Ep 59: The End(s) of Monotheism W/ David Burnett

00:00There's some ambiguity there is Paul saying, "Oh yeah, these things that people call God's,

00:08but we know there's only one God."

00:09Is Paul saying that or is Paul saying, "Yeah, they're these gods all over the place, but

00:14as far as we're concerned, only one God matters to us."

00:18That is what he's saying.

00:21Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:25And I'm Dan Beecher.

00:26And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast where we increase public access to

00:31the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about

00:36the same.

00:37How are things, Dan?

00:39Things are going great.

00:40I'm having a good time.

00:41I did not get to travel this last weekend, however, and apparently you guys did.

00:48And I'm saying you guys, because there's not just you here with us, why don't you tell

00:54the people who we got here?

00:56So we got the People's Champ.

00:58My old friend David Burnett is joining us again.

01:02Welcome to the show, David.

01:03I think it's our first time repeat guest.

01:07Yeah, a returning champion.

01:09A returning yes.

01:11So welcome to the show.

01:12Good to have you back.

01:13Thank you for your time.

01:15Thank you.

01:16Thank you.

01:17Good to be back.

01:18Yeah.

01:19And the reason.

01:20I was just saying I'm glad to be the first returner.

01:23Yeah.

01:24And we're glad to have you back.

01:25Hopefully, there will be more returners in the future.

01:28We are having here because you and I just spent the first three days of the week hanging

01:34out together in lovely Providence, Rhode Island at Brown University.

01:41We were participating in a conference that we presented at as well as organized.

01:47That's correct.

01:48Yeah.

01:49And the weather was surprisingly, according to everybody who lived there, the weather

01:54was uncharacteristically nice, which was great.

01:57Yeah, it was really nice.

01:59Providence is beautiful.

02:01That was divine Providence is what that was.

02:07You guys were given the green light from above to get to do this conference.

02:12Well, I think that has to be where they got their name from, right?

02:18And Lightman era notion of Providence.

02:20Yeah, something like that.

02:22Now we've, I think we've mentioned the conference before.

02:26In fact, I think David, the last time you're here, we talked about this.

02:29The conference is called the meanings and ends of monotheism.

02:34And we had said we were going to livestream it.

02:37It turned out that that wasn't going to work for everybody, but we did record it.

02:42And it will be released publicly later.

02:45But we wanted to have you on the show so we could just jam a little bit about the conference.

02:50We're going to scoop the recording.

02:52We're going to, we're going to, we're going to get out in front of it and tell the people

02:56some of the cool stuff that you guys were able to talk about and that your guests were

03:02able to talk about.

03:03So I think that that's, I'm excited to hear about it.

03:07I was, I was going to watch it streaming and then it turns out that that's, that wasn't

03:11an option for me.

03:13Well, yeah, I mean, in discussions in planning the conference, you know, it's just been a

03:18long time of planning ahead of time to work out the details.

03:23And for a conference like this, it very much was a scholarly workshop style conference.

03:31So what we wanted from the conference and the sort of aims and goals of the conference,

03:37I think we accomplished better doing it this way, which is, you know, this is something

03:42that scholars need to workshop these ideas and work together on and get good feedback

03:49on and discussion going and work out those ideas.

03:53And then we take our papers back and there's going to be like a six month process before

03:59we get papers back in for them to like make any edits they need to and all of that.

04:05And then we're going to share them with the actual conference members so that we can actually

04:10get feedback on each other's work.

04:13And then this is going to become a published volume.

04:17And so the having it a small, intimate, scholarly conversation to work out those ideas and really

04:26test those ideas in a, in a highly saturated peer review environment, you know, is really

04:34important because if we say we believe in peer review and we say we believe in scholarship,

04:40then it needs to be done properly.

04:42And that takes a long time.

04:44And so if it's done right, it takes a long time.

04:48And so that's the nature of the beast, you know, because, you know, like you Dan's, I

04:55believe in accessibility.

04:56I want to work towards that in the future as well and help bring scholarship to the masses.

05:01But for it to be done with peer review and worked out and established has to become scholarship,

05:08you know.

05:09And so there is a critical mass of scholars who agrees with us on this challenging the

05:18category of monotheism and the study of antiquity.

05:21And that's very much what this conference is about.

05:23I mean, the reason why we went with the name, the meanings and ends of religion, the S

05:30in ends is in parentheses.

05:33So it's a double entendre of sorts.

05:37It's the name comes from a famous Wilfred Cantwell Smith book called The Meaning and End

05:44of Religion.

05:45And in that book, it was popular in the 60s.

05:48This is going to be rehash for some who've heard us discuss this.

05:52It was months ago.

05:54Nobody even paid attention back then.

05:56But this is this is important.

05:57So the reason why we went with this name in particular, the meanings and ends of monotheism,

06:04is to play off that title, The Meaning and End of Religion by Smith.

06:08And what that book did in the 60s, what it was a part of was a kind of a paradigm shift

06:12in religious studies to say, this category of religion, the way it operates in modern

06:20discourse, scholarly discourse is very much anachronistic to the study of the past.

06:26In other words, we're bringing assumptions, critical assumptions of modern scholars and

06:32taking them back to antiquity and foisting them on ancient people that wouldn't share

06:38those same assumptions and those same categories when it comes to religion.

06:43And so the book was kind of saying that we shouldn't use the term religion at all in

06:48critical study when we look at these ancient communal traditions that are passed down and

06:54personal phase of the peoples themselves.

06:58And that's how Smith sort of broke down the categories.

07:01But so what we were doing with the concept of monotheism, quote unquote, is saying that

07:09that category hasn't faced the type of critical scrutiny that religion has in any way that

07:18is helpful in the study of antiquity.

07:22And so we wanted to help spearhead that movement.

07:26There has already been scholarship that's been critical of monotheism for some time.

07:31That is not new, but what we wanted to do was get together some of those scholars in

07:38one place in one conference and say, OK, let's take the gloves off, so to speak.

07:46Let's be straightforward with this and not dancing around the issue, but just get right

07:52out there in the open and say, this category should not be used for the study of antiquity

07:57anymore.

07:58Let's talk a little bit quickly about that category, about the idea of monotheism as

08:04it has been talked about up until now and what what it meant.

08:11And then and then a little bit about why you think that that is an outdated way of thinking

08:16about and, you know, the beliefs and sort of practices of antiquity.

08:25I think my paper probably goes most directly into trying to figure out what's the origin

08:31of this of this conceptual package.

08:34This is fun.

08:35It's like Dan.

08:36It's like I'm interviewing you, too.

08:37Yeah, I'm a guest on my own on my own damn show.

08:43So we first get the word monotheism in around 1660, a guy named Henry Moore, who's a he's

08:53called a Cambridge Platonist, or Platonist, if you're nasty.

08:57He's one of these guys who's who's using platonic philosophical frameworks to advance certain

09:06Protestant interests, particularly over and against the people who are perceived of as

09:10the enemy at the time, which included materialists like Thomas Hobbes and and people that they

09:17accused of being atheists and Muslims and things like that.

09:21How dare they, what a horrible accusation, also one an atheist.

09:25But well, and they were like, oh, the, the materialists who worship the world as the one

09:31and only God are, you know, are basically worshiping, no God, they're all atheists.

09:38So it's pretty complex when you drill down to the bottom of it, but they're using this

09:43concept of monotheism as, as a value judgment and an identity marker.

09:48And what I, what I point out is that they're not using it to mean worship of one God.

09:54Like they kind of dance around it like this is what it means, but it's like, well, what

09:58about Islam?

09:59And then it's like, that's a, that's a false pretense to monotheism.

10:03They're not true monotheists because they don't believe in the same God as us.

10:07And then, okay.

10:08Like I said, the materialists, because they believe in an impersonal single deity, they're

10:13also not believing in a real God, and so they're atheists.

10:17And so basically a monotheist, we're monotheists and anybody who, you know, claims to believe

10:25in one God is, if their God is too different from our God, then they're, they don't believe

10:30in the right one God.

10:31And so they're not monotheists.

10:32So I, what I do in my papers, I, I explain three different ways historically that the,

10:37the concept of monotheism has been used.

10:40So when it was coined, uh, and I call this enlightenment monotheism, it was basically

10:44this idea that there's this one personal, all powerful, supremely sovereign omnipotent

10:49omniscient omnipresent God who created everything that exists apart from them out of nothing.

10:57And so, uh, one of the necessary features of, of enlightenment monotheism is creation

11:02ex nihalo, which is, and, and like we kind of think of this as, at least, uh, in the way

11:08I've seen it discussed, we kind of think of it as, as, uh, just this kind of doctrine

11:13that's there.

11:14Oh yeah.

11:15Creation had to happen out of nothing, but this is huge.

11:19Anciently, uh, when they're first debating this in the second century CE in the enlightenment,

11:25if it's not creation out of nihalo, it's crap as, uh, as the great poet once said, um,

11:33but then you get in the, in the 19th century, you get all these, like in the 18th 19th century,

11:38it's like that's when dictionaries were suddenly all the rage, uh, and in Webster in 1928,

11:44I think this is the first time anyone ever defined monotheism as the belief in the existence

11:50of one soul deity prior to that literally dictionaries defined monotheism as the doctrine

11:56of the Unitarians.

11:58Oh yeah.

12:00So like you look in the dictionary, monotheism, the doctrine of the Unitarians.

12:05This word, um, and then Webster says, believe in one single soul deity.

12:10And I, I suggest this is an etymological fallacy because it's never up until that point.

12:16No one had ever said monotheism is this.

12:19And here you can apply it to all these different religions and you can distinguish monotheism

12:23from not monotheism.

12:24It was an identity marker and a value judgment.

12:27And then so weird because it does like the word itself just sounds so easy to like, to

12:34break down it, like mono one, theism, God, easy done out the door.

12:40And so to hear that it wasn't that is a little bit shocking, to be honest with you.

12:44And you know, the, the etymological fallacy is very, very common.

12:47People use it all the time in the 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st century.

12:52Uh, and, and then what I describe a third kind of monotheism, which is what I call and,

12:57and you'll recognize this word, renegotiated monotheism.

13:01And, uh, and this is where once we started noticing, Hey, you know what, in the Bible,

13:08they kind of talk about all kinds of different gods.

13:10Uh, then we had to be like, well, what does this mean about monotheism?

13:13And instead of saying, okay, that's not monotheism, we decided, Oh, well, monotheism just means

13:19something else then.

13:21It means whatever we find in the Bible.

13:24And so you have these scholars who look in the Bible and whether they're looking in

13:28the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament or whatever, they'll say monotheism is this so that we

13:36can continue to identify this as monotheism.

13:40So they're changing, they're revising the definition so that we can continue to call

13:45what is in the Bible, monotheism, um, it seems to have become important in the, uh, in the

13:51history of a specialty of Christianity, to identify the Bible with the concept of a single

13:59God with the concept, uh, with the belief in, uh, only one God at any given time.

14:07Yeah.

14:08And in the, in the paper, I argue that a big part of this, and what I think is probably

14:12the central part of this is that as an identity marker and a value judgment, you want ideological

14:19continuity with these people who wrote the Bible that you believe to be, you believe

14:25you're a part of a continuation of the same community.

14:28You're the same group.

14:30And so you want them to believe the same things that you're believing now.

14:33And so monotheism is, is the beating heart of Christianity for a lot of folks, particularly

14:38when they're comparing it to other things that they don't think are monotheistic.

14:43And so obviously the authors of the New Testament had to be monotheistic.

14:47And, and Arya argue that scholarship today is trying to maintain that continuity, that

14:52connection and they're willing to just revise the, the concept, um, wherever they need to

14:59go with it in order to, to maintain that connection.

15:02And I argue that that is harmful to the, the academic endeavor and that we need to, we

15:08need to acknowledge that, uh, there's not monotheism in the Bible.

15:14And if we want to argue for the utility of that framework, that analytical framework,

15:18if we want to say there's value in imposing this interpretive lens on the Bible, they

15:23should make a case for why it's valuable.

15:25We should no longer just give the benefit of the doubt.

15:29We should no longer just default to accepting the monotheism of the Bible.

15:32Um, exactly.

15:33And so that, that, that's the gist of my paper.

15:37And I conclude by saying, and so if anybody wants to use this framework, they first need

15:42to demonstrate that there is value to it and that it's not just an attempt on their part

15:47to structure values and powers and, and, and boundaries and things like that.

15:52Well, and to support a, a sort of dogmatic stance, right?

15:55Yeah.

15:56Isn't that what we're talking about is like, uh, some, you know, now that word, that monotheism

16:01word is being used to support a dogma rather than to actually, you know, just look at what

16:09is present, uh, and, and, and take it as, you know, on its own terms.

16:14Yeah.

16:15And as you well know, the official position of the data over dogma podcast is that data

16:19goes over the dogma rather than the other way around.

16:22We don't let the dogma wag the, wag the data.

16:26Yeah.

16:27I like that.

16:29That's a, that's a shirt right there.

16:30Somehow we got to turn that into a shirt.

16:32Don't let the dogma wag the data, something, uh, so David, what was it?

16:38Talk about what your paper.

16:39Did you give a paper?

16:40Also, what was, what was your paper about specifically?

16:44Yeah.

16:45Um, my paper was sort of a, a revised version of a paper I gave a couple of years ago.

16:52Me and Dan were in a section of SBL, um, on, uh, in the deuter, deuterocanonical and cognate

17:00literature section.

17:01They, they, I'm going to, I'm just going to jump in and mention SBL is the society of

17:05biblical literature, uh, yeah, you're talking about their kind of biblical literature.

17:09Yep.

17:10Their, their company years ago at the society, biblical literature, me and Dan gave similar

17:15papers, uh, to the ones we gave now, but the, the, the paper I did then is the paper I developed

17:21for this conference, um, which was called a virtuous gods or deserving of death, conflicting

17:29early Jewish postures, um, towards the gods within ancient Mediterranean paganism.

17:34And so what I was trying to argue there just briefly is that when you look at a somewhat

17:42representative spectrum of early Jewish literature, so when I say early Judaism, I mean the Judaism

17:49of the second temple period.

17:51So which is anywhere spanning back as far as sixth century BCE to like first century CE,

17:58the end of first century CE after the destruction of the temple.

18:01So, um, generally speaking, when we look at early Jewish literature, we can find a spectrum

18:07of different postures towards the gods that are active in ancient minute, Iranian world.

18:15And they largely vary, but when you look at these varying postures towards the gods, none

18:23of them, not even on either pole.

18:25So on one pole, you'll have someone like Fylo of Alexandria saying things like, um, talking

18:32about the gods from Deuteron, sort of the deuteronomic vision of the cosmos, where you

18:36have the gods apportioned over the nations, um, that we have, um, happening at the tower

18:42of Babel scene.

18:43Uh, so in commentary on that text, uh, in Fylo, in the context of, uh, like platonic philosophical

18:51discourse about the, uh, scholar, Natura, the, the scaled nature, the hierarchy of the cosmos,

18:57he comments on this text saying, yeah, those gods of the, those gods of the nations, um,

19:02those celestial bodies that, that Deuteronomy says is God, yeah, they're gods.

19:09They're rulers that are appointed over the father of all though.

19:13They are not the sole cause of everything themselves.

19:17And in this sort of, um, critique of some Greek beliefs about the causation of all, uh,

19:25events to the celestial bodies, Fylo critiques this and says, no, they're gods.

19:31Yep.

19:32But they are copying the rule.

19:34They're doing mimesis.

19:35They're, they're imitating the rule of the father of all.

19:39And this is standard fair in platonic cosmology of the day, uh, of, you know, an ordered cosmos,

19:46everyone playing their part, keeping this perfect harmony thing.

19:49Well, Fylo's on board and he's like, yeah, um, and matter of fact, he goes as far to

19:53say that these gods, even though because they're rulers, like delegates under the father of

20:00all, that makes them liable to correction because they're not the father of all.

20:04They're not the like head guy.

20:06Right.

20:07But so he says they're liable to correction, but he says because of their virtue, they're

20:11never destined to undergo it. Okay. So it's, this idea that Fylo is not an apocalypticist,

20:18right? I think I talked about this last time is, is there's no sense in which he sees some

20:25final end of days where the gods need to be judged and killed.

20:29There's none of that.

20:30Right.

20:31Okay.

20:32The gods aren't the issue for Fylo.

20:35He's, he's sort of lampooning the Greeks who say that they're autocratic gods.

20:40He literally calls them that. He says, for the Greeks who say they're autocratic powers,

20:46they're wrong. You know, they rule under the father of all. So at no time in Fylo anywhere,

20:54does he negate the, the gods existence, their agency, their, their rule that's delegated

21:03to them under the god of all, their regular place in ordering the cosmic government of

21:10sorts. All of that's very real, but they're virtuous for him.

21:16Right.

21:17But then if you fast forward on the other side and you go to Paul, like this is totally

21:22opposite into the spectrum here, Paul will use the exact same terms for the gods of the

21:28nations that from, from the Septuagint from the Greek translations of the Jewish Bible

21:33and commenting on same texts in a very different context, very different rhetorical goals,

21:41very different things taking place. These are epistles to specific communities and he's

21:46an apocalyptusist. So the context couldn't be more different.

21:50Right.

21:51But what's interesting is when that those texts come up, they all affirm that those gods

21:58are in fact real and are in fact agents in the world. But for Paul, as this radical apocalyptic

22:04Pharisee that thinks this waiting for the final day new month, the resurrection from

22:10the dead, this great event included in that event is the judgment of what he calls principalities,

22:17powers, rulers. These are the same terms used in these other Greek Jewish literature for

22:23those gods that are delegated over the, over the world. So that's not so so so the final

22:29judgment isn't just for us humans, it's also for all of these other and so we have gods.

22:34Oh, yeah.

22:35So much so. It's so in your face that the Paul actually uses the language of parocia to

22:44speak about the coming back of Jesus, where there's this final judgment of the cosmos.

22:51And he even includes the holy ones, he calls them his fellow believers in Jesus who have

22:58received the new month from heaven, this heavenly spirit of the gods, so to speak. But it's

23:04the spirit of the high God, the most I God that the Messiah himself shares. So that links

23:10them in some weird mystic cosmic way to them. And he says that you all are going to participate

23:16in this. Don't you know you're going to judge the cosmos? Don't you know you're going to

23:21judge the angels? You know, surprise. So that's part of their role. They're in the big judgment

23:31divine court scene at the end, you know, and they're issued their judgment that they're

23:36going out the door, you know. So that is a totally different picture than Fylo. I mean,

23:43Paul would look like the crazy apocalyptusist with the sign on the corner, right? Right?

23:48Yeah, you know, we're sort of like the urbane sophisticated philosopher, you know. So you

23:55couldn't get more opposite in terms of the views of the gods. But here's the point.

24:02Even if you consider these radically different polls of postures towards these deities in

24:09their own lived context, in their own lived religious context, you're not going to find

24:15anything remotely close to anything we could call monotheistic, right? In the way that

24:22that term is generically employed today. And what what I did say on top of that is when

24:31you when you consider all of the nuances that get added to this term in contemporary scholarship

24:38on early Judaism and Christian origins, in particular, it dies the death of a thousand

24:44qualifications, because like Dan said, once once that definition has shifted, some might

24:52say, oh, well, yeah, but in scholarship, it hasn't shifted, you know, by ancient Jewish

24:57monotheism, or like an evolution of early Jewish monotheism into these Christological

25:03monotheism, whatever the heck that means, you know, that these terms get employed all

25:08the time. But you have to qualify them all day long. And in every text you reference,

25:15there's always other divine powers everywhere. Isn't there even a problem with just saying

25:24Christological monotheism in the sense that like, if Christ is a God or is part of a Godhead,

25:32that's that's plural, right? Now suddenly we have a plural God in Christ and his and his

25:39Godfather. Well, it manifests the problem, which is not which is that monotheism isn't

25:45the rule that we're holding up. Monotheism is just an identity marker and a value judgment.

25:52And we will just massage it into whatever context we need that value judgment and that

25:58identity marker, whether it means inclusive monotheism, exclusive monotheism, ethical

26:03monotheism, Christological monotheism, first century Jewish monotheism, whatever we need

26:09it to be. If we need monotheism to be there, it's going to be there one way or another.

26:15Right. And this is what happens here. Like Dan put it beautifully just saying it's like,

26:21what tends to happen? These huge anachronisms take place in just a couple of sentences.

26:27I mean, people can bring entire categories that take hundreds of years to met out to

26:33develop. And they'll just say, Oh, yeah, here it is. Look at this text. This doesn't this

26:38kind of sound like something that one day will become this. So it must be this, you know?

26:44Right. And it's like, whoa, whoa, hold up. I mean, you take 1 Corinthians 15 is a great

26:48example of this. If, you know, a lot of the talk about Christological monotheism and things

26:54like this, um, when, when around the New Testament, all the EHCC folk use this language. I don't

27:01know the early high Christology club. Oh, okay. And there's like a little club of scholars,

27:07you know, the idea that Jesus didn't slowly develop into being God, but immediately.

27:14Yeah, right. I understand as God. That's right. First generation, right off the bat, everyone

27:19thinks that mutation. That's right. Here is on a half shell. Christology. Um, but notice

27:29the nuances here. Notice the nuances. It's not a mutation of monotheism. Well, there's

27:34already this ancient Jewish monotheism where you have, okay, sure, there's these other

27:39gods kind of, but they're created. See, there's only one creator, you know, even though some

27:45of these Jewish texts in the second temple period didn't get the memo about Creazio X

27:51knee. Hello. They didn't get it, you know, cause they're like, Oh yeah, the powers and

27:55the rulers, they're involved in ordering the world too and bringing it about and setting

28:00it in order. And it's like, I remember reading these texts in, in like my early master's

28:05degree, like, wait, what? Why are these powers involved in creation? Well, I thought God was

28:11the only one doing all this stuff. You know, um, so even, even Jesus is like that. It's

28:17right. A lot of people misunderstand. It's created through Jesus or something like that.

28:22Jesus did the creating, which technically would be a Tuesday in the ancient Mediterranean,

28:27really. Yeah. I mean, because you have powers that Yahweh himself uses in these early Jewish

28:32texts to do all kinds of stuff in creation. I mean, wisdom as a entity that creates for

28:40God is there in Proverbs eight and the early Christology folks that know that that, that

28:47that, um, category is already well developed in second temple period. Um, but anyways,

28:53uh, the point, the point is that, that we don't, we want to like sort of wipe all the

29:00anachronism off the table and say, let's just engage this literature and be critical about

29:08the use, the employment of this category. Um, and a great paper that piggyback to right

29:16off of what Dan was talking about was towards the beginning by an amazing scholar, Deborah

29:22Scoggin's Ballon time. Wonderful scholar. Um, also, uh, of Brown, um, who teaches at Rutgers.

29:30She did a paper called, uh, translating monotheism, how a lens of monotheism impacts translation.

29:37And it, oh man, it just knocked out of the park. Exactly what Dan was saying about these

29:43first category conference. Yeah. As the first paper of the conference, talk about a way

29:48to start, you know, um, but she, she knocked it out of the park with this concept of saying,

29:54look, when you have this developed category of monotheism already where you assume that's

30:00what this religion is, that's what it's in the Bible. It's exactly what Dan was saying.

30:04Like this is already monotheistic. When you go back to try to translate these texts, there's

30:10so much psychological influence over, uh, translation choices in very weird texts that

30:19don't fit any of those categories. You know, and so you're trying, you see, and she shows

30:25like multiple translations, um, English translations and ancient translations, how this happens,

30:32how it different times when you have theological development, and this lens of monotheism developed,

30:38it's influencing all kinds of translation choices. And you can see it. I mean, it's,

30:43it's, it's really obvious to, uh, historians and translators when, uh, when you're made

30:49aware of it. Problem is there are, there are so many interpreters that probably weren't

30:55even aware that those, that those lenses are already fully developed. And so you couldn't

31:02imagine seeing it any other way. You know, if you're just, it's, does a fish know it's

31:07in water, right? You know, right. So this is why a conference like this is so important

31:12is like we have to try to take these lenses off and be critical with the data and look

31:18at it and say, wait a minute, does any of this fit? You know, can you guys provide an

31:23example? Uh, maybe that, uh, that, sorry, the, the professor that you just named, I'm,

31:29I didn't catch her Deborah Scoggin's Ballantine. Yeah. Can you provide? Maybe she provided

31:34an example of, uh, you know, of a scripture that has been traditionally translated one

31:39way, but, uh, would be better translated in another way if we sort of cast off the, uh,

31:47the monotheism lens. Is there, can you think of a, of a specific example of that? Well,

31:52the one that, uh, that she talks about in her paper was when, uh, Jacob and, and Laban

31:58are parting ways. Um, and is, this is Genesis. Um, oh shoot. I'm 33, 33, okay, 31, 53. And

32:08I, I'm pulling it up, uh, right in front of you, but, but basically they're both going

32:12to, uh, you know, swear their oaths. Um, and so the NRSV says it this way, may the God

32:18of Abraham and the God of Nahor judge between us. So Jacob swore by the fear of his father,

32:25Isaac, and Jacob offered a sacrifice on the height. Call this kinfolk to eat the bread,

32:29blah, blah, blah. Um, and, and so the, the question here is, um, and there is a, uh,

32:35there is a part, it looks like the, the NRSV. Yeah. The NRSV takes out the, uh, the reading

32:42that she's talking about. There is, um, uh, there's another statement, uh, Elohim, um,

32:50Avotayhem, which means either God of their fathers or gods of their fathers. And so the

32:56question is does God of Nahor and God of Abraham mean this is the one God who is both the God

33:04of Abraham and the God of Nahor. Or does this mean there's one God that's the God of Nahor

33:09and another God that the, that is the God of Abraham and, and the statements that Elohim

33:15of their fathers is ambiguous. It could be interpreted either way because Elohim can be

33:20plural or singular. And so depending on, on the lens you're bringing to this passage,

33:27you may one try to preserve the ambiguity, um, which, uh, when I worked in scripture translation

33:33for the LDS church, we actually at one point wanted to make shirts that said maintain the

33:38ambiguity, the idea being that you don't want to make the decision for the reader. You want

33:43to pass on the prerogative to make the interpretive decision to the reader. And so you can maintain

33:50the ambiguity or you can decide for them, in which case you say, Oh, this is referring

33:54to different gods or this is referring to one God. So, um, and so she talks about how

33:59the Septuagint makes a decision about that, about how the Vulgate makes a decision about

34:04that. And then how modern translation, the King James version, the RSV, the NRSV, the

34:08NIV, how, um, translations, uh, the translators make different decisions based on the lenses

34:14that they're, they're bringing to the text. And when, you know, talking about, uh, Paul

34:19and the gods, you know, if you go to first Corinthians eight, there's this famous passage

34:24where he says, and here's the NRSVUE indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in

34:30heaven or on earth, as in fact, there are many gods and many lords yet for us, there is one

34:34God, the father for whom are all things and for whom we exist. And there's some ambiguity

34:39there is Paul saying, Oh yeah, this, these things that people call gods, but we know there's

34:45only one God is Paul saying that or is Paul saying, yeah, there are these gods all over

34:51the place, but as far as we're concerned, only one God matters to us. Right. Like, with

34:57that lens, yeah, yeah. And I agree. That's, that's precisely what he's saying. Um, and,

35:02and the, uh, what I, the metaphor that I use in, uh, in my paper is the Broncos. Like as

35:09far as I'm concerned, there's only one, you know, there's a lot easier to say back in

35:14the late nineties, but you know, like the Raiders, they're not even a real football team. Like

35:19it's, it's just the kind of rhetoric that we use to juice each other up and to make ourselves

35:26feel better than, than the other. Yeah, I've had to do the same thing. Uh, I mean, I remember

35:32giving my first paper, like in 2014, 2013 or 2014. And it was at this Paul and Judaism

35:40conference at HBU or formerly Houston Baptist university. Now it's Houston Christian, I

35:46think. But, um, uh, this, I'd given this paper there. And, um, I talked about the gods of

35:53Deuteronomy in relation to the interpretation of Romans four and, um, uh, interestingly,

36:01what this, uh, sort of pastor scholar, older pastor scholar, you know, um, had a PhD, I

36:07think he taught at some point, but he had pastored most of his adult life. You know,

36:10he's like the older statesman, you know, evangelical pastor in the pews looking out

36:16for these young, heretically, you know, I'm going to show these kids what's a, what for,

36:21you know, he immediately tried to go in on me in the Q and A time and say, well, clearly

36:28by Isaiah, it says that there is only one God, there is no God beside me. You know, what

36:34are you talking about that they were not monotheist? I said, wait a minute. It's just

36:41in comparability language at the time I drove a Ford focus. It was like, it's like me saying

36:47my Ford focus is the only Ford focus. You know, there are no other Ford focus out there.

36:52It's just mine. You know, I'm not making an ontological claim about the, the oneness

36:59of my Ford focus, you know, and, and I, and I had already made points that look at Katie

37:05and hymns do this to their deities too. You know, it's like, oh yeah, there is, but one

37:10God who amongst the gods is like you. It's like, wait, what? Yeah. So this is just common

37:15rhetoric, you know, I've shared that on, on social media, the, the great Cairo hymn to

37:20aton, uh, from Egypt, like you read that and like that's, that's even more, uh, emphatic

37:28than the stuff you find in Deutero, Isaiah. Yeah. That's, that's a, that's awesome example.

37:34Yeah. The, um, so the, the first session was, uh, Hebrew Bible, and there were three of

37:40us, Deborah Scoggins, Valentine, I presented. And also, um, another wonderful scholar named

37:44Jennifer Singletary from Penn State University. And her, her paper was called the end of high

37:49postetetization. Or how I learned to stop worrying about Israelite polytheism. And her

37:57paper was really cool. I didn't know what to expect with, with her paper, but, um, high

38:02postetetization is this idea that I feel like you're stuttering when you say that word,

38:08but that's, I'm sure you're not, uh, yeah, no, I'm not so, and that was something that

38:14she kept saying. She's like, I had to practice pronouncing all the words, the, um, over and

38:19over again. But this idea of a, uh, a hypothesis is, uh, I don't know if it originates in,

38:25in Christological scholarship or it probably comes from, that's where it becomes a dominant

38:31category. Yeah. Yeah. In the early Christological debates, yeah, about a hypostasis of God that

38:37is still part of the one God, but it develops into this language of personhood in, in the,

38:43in the councilor debates, yeah, on Christology. But what happens is hypostasis, then because,

38:51you know, the Bible is now we have Christendom. We, we, everyone's Orthodox Christian. That's

38:57you have the Orthodox readings of the Bible. So you got, if you have any weird, you know,

39:03God looking stuff back here. Oh, that's a hypostasis. That's just, yeah. That's not a

39:07separate God, right? You know, I still don't understand what one God. So this is a, this

39:12is a fancy Greek word that means substance, but the idea of a, a hypothesis or hypostasis

39:20is this is like an avatar. It's an entity that is distinct from the main entity, but

39:28it only points back to the main entity. Okay. And so, and so like a divine image is thought

39:35of as a hypostasis. And so when, when you have these texts that are talking about all these

39:41other gods, if you identify them all as hypotheses of the main God, then that protects monotheism

39:50because it means they're not autonomous, independent entities. They're just, they're just the avatars

39:58of the main God and, and her voice feels problematic considering that they fight each other. But

40:04okay. Well, yeah, it's, it's highly problematic. Go ahead, David. Yeah, I just, I'll interject

40:11something here. The ones that are normally, this is, and this is helpful for Hebrew Bible

40:17stuff because when, when Christian scholars want to talk about hypostasis of God, they

40:25will go back like the councils did and talk about the wisdom of, of God is it appears

40:33as if wisdom is this other, this second figure that has some sort of agency, you know, it's,

40:40it's described as if wisdom gets to create, wisdom is, gets to play a role. But, but it's

40:49still the wisdom of God. So it's sort of personified. So is it an agent in and of itself or is it

40:55just part of God? And so it's, that's what we mean by, well, it's a hypostasis. It's like,

41:01it's, it's, it's part of God, but it just appears as a separate agent. And so the name

41:07of God is another very important one in the Hebrew Bible. It's, that was very important.

41:14All through early Judaism, this on a monology, this idea that the name has presence, you

41:19know, it's, it signifies presence. So then you build a temple, Yahweh says, you know,

41:24you build a temple for my name, the tabernacles where my name will dwell there. And it's real

41:32presence of the deity is there. You know, the Shekina can be called the name, you know,

41:39the glory of God in the kavod is, is often another one too, the glory of God. So these

41:45are all like hypostasis. These are like, it appears like they're a second figure, but

41:49they're part of the one God. And so this is that discourse dominates a lot of scholarship

41:56because they, they impose it on much more ancient, ancient Israelite stuff because they

42:03need it to be there. And it functions as an explanation that cuts off any further interrogation

42:09because it's like, there's some kind of relationship there. Boom, hypostasis. And, and that means

42:15we're done talking about the relationship because we've already presupposed that whatever that

42:21relationship is, it is, it is subsumed within our understanding, which is again, based on

42:28Christological stuff. And so it, it's basically just a way of shellacking everything over

42:34with Christology so that we don't complicate things any further, which was really one of

42:41the main things I was trying to do in my book was show, hey, we can actually explain why

42:47people are thinking of these things this way. But it complicates Christology to, to do that.

42:54But she brought up some wonderful examples from Contilidazrud, some of the inscriptions

42:58there, where it refers to Elle refers to Adonai refers to ball. And, and she complicates the

43:05assumption that these all must be, hypostasis of Adonai, and then talks about some, some

43:11really cool inscriptions from Ella Fantini. This fascinating. Yeah, there, there was a

43:17Jewish garrison that was stationed there at the end of the fifth and the beginning of

43:22the fourth century's BCE. And they had a temple there. And like it was destroyed by the locals.

43:28And the governor there was like, yeah, you can rebuild your temple, but no animal sacrifices,

43:31only, only fruits and vegetables and stuff like that. And, and they have references to

43:37a variety of different deities there. And so, who are sometimes just dismissed as hypostasis?

43:45I'm so also a phenomenal paper. Yeah, her paper is great. Yeah. And then David, your

43:56section, Second Temple Judaism and Christian origins was the longer we had four in there,

44:03didn't we? Yeah, that was the, that was four. It was separated

44:07by a break. Yeah. And so Emma Wasserman went right before you and you could probably explain,

44:13talk about her paper better than I can because you're a little more closely related to what

44:19she's doing. Yeah. Well, her paper was called Pantheon,

44:24Polymics and Intellectual Pressures, reconsidering Paul's Numa. She left off the Numa part for

44:32this paper and sort of restructured it a bit. But she was, she was mainly talking about

44:38from a host of texts and compares, comparing it to sort of the common intellectual context

44:45in philosophy in the, in the Greco-Roma world to say that Paul believed in a Pantheon, very

44:52similar to the way the Greeks did. So it's this structured power, think of like a pyramid

44:59or a hierarchy, a scaled, a scholar, Natura, as they call it that I was talking about earlier,

45:04like a scaled hierarchy. And this is, this is ubiquitous. And talking about multi-level

45:09marketing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You got the, the CEO at the top,

45:15but you got, you got to have your, your, your, your sort of deity downlines. Otherwise, yeah,

45:20what Emma, Emma's incredible scholar, because she has this encyclopedic knowledge of ancient

45:27philosophy. I tell you what, I am so jealous of those Stanley Stowers students because

45:34her and Robin Faith Walsh and others, Steven Young, these guys know Greek philosophy backwards

45:41and forwards. They are great. And I'm so glad to have them because I have a ton to learn

45:47from her still. But she, she masterfully showed that like, look, these pantheons, Paul's Pantheon

45:56is actually no different in like structure in the way that it's imagined in tears. And

46:03there's all kinds of like discourse and rhetoric around that and navigating that. But everyone

46:11is sort of on that page, you know? And so it's not, it's more of, I think she talked

46:19about anxieties about affinity, like the likeness. If, ooh, it's, you get anxious that

46:27it sounds too much like, you know, your compadres over here. So you got to tweak things a little

46:33bit to sound unique. And so this, the, these things that sound may sound radically unique

46:38and Paul aren't really. And so she's doing a high level critical readings, doing like

46:45talking about literary producers and shared repertoire of literary producers of the period.

46:51And Paul, the way she's critically discussing Paul is that it's just a varied model of a

46:57Pantheon, you know, this, that's what that's what's happening here. It's just one varied

47:02model of scholars looking back critically. Oh, these are all pantheons. That's all this

47:09is. And so the way she talks about these literary producers in that context has much more to

47:16do about anxieties towards affinities with others, you know, to have some unique voice

47:21to have some Euro, you're a religious expert in the words of Heidi White. So this is, this

47:30is, he's a religious expert in the ancient Mediterranean. He's carving out his own place,

47:34his own voice. And so he might tweak things this way, you know, well, they need to be

47:40dealt with this way or that this lower tier needs to, there's a battle going on over here.

47:45But the whole time for critical scholarship is let's just admit these are all Pantheon's.

47:50Yeah. And this is something there is no radically other view of the cosmos going on, you know,

47:57and that's not a thing. And that's a big point to make here is that a common theme in all

48:02of this is when we look at the relationship of the Jewish Christian Hebrew Bible literature

48:09to the literature and the societies around it, it's not a revolutionary departure. And

48:16for, and particularly with monotheism, what scholarship wants is this to be a revolutionary

48:21break. Right. This, you know, just sudden instantaneous mutation that nobody could have

48:26seen coming or revolutionary monotheism or all these things. Because what that means

48:31is this is divine in origin. This is special. This is, yeah, this is, this is not just an

48:37incremental elaboration on everything that came before, which is in reality, when you

48:41look at the, at the data, that's what you see. They're not departing wildly from what's

48:48going on around them. They're just saying short, small, little, little deviations from

48:53what's going on around them. And so I think that's one of the important things that this

48:58conference is going to show is that there is not this radical revolutionary departure,

49:03but it is, it is carrying on very similar traditions, just incrementally elaborating

49:07on them.

49:08I think one of the things that's that I think is would be surprising to most people. I think

49:15a lot of people would be more comfortable admitting an idea of polytheism in, in, in sort of in

49:27Hebrew Bible times, in, in, in Old Testament times, and less comfortable with that being

49:32a part of New Testament, you know, poly and beliefs. And I think that's the part that

49:39I think is, is this the big, the big revelation from, from what I'm understanding from, from

49:46you guys is that like, there's no, you know, we've, we've said it before, but there's no

49:50part of this, of the Bible that doesn't have polytheistic belief.

49:57I, and I think one of the things we talked about, I would agree with that. One of the

50:01things we, we frequently brought up at the conference was the threshold of monotheism.

50:06Where do we identify when we finally have monotheism? And if you go back 150 years in

50:11scholarship, it's like, oh, Abraham was the first monotheist. And then a couple generations

50:16later, Moses was the first monotheist, then a couple generations later, Deutero Isaiah

50:20is the first monotheist. And so our generation is, is coming on what I hope is the tail end

50:26of the, the era of Deutero Isaiah. They're, they're constantly trying to hold that threshold

50:35against the data and say, no, no, no, we have it by this time. And we're, we're in addition

50:41to just blasting past Deutero Isaiah, we're blasting past the New Testament. Also, we're

50:45not waiting for, for that era. We're saying, no, it's not in Deutero Isaiah. It's not

50:50in the Greco-Roman period literature. It's not even in the New Testament. And, um, I think

50:57that's going to be another important contribution of this volume is we're going to point out

51:01the, well, one, the question of where the threshold is is the wrong question to begin

51:06with. Uh, but two, it's definitely not anywhere in the Bible. And I think Paula Fredrickson,

51:11who has the, the paper after yours, uh, did a wonderful job of, of talking about our frustrations

51:19with the use of the framework of monotheism and its abuse in light of the fact that it's

51:25just not identifiable anywhere in the Bible, including in the New Testament and even within

51:30early Christianity, 100%. I think it's funny that when you, when you mentioned like, you

51:37know, the, the pushing forward of this threshold, like, you know, I am no Bible scholar. I am

51:43no, I am no expert in, in the Bible. But even I look at Moses and I'm like, you guys remember

51:49in the story of Moses that like the bad guys had gods that had powers too, right? Like that's

51:55just right there in the story. Like how could you possibly like, that's just, that's about

52:01as obvious a thing as, as I can imagine. And so the fact that it, what it speaks to, to

52:07my mind is how important it was to these scholars to maintain this dog, this dogma of monotheism.

52:18Yeah. We all saw Steve Martin and Martin short throw their, their staffs down and they became

52:22snakes. And in fact, somebody brought up that this generation is a generation that was raised

52:29thinking about the story of the Exodus based on the Prince of Egypt. That's the lens so

52:35many come to it through. And in fact, I've heard people argue, well, you know, Moses's

52:41brother gave him his ring and it's like, that's the Prince of Egypt. That's from a cartoon.

52:47That's not from the Bible. Yeah. And, you know, Whitney Houston is impeccable in, in the soundtrack,

52:56but that's not the, the text of the Bible. And then. So yeah, with Paula's paper just

53:03real quick, I mean, she's, I mean, for Paula, what else can you say that she has not already

53:10said many, many times about monotheism? And she basically was saying that, you know, her

53:15article of Philoharid Paul and the many gods of ancient Jewish monotheism is a masterpiece.

53:22That's the article review from yeah. Just excellent, excellent piece. But she lots of

53:31the points that she's made before, but she goes out, she's been going after for a very

53:36long time, the AAHCC types that use language like Jewish biblical monotheism, you know,

53:46ancient talking about New Testament authors and saying, oh, they're using Jewish biblical

53:52monotheism, you know, and they'll talk about, well, faithful Jews, you know, who read their

53:58Bible, you know, we'll use this will be monotheists. And it's just like, every time you hear this,

54:06it's like the Christian exceptionalism is, is, is, whoa, it's wow. It's like, oh my goodness.

54:14And you think in a post Holocaust world, where there's been droves of writing in, what does

54:21it mean to do harmonics of text that even have anti Jewish stuff tinging in them? How

54:29do we read them? And how do we be honest with them and critical of them and interrogate

54:34them in a post Holocaust world? And it's, there's so much of this monotheism talk runs

54:41into this problem. And this runs into Robin's paper too. Yeah. And Steven's to some degree

54:47as well. I think yeah. So Robin's faith washes paper, just incredible as well. I mean, just

54:55really great paper. She did a paper on Jesus in Berlin on monotheism and origins at the

55:01God, my French is terrible. How do you say it, Dan? I said, fund a sequel. And yeah,

55:07fund a sequel, something like that. I buy French terrible. So minus, but you know, Robin's

55:12is impeccable. So, but you know, her paper was brilliant because she was showing, she

55:20was actually doing, she had a very unique paper in our conference. And I almost wish

55:25we had an in the future, we will. But she, she brought an example of, okay, let's see

55:31on the ground. How is this term functioning in the 18th and 19th centuries? Like specifically

55:37in Germany, in Berlin, look at these German scholars, the way they're employing the term.

55:43And she shows the history and the development of this in really brilliant ways that shows

55:51the super sessionistic agendas. Yeah. In the rise of monotheism as it grows in that period,

55:57rhetorically, as an anthropological category, that's kind of the heyday of the anthropologist

56:03and monotheism becomes the main category for, for kind of ordering the development of humanity

56:10in this evolutionary teleological. Yeah, I mean, I've heard that sort of in my sort

56:15of encounters with biblical scholarship or anthropological scholarship talking, I've

56:22heard people say that monotheism was a big turn in, in, in, in, in sort of the development

56:31of human belief systems, etc. Yeah, it's, it's, it's radical exceptionalism and essentialism,

56:38you know, it's like, yeah, well, now we've reached this, you know, pinnacle of monotheism

56:43and we're at the heights of, and all these little pagans that still worship all their

56:48little gods are somewhere under us, they're other, you know, right. So we've evolved to

56:52the supreme race, so to speak, you know, who understand this. And her, there's that value

56:59judgment again, right, yeah, of course, the value, it's, but it's tied, you can't separate,

57:04she proves pretty substantively that you can't separate that rhetoric in German scholarship

57:12from that super sessionistic, essentialist project, you know, it's all wrapped up with

57:20it and it's used rhetorically to function that way as well. Yeah, I mean, I've heard

57:26it used to be, you know, I remember when I was in school, I took a class and it was

57:32a philosophy class and, you know, give those 20 years ago or something, but not that long

57:39ago, but you know, my professor at the time was sort of looking down on all of these silly

57:45polytheists and, and, and it becomes, you know, a vehicle for racism and for sort of putting

57:55down of other cultures, which is really probably not great. Yeah, she, one of the points she

58:03makes is she was talking about the fits and starts and the zeal from like the 18th and

58:1019th century to discover these natural laws that govern the world. And so monotheism is

58:15like the culmination of that that they found out, you know, and she even talked about Jesus

58:20as culmination, you know, it's like we've arrived, you know, versus those others that haven't

58:26and we solved religion. Congratulations, everybody. So I mean, literally what it was, literally,

58:32I mean, so she makes the point, the very clear point at that point. So what taxonomic value

58:38does monotheism have at all when you know that that's the way that it's functioning.

58:43That's the way it's been appropriated and employed, you know. So I thought that was great. I thought

58:49her paper was needed at our conference. Yeah. And that leads into the last section had two

58:55papers in it that we don't have time to get deep into. But Steven Young, who was participating

59:00over Zoom because he was ill, his is entitled monotheism as a competitive strategy. Athanagoras,

59:06the pseudo Clementine literature and manufacturing Christian exceptionalism. And he didn't get

59:12into pseudo Clementine literature in the presentation, but he talked about Athanagoras and some

59:17other early Christians who were basically using the claim of monotheism to try to manufacture

59:22this idea that we're, we're different, we're revolutionary, we're radical, and we're better.

59:28So that identity marker and that value judgment where they're using monotheism already to

59:34do what Robin points out as being done in the 19th century in an effort to try to distinguish

59:40themselves. And primarily because they're on the losing end of imperialism. And right,

59:46but they need to find a way to pump themselves up. What what era was Athanagoras? Is it?

59:55Yeah, this is a late second century CE beginning of the third century CE. So this is right after

60:01the New Testament has been written, it's still kind of crystallizing. And these are the earliest

60:06what they call apologists who are basically starting in the middle of the second century

60:10CE, you get a bunch of Christians who are philosophers who are thinkers who are trying

60:17to make Christianity palatable for the Greco-Roman intelligentsia. They're going to kind of meld

60:24and merge the philosophical frameworks of the day with Christianity to try to argue,

60:31Hey, Christianity is compatible with all this. In fact, Christianity is the best manifestation

60:37of everything that you're already saying. Well, yeah, and explicit exceptionalism in

60:42Athanagoras. I mean, going to the extreme. I mean, calling things like pagans, they're

60:48oh, they just they're all, you know, poor Nia, that's all they're doing in their worship

60:53of their gods. And it's like we have the right readings of Homer, we have the right readings

60:58of this. Everyone else is sort of, you know, they're seen as like the filthy other, you

61:03know, I mean, exceptionalism and othering is not new in any religious practice. That is

61:10sort of a feature of most religions that I've encountered, I would say, like, but I think

61:17one of his important points is that when you start talking about other cults to other

61:24deities that way, but our cult to our deity this way, it's, you know, this is all wrapped

61:31up in their monotheism. So he's showing the rhetorical function of it. It's like in your

61:37face and brutally obvious then it might not be so much to someone who doesn't know the

61:43history of it in in Christian and early church fathers and afterwards. But if you know that

61:50history, you'd be more prone to catch it in the more developing periods, you know, later.

61:57And so the exceptionalism involved and what you can sneak in with that exceptionalism

62:03gets really dangerous, you know, well, there's so much more to talk about. But alas, we need

62:09to cut this off. So everything else is going to go to our patrons. And that's going to

62:14include, there's one more paper that we needed to talk about. Is that right?

62:18So we've got Josiah Bizby's paper Josiah is another one of the organizers of this conference

62:23and a longtime friend of, of David's. And he had a phenomenal paper entitled the divine

62:29council divine multiplicity and gradations of divinity and late antique midrash. Oh, yeah,

62:34I want to have been waiting for the rabbinic literature. His is all about that epic. Nice,

62:40nice. And I also want to talk about like sort of situating all of this that we've been

62:45talking talking about within sort of modern scholarship and and sort of get a, if you

62:53guys have, you're not allowed to answer this now, but if you have a shakedown of like where

62:57modern scholarship is with all of this, I'd love to talk about it. But that's for our

63:02patrons only. I'm afraid if you become a $10 a month patron, all of the after parties are

63:09available on Patreon, you can go to patreon.com/dataoverdogma. You can also join at the $5 month level

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63:24If if that's appealing to you, if you want to reach out to us, contact data over dogma pod.com

63:32is the address. David, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. It's

63:37my pleasure, guys. And we will talk to you all again next week. Bye everybody.

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