But what I do know is there is also a book

02:58that was in-- that was not in my Bible called Jubilees. And I don't know anything about

03:04it.

03:05Well, it is-- it is generally considered a pseudographical text. It is non-canonical for the overwhelming

03:13majority of Christianity, as well as Judaism. There is a movement, a Jewish movement that

03:23is associated with the Christian movement that has it in the canon, that also has it

03:26in the canon.

03:27Okay.

03:28The Ethiopian Orthodox Tawakkato Church has Jubilees in the canon. In fact, their inclusion

03:33of the book of Jubilees in the canon is the only reason we can claim to have a full copy

03:40of the book of Jubilees, because it was only preserved in Ghe'ez manuscripts for a long,

03:49long time until we discover the Dead Sea Scrolls. And I think there's a little bit of a Latin

03:55translation from like the 5th century.

03:58But the dozens--

03:59So, the last time we met the Ethiopian Orthodox Tawakkato Church, we were talking about First

04:08Enoch and how they include that also in their canon.

04:11Right.

04:12Yes. And these-- and these-- and this is closely related. In fact, Jubilees is probably basing

04:18some of its text on First Enoch.

04:21Okay.

04:22And so these are both texts that were written in the Hellenistic period. Most scholars would

04:26say Jubilees was probably written somewhere between 160 to 150 BCE.

04:32Okay.

04:33This is just after the Maccabean period. This is during the Hasmonean kingdom. And it was

04:41probably originally written in Hebrew. And then probably translated into Syriac somewhere

04:46along the way, also translated from Hebrew into Greek.

04:50And then from Greek into Latin and into Ghe'ez, because Jubilees was probably brought down

04:57to the Kingdom of Aksum, modern-day Ethiopia, by folks who had copies of the Septuagint,

05:04so the Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures, including First Enoch and Jubilees. And then

05:11I think the oldest existing Ghe'ez or Ethiopian manuscript of Jubilees is like from the 14th

05:18century.

05:19But there are like 50 or so manuscripts of Jubilees preserved in Ghe'ez. And based on

05:25the manuscripts of Jubilees that were discovered at Qumran among the Dead Sea Scrolls. There

05:31are more than a dozen different manuscripts of Jubilees, which puts it alongside First

05:36Enoch outnumbering the number of manuscripts of every other book of the Bible except for

05:45Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and Psalms.

05:51Wow.

05:52So, Jubilees and First Enoch were quite influential.

05:55Yeah. So, wait, if I'm understanding you, let me just say it in my own way just to make

06:01sure I'm getting it. But like, if there were that many copies of that in the Dead Sea Scrolls

06:08and among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and at least the people who were keeping those records near

06:13the Dead Sea lo those many years ago, anciently, clearly, it must have been very important.

06:20It must have been as important to them as you say, those other books as Genesis, Exodus,

06:26or whatever ones you listed.

06:28Yeah. They definitely weren't the core of what was considered scripture for Judaism,

06:34but they seem to have been even more influential than books like Ezekiel and Daniel and Numbers

06:44and Joshua and stuff like that. So, it was influential if we take the number of manuscripts

06:50preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls as in as a proxy for how important the text was.

06:58But we also see its influence on later rabbinic literature. We even see some stuff in the New

07:03Testament that seems to be reflecting. Not necessarily saying, "Hey, here's something

07:09I took from Jubilees," but references to traditions that look at those traditions in

07:16ways they are presented in Jubilees and not really anywhere else. So, indicating that

07:22they're familiar with and they are influenced by the tradition as preserved in Jubilees.

07:28But in short, Jubilees is basically a rewriting of the book of Genesis and a little bit of

07:34Exodus.

07:35Oh, okay.

07:36Interesting.

07:37The idea is this. Moses is on Sinai in Exodus 24. God's like, "Hey, I'm going to give you

07:44these laws." But once you all get to the promised land, everybody's going to break all the laws.

07:51I'm going to send them away in exile. I'm going to destroy the temple. Then I'm going

07:54to bring them back. Then I'm going to rebuild the temple. And then everything's going to

07:58be copacetic from then on out. Everything's going to be grand. And Moses is like, "What

08:03if you didn't do that?" And God was like, "No, I'm still going to do that." And then

08:10God is like, "Here's my angel and he's going to give you all the deeds and God bounces."

08:16And so the angel of the presence and this is the Malach Adonai, the messenger of Adonai

08:22that is introduced in Exodus 23, the chapter of 4, where God says, "I'm sending an angel

08:27before you to guard you along the way. My name is in him." And this angel's like, "Hey,

08:32Moses, anyway, here's the deal." And retails the entire book of Genesis. Not verse 4 verse,

08:41but like story 4 story. And an awful lot of it is condensed. But it's all being retold

08:48in a way that would be more meaningful for an educated Jewish person in the middle of

08:53the second century B.C.

08:55So it's kind of like there are what's going on in Jubilee's, in my opinion, is kind of

09:03close to what Joseph Smith was trying to do with his revision of the Bible, like the

09:11book of Moses, where God's like, "Hey, Moses, so anyway, here's how everything's going to

09:16play out." This says how everything began, here's everything's going to play out. And

09:21you're rewriting the whole book of Genesis and changing an awful lot, but kind of following

09:26the same trajectory. And it's all divided up into Jubilee's. So Jubilee is 49 years according

09:37to the Hebrew Bible. You have seven years, that's the seventh year is the Sabbath year,

09:43but every seven sets of seven years is the 49th year, that's the Jubilee year. And so

09:49basically we're imposing this chronological framework of sets of seven and Jubilee's

09:56in everything upon the book of Genesis. And so a lot of the chapters begin where the angel

10:05of the presence is speaking to Moses and says, "So anyway, during the fifth year of the fourth

10:13week of this Jubilee, in the third month, in the middle of the month, Abram celebrated

10:18the festival of the first fruits in the wheat harvest." And it's kind of a way to say this

10:23history is already written. It's playing out according to this very regimented chronology.

10:33Everything important happens on Jubilee years or in a way that can be measured against these

10:39Jubilee years. And you get updates and you get changes and you get corrections and stuff

10:46like that. I want to read a couple of examples of some of the things that some of the ways

10:52they're retelling the story. But first, this is the very end of the first chapter. There

10:58are two sections to the book of Jubilee's. Chapter one is one section. And then the other

11:03section is chapters two through 50. Oh, okay. And there are only 50 chapters in Jubilee's.

11:10But those are not evenly measured chapters. It is. It is. It is definitely back heavy.

11:17But and the first chapter is, is just kind of this narrative explaining what's going on

11:23where Moses is like, what, why, who? Okay. And anyway, verse 29 of the first chapter, it's

11:31a long verse, the angel of the presence who was going along in front of the Israelite camp

11:35took the tablets that told of the divisions of the years from the time the law and the

11:39testimony were created for the weeks of their Jubilee's year by year in their full number

11:44and their Jubilee's from the time of the first creation until the time of the new creation

11:48when the heavens, the earth and all their creatures will be renewed like the powers of the sky

11:52and like all the creatures of the earth until the time when the temple of the Lord will be

11:56created in Jerusalem on Mount Zion. So that's the explanation of what the angel of the presence

12:02is about to drop on Moses. And so you have in chapter two, you have Adam, any, you have

12:13this whole creation. And then you have this statement, there were 22 leaders of humanity

12:17from Adam until him and 22 kinds of works were made until the seventh day. So we've got another

12:25division into these very symbolic numbers. And 22 is symbolic. Do you do you have any idea

12:33where where 22 might be symbolic? 22 and 24, both pop up a number of times in early Judaism.

12:39I know the significance of six seven, but I don't know the other ones.

12:44No, you don't. Nobody does. I'm the only one.

12:5022 and 24 are significant. 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, 24 letters in the Greek alphabet.

12:57And so once you get into first century CE, you have texts and folks, people like Josephus

13:04and other texts that say, Oh, yeah, our sacred scriptures, number 22, or they number 24.

13:10That's how many books are in there because that is symbolic. And you know, if you like Greek,

13:16then you go with 24. If you prefer Hebrew, then you go with 22. So that's what's going on with these,

13:21these symbolic numbers. And there's an interesting tradition that has its origin

13:27in the book of Jubilees. That might surprise some people. So I've made videos before where I've

13:33said, Hey, the first lie in the Bible is not the serpent talking to Eve. It actually comes before

13:38that Genesis to 17 where God tells Adam on the day you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge

13:45of good and evil. You will certainly die. He doesn't die. What's going on there? Right.

13:51One of the responses to this, there are two main responses. One is to say, well, he didn't mean die

13:57die. He meant die is and not die. The other response is to say, well, a day to the Lord

14:06is a thousand years. Right. And this is based on, there's a passage in, I always screw it up. I don't

14:13know why it's either Psalms or Proverbs where it says the day is like a thousand or a thousand

14:19years or like a day to the Lord and or like a watch in the night, which would be like three or four hours.

14:26And I've, I've always found that a rather silly argument, but it originates in the book of Jubilees.

14:34So Jubilees chapter four, we're getting to the end of the story of Adam. He was the first to be

14:39buried in the ground. And then verse 30, he lacked 70 years from 1000 years because 1000

14:47years are one day in the testimony of heaven. For this reason, it was written regarding the tree of

14:52knowledge on the day that you eat from it, you will die. Therefore, he did not complete the years

14:57of this day because he died during it. So the book of Jubilees, we've got the, the apologetic

15:06built in. Yes. One of the first apologists going through and rewriting the text and smoothing out

15:13the problems and being like, you thought that was a, that was a contradiction, we gotcha.

15:19And so this is doing some, it's very similar to Samuel and Kings and then Chronicles,

15:27where Chronicles is retelling a lot of the same stuff, but altering it and fixing it and like,

15:32wait a minute, we got to have our, our Levites here. Okay, drop some Levites in, we'll throw some

15:37Levites over there. We'll sprinkle some Levites on the, on the arc. And in Jubilees, they're,

15:42they're doing a very similar thing, retelling the book of Genesis. And so in a lot of ways,

15:46it is kind of like one of the first commentaries on the Bible because it is, it's basically telling

15:54us what was important to them at the time and how they wanted to think about it.

16:00Yeah, we could do the same thing today. If someone were to rewrite the book of Genesis and somebody

16:06was like, Hey man, go nuts. You have all the authority you need. Just do what you need to do

16:14to make it work for you. And they would be like, Oh, okay, I'm going to put some, you know,

16:18more angels over here and do this, that and the other thing. It would, it would be the exact same

16:22thing. And then there's something that is very important here. Remember, this is being written

16:27probably by a rather well educated Jewish individual. They also have a concern for calendars.

16:34And they say in chapter six, uh, hear the, uh, the angel of the presence is talking to Moses and

16:41says, now you command the Israelites to keep the years in this number, 364 days, then the

16:49year will be complete and it will not disturb its time from its days or from its festivals,

16:54because everything will happen in harmony with their testimony. They will neither omit a day

17:01nor disturb a festival. So we're, we're getting pretty close, pretty close. We're getting closer

17:07to and close. Yeah. We're moving away from a Luna solar calendar to a strictly solar calendar.

17:13Right. 364 days. Not exactly. Um, getting us all the way there and they

17:18divide it for a while. It'll work for a good little while there's going to be some drift. Um, but you

17:24know, we're not going to be alive to see it. So why don't we care? Um, so, uh, and, and this is,

17:30wasn't this holiday in, in September? This began as a harvest festival. This was supposed to be,

17:37this was supposed to be a winter thing. Yeah. And now it's a planting festival, um,

17:41which, which is why, you know, people are like, well, the solstice was on December 25th. It's not on

17:48December 20th. It wasn't at one point. And, uh, and then, and then we had that Tokyo drift. Um,

17:55and, uh, they divided into four quarters of 13 weeks each. And they used, I want to say they

18:04use like a Sabbath trick to, to resolve the, um, this one weird trick. Yeah. The,

18:13the angel of the presence hates this one weird trick. Um, so, uh, the calendar is a big part of

18:20this festival. So a big part of it. The book of Jubilees is going along saying that Abraham

18:24celebrated the, you know, uh, Shavuot and, uh, the festival of booths and stuff like that. I think

18:31that's anywhere in Genesis. That's a much later thing. Um, but here's an example of, uh, one of the

18:39ways that a story is being retold in this because, uh, it's 50 chapters. The book of Genesis itself

18:46is 50 chapters. So if it were an exact retelling, it would just be Genesis one through the end of

18:52Genesis 50, uh, but it's not. It's shortening things. So this is Genesis 19, the entire

19:00chapter of Genesis 19 is five verses. And, um, and Genesis 19 is the destruction of Sodom and

19:07Gomorrah. So this is what the book of Jubilees, how it recounts, uh, the story of the destruction

19:14of Sodom and Gomorrah. During this month, remember, we're dividing everything into, into months and

19:19and weeks of years and stuff. During this month, the Lord executed the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah,

19:25Zeboim and all the environs, environs of the Jordan. He burned them with fire and brimstone and

19:31annihilated them until the present in accord with what I have now told you about all their actions.

19:35That they were depraved and very sinful, that they would defile themselves, commit sexual sins

19:40in their flesh and do what was impure upon the earth. The Lord will execute judgment in the same

19:45way in the places where people commit the same sort of impure actions as Sodom, just like the

19:51judgment on Sodom. But we want to know, man, I've been to Vegas. It's, uh, I don't think

19:57you're a fan from what I, from what I hear too. Um, I don't think that's, that is right.

20:03But we went about, and remember this is, uh, still the voice of the angel of the presence to Moses,

20:09we went about rescuing Lot because the Lord remembered Abraham. So he brought him out from

20:15the overthrow of Sodom. He and his daughters committed a sin on the earth that had not occurred on the

20:21earth from the time of Adam until his time, because the man had sex with his daughter. Yes. Here,

20:28it has been commanded and engraved on the heavenly tablets, tablets regarding all his descendants,

20:33that he is to remove them, uproot them, execute judgment on them like the judgment of Sodom,

20:37and not to leave him any human descendants on the earth on the day of judgment,

20:44which is rough. Yeah. Because when we look in Genesis 19, uh, the offspring of the incestuous

20:54pairing of, of Lot and his daughters, uh, is, are the people of, uh, Moab and Ammon. Oh, right. Yeah. So we,

21:03we've got, ew, that's a little problematic, but, um, but that, that's it. That's how the entire

21:10chapter of Genesis 19 is, is retold. So it is, yeah. So it's condensing some stuff. And then, you know,

21:18when it comes to the festival of tabernacles, that gets, which is my personal favorite. I love

21:25that festival. That gets like more than twice as many verses. So there's, there's an awful lot about

21:31the, the things that the, the author of Jubilee's chooses to dwell on are sometimes a little

21:39unexpected, unusual. They're not the kinds of things that people today, uh, would choose to dwell

21:44on. I mean, if, if you had a, a lot of, uh, the mega church pastors and the, and the tiktok pastors

21:51of today doing this, we would probably have 20 chapters on Sodom and Gomorrah. Yeah. Um,

21:57and the festival of tabernacles wouldn't even be in there, but it probably shouldn't be anyway,

22:02because it's, it's not in Genesis, but the, the, the, the last few chapters cover the time in Egypt

22:09and the angel of the presence is like reminding Moses what Moses just did. Um, and then getting

22:16up to the point where the angel of the presence is like, so recap, uh, your story. And, uh,

22:22that's, uh, that brings us to right now. So I am talking to you on the mountain. Yeah.

22:28So I wanted to circle back to something because at the very beginning of this segment, you've

22:36mentioned, you called this, uh, book, pseudopographical. And I guess what I'm wondering is, is it meant

22:44to be that it is, are we meant to believe that Moses wrote this book? Well, we're meant to believe

22:51that the angel of the presence dictated this book to Moses. So Moses wrote down what was dictated

22:59to him in, in the angel's voice. That's why the passages are like, so that's why I, we, uh, and,

23:06and this is the two angels that are accompanying God in Genesis 18 and travel on to Sodom and

23:11Genesis 19. That's when we helped lot out, but then God was like, destroy all of his descendants.

23:18Um, so that's, it's the angel of the presence dictating the text to, uh, Moses and Moses just

23:26furiously writing everything down. Slow down, slow down, man. Even though Moses is probably,

23:34well, the text represents him as, as literate, but, um, historically speaking, if there were a

23:41historical Moses, uh, he would have spoken probably, I don't know, let's say Russian. Um, so, um, I mean,

23:51Egyptian is good enough and answer as, as any other. Sure. Egyptian. Um, but, uh, we have,

23:59but this angel of the presence is the one that's delivering the laws to Moses. Yeah. And so, you know,

24:06you go to Galatians, written by Paul, Galatians three, verse 19 says, why then was the law given?

24:14It was added because of the transgressions until the arrival of the descendant to whom the promise

24:19had been made. It was administered through angels by an intermediary, which seems like it's referencing

24:29this tradition of an angel mediating between God and Moses, who then turns around and gives the law

24:38to the people. Right. So this is one of the indications that the book of Jubilees was, was

24:44probably influential enough to be reflected in, in some New Testament passages. And, and there are

24:50a handful of other places where, uh, where scholars think that the influences is coming through. And

24:57we do have evidence that, uh, early Christians knew of the book of Jubilees, uh, the writings

25:02of Epiphanius, Justin Martyr, Origen, Diodorus of Ty, Tarsus, a Sedoria of Alexandria, a Sedoria

25:09of Seville, uh, Eutychius of Alexandria, a number of, of early Christians make reference to Jubilees.

25:18They probably had either Greek copies or maybe Syriac copies, or Latin copies before, uh, it just,

25:27being left out of the canon, it, it was a text non grata. And so, uh, probably faded away. And so,

25:36so I'm sorry, just the idea is that those people who referenced it probably, the theories that they

25:42probably were, they were referencing it as scripture is like in the same way. No. Oh, okay. No, no,

25:49just they, they were just, um, witnessing to the existence of the text, not necessarily saying this.

25:57We got scripture here, people. Um, I, I would have to look into those texts to see exactly how

26:02they're representing it. Like first Enoch, definitely. There were people who are referencing it as

26:06scripture. The New Testament references it as prophecy. Jubilees, uh, I think the, the evidence is,

26:13is not nearly, uh, so strong, but these are folks who, uh, who are referencing it as a text that

26:21was in circulation. Okay. Um, and, and based on comparison of the, I can't, I think I said this

26:27already, but based on comparison with the Hebrew manuscripts that were discovered at Qumran,

26:33the gaz versions are pretty faithfully translated. So, um, so the, the, the, the

26:41Ethiopian versions that exist have not significantly changed much. Uh, it pretty closely follows the

26:47ancient versions that we have from, uh, from among the Dead Sea Scrolls. So it's a fascinating book.

26:56I think it's, it's interesting to see how the interpretive lenses that, uh, educated Jewish

27:03writers in the middle of the second century BCE are, how they're interpreting what's going on in

27:09Genesis, what they don't like. Like they, they edit out a lot of the stuff where God is like

27:15motivating people to lie and stuff like that. Some of that gets edited out, uh, the stuff where, um,

27:22where I got a lot of genetics, by the way. Yeah. So, so the author of Jubilees, yeah, is, is one of

27:29the first apologists wants to present this as something that is not going to rub the Jewish

27:36intelligency of the wrong way, but it's going to make this sound like inspired scripture,

27:43make it a little easier for them to, um, to game the algorithm so they can make that scratch

27:50of a more people see in their videos talking about talking about how awesome the book of Genesis

27:55is. Uh, so a fascinating text. I don't think it's, it's as influential as the book of first Enoch. It

28:04passes along some of the traditions of first Enoch, uh, but it was an influential text in some ways.

28:10And as we've seen, it is the origin of one of the apologetic arguments against understanding God's

28:16statement in, uh, Genesis two, 17 as a lie or at the very least, something that doesn't actually come

28:23to pass that God said would come to pass, uh, which I think makes it, um, fascinating, uh, uh,

28:29in its own right. But there's, uh, the hermenaya commentary series. That's where you're going to

28:34find the best discussion of Jubilees. There's two volumes on Jubilees and they took the translation,

28:42uh, that James Vanderkamp did for that commentary series and they published it as a standalone

28:47translation. So if you would like a really, really good translation of Jubilees,

28:51it's like 17 or 18 bucks to get the paperback version of the, of the hermenaya translation.

28:57So don't go, uh, chasing down the, uh, the TikTok shop folks who are putting the, uh, this is,

29:07this is the real Ethiopian Bible with all 88 books. We got them all. Um, you know, they'll,

29:13they'll have a version of Jubilees in there, but it's going to be a public domain translation

29:18from a 150 years ago. Oh, wow. It's, it's not going to have the updates that we have from, uh,

29:25the Dead Sea Scrolls and stuff like that. And it's not going to be a very good translation.

29:29So if you want a good translation, don't waste your time with, with the Ethiopian Bibles that

29:34people are selling on, on the internet right now, just go get your hermenaya translation.

29:38Okay. All right. Jubilees sounds fun. Uh, let's move on to our next, uh, segment,

29:47which is taking issue. Bum, bum, bum.

29:49And this, this week's, uh, taking issue, we're going to take issue with a, a rather attractive

29:59image, a beautiful, uh, chart that was built, uh, a while ago, uh, called the, uh, the cross-reference

30:13visualization. And this was, I think it was done by a guy named Chris Harrison, I think.

30:21Yes. Or, uh, yes, Chris Harrison. And, uh, and, and basically the, what it purported to be was, uh,

30:30imagine a, a horizon line, essentially, a, a line in the lower third of the, uh, of the image.

30:38And below it are these lines, these, just, just a stack of vertical lines of different lengths,

30:46yeah, that are descending down from the horizon line. And I guess those are the chapters of the

30:51Bible. Is that right? Yes. And then, uh, and then above it are these big, beautiful curves and

30:57multi colors. And it's very pretty. And the curves go from one vertical line, uh, below all up and

31:05over to some other vertical line. And it's just interconnecting all of these different chapters.

31:13And what it purports to be, if I am to, if I understand this correctly, is a visualization of

31:21all the ways that the Bible, all the verses in the Bible that correlate with each other.

31:29Yes. It is the Bible cross references chart that's, uh, began as a collaboration between

31:36a pastor named Christoph Romild and Chris Harrison in 2007. They, they claim to have cataloged 63,779

31:47cross references in the Bible. Okay. And this is a visualization of those 63,779 cross references.

31:57And, uh, as you mentioned earlier, what we were discussing, what we were talking about tonight,

32:02there was a, a very popular, um, kind of mimicking version of this chart that is Bible contradictions.

32:12Yes. Um, now the handy thing about the Bible contradictions chart is that it actually catalogs

32:17all the actual contradictions. Uh, Chris Harrison's chart to my knowledge, I think somebody has tried

32:23to recreate it in an interactive way. So you can actually see the verses, but in addition to the

32:28fact that it does not include all 63,779 cross references, it doesn't even tell you what verse.

32:35It just says Genesis one Ezekiel 37, which means go read both of these full chapters and then figure

32:43out what they have in common. But I see this chart or at least the claim 63,779, uh,

32:52like this is in my head, like that, like that song that's, uh, that I don't even remember the number,

32:58but it's 600 something, something, something, something, um, uh, you probably know what

33:02that's from. It's from rent. It's from rent. I was going to say is it from rent? Um, but

33:06I've never seen rent. Um, and you usually see that number included in, in this claim,

33:14the Bible, 1500 years, 45 authors, three continents, three languages, 63,779 cross references,

33:26no contradictions, one message or something like that. That's been shared far and wide. And it drives

33:33me nuts because it's pretty much entirely wrong. The only thing that is accurate is that it is

33:39written in three different languages here, American Greek. Um, but when I first saw that,

33:45I had to chase down this chart and see what was going on here because people make it sound like

33:50this is such an anomaly that the only plausible explanation is something supernatural. Like this

33:58is evidence for the inspiration, the inerrancy, the unibokality, the supernatural origins of the

34:04Bible. Right. And it just doesn't, it, it just didn't pass the sniff test for me. So I, I, I,

34:11I chased down the origin of it. And, and here's the way Chris Harrison defines a cross reference.

34:19Okay. Cross references are conceptual links between versus connecting locations, people, phrases,

34:26et cetera, found in different parts of the Bible. Great. That, however, does not tell us who is

34:34making these links. Right. And this is my biggest problem with this. There is nothing that supports

34:41the notion that these links are inherent to the text, native to the text, understood and intended

34:47by any of the authors and editors. Sure. These links are often so thin and so ambiguous as to be pretty

34:56meaningless. Like the, there's a partial list of these cross references that I found where somebody

35:04was like, Genesis one, one talks about the creation of the heavens and the earth. And so this cross

35:09references with every single passage in the Bible that uses a word for create. Oh, it's like, no,

35:16it doesn't or heaven or earth. Yeah. That's not, that's not indicative of intent. Right.

35:24Or cognizance on the part of any of the authors. That is us saying, I matched these two. Right.

35:32Well, and not only that, but like, not for nothing, later books had the previous books to reference.

35:40They were, the authors were familiar with the work going before. So a reference doesn't mean,

35:47like, you know, if, if the guy who writes Spider-Man 211, also read Spider-Man three. Yeah. See,

35:55it's number three. Yeah. It doesn't, that doesn't prove anything divine happening. Right.

36:05The Bible is, is unique in a lot of ways. It is an anthology of

36:13texts for a community that lasted a lot longer than most other communities have lasted.

36:22It shouldn't have lasted as long as it has. But because it lasted as long as it did, because

36:28the authoritative literature accumulated for as long as it did, and every layer that was added

36:36to it had the benefit of looking back at some, if not all, of what came before, you have a lot of

36:45intentional illusion and paraphrase and even direct quotation of the things that came before.

36:52Right. And so it is a uniquely self-referential text, but not in a way that is

36:59implausibly human curated. Right. Like it, the, the uniqueness of the circumstances

37:07contributes to the uniqueness of the features of the text, and definitely not in a supernatural

37:16way. Right. But it, but it gets even worse for Chris's explanation, because in addition to the fact

37:22that what this is basically saying is, I can create links 63,779 times, which says nothing about

37:31what the text itself intended. Like I can take Lord of the Rings and Hellboy and the Bible,

37:40and I bet you I can create thousands of cross references as well. Look, this, we got a reference

37:46to mountains over here. We got a reference to mountains over here. Boom, cross reference, roasted.

37:50Like it doesn't mean much, but Chris goes on in the, where he's selling versions of this chart.

38:00So his cross references are included in the margins or footnotes of some Bibles,

38:04and he, and then he says example here, and there's a hyperlink to a version of the Bible that has

38:11in the margins a bunch of cross references. And I'm like, great, I want to look at the cross

38:16references that Chris chose to show us as an example of cross references to see what a

38:22prototypical cross reference in the mind of Chris Harrison is. And it is the, the page that is linked

38:29to as Acts chapter one. And the, the cross reference that is in the dead center is Acts chapter one,

38:38verse 18, which describes the death of Judas. The first cross reference is Matthew 27, three through

38:4610, which is the contradictory account of the death of Judas. So when you look at the first cross

38:57reference of the example of cross references provided by Chris Harrison, what do you find

39:03a contradiction in the Bible? And, you know, we've gone over this contradiction before. I think we

39:09have, have we talked about the various Judas is exploding in whatever way he's going to explode.

39:17And, and, you know, we know that if you need these texts to both be accurate descriptions of a single

39:25event, you can force them through the square hole. Right. But for anybody capable of abstract and

39:32critical thought, these very clearly contradict each other. And so I think it's funny to try to

39:38use this as evidence of something when your evidence directly refutes and contradicts your claim. Yeah.

39:46And then the, the other references are Matthew 18, seven, 26, 14, 15, 24, Mark, 40. And these are

39:54references to Jesus basically lamenting Judas's destiny. Yeah. And so, okay, great. You've got Matthew,

40:03Mark, Luke, and John all talking about Judas, because they're four different tellings of the

40:10same story. Right. So it's like, these are pretty, that's a pretty solid and easy thing to correlate.

40:15Yeah, that's pretty low hanging fruit. That's, that's an accident of having four different

40:21tellings of the same story. Nothing supernatural about anything yet. Right. And so the fact that

40:29when I look at that one verse, I see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight cross references

40:35in the one verse, one of them's a contradiction. And the others are just the same story told four

40:43different times by the four different authors. If these are your cross references that are supposed

40:50to be manifesting the supernatural nature of this book, how dare it have 63,779 cross references,

40:59has any such thing ever existed before? Yeah. This is, this is nothing special.

41:04Yeah. So I am, and I try to bring this up. Like you, you've seen me on Twitter. I get pretty chippy.

41:14They have a good time. I have a good time. I, when I see this, I usually, I can't pass up the

41:23opportunity to correct it, because it's just so silly and it's not evidence of anything. And if

41:30you think critically about it for any amount of time at all, you can see that this isn't really

41:35evidence of anything. And, but man, the pushback I get, when I point out how silly this is,

41:44for folks who just, I don't know what they're thinking about when, when they're looking at this.

41:50If I bring this up and show this to them, I don't know what's going through their head, but

41:55certainly not critical thinking, which is, which is a problem. So this chart as,

42:05as pretty as it is, yeah, and I got no complaints. The aesthetic is fine. Yeah. And when you look at

42:12the, the lines across the bottom as well, they're also shaded. You go from light to darker to darker

42:19to darker to darker to darker. And, and those are the different books. Okay, sure. So, so Genesis

42:26is the light one on the left. And then you go all the way to the very light one towards the right.

42:30That's Matthew. And so you can, you can see the, yeah, the, the different books of the Bible. So,

42:37like it's, it's a good little visualization of, there's a lot of data in the visualization.

42:44What's that really long chapter in the middle? Psalms 129, I think.

42:50Is that the, gosh, I always forget. I'm pretty sure. I would have guessed it was a psalm.

42:57Yeah, it is. It has like 150 verses in it. Oh my gosh.

43:03Nope. It's not 129. Somebody, somebody listening to this is going to be like,

43:08Dan, you moron. Got him. We got him, everybody. He didn't, he didn't know which one it was.

43:14Got you. I've been God. That is true. It is in the,

43:20it is in the one. You know, we don't need to know. It's fine. Okay. Okay, fine.

43:27Everyone can look it up on their own. Just go through, go through psalms until you find the one

43:31that's too annoyingly long. But there's something, something else that I see when people do this,

43:38when they say, oh, here's all the cross references, the, you know, the cross references claim

43:45is circulating enough to have a life of its own when you begin to see supplementary claims,

43:53like people posting a very similar chart that has only maybe a couple dozen links,

44:01all these rainbows going across the horizon line. A bunch of people are sharing a very

44:08similar looking one with only a couple dozen lines and they're labeling it cross references

44:16in the Koran. And I was like, what? Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa. So they're claiming, like, look,

44:25our book has 6,000. Yeah, yeah, 63,000. And they only got, they've only got like 42. So clearly,

44:35their book is false and our book is real. Yeah. And the, the first time I saw this,

44:42I was like, that doesn't look right. Like the Koran has an awful lot of cross references. And

44:46you can even find books published on cross references in the Koran. There are a lot of them.

44:51And so I, I did something that the overwhelming majority of the people on the internet don't

44:58seem capable of. I saved the image and then did a reverse image search. Oh, for those of you out

45:06there who don't know about this, go to like 10i.com or you can even just go to Google images.

45:12And you plop in the image and it will tell you where this is found on the internet. 10i I like

45:18because it will tell you can sort them according to date. So we'll give you the earliest occurrence

45:24of this image anywhere on the, on the internet. Drop it in there. I took this chart. I dropped

45:29it in there and it took me to a website called Adam Lambert, full circle moments and firsts.

45:38What this is, is a timeline of the life of the American Idol singer Adam Lambert

45:48with life events and when they like come around again or capitulate or whatever.

45:58And so you can, and, and the people who say cross references in the Koran, it's a, it's a fuzzy

46:03chart. You can't really tell what's going on there. You can't read anything. But if you just,

46:09you know, do a reverse image search or you go to that website, you can see that like the events are

46:17like American Idol audition San Francisco, California, July 17th, 2008. And then 2009 meeting Madonna,

46:25Madonna's home, New York City, New York, May 27th, 2009, Ring of Fire, Glam Nation tour,

46:32Ryman Auditorium, National Tennessee, July 7th, 2010. Somebody found a chart that looked similar

46:38but had significantly fewer connections and we're like, I'm taking this and then slapped this

46:46label on it, ensuring that the image was blurry enough that you couldn't see anything and just

46:53pass this off as the cross references of the Koran. I, and I got to say the way that

47:01I assume mostly American, but maybe not just, I don't know. I've seen Islamophobia all over the

47:10world. The way that Christians, bad mouth the Koran, these are people who of course have never

47:16read the Koran. They don't know what's in the Koran. They know what, you know, some very

47:22Islamophobic pastor on the internet has told them about the Koran, which is all misinformation.

47:29But it's just so weird to me that like how, you know, I made a very fiery post on threads a

47:39while back. I have zero threads followers. You guys are welcome to try to follow me on threads.

47:44I don't even know what my threads handle is. But I, I've did a post and I made a claim about Christianity

47:53and Islam being essentially the same thing. And oh, the people got mad and, and you know,

48:01okay, fair enough, you, you disagree that that with my claim that theologically, they're similar.

48:08That's fine. But they didn't present theological arguments. They basically, like multiple people

48:15were like, um, no, because they worship Satan. And I was like, really? That's, that's it. So like,

48:23the desire to just, just full on slander Islam with no knowledge, just just. Invective is amazing.

48:33And, and a lot of them will be outraged at anything remotely similar coming from non-Christian

48:42religions. Like, have you ever seen people who, who are like, the Talmud says Jesus is boiling in

48:48a pot of feces for eternity? It's like, well, you just said Muslims worship Satan, right? Like,

48:55on what grounds do you say what you're saying is appropriate? And what, what this 2,000 year old

49:01text set is, is inappropriate. Um, and, and I don't know if anyone has noticed, but there has been an

49:09increase in, uh, Islamophobic rhetoric on the part of evangelical Christians online recently,

49:15because there's been a, the, like, there are influencers who are like, Islam is the next

49:22mountain that we're going to conquer. We, and, and so there is a, an intentional and a,

49:30a concerted effort to turn everyone's sights on Islam. So there's going to be a lot, a lot of

49:35Islamophobic, a phobic crap on the internet. But push, push back against that folks. Yeah.

49:42We'll see that. There's, and, and especially if people are using like Sam Harris post 2011

49:48Islamophobic pseudo scholarship, um, that's, that stuff's no good. But you know, you have like

49:54Ali Beth Stucky coming out and saying literally 99% of the world's terrorism is, is rooted in Islam.

50:00It's a, it's a uniquely and inherently violent religion. I was like, you've got more violent

50:05passages in the Bible than you do in the Quran. Yeah. And they'll be like, well, obviously Jesus,

50:11you know, said this that in the other and it's like, okay, that doesn't make those passages go away.

50:15That is just you renegotiating what you think the Bible is telling you. And guess what?

50:22People do the same thing with the Quran. Right. Which is why you want us to find

50:27messages of peace and love in the Quran because we can find them. Yeah. They're there. Yeah. And,

50:34and they'll be like, no, no, they have to interpret it this way. And it's like, well,

50:37nobody, you, you don't think you have to interpret the Bible that way. Everybody's going to engage

50:44with their texts and in ways that make them meaningful and useful. And unfortunately,

50:49there are a lot of societies right now that don't have a lot of political stability,

50:53where the state is not considered to be legitimate, where there is a lot of ethnic conflict and

50:58stuff like that. And so if people find meaning in the more violent parts of the text and decide

51:04they're going to go out and do something desperate in order to try to save their people or their

51:09nation or whatever, that's going to happen. Just like it does with control and do and, and, you know,

51:16and gain power. That's also, but I mean, it's so funny to hear all this talk about, you know,

51:24Islam is the terrorist or religion when the majority of terror terrorist acts that happen

51:33in the United States are done by Christians. No, that's just, I mean, you know, Christians

51:39white supremacists too. Yeah, Christians are the vast majority here. And right now,

51:44Christianity, you know, evangelical Christianity is getting radicalized in ways that we've never

51:50seen really, but, but yeah, I mean, if we're going to judge a religion by what the extremists

51:57in that religion do, I don't think Christianity comes out smelling very good.

52:04No, no, obviously not. And, and all the, all the folks who have like crusader armor in their,

52:11their profile pictures and stuff like that. Like you're kind of undermining your own case.

52:16Right. Yeah. My talk about Pete with his with his crusade cross a tattooed on his arm or whatever.

52:23Which is like, that's the Jerusalem cross. And if you go to Jerusalem, they're all over the place.

52:31And, and in Jerusalem, like it has a very different significance. But for

52:37Petey Hegsef, the Fox News talking head who has almost killed people numerous times because he

52:46can't throw an axe accurately. And because he does all this goofy frat boy, Chad stuff.

52:53When he has it, it's not for the, the uses that's that are old and historical. Right.

53:01It's for right wing identity politics. Right. And, and yeah, if, if you want to find inspiration

53:08for violence in your holy book, you can find it. Yeah. I mean, that's there. Yeah. We see it all

53:15over the place. And, and a lot of Christian nationalists are trying to do that while also

53:20trying to, trying to walk this tightrope or thread this needle, if you like, of, of trying to get

53:27biblical authorization for their violence while condemning Quranic authorization for,

53:32for other people's violence. Right. It's a, frequently, frequently using their Bible to,

53:38to justify violence against Muslims. Yes. Because of their Quranic history of violence. So,

53:49no irony there at all. It's identity politics all the way down. And the sooner people realize that,

53:54the sooner we can actually grow the hell up. Yeah. And, and move on as, as a globe, as, as a world,

54:01move on from what humanity? It feels like this is a, this is a thing that feels like we're stuck

54:07here for, for this is, this is where we're at. It was Psalms 119, by the way, I was off by 10.

54:14Oh, okay. I had two thirds of the numbers. Correct. I just didn't get that second position. Right. I

54:19was. All right. Well, on that note, now that we are finally come full circle and we know,

54:26just like Adam Lambert would have liked job. Yeah. Praise be he.

54:29Let's close it off. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. If you would like to become a part of

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54:57the show. Thanks to all of you for tuning in. And we'll talk to you again next week.

55:03Bye everybody.

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