Ep 57: Does the Bible say the Earth is Flat?

00:00Well, I hesitated to, like when I was decided to make this video this morning for my social

00:06media, I was like contemplating, do I really want to do this?

00:09I'm opening myself up for criticism, but I was like, no, if I feel this way, I've got

00:16to go through with this just because I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the mirror.

00:25Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan, and I'm Dan Beacher, and you're listening to the

00:29Data Over Dogma podcast where we increase public access to the academic study of the

00:34Bible and religion, and combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

00:40How goes the storm, Dan?

00:41Well, it seems to have left you and come to me.

00:45We live on opposite sides of the Salt Lake City Valley, and yeah, I'm hearing thunder

00:52in the background.

00:53I hope our listeners can't hear it, but if you can, it'll just, we'll just call this

00:56a moody episode.

00:57Little ambiance, that's all.

00:59Yeah, exactly.

01:00Cut a lot.

01:01I love it.

01:02And speaking of moody, moody, we're going to have some fun with a conspiracy.

01:10We're doing conspiracy watch to start off with, and then we're going to have opportunities

01:16for growth.

01:17I think that should be a self-help thing.

01:19We're going to do Dan's self-help, and it's going to be me looking into a mirror, right?

01:26Yeah, exactly.

01:27You're good enough.

01:28You're smart enough, and God, that dog gone it, or gone, dong it.

01:33I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here.

01:35Or you could just go all the way back to Shania Twain, gone and done it.

01:39Gone and done it.

01:40There you go.

01:41I like it.

01:42Yeah.

01:43But no, you are going to be looking into a mirror a little bit because you've revised

01:47your position on something.

01:48Yeah.

01:49Yeah.

01:50I am capable of growth from time to time.

01:52It is painful, and it leaves behind a foul smelling husk.

01:57But we have opportunities for growth all the time, and I want to share a little bit

02:01about how I don't think my position was necessarily wrong, but I'm going to revise it a little

02:08bit because I think I can point it a little more directly at the target.

02:14So we'll get to that at the second half of this.

02:16Oh, I mean, I made it sound all sexy and crazy and wild, and then you narrowed it down

02:22to the point where it almost doesn't sound like anything happened at all.

02:24But that's okay.

02:25We're going to have a good time.

02:26Yeah.

02:27Everyone stay tuned to hear how Dan was almost, but not quite a little bit, maybe wrong-ish.

02:35Yeah.

02:36Well, it's not the first time, and won't be the last time.

02:40But before that, conspiracy watch.

02:43So for today's conspiracy, Dan, you suggested this idea, and I tried to Google it.

02:54And here's the problem with Googling certain big conspiracies that have been widely and

03:04well-refuted by respected sources.

03:07Is it all the porn that comes up?

03:09It's all the porn.

03:11It's a problem.

03:12No, the problem is that what you get is those respected sources and their refutations, and

03:18their refutations very, very rarely include the real off-the-wall dingbat stuff that you're

03:25looking for.

03:26There's not a lot of steel manning going on when it comes time to refute some of these

03:31yes and on conspiracy theories.

03:33So when you want the juicy stuff, I want to know exactly what their argument is from

03:39their mouths.

03:40From their mouths.

03:41Yeah.

03:42You got to go into the trenches.

03:43So here's the thing, what we're talking about today is flat earth.

03:48And what I found, and I think this is why we're talking about it.

03:52I don't know.

03:53I haven't heard your argument yet, but I believe that this is why we're talking about it.

03:56If I type flat earth, I get like page after page after page of refutations of the flat

04:02earth conspiracy.

04:03And probably something at the top saying, if you think the earth is flat, here's a number

04:07for you to call.

04:08Right.

04:09I think about the flat earth crisis line or whatever.

04:14What I found helped was if I typed in the word firmament, because that changes things

04:22a lot and gets us to the heart of one of the main reasons why people are eager to believe

04:32that the earth is flat as opposed to a globe spinning in space.

04:40Okay.

04:41So let's talk a bit about why the flat earth conspiracy loops back to our subject matter,

04:52which is the Bible.

04:55Do you want to start on that?

04:56Or do you want me to start?

04:57Oh, okay.

04:58I thought you were still leading into.

04:59I was leading into you going.

05:01Okay.

05:02So you say words just to pull the curtain back a little bit.

05:05I imagine that sometimes people are like, they must have like a script.

05:09They talked about this stuff beforehand.

05:11Know what usually happens is we'll text each other and be like, what do you want to talk

05:15about?

05:16Oh, I thought of this.

05:17I thought of that.

05:18And then the other will go and poke around and do some research and then we get together

05:22and we're like, okay, hit record.

05:24So anyway, and yeah, yeah, and it's a miracle.

05:29This makes sense at all.

05:30It's radio gold in my opinion.

05:33So the Bible and the flat earth, we've got a lot of different ways that the ancient conceptualization

05:43of the earth and the universe is represented.

05:46But what we don't have is somebody saying, this is what our earth looks like.

05:52What we have are just kind of scattered references to different features of the earth and the

05:58heavens and we have to kind of piece it all together.

06:01And there are two different dimensions to think about this.

06:05And then we got some $2 words coming up here.

06:08One of them is diachronically and the other is synchronically.

06:12Diachronically means through time.

06:15And so there are differences as you go from the earlier layers of the Bible to the later

06:20layers of the Bible.

06:21And then synchronically means at the same time, there can be differences from person to person

06:27place to place at the same time.

06:30And so it's not a, because the Bible's not univocal, I don't know if you've heard about

06:35this yet.

06:36What?

06:37What?

06:38Where did this happen?

06:39It happened on February 3rd, the Bible is no longer univocal, it's multivocal.

06:44You have different people saying different things.

06:47And so there's a lot of kind of assuming and guesswork and filling in the gaps and trying

06:54to construct a cosmology from the Bible.

06:58But there are a handful of things that are pretty consistent that we see repeated reference

07:01to throughout the Bible.

07:03And those things include things like the pillars of the earth.

07:08You get these, these pillars are referenced all over the place.

07:11You get this idea that the, the earth has been fixed and is immovable.

07:17This is something that you find in a number of different places as well.

07:20Can you say pillars, are they pillars that are like holding up the sky?

07:26Are they pillars that are, that the earth is sitting upon?

07:30What pillars are we talking about?

07:31So that it's, it's not entirely clear.

07:34We just have a bunch of different references to pillars of the earth.

07:36But this is, this is very clearly like foundations, architectural foundation slash pillars.

07:43So they are things that are supporting in some sense, the earth.

07:47Okay.

07:48And this is pretty consistent.

07:51And it's not just kind of, you know, flowery poetic stuff.

07:56There seems to be this idea that there are foundations and or pillars to the earth.

08:02And then we have, you mentioned the firmament.

08:04And the firmament comes from the King James translation of a Hebrew word, vacuia, which

08:11occurs in Genesis one where it talks about the, the heavens, the skies.

08:18And the idea in the Presley creation account from Genesis one, and you can go all the way

08:23back to the very first episode of this dumb podcast to hear about the creation in, in

08:32the early chapters of Genesis.

08:34Yeah.

08:35But the idea is that the earth is underwater.

08:39And these kind of chaotic waters of creation.

08:42And God affects creation by creating this Raquia, which literally, it comes from word

08:50that means to hammer out.

08:52And so you got to think of the steel drums playing while God kind of inserts this solid

09:03dome that separates the waters above from the waters beneath.

09:08So it is firm, it is a solid dome. And when you talk to conspiracy theorists today, they're

09:13like, yeah, there's no space travel. You just bounce off. So

09:16Oh, let me tell you something. I had the delightful misfortune of go. I stopped on Google and

09:25went over to TikTok for some content about this. And man, the number of videos that I

09:32saw where it's like, look, they either, we can't penetrate the firmament. If you look

09:38at all of the NASA, first of all, NASA is apparently a whole thing for these.

09:45Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's like, like, this is a, like they're, they're talking about NASA

09:49means deception right in Hebrew, which does it? No. Okay. No, it doesn't. Are they referring

09:58to anything similar? There's a verbal root, nasha. And because this is usually written

10:04with diacritics. And they don't know how to read diacritics, they think. And a s with

10:12a chevron on top of it, a is pronounced NASA, but it's nasha. And then also, that's just

10:19a reconstructed verbal root. The word never actually appears as nasha. To mean deceive,

10:25it has to be used in the causative Hifill stem. And so, and so we get some morphological

10:32changes to it. You have to add a performative, Hey, you get an I quality vowel. You get a,

10:38you get a consonants cluster with the noon and the shin, which means the noon gets assimilated

10:43to the shin and then you get an I quality vowel between the second and the third radical.

10:48And so basically wherever this word means deceive, it's being pronounced like in Genesis three,

10:56where Eve says the serpent beguiled me and people are like, that means nasa. That word

11:02appears as Hishiyami in that verse. So no relation whatsoever to nasa. Sorry to not

11:09it all. Sorry, I asked. But yeah, so the nasa thing they're talking about how like all the

11:21rockets actually curve and then just come down again, nothing actually. And then there's

11:26and then there was all this stuff about SpaceX and how they're trying to like how how one

11:33of their things actually hit the firmament and they show a little thing. And it's obviously

11:37just like this separation of the stages or something like that. But man, a lot of talk

11:44about firmament. There was even one, I saw one where there it was like just an image

11:49of an observatory that happened to have like, I don't know, like looked like lasers shooting

11:55straight up and it was like, are they trying to destroy the firmament? It's, it kind of

12:02gives you Mr. Burns vibes for centuries, man, has tried to blot out the sun. And I'm going

12:09to do it. Yeah. But the firm in in the biblical conceptualization, there is a solid dome up

12:17there and it's crystalline in nature and looks like sapphire and that's why it's blue. And

12:22the windows of heaven are actual like holes that open up to let the rain fall. And and

12:30then the heavens of the, what's that? I was going to say the stars are like contained

12:36in the firm. Yes, yes. And and they are, you know, they're moving around. In fact, I think

12:42if you if you look in, so so this this cosmology is kind of consistent in a bunch of different

12:50parts of ancient Southwest Asia, going back to the Bronze Age, the Hebrew Bible's representation

12:57is generally coming from the, let's say, the middle two quarters of the first millennium

13:06BCE, that's where we get most of the discussion. Okay. And then we get, but it's just these

13:13scattered references, we don't actually get an attempt to describe things until the book

13:18of Enoch, which is, as you can imagine, exciting. So the book of Enoch is Hellenistic period.

13:26The majority of it's probably written between the third and the first century BCE, but you

13:30actually get a, here's what the earth looks like kind of pseudo scientific discussion.

13:37And I saw one part of it that was just so great. So the luminaries, the sun and the

13:44moon. And so this is first Enoch chapter 72. This is the first commandment of the luminaries.

13:52The sun is a luminary whose egress is an opening of heaven, which is located in the direction

13:58of the east and whose ingress is another opening of heaven located in the west. I saw six openings

14:05through which the sun rises and six openings through which it sets. The moon also rises

14:10and sets through the same openings and they are guided by the stars together with whom

14:14they lead. They are six in the east and six in the west heaven. All of them are arranged

14:20one after another in a constant order. So now we've got this idea of the stars and the

14:26luminaries kind of following specific tracks. Yeah. Through openings. Through openings, right?

14:34So it's like they're open the window. The sun comes in. Hey, everybody. And here I'm

14:40thinking of the alternate universe from Rick and Morty, where the sun is just constantly

14:46screaming. I don't know if you've seen that episode, but it's great. I don't think I've

14:53ever seen this rich and Marty thing, but you've never seen Rick and Morty? No, I saw I saw

14:59like an episode or two. I didn't suck me in the way I was promised it would. I think

15:06if you if you got into it, you would just love it. But yeah, I can see how just one episode

15:11might you might not get get hooked. I like I like this Enoch description just because

15:17it reminds me of like, you know, one of those big clocks in a German square that has all

15:23these things ticking around and coming out of openings and going some lady chasing a guy

15:28with a rolling pin around the outside. It's kind of like a Disneyland situation. Yeah.

15:34Pirates of the Caribbean. It is a small world after all. Yeah, or a planetarium or something

15:40like that. But the idea is basically that this dry land exists within these within a ring

15:49of the sea. So basically you're surrounded by seas and you have references to the disc

15:57or the circle of the earth. And then the firmament comes up from the outside of the waters and

16:05then encloses this area and all the, you know, the birds of the skies and everything

16:11are in there and then the luminaries in the planets and all of that. But Enoch actually

16:15talks about a little bit of what's going on beyond the firmament when you go beyond

16:21the the edges of the earth getting a little Jules Verne on the Hellenistic Jewish world.

16:29And so I think there are a number of different drawings of the ancient Israelite concept

16:34of the cosmos. And who knows if any of them would actually match up with what an ancient

16:39Israelite or Judahite or early Jewish person might have drawn. If you sat him down and

16:45were like, draw the cosmos. But generally, the idea is that you've got dry land surrounded

16:54by water. There's a firmament that comes up out of there that encloses that whole land.

17:01You've got an underworld, which is where the deceased are. And beneath that, you've got

17:06the pillars of the earth. And then this is all resting on the broader kind of primordial

17:13waters of creation slash chaos slash whatever. And there's also a concept that the gods inhabit

17:23the heavens above the heavens of the earth. And so from the way the Bible represents things,

17:33it's a flat earth. Yeah. It's obviously not what the earth is actually like. Well, why

17:39wouldn't they have that representation? When when no one could go more than, you know,

17:45literally if no one you know has ever traveled more than a couple hundred miles in their

17:51whole life, you know, it you're not going to be able to come up with a spherical idea.

18:01Yeah. Like the earth is huge and looks flat from where you are other than like bumps and

18:06mountains and things. And most people like, you know, you can see that far away, you can't

18:12really see things anymore, but they probably would have thought, Oh, you just get smaller

18:16and smaller and smaller the further away you go. And you're just too small to see. Yeah.

18:21And you have you have references to their, there are a bunch of passages in the scriptures

18:26that make statements that suggest they imagine that they're on a pretty limited plot of land

18:34that is fairly flat. So, you know, the idea that that every eye will see when Jesus comes

18:41in the clouds only makes sense if it's possible for every eye to see because like everybody

18:49can see the sun. Right. At least as far as we know, everybody can see the sun up in the

18:55sky. And there's and it probably is at the same time. Like there's no there's no way

19:00to like as you travel, there's no way to see that, you know, you're seeing the sun at a

19:06slightly different time than the place you came from or whatever. Yeah. And you have in

19:15the Greek world, you have in by I think around the 5th century BCE, you start to have these

19:22ideas that the earth is round. Now, this is not based on scientific study. Initially,

19:27it's because Plato, I don't know if he got dumped or something, but he just got really

19:32into spheres. And we're just like, man, I love spheres. And so just hypothesize that

19:39all the perfect things, all the central main, all the main characters in the universe are

19:45spherical. And the idea is that every point is the exact same distance from the center

19:51and and who doesn't that just make the tuning fork in your loins ring. Plato was a weird

19:58dude. But this information doesn't spread out to to the Jewish world. But you have kind

20:05of the convergence of this aesthetic notion that the earth is round with developing notions

20:11based on like people who are taking measurements about shadows that are being cast in Egypt

20:16and stuff like that from one part to, you know, a bunch of miles down the other direction.

20:22And as our ability to measure time and distances and things like that gets refined, it becomes

20:29more and more clear that we live on a spherical earth. And some of the earliest Christians

20:35insisted that we live on a spherical earth. Like there's a there's an early Christian

20:40and philosopher named Athanagoras toward the end of the 2nd century CE who is like, yep,

20:46the earth is straight up a sphere. And other people didn't buy it. But that became kind

20:52of the consensus view among the more philosophically oriented, the more thoughtful Christians.

20:59Yeah, I mean, the idea of a spherical earth dates back to ancient Greece, like this is

21:10not this is not something that was not around the people who, you know, were alive in biblical

21:18times or at least late biblical times, they might have encountered this idea.

21:23I imagine they did, but we don't we just don't see it reflected in any of the text. So folks

21:29like, you know, the author of the gospel of John or Paul, maybe they believed in a spherical

21:34earth. They never say one way or another. Right. And some people talk about this idea

21:40that they're the four corners of the earth. Yeah, they're like, Oh, that means it's got

21:44to be a flat earth. And it's like, I talk about the corners of the earth, the the ends

21:48of the earth, the the edge of the earth. You know, that doesn't mean that I think there

21:55are actually four points that that's sit at the four corners of a square or something.

22:01It's just bigger speech. It is very funny to me how many people how often I will hear

22:06someone say, you know, when they're when they're defending their take on the Bible, one thing

22:13is obviously literal. And another thing is obviously a metaphor or figurative. Yeah.

22:20Yeah. And it's like, okay, well, if one thing can be figurative, other things can also be

22:25figurative and how do you know the difference? Yeah, I think we there's a lot of rhetoric

22:30where we're just kind of doing our best to try and feel it out and try to figure out

22:34is this does this make more sense as figurative? What's the trend when we see this language

22:39being used? Is it are there any context in which it is more clear if it's one or the

22:45other? But yeah, I don't think the the whole corners of the earth idea is very determinative.

22:52But we do see people talking about that. One thing I did want to bring up is there's a

22:58word in Hebrew, Hug, that is het Vav Gimmel. And this word occurs in a handful of places,

23:07but Isaiah 40 verse 22 is a place that people will bring up a lot. And this, let's see,

23:14the NRSVUE says this, it is he who sits above the circle of the earth. And its inhabitants

23:21are like grasshoppers who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like

23:25a tent to live in. And this and and people will appeal to this as evidence that the Bible

23:33is already aware that the earth is a sphere because they hear circle. And then Job, I

23:40think there's some stuff in yeah, Job 22 14, he walks he the KJV says he walketh in the

23:47circuit of heaven. And he says vault of heaven NRSVUE says dome of heaven. So I guess they're

23:55trying to link this word Hug with with the the firmament, the dome. But but Hug is is

24:03like you draw a Hug with a compass. So circle disc, it's not necessarily a sphere. It's

24:11just a circle. And so Isaiah 40 verse 22 is talking about this idea of the disk of the

24:17earth that's surrounded by water. Okay. And it is not talking about the globe of the earth.

24:25Proverbs 827, the famous creation of wisdom has a part where it says, when he established

24:32the heavens, I was there when he drew a circle on the face of the deep. And this idea being

24:39we're inscribing the boundaries of the deep and the dry land is going to be within those

24:45boundaries. So it's a it's a circle. It's not a sphere. So so folks who appeal to that

24:52as as evidence that that Isaiah already knows about a spherical earth, doesn't work all

25:00that well. Yeah, I mean, and I think, you know, when I look at biblical references and I see

25:08references like ends of the earth or, you know, corners of the earth. I don't see anyone.

25:17Yeah, it doesn't seem to me like anyone's trying to make a solid representation of what

25:24the earth is. Yeah, they're just it mostly seems to me to be either figurative language

25:31or just sort of a big, you know, like, yes. Another one that comes up quite a bit is Job

25:4026 seven. Let me let me pull this up and see what what the NRSV has to say about this.

25:50So he stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth upon nothing. And so people

25:58say that indicates God knows that the earth is floating in space and that it is not on

26:05foundations that it is not resting in a sea of primordial goo. And this what about the

26:13pillars then? And what's it? Always you always bring it back to the pillars. No, the and

26:20this is where Job is getting particularly poetic. He binds up the waters in his thick

26:27clouds. And the cloud is not torn open by them. He covers the face of the full moon

26:32and spreads over at his cloud. He has described a circle in the face of the waters. That's

26:38probably inscribed. Yeah, yeah, he at the boundary between light and darkness, the pillars of

26:45heaven tremble and are astounded at his rebuke. So now heaven has pillars. And and they get

26:53scared when when God gives them a talking to so so this is this is very, very figurative

26:59language. But for some people, it's a proof text. If they want to try to suggest that

27:05as a scientific document, the Bible is accurate and in all that it claims about the natural

27:13world, then they need to be they need something in there, even if it means you got to reject

27:19the other 999 things that are pretty clearly a flat earth perspective and say, well, we

27:26got this one. Yeah, I guess I just, you know, it's so funny when when the flat earth theory

27:34started to regain prominence, sort of 10 or 15 years ago, or it started to come back into

27:42up into sort of the the parlance of our time. It took me by surprise. I was shocked. Yeah.

27:51When it started to happen. And I could not for the life of me figure out why it was happening.

27:56Like we had thought literally thousands of years of knowledge all pointing to his spherical

28:05earth. It was, it was set. It was done. It was easy. And then I, so I was like, why,

28:13why is this happening? And I think that it, you know, Genesis is a problem. I think that

28:21a lot of it started from people not wanting that a firmament model of a of, you know,

28:31an earth with a dome over it to be refuted in their Bible. I think I don't think that's

28:38the whole of the thing. I don't think that's all of why people, I think there's a lot of

28:43people that just really want to reject, you know, sort of understood knowledge. Yeah. Because

28:52that's part of their personality. They just, they, they, you know, skepticism is good, but

28:58badly applied skepticism is bad. And I think, I think there are a lot of people who there's

29:06an awful lot of pushback. And so you can, you can revise your position or you can dig

29:13in your heels. And, and we've got an awful lot of that going on where people are just

29:18digging in their heels and saying, no, I'm drawing a line here. And I don't care if it's

29:24just bafflingly dumb. I'm going to dig in my heels because this is an identity marker

29:31now. And so to show everybody, I'm, I'm a real one that I'm, I'm one of the, one of

29:39the good ones. I'm going to dig in my heels and make ridiculous claims in public just

29:45to put on display just how mindless I'm willing to be. I don't know. I'm going to push back

29:52on you because I've seen a lot of actually actually smart people making really interesting

29:58and scientifically literate arguments about why this could be true. And in the end, it

30:06doesn't hold up, but they're using, they're using real math. They're using real, you know,

30:12real ideas and concepts that, that, that dumb people wouldn't come up with.

30:19Well, they're, they're performing that because when you try to take real math and real science

30:26and all take all of it, yeah, then it's obviously doesn't make any sense. I think those arguments

30:33are always isolating a tiny little sliver of real math and real science to say if we,

30:39if we look at this little part right here, then that can be made to fit if you squint

30:45hard enough at it. And therefore the whole rest of the scientific community can just

30:53be summarily dismissed. Yeah. And it always seems to come down to that, whether it's it's

30:58climate change or whether it's the global flood or whether it's around earth. I, I love

31:06the last couple of times we've had these eclipses, or there's been a lunar eclipse.

31:13I love the, the folks who show the image of the moon. And then there's like a little

31:19tiny disc shaped shadow passing over the moon. It's like, shouldn't we be seeing this? Yeah.

31:27Like a slit as opposed to a circle or whatever. Yeah. And depending on which part of the earth

31:31you're on, maybe it's a, it's a little more oblong, but it's right. It's never approaching

31:36a perfect circle. Yeah, it is funny. And then, you know, I will say that the guys, the people

31:43who are, who are genuinely smart and they've, they focus in on some of these, you know,

31:49scientific questions and mathematical questions in terms of the shape of the earth. You can

31:55generally find them like going all the way with their experimentation or with their,

32:01with their, you know, math and then eventually going, Oh, wait, that didn't work out the way

32:06it should have. Yeah. Hang on. And stuff. So anyway, there've been some, there've been

32:13some people who have like converted to reality and, and like have been high profile about

32:21it. I've gone out and say, I have, I no longer believe this. And you know, they've been, they've

32:26had big time followings on YouTube and elsewhere and social media and have, and have seen the

32:32light. And then I've come back to try to evangelize their, their compatriots and doesn't go well

32:42for them. No, no, at least with their old community. Once you've converted people to, to something

32:49like that, it's hard to get them to let to let go of it. Yeah. However, smart people, good

32:56people, people who are of good faith and wish only to be seeking better and more up to

33:03date knowledge do often revise their positions, their older positions. Yes, they do. Which

33:10I think is a good segue into our opportunities for growth. So tell us, Dan, you, you know,

33:21we teased it at the beginning. You had a position that was, you know, that you took on our show

33:29and elsewhere, I think. And then, and then you, and you ended up buttoning up against

33:36some people. Talk, talk us through it. Talk us. Tell us what, what you had originally said.

33:42Yeah. And then what arguments have been made that, that, that steered you in a slightly

33:47different direction. Well, like nine or 10 weeks ago, we did an episode of the show where

33:52one of the things we talked about was Matthew's description of the triumphal entry and Jesus

33:59riding into Jerusalem on two animals at the same time. And it was a laugh riot. We had

34:06we had a good time. We had a good time. And I had, and I had made a video about that probably

34:12two or three weeks prior to that. And the way I had interpreted the text is, is we have

34:19this text where it says they, Jesus tells them, Hey, go get me your go to this house,

34:25you'll find a donkey and you will find a cult tied up with it untie and bring it to me.

34:32If the owner gives you any guff, just give them a swift backhand, tell them the Lord

34:38has need of them and they'll let you go. And it says they brought the, the donkey and the

34:44cult to Jesus. And this was done so that the prophecy in Zechariah 9, nine would be fulfilled.

34:51And they took their cloaks and they put them on them and they put him on them. And the,

35:00and initially I was, I was pointing out the distinction between the King James rendering,

35:04which I was suggesting obscures this by saying they sat him there on, which is not marked

35:10for number. Right. But the them is very clearly plural. And whether you understand the antecedent

35:19of that pronoun to be the them that is the animals or the them that is the cloaks that

35:25are on the animals, the way the text is telling the story, Jesus is sitting on top of two animals.

35:32Right. And, and we went through a bunch of different good ways to visualize this. Yes.

35:38Yes. Including, including these sofa and Ottoman style. The human donkey pyramid where you've

35:47got a donkey, a little donkey, and then a person up on top. Right. There, there are a bunch of

35:54different ways that that it has been visualized historically. And as I pointed out, we even

35:58have like medieval artwork from Christians who are representing Jesus sitting on the larger donkey

36:04with his feet resting on the cult that is tied up. Or some people say he, he switched back and forth.

36:10And after I made my initial video and then we released the podcast episode, there was some debate

36:19online on places like YouTube and elsewhere where apologists were, were bringing up challenges to

36:25this. And most of it had to do with how we think Matthew was interpreting the prophecy, whether it

36:33was a misunderstanding or whether he was intentionally interpreting it a certain way and presenting

36:38the fulfillment of a prophecy in a very careful, very specific way. And I think in our episode,

36:46I even said whether or not you think that Matthew misunderstood this. But I suggested that Matthew

36:53was representing Jesus as writing on two animals, because they were so concerned with ensuring that

37:00Jesus is fulfilling this prophecy to the tea. And the prophecy as Matthew is representing it comes

37:07through, it's a Greek translation. It's not exactly what the Septuagint says, but it's close to it.

37:14And I suggested that's the opposition of the original prophecy. So the original prophecy in

37:22Hebrew says, he will come writing on a donkey, even a cult, the full of a donkey. And this is

37:30opposition. This is, this is just saying the same thing two different ways. So there's one animal in

37:35view. And or actually, I think I think the Hebrew says the full of of Jenny's or something like that.

37:43And in the Greek translation, however, it just seems to be two animals. He will come writing on a

37:50donkey and a cult, the full of a donkey or Jenny's or something like that. And and I suggested that

37:57Matthew is just trying to fulfill the prophecy exactly as they found in the Greek translation.

38:04And listening to the discussion, watching people argue about this, I think that there's a better

38:13way to understand it. I think that Matthew is actually trying to eat his cake and have it too.

38:20I think that Matthew is because there is ambiguity regarding the on them pronoun.

38:27Does this refer to the clothing? Does it refer to the animals? And so naturally,

38:33like if if somebody told you this story and you'd never heard any of this before, you would be like,

38:38wait, is he sitting on both animals? Because it's just not clear. You would want clarification

38:46in the story does not clarify. Right. So if Matthew sees the prophecy as saying two animals,

38:54it seems to me he's telling the story in a way that plausibly could be said to fulfill

39:00this prophecy with two animals. And yet also plausibly could be interpreted as

39:07only as him having only one mount him writing on one only one animal. So the idea is, hey, Matthew,

39:16are there two animals or one? Precisely.

39:19And Matthew, are there two animals or one? Oh, look over there.

39:24Yeah. So if I understand the new take, the new take is

39:37that it's not Matthew specifically saying Jesus is writing on these two animals.

39:44It is Matthew being purposefully obtuse so that you can take you could take either position

39:53and it would be justifiable with his language.

39:56I think that makes more sense to me now in light of the arguments I've seen.

40:03And there are other arguments out there. There's a scholar named Carlson who published two papers

40:12in, I think, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, like five years ago, arguing that the way Matthew describes

40:21the prophecy is the plenary fulfillment of Zechariah 9.9, where he's trying to include

40:28all of the imagery, all of the possible imagery that comes from Zechariah. And it's a complex

40:36argument for why the on them means that Jesus was actually on the cult there. I think reasonable

40:45people can disagree about this. There have been numerous different ways to try to explain what's

40:50going on here. The more I think about it, the more I consider the other arguments. I don't think

40:57there's a way to say the text indicates Jesus is only writing on one animal. I don't think the two,

41:05the two-mount reading is precluded by anything. I think that has to be a possibility. But

41:12it makes more sense to me now that the ambiguity there has a rhetorical role in the way that Matthew

41:20has crafted this. Because if Matthew shows this draft to somebody, hey, look what I'm working on.

41:26They're going to be like, I think you may need to make it a little more clear what's going on

41:31here. And he's like, yeah, that's the point. That makes the most sense to me. And so this is the

41:38judgment that I am a little more comfortable with now. That's not to say that this is the way it

41:46has to be and everybody is wrong. This is not the consensus view.

41:51Oh, no, no, no. This is now, this is the official position of the Data Overdown podcast. And all of

41:58its listeners have to now assume that there is an affiliates. That's right. Everyone from now on

42:06has to be in perpetuity this way until further revised by you. Because we are all your acolytes

42:13and have to believe as you do, which is a horrific thing to think about. I'm glad it will never be

42:21the case. Well, I mean, it's kind of the point of having this segment, right? Is the idea that,

42:26like, just to demonstrate that this is all we're doing the best we can, like scholarship in general

42:34as a concept is especially scholarship like this, where it's about something that was written

42:422000 plus years ago. Yeah, you know, two or more. And, and all we have is best guesses. And all we

42:52have and, and you know, we, and it's important to revise those ideas as other people's arguments

43:00come into play. Yeah, I agree. I think that, you know, it, this is not, is not a quote unquote

43:08hard science. It's a real squishy science. But the most part, what we're doing is we're taking a

43:14bunch of judgment calls and we're just trying to see which judgment calls make the most sense,

43:19have the most support. And that's kind of our, our moving target. This is where we are right now.

43:25And, and everybody changes on these things. I've, um, they, a paper I published in 2018 in the

43:31Journal of Biblical Literature on Psalm 82, where I argued that Psalm 82 is a post-exilic,

43:36very late composition. If you had told me 10 years before that, that I was going to be arguing

43:42that Psalm 82 was post-exilic, I would have laughed in your face because I was with the

43:49majority of scholars who saw Psalm 82 as one of the oldest texts in the Hebrew Bible,

43:55one of the earliest passages that sees Adonai and El as separate deities that is a divine council

44:03scene that is, uh, just this archaic mythology. And the more I looked at it, and the more I looked

44:09at it, and the more I tried to figure out what was going on here, I slowly changed my mind till I

44:16got to the point that I was like, no, I am convinced that it is the other way around. Um,

44:22and so if you want to go see the argument that I've made, you can find my article on, on, on,

44:27my link tree, uh, it's called the God's Complaint Plural God's Complaint. Psalm 82 is a Psalm of

44:33Complaint. And, um, and that's an example. People ask me from time to time, what are some things

44:38you've changed your mind about? That's an example. I think the Matthew writing, uh, the, the triumphal

44:44entry question is another there, there have been these things. And as we talked with David Carr last

44:51week, uh, and even he said that, uh, 1996 David Carr doesn't always agree with 2024 David Carr.

44:58And, um, this is just, this is just the nature of the beast. Um, and so, and it's the mark of a, of a,

45:05of a honest scholar or an honest person to say, like, I don't trust someone who agrees with their,

45:14you know, with 15 years ago them about everything. That's not, you, you haven't done any work in that

45:21time period. If, if that's how you are. And, and I think that's, I think that's one of the indications

45:28of, uh, of someone who is, who is not committed to a series of dogmas. Because there are a lot of

45:35folks who they, they have some wiggle room, but there are walls and they, they are not going to go

45:42over those walls, not for anything whatsoever. And, and there are folks who, you know, they may be

45:47convinced of stuff to, to differing degrees, but for the most part, anything's fair game. And, and

45:53I'd like to think that I'm in that position that, um, I have tried to model that where, um, I'm not

45:59committed to anything, uh, to the degree that I, I just will say, no, it's impossible that it is

46:05this other thing within, within reason, you know, the flat earth, I think is something that's, you know,

46:12that's not the kind of thing we're talking about. It was talking about, because you were talking

46:16about the walls that people have set up in their sort of dogmatic walls. Yeah. And my, and the image

46:21that instantly popped into my mind, the ice wall, the ice wall, the, the flat earthers think, uh,

46:27surrounds, uh, the disc of the earth. It would be, it would be fun to see if there were any flat

46:33earthers who were talking about this ice wall before, um, game of thrones. Game of thrones.

46:39Hey man, that, that thing looks pretty good. I think that's a great idea. Yeah.

46:44But, um, in terms of actual like legitimate scholarly, um, theories, uh, I, I think everything

46:54has to be potentially on the table. Uh, and, and that's one of the things that frustrates me

46:59with a lot of the content that I engage with is the, there's only half a table there and they're

47:06only going to play with whatever is on half of that table. Um, but yeah. So not, not a huge change,

47:13but no, it seems pretty minor. But I, well, I hesitated. Like when I was decided to make this

47:20video this morning for my social media accounts, uh, the socials, uh, it, it took me, I was like

47:27contemplating, do I really want to do this? I'm opening myself up for criticism. Um, even though

47:33it's a pretty minor thing, but, uh, but that's one of the, one of the things that, that, uh,

47:38that bothers me. And that's one of the things that can disincentivize, uh, more open, honest

47:44engagement. Um, I would be lying if I said that's, uh, you know, I just go full bore, uh,

47:53whatever I'm thinking without ever considering the, uh, the implications or the consequences,

47:58that's just not true. Um, I, I do think about that stuff. And I would like to think that it does not,

48:04I am not self censoring because of that. So I, I was like, no, if I, I feel this way,

48:11I've, I've got to go through with this, uh, just because I wouldn't be able to look at myself in

48:17the mirror. Uh, if I were like, oh no, they're going to make fun of me. Well, let them. I mean,

48:23the truth is that like the people who would make fun of someone for revising their position based

48:28on new or different information are the people that like they're, they're really telling on

48:35themselves about what, what's important to them and what they value, which isn't truth, certainly.

48:43It may be something like, you know, I mean, people value their dogmatic beliefs and whatever.

48:49But it would be pretty hypocritical of you to, uh, to have a, a dogmatic view that is

48:58impermeable to data considering the title of our show.

49:02Yeah, I'm trying, I'm trying to live up a lot of people are like, there's not, you can't be

49:08data over dogma. And I'm like, look, from day one, I have said this is aspirational. Yeah.

49:15Nobody can, can do this perfectly. It is aspirational. And so I'm trying to live up to

49:20the standards, um, to which we aspire on the data over dogma podcast. And that's why I thought,

49:27hey, maybe this would be a good segment to, to talk about. It's, it's a little shift, but it's an

49:33example of, uh, of me owning up to, um, having changed my perspective. Yeah. And I, and it's funny,

49:42I made fun of it for being little, but, uh, as you point out, like entire careers are made on

49:49tiny little, like, like this is, this is a field of study that concerns itself with minutia. So I

49:57think I, I think, uh, you know, I, I should be more, I should be more open to little things.

50:03It's the little things. It's the little things. Like the great poet one said, it's, it's the

50:10little people like you Clark and your family. Um, that's, uh, Christmas vacation. Yes,

50:17in case one, one of the greatest, um, films ever made. In my, in my humble opinion. Yeah. Well,

50:24it's a, that Griswold family is, is a real hoot. Beverly D'Angelo, you know, lots of, lots of, uh,

50:33lots of young crushes. I'll just say, um, we didn't need to go there, but, uh, well, all right,

50:40that's fair. She came up. She came up. Um, all right. Well, listen, you and I are going to continue

50:46our conversation, uh, in a much less formal way over, uh, on the Patreon. So if any of you

50:53friends out there would like to help be a part of making this show go and get extra added bonus

50:58content and an early ad free version of every episode of the show, you can become a patron too.

51:04Just go ahead over to patreon.com/dataoverdogma. If you'd like to do that, you can reach out

51:11us by writing into contact@dataoverdogmapod.com. Other than that, we'll just see y'all again next

51:18week. Bye everybody data over dogma is a member of the airwave media podcast network. It is a

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