Ep 65: I Got Soul, and I'm Super Bad

00:00- They are literally taking these pillowcases and like

00:03(grunting)

00:05and you know, oh, I got your soul.

00:06And then God is like, you naughty little minxes.

00:11I'm gonna grab those pillowcases and I'm gonna open them up

00:14and the souls are gonna be able to get back out.

00:16(upbeat music)

00:18Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:22- And I'm Dan Beacher.

00:23- And you are listening to the Data Overdogma podcast

00:26where we increase public access to the academic study

00:29of the Bible and religion and combat that pernicious spread

00:34of misinformation about the same.

00:36How are things, Dan?

00:38- I'm pernicious, man.

00:40I'm out here being my sister as a tattoo.

00:42- On a weekday?

00:43- My sister actually has a tattoo of the word pernicious

00:45on her elbow 'cause-

00:47- Oh, does she?

00:48- Someone wrote an article about her music in a sort of

00:52underground rag and called her pernicious in pink

00:57'cause she had pink hair at the time and she was like,

00:59okay, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna be pernicious.

01:01- She's just gonna lean into that.

01:02- Yeah.

01:03- All right, not making it her whole identity

01:05but at least the identity of her elbow.

01:08- Yeah, that's right, that's exactly it.

01:10- Thank you, fair enough.

01:11- So, speaking of pernicious,

01:13let's get, today's show is gonna be a little pernicious.

01:17We're gonna talk about, or rather,

01:21it's gonna be about a concept that has been pernicious,

01:25permiscuous, it's been permiscuous in my life.

01:29So, we're gonna ask about the soul.

01:35- Yeah.

01:36- And then in the latter half of the show,

01:39we'll do a chapter and verse about that sort of uses

01:44that concept and we'll see how that plays out.

01:49- Yeah, we're gonna push back a little bit

01:51against the conventional wisdom about the concept

01:54of souls in the Bible but using my own research,

01:59one of my books, a book from another very well-respected

02:05scholar named Richard Steiner and some material remains

02:10that have come to light in more recent years

02:14that are gonna help us get a better grip

02:16on what the Bible's talking about when it talks about a soul.

02:20And there I'm, in my head, I'm quoting Lisa Simpson from.

02:24One of the best Simpsons episodes ever

02:27where Bart sells his soul.

02:29- Yes, indeed.

02:30- To Millhouse, right?

02:31- Yeah, yeah.

02:32And one of my favorite comic book guy lines

02:36when Bart is sleeping out front of his store

02:39'cause he wants to get his soul back

02:41and the comic book guy says,

02:43"As my breakfast burrito is congealing rapidly,

02:45"I will be brief," and then tells him he,

02:49he sold his soul, found a buyer right away for that.

02:54- So I, on the other hand, have tried to sell my soul

02:57and no one will take it.

02:59- No buyers, huh?

03:00- Yeah, it's very sad.

03:02- It's not a seller's market right now.

03:04- No, not for an atheist soul.

03:07An atheist soul means nothing to anybody.

03:08Here's the, as an atheist, I will say,

03:11like I have people talking to, you know,

03:15using this word soul or a spirit or, you know, whatever,

03:19which aren't necessarily synonyms,

03:23but can be used as synonyms.

03:25- There's certainly semantic overlap,

03:26but at the same time, they are different concepts.

03:29- Yeah, and I, so I have people use that word with me.

03:33And then I say, I don't know what that is.

03:36Like I don't have a concept of that

03:38that applies to my philosophy of the universe or whatever.

03:44And it blows people's minds.

03:47Even other, even other like non-believers

03:50who still have some sort of like sense of a spirit

03:55or whatever, it really confuses people for me

03:58not to have that sense.

04:00- And maybe we can clear up a little bit of that today

04:03because I'm gonna start from the cognitive sciences

04:08and our conceptualization of the self

04:11because that has a lot to do with why

04:14pretty much every society that has ever existed

04:17that we can document has, maybe not,

04:21has an authoritative version of this,

04:23but has some concept of an unseen kind of locus

04:28of the animacy of agency, of cognition,

04:34concepts of spirit, souls, ghosts, things like that.

04:38- Right. And so it's actually a very natural

04:42what's called a, well, it's kind of a side effect

04:47of human cognition of how our brains became the way they are.

04:52But to start, I wanna go, one of the ways

04:57that cognitive scientists try to better understand

05:00how our concepts of the world around us

05:02and of ourselves develop is by looking at infants

05:06and newborns and trying to see if there are

05:10features of perception that maybe are innate to us

05:15that are not things that we developed during our childhood.

05:20And one of the things that they've shown, for instance,

05:23is that even in the womb, they did an experiment

05:26where they shined lights through the pregnant women's bellies

05:31and then saw how the fetus is reacted.

05:36And they used a variety of different shapes

05:38and some of them are three dots with two dots on top

05:41and one on the bottom, which kind of somewhat looks

05:44like a face and then they would have it

05:47at different orientations.

05:48And when it was oriented with the two dots on top

05:51and the one dot on the bottom,

05:52so it looked more like a face, there was statistically

05:56significant feedback, reactions coming from the fetuses

06:01compared to all of the other orientations,

06:04which suggested to these scientists

06:06that there is something even fetuses within the womb

06:11are somehow programmed to recognize a human face.

06:16- Right.

06:17- And then when they're born, there's a lot more attention

06:20that newborns will give to human faces

06:23as opposed to other kinds of shapes and things like that.

06:28And one of the things that they notice growing up

06:31about a quarter of primary school aged children

06:36develop imaginary friends.

06:39And we just went and saw if with my girls in the theater.

06:44- Do you like it?

06:45- It was a fun little show.

06:47You kind of see where it was going,

06:50but it was a fun little show.

06:52And there were great voices that you had to try

06:55and recognize for the different imagination.

06:57- Yeah, that does seem to be the game, right?

06:59Figure out who, because there's like

07:02a hundred different famous people voices in it.

07:04- Yeah, yeah.

07:05So there were some fun ones, like George Clooney

07:07is in there and stuff like that.

07:09But an imaginary, and what's going on here is as kids grow up

07:14and they're starting to kind of observe things happening

07:18around them, some of the things that they notice

07:21are that people have intentions.

07:23They move their body in space in order to achieve things.

07:27And so we begin to kind of intuitively develop

07:30this notion that things happen for a reason.

07:33If somebody knocks something over, they intended to do that.

07:36There was some kind of action that caused some other action

07:39because some agent intended for that to happen.

07:43And so we develop this sense of intention and of agency,

07:48but we don't only limit it to things

07:52that we know are intentional agents.

07:54And so we can start to attribute intentional agency

07:58to movements and actions and things

08:01that are totally natural in the world around us.

08:03In fact, there was a very famous experiment done back

08:05in the '40s where they showed animations

08:07of like shapes, triangles and circles and squares

08:10moving around inside a box and outside a box

08:13and like a door opened and some of them come out

08:16and some of them come in.

08:17And then they asked people questions about what they saw

08:20and people attributed not only agency

08:23but personhood to these shapes.

08:25'Cause they were behaving how they would expect persons

08:29to behave and so intuitively,

08:31they just like understood them to be persons.

08:34- So the scientists who were conducting the experiment

08:37didn't say what did the triangle people do.

08:41They just said, what did you see?

08:43And people were like, well, the triangle people moved

08:45over there and the square people and you know,

08:48person man hates triangle man.

08:52- Right, who's big as the universe,

08:56but they didn't call them people,

08:58but they would say, oh, the triangle wanted to get out.

09:01- Right.

09:02- And the circle was getting in the way

09:04and the circle wanted to do this then the other.

09:06And so they were attributing agency and intention.

09:09And one of the things that we also notice is that

09:12our intentions and our thoughts are all internal to us.

09:16They're hidden from everybody else.

09:18We can speak and act in ways that mask and hide

09:22our intentions.

09:23And so we also develop this notion that our self

09:28is something that is interior to us

09:31and is not necessarily isometric with our body.

09:35And we also project that onto others.

09:38And we imagine that everybody else has some kind of self

09:41inside them that is unseen, that we can't access.

09:46And so as the concept of personhood develops in infancy

09:49into childhood, into young adulthood,

09:53this notion that the self is something that is inside

09:56the body and is not identified with the body isometrically

10:01stays with people.

10:03- Yeah.

10:04- And we have this notion and so this is where most people

10:08will be like, ah, you're getting into, you know, the,

10:12oh man, I can't remember people's names today.

10:15- Who said I, who said I think therefore I am, Descartes.

10:19- Descartes, okay.

10:20So we're getting into Cartesian dualism

10:22and you can't do that.

10:24And it's not exactly Cartesian dualism,

10:26but what it is is a concept of body agency part ability

10:31that we conceive of different locations of agency

10:37and cognition and things like that.

10:38Like, and some of these become socially conventionalized.

10:42Like, you know, you have people will say,

10:45oh, my heart is in conflict with my head.

10:48- Right.

10:49- It's like, no, they're not because your heart is not an agent

10:52nor is your head a separate agent.

10:54They are just different organs or body locations,

10:58regions of a single agent.

11:01But we conventionalize these notions

11:05and there's been research that shows that around the world

11:07in numerous different languages

11:10from all different types of cultures,

11:12there are three main ways that people organize

11:16the locations of agency.

11:19There's one that locates it in the chest.

11:21There's one that locates it in the guts.

11:24And then there's one that locates it

11:26between the head and the chest.

11:29So those are the three main like regions

11:32where societies and languages locate the self.

11:38And so one of the things that also develops from this

11:43is the idea that the self and the body can separate.

11:48And you can have different body parts

11:51that are responsible for different things.

11:53You remember the Seinfeld episode

11:54where Jerry is dating this beautiful woman

11:59who's not very smart.

12:02And he says, my penis and my brain

12:04are engaged in a chest match.

12:07And he's like, how long does the penis

12:11always beat the brain and George goes until you're 40?

12:14Then it's just not as much of a blowout.

12:16But the idea being that these are different,

12:21they're loci or locations of different kinds of interests.

12:26And then you know, your gut is where like fear is

12:28and your heart is where like love and passion is.

12:30And your head is where your analytical thinking is

12:33and all this kind of stuff.

12:34So you have different locations of this

12:37and although my understanding is that that's fairly,

12:40those specific locations are fairly new.

12:45Like having the head be the location

12:46of almost anything is a fairly new development, right?

12:50- Yes, these are all socially conventionalized.

12:55So it's modern societies influenced

12:58by the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment

13:04tend to have that idea

13:07that the head is where the analytical part is

13:09and the heart is where the emotional part is.

13:11Guts is where the fear part is.

13:13Because yeah,

13:14the brain wasn't thought to have any significance.

13:19And even if you go look in the Hebrew Bible,

13:22when it talks about the heart,

13:23that's usually what it's identifying

13:25as the location of cognition.

13:27- Of thought, right.

13:28- And so it's when the statement that Jesus says,

13:34in the New Testament, love God with all your heart,

13:38might, mind and strength, that's not in the Hebrew.

13:42That's something that was added

13:45when the Hebrew was translated into Greek

13:47because the Greek societies had a concept of the mind up here.

13:51And so they added that.

13:54And so frequently in the Hebrew Bible,

13:56the word "lave" heart is translated as noose mind in Greek.

14:01- Oh, interesting.

14:02Yeah, so you, it's different from society to society.

14:06- Right.

14:07- And there are, there are societies,

14:08like there have been people who looked

14:09at certain Melanesian societies

14:11where the person is not only constituted by their body,

14:15but also by their possessions.

14:18And then who they're married to and things like that.

14:22And there are these fascinating rituals that go on

14:26where if someone marries into the wrong bloodline,

14:29then they've got this problematic confluence of bloodlines

14:34and they actually have to give away possessions

14:37in order to write the ship.

14:40- Oh, interesting, that's crazy.

14:41- So the person, the person who can be constituted

14:43in all these different kinds of ways.

14:45And so when we look in the ancient world,

14:47one of the times when you see how people understand

14:52the different locations of agency and things like that

14:56is in death.

14:58And even today we see this,

15:01where I think I might have told this story before

15:03on the podcast, but there's a story about a guy

15:04whose daughter was killed in a car accident

15:07and she was an organ donor.

15:09And her heart went to a young man who needed a new heart.

15:12And the father of this young woman

15:16rode his bike across the country to go meet this guy

15:19and brought a stethoscope and listened to his heartbeat

15:21and said, I got to spend some time with my daughter,

15:25because that was for him.

15:27Like, if she had donated some kidneys,

15:31he wouldn't have been like,

15:31let me get on those kidneys.

15:32I can feel my daughter's presence there.

15:34But because the heart is so socially significant

15:37in terms of personhood,

15:39you can hear the heartbeat from outside the body

15:42that brought him to tears because for him,

15:46that was the sensation of being in the presence of his daughter.

15:50So in death, we see a lot of this.

15:52And anciently, we got to go to death in order to try

15:57to understand their concepts of personhood

15:59for a couple of reasons.

16:00One, because that's when it sits so close to the surface.

16:02But also, we have a lot more stuff

16:06that is mortuary and funerary in orientation

16:09just because of the accident of preservation.

16:12- Oh, right.

16:13- The accident of preservation.

16:14- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

16:14- Yeah, because they tend to bury stuff.

16:16And so the stuff that gets buried tends to be stuff

16:20that is preserved.

16:21So that's a bias that we have in archeology

16:25is we're heavily biased towards the mortuary stuff.

16:29But that helps us see how they understood the person.

16:33And there's some fascinating stuff from the Levant

16:37or ancient Southwest Asia.

16:39And one of the things I want to talk about,

16:40because we're going to talk about it a little bit

16:43is the concept of the steely.

16:45And not steely Dan, a lot of people,

16:48every time I bring up the tell Dan steely,

16:50people are like, is that where Steely Dan got their name from?

16:53No, of course that's not where Steely Dan got their name from.

16:55But you can go back to the Neolithic

16:59and you find stones that are taller than they are wide,

17:04where they have a flat face and then a rounded back

17:06that are set up along in different patterns

17:11and arrangements and things like that.

17:13And some of them are thought to be intended to represent deities.

17:17And others are thought to mark internments inhumations

17:22where people have been buried.

17:25Although they're not necessarily right above the burial,

17:28they're kind of an index for a burial

17:32that could be at some distance from the marker.

17:35But we start to see these things begin to function

17:39the same way that these markers seem to be housing,

17:45some kind of concept of a soul,

17:49some kind of partible vehicle for the agency of the deceased.

17:54And so in that sense, divine images and headstones,

17:59ancient headstones are functioning identically.

18:03They're both there to kind of index the unseen agency

18:08of this entity, whether it's a deceased loved one

18:11or a deity or something like that.

18:14And when we get into like ancient Egypt

18:17and Mesopotamia and things like that,

18:18and we get to see texts associated with this,

18:21there's some cool stuff that comes up.

18:23So in ancient Egypt,

18:26the torso was one of the main containers of the body

18:31and it housed the Ib, which is translated heart.

18:35That's the seat of intelligence.

18:36And then there was also the Chate was also associated

18:41with that area.

18:43And then there are a bunch of other kind of parts

18:45of the person.

18:46The ceperu was a manifestation of a person.

18:51You also had the ghan, which was the name of the person.

18:54You had the ach, which was the spirit of the person.

18:57But in their burial, there were like ways

19:01for each of these different elements of the person

19:03to be preserved.

19:05And the, but the most important thing

19:08for the survival of the person into the afterlife

19:11was the ka, which was an animating force or a twin

19:15that existed on in the person's statue

19:19once their corpse had disintegrated.

19:21Cause the soul was thought to do it,

19:23kind of stay with the body.

19:26And at night it could fly off and go do stuff.

19:30So it's kind of like a dream soul.

19:32If any, if you've ever heard of a dream soul,

19:34it's the idea that that you have a soul

19:36that leaves your body when you're asleep.

19:38And so your dreaming is, is that soul experiencing the world

19:41and then it comes back to your body.

19:43- My dream soul is weird, man.

19:43So in death.

19:46I'm just gonna say.

19:48- Mine gets into a lot of trouble,

19:50but you had the, this idea of the ka

19:54that could stay close to the body.

19:56But then when it disintegrated,

19:57it needed some kind of house.

20:00When the body was, was gone, it needed somewhere to be.

20:02And so there was usually a statue that was used as,

20:06as the house.

20:08And then there's also the ba,

20:10which was kind of a flexible concept

20:14that usually was associated with deities

20:16and then with kings and then was,

20:19was kind of democratized later on.

20:21And it was represented as a, as a saddle-billed stork

20:25or a bird with a human head.

20:27And similar to this idea of this thing

20:29that goes and, you know, can travel around.

20:32- Right.

20:33- And there's a cool story.

20:34If anybody ever wants to read some cool ancient

20:37Egyptian literature, the dispute between a man and his ba

20:41is a story about a guy who's contemplating suicide.

20:46And he's debating with his ba about whether or not

20:49to do this and because he's afraid his ba will abandon him.

20:54- His ba, I'm still confused about the ba concept.

20:57The ba is the stork thing I would.

21:00- Yeah, so this is another, it's like the ca,

21:04it's very similar to the ca.

21:06It's like spirit and soul, there's some overlap.

21:09So it's not clear exactly how they're different.

21:12But this is basically some element of personhood

21:15that's gotta be close to the body.

21:16But he's afraid if he takes his own life,

21:18the ba is gonna be like, you're a loser, I'm outta here.

21:21And then his afterlife is basically over.

21:24And the, the ba is supportive of this idea.

21:30And then realizes, oh shoot, if I run off

21:33when this guy's dead, then I'm not gonna be able

21:35to get the food and the provisions that are gonna be

21:37provided in this guy's mortuary chapel.

21:40So then I'm up a creek.

21:42And so they're both kind of like trying to figure out

21:45how to not get hosed by this guy's plan.

21:49It's a weird story.

21:50And then when we get to ancient Mesopotamia,

21:53we have, we also have multiple different elements.

21:56The atemu was the body spirit, that was the one

22:00that had to be close to the body.

22:01We got the nappish to was the animating force

22:05and the zakiku, which was the breath, the wind or the spirit.

22:09And again, there's some overlap, but also some distinction.

22:12And then the spirit of a deceased person

22:16could leave the underworld and invade the bodies

22:18of the living, usually through the ear.

22:20That was your weakest point of entry.

22:25- I don't like that, I don't want them to do that.

22:27- Yeah, no, you had to be, you know,

22:29it's with the headphones.

22:30- That's why we have the headphones,

22:32- That's why the kids are wearing headphones

22:33everywhere they go these days.

22:35I still think it's weird to see somebody inside a car

22:38with like big over the ear headphones on.

22:41- I do want, I do want to see some headphone manufacturer,

22:47Skullcandy or somebody, you know, Apple,

22:50just listing as one of its features,

22:53will block souls from invading the body through the ear.

22:57- So that you don't get possessed.

22:59- Yeah.

23:00(upbeat music)

23:03- And then there were rituals that had to be done

23:07when the person died so that they could occupy these statues

23:12after their body disintegrated.

23:16And that brings us to the main steely I want to talk about,

23:21which is the Katumua Steely,

23:23which was discovered in a place called Samal,

23:27which is in southeastern Anatolia, southeastern Turkey.

23:32And this was discovered in a zero hit tight town

23:36called Zincherli, and it dates to the 8th century BCE.

23:40And the steely looks a lot like a headstone in its shape.

23:45Most headstones are a little taller than they are wide.

23:49This one is just a little bit taller, it has a rounded top.

23:53But then there is this very expertly carved relief

23:58on the stone that it shows a figure seated

24:02in front of a table and they're holding a cup

24:06and a pine cone.

24:07And the pine cone is very important.

24:10You can't forget the pine cone.

24:11And then it has a table that has a duck and a bowl

24:14and like a stack of bread on it.

24:18And then the rest of the space is filled with an inscription.

24:22And I'm gonna read a translation of the inscription

24:24done by a friend of mine named Seth Sanders.

24:27And the inscription begins, I am Katumua,

24:30servant of Panamua, who commissioned for myself

24:34this steely while still living.

24:37- Oh wow.

24:37- I placed it in my eternal chamber.

24:40So this is like your mortuary chapel.

24:43And these exist in Israel, ancient Israel,

24:45they exist all over the place.

24:47And established a feast at this chamber.

24:51And then they're gonna list the offerings that are made.

24:53A bowl for Hadad, a ram for personal name,

24:57a ram for Shamsh, a ram for Hadad of the vineyards,

25:01a ram for Kubaba, and a ram for my Nevesh,

25:06which is equivalent to the Hebrew Nevesh.

25:10So my soul, which is in this steely.

25:16Henceforth, whoever of my sons or of the sons

25:19of anybody else should come into possession of this chamber,

25:22let him take from the best produce of this vineyard

25:25as a presentation offering year by year.

25:27He is also to perform the slaughter prescribed above

25:30in proximity to my soul and is to a portion for me,

25:34a leg cut.

25:35So if you had the means, before you died,

25:41you wanna do a raid, you know, these days,

25:43it's like we get shared burial plots

25:45and we got our, this is what we want our headstone to say.

25:48Recently, you were like, okay, here are the sacrifices

25:51that I want to be made to me as I am occupying this headstone.

25:56And it literally says, for my soul, which is in this steely.

26:02And so we have this notion similar to what's going on in Egypt,

26:06similar to what's going on in Mesopotamia,

26:08this Anatolian guy, Katumua, anticipates that when he dies,

26:15some part of his Nevesh, his Nevesh, his soul,

26:18is going to have to occupy that steely

26:22and he wants to ensure that he's being fed enough

26:27to ensure a lengthier afterlife.

26:30- You know, that's something, okay.

26:31So a couple of things come to mind when you tell me this.

26:34One thing is that this is, he's obvious, obviously,

26:41this is very close to how God's want their worshipers to act.

26:46- Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

26:49This is a point I make in my book.

26:50Your treatment of deceased kin

26:55is no different from your treatment of deities.

26:58- Interesting.

26:59- And deceased kin could be referred to as deities.

27:03- Right.

27:04- Remember when Samuel gets called up

27:05by the necromancer of Aendor,

27:08she says, "I see an Elohim, I see a God."

27:12And this is the deceased Samuel.

27:14And you have ancestor worship going on

27:18'cause there's nothing different

27:21between going to a special little space

27:25where there's a little standing stone

27:28to offer food to your deceased kin

27:31and going to a temple that has a little standing stone

27:35to make offerings to a God.

27:38And so there's an argument to make that very anciently,

27:42this is what people were doing with deceased kin

27:45and it morphed the deceased kin

27:49into what we now would call a deity.

27:52In other words, the worship of God's in temples

27:55may originate in the worship of ancestors

27:59in mortuary chapels.

28:00- And ancestor worship is a worldwide phenomenon.

28:03- All over the place. - That's happened everywhere.

28:06The other thing that struck me when you said that,

28:09when you talked about making these offerings to the dead,

28:14is that when I think about an offering

28:19or a sacrifice to a God,

28:22it never occurred to me that it was for eating,

28:24that it was for the God to be eating.

28:26But in this case, it seems very clear that it is

28:29that this person believed that their soul

28:33would need food.

28:34- Yeah, absolutely.

28:35- Do you think that the sacrifices to God's

28:38was also like, here have some food?

28:40Like it was actually an eating thing?

28:42- Yeah. - Okay.

28:44- Something interesting about rituals

28:46is most rituals are what we...

28:50What cognitive scientists would call causally opaque.

28:53We don't have a clear idea of the relationship

28:55between what we're doing and some kind of outcome.

28:59- Right.

28:59- People develop rationalizations.

29:01- No, we do this because this that and the other.

29:04And so when you look at the parallels between my deceased kin,

29:09I wanna have them have a lengthy successful afterlife.

29:14So I'm going to continue to give them food and drink

29:17and also light.

29:18One of the things that we frequently find

29:21with burial assemblages is lamps.

29:24They need light, they need food, they need drink.

29:28And the only reason is that they have a need of this.

29:33When you look at what's in the Jerusalem temple,

29:36you got a lamp, you've got a table of shoe bread,

29:40you've got offerings that are made.

29:43So it's the exact same stuff and it must originate

29:47from the same perception that the gods stand in need of this.

29:51And when we go back to the literature

29:53that existed before the Hebrew Bible,

29:56the humans are created to be enslaved to the gods

30:00so that they can provide the gods with all the things

30:03that they need and want.

30:05- Interesting.

30:05- And so the idea that, oh, this is just God wants us

30:09to show that we're willing to make sacrifices and say,

30:13well, it seems an awful lot like God just needs the food

30:18and needs the wine and needs the light.

30:22And so I have not made a full case for this,

30:26but in my book, I point out that it seems awfully convenient

30:31that in form and function,

30:34they're both doing the exact same thing

30:35and looking the exact same way.

30:37In fact, there are a lot of archeologists who argue

30:41with if they find like something that looks like a table,

30:44they will disagree over whether this is an altar for a God

30:47or an offering table for an ancestor.

30:50And one publication will say,

30:51this is very clearly an offering table.

30:53And another publication will say, this is very clearly an altar

30:56and it's because in form and function, they are the same.

31:00- Right.

31:01- And so the deity, and in my book, I make the case

31:05that deities, the concept of a national deity,

31:08probably develops out of this notion that after death,

31:11there's this unseen spirit soul thing out there

31:15that we still have to provide for,

31:19but also it can give us information.

31:21We can go to it and say, hey, can you curse so-and-so

31:26because she stood me up for a second date

31:30or because so-and-so is not returning my power tools

31:32or something like that, there are ways to petition

31:36your deceased ancestors to have them do favors for you

31:40or to have them give you information that you need.

31:42So again, exact same things that gods are doing for you.

31:47And Susan Ackerman has made a case years ago

31:51that one of the things that Josiah,

31:54that pernicious little king of Judah

31:56in the late eighth century BCE,

31:58that one of the things he was doing in Deuteronomy

32:01was trying to put an end to ancestor worship

32:04because he wanted Adonai, the god of Israel,

32:06to be the one that everybody had to go to

32:08instead of going to Old Man River who died.

32:13- Right.

32:14- That is interesting because if ancestors go on after death

32:20and it definitely seems like the concept

32:25is that these ancestors can then also provide some help

32:32to the living, you know, given these offerings

32:36and whatever, there's some agency there

32:38where they can provide some sort of help.

32:41If everybody has ancestors who they can go to for help,

32:46that's something that's beyond the control

32:48of the sort of centralized organization and so,

32:52and so it sort of dissipates their power structure.

32:56- Right, like in that kind of arrangement,

32:59the national deity is really only there

33:02to address national concerns, communal group things.

33:06But when it comes to the everyday stuff,

33:08they can just go to their ancestral deities

33:11and that may be one of the things

33:13that Deuteronomy is trying to do is say,

33:15"No, we want you coming to us to Adonai for everything."

33:19And there's a wonderful book that was published

33:23a couple of years ago by Kerry Sonja

33:25called "Caring for the Dead in Ancient Israel"

33:28that goes into detail about not just the cult of the dead,

33:32but ancestor worship and how that's represented

33:36throughout the Hebrew Bible.

33:37And then Christopher Hayes also has a wonderful book

33:40called "A Covenant with Death"

33:42and "On the Cover" is an image of Yield Catumua Steely,

33:47which is all about the Nefesh, the soul that is in this steely.

33:53So I think the concept of the soul is integrated

34:00with the concept of deity in the Hebrew Bible,

34:04the concept of worship in the Hebrew Bible.

34:06So I think it's so thoroughly integrated

34:10into the foundations of so much that we think about today

34:14when we think about what's going on in ancient Israel

34:17and Judah and early Judaism and even Christianity

34:20is developed from some of these ideas about souls

34:24that ultimately are rooted in what are called spandrels,

34:29that's an old Carl Sagan term that refers to the byproducts

34:35of the evolutionary process where it's addressing something

34:40but then there's this byproduct off to the side

34:43that also pops up and so the concepts of souls and deities

34:47are an example of an evolutionary spandrel

34:50that informs so much of what we understand today

34:55about religion, about the religion of the self

34:59as well as the religion of the gods.

35:01- Did the idea of the soul, maybe we don't know this,

35:06but I mean, one of the things that I'm wondering about

35:09because most of the things, like you say,

35:11we're talking a lot about funerary texts

35:14and sort of things that have to do with death

35:19which means that the concept of the soul

35:22has established itself as something that continues on

35:26after the death of the body.

35:28- Yeah.

35:29Do we know of whether the soul like maybe had,

35:29- Was that always the case?

35:33there was a development where the soul started out

35:35as just sort of this animating idea of,

35:39I mean, I guess you kind of talked about that

35:43in the beginning, do we know of a time period

35:48before the idea of the soul going on

35:51or was that pretty instantaneous?

35:53'Cause it seems like a lot of people

35:55would come up with that idea pretty quickly.

35:57- So from the perspective of the cognitive sciences,

36:02this would be something that has always existed.

36:05Because one of the things that everybody's always been

36:09around death and your mind, when you get to know somebody,

36:14your mind has certain ways to trigger

36:17your perception of their presence.

36:18And there are some folks who have this situation

36:23where they can't recognize faces.

36:25And so if you can't recognize a face,

36:27all of your background, all the history,

36:29all the memories that would be associated

36:32with that recognition, they don't get queued up.

36:35And so you don't have that connection

36:38that you normally would.

36:40And that is your mind projecting

36:43when you recognize somebody's face,

36:45your mind is projecting all that stuff

36:47onto your experience of the world around you.

36:49We experience the world kind of, it's a two-way street.

36:52We're receiving input, but our minds are also projecting

36:55the experience.

36:57If somebody, if a loved one, a child, a parent, a spouse,

37:03a friend, a celebrity you have a crush on,

37:06passes away, probably not the last one,

37:09but somebody you've spent a lot of time around

37:11passes away, your mind doesn't just turn now that off,

37:15which means that you continue a perfume,

37:18a room that you go into, a photograph,

37:22a food that you eat, all kinds of things

37:25can turn that on in your mind,

37:27even though the person is not there.

37:28And this is why people report experiencing

37:31the presence of deceased loved ones.

37:34It's because the mind can make that perception as real

37:37as when you're actually in their presence.

37:39And so that would be going on in the ancient world

37:42as people are just kind of developing ideas

37:46about what the world around them is like.

37:48And they, around the campfire, might say, you know,

37:51so-and-so, Aug died, but I came to me in a dream

37:56or I was out in the woods hunting

37:58and he was beside me and helped me in all these,

38:02there are all these different ways that they could perceive

38:04that this agent is still out there in the world somehow.

38:08And because just the nature of cognition has the world

38:12just potentially teeming with unseen agents anyway,

38:15it just fits naturally.

38:17- I mean, you joke about a celebrity dying as being,

38:22but I think that does fall into the category.

38:25The way that people respond,

38:27when a beloved, you know, Alan Rickman passes away-

38:31- Elvis.

38:33- And people-

38:34- Yeah, and not only, like people mourn deeply,

38:37I think, and you know, maybe that's just because,

38:41especially with actors, you develop what feels

38:46like a relationship with these people.

38:47Like you've, you know what I mean?

38:49- Yeah.

38:50- They're substitutionally present in your life.

38:54You know what I mean?

38:56- Yeah.

38:57- I've never met that actor maybe, but, you know,

39:00gosh, you've had, you've been, you know,

39:02you went to Mordor with them.

39:04- Yeah.

39:05- You've done, you've gone through a whole bunch of stuff.

39:08- Or you might have done unspeakable things

39:10with Britney Spears or with-

39:12- Right.

39:14- Any one of a number of different celebrity.

39:18- Yeah, but I do, I mean, it makes sense to me.

39:21I have a friend, when I was a friend of mine from college,

39:27passed away just a couple of years after college.

39:31And he had a specific look.

39:34I don't know what it is about his look.

39:36He had very dark black hair and, you know,

39:39a fairly average build.

39:42But I kept seeing dudes from behind

39:45who looked a lot like him.

39:46And it would spark.

39:50Like the exact thing that you're talking about.

39:53Like all of those synapses that were programmed to Eric

39:58suddenly would flash and I'd be like,

40:01"Oh, it's Eric."

40:02And then I'd be like, "No, no, not Eric.

40:05"I know for a fact that's not Eric."

40:07But I would have to like go through a process

40:10to sort of walk myself out of, "Hey, it's Eric."

40:13- Yeah, and that's your intuitive cognition.

40:16The automatic, not in your control side

40:20of the cognitive spectrum is flashing those cues

40:25and then the reflective side has to overrule it,

40:28has to say, "No, that can't be."

40:32And you know, there was a girl I dated in college,

40:36bad breakup, but I could like,

40:40I knew what kind of car she drove.

40:42And if I looked out of an airplane window

40:44at 35,000 feet and one of those cars was down there,

40:47I was going to spot it and suddenly going to be like,

40:51is that her?

40:51So yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.

40:56That's the reality.

40:57People have been dealing with that for thousands

40:59and thousands of years.

41:01Ever since we developed the capacity for imagination

41:05and what's called the theory of mind,

41:08the ability to project and simulate other minds,

41:13we've been experiencing that

41:16and that's just a side effect of human cognition,

41:20which is a fascinating one that I think we haven't even

41:24scratched the surface of the relevance of this

41:27two things like religion and worship and things like that.

41:31(upbeat music)

41:34- Well, I think that's all fascinating.

41:39I don't know, like from a cognitive perspective,

41:42I think I really make all of that make sense.

41:46I'm not 100% sure that I understand a biblical idea

41:49of a soul because we've gone through several different

41:54religiously oriented ideas,

42:00but maybe we should just move on to our chapter and verse.

42:05- Yeah, let's do it.

42:06- And get to the biblical concept.

42:09- Absolutely.

42:10(upbeat music)

42:12- So, the chapter and verse that you gave me,

42:16we're launching into Ezekiel 13.

42:19And I looked at this in several different translations

42:26because the first thing I did,

42:28no, we're Ezekiel 13 versus like 17 through 23-ish,

42:33is that what we're talking about?

42:36- Yeah.

42:37- And I went to our go-to, the NRSVUE,

42:42and saw nothing about a soul and went,

42:46what are we doing here?

42:47- Yeah.

42:48- So, I went and looked in other places

42:51and then it started to make more sense.

42:56KJV made, like mentions the soul,

42:59the NASB, the new American Standard Bible,

43:061995 edition, it's all different.

43:11I'm gonna start with the KJV.

43:13Can I just read some of the KJV

43:14so that people can get a sense of it?

43:16- Read on.

43:17- I'll start with, so in verse 17,

43:21likewise thou, son of man,

43:23set thy face against thy daughters of thy people,

43:26against the daughters of thy people,

43:28which prophesy out of their own heart

43:31and prophesy thou against them.

43:34And say, thus saith God, the Lord God,

43:39woe to the women that sow pillows to all armholes

43:44and make kerchiefs upon the head of every stature

43:48to hunt souls.

43:51- Whoa, man.

43:53- Yeah.

43:54(laughs)

43:56- Man, the 90s references just flow from you, man.

43:59- Yeah.

44:00- 90% of our audience has no idea what's going on.

44:03- That's okay, will ye hunt the souls of my people

44:07and will ye save the souls alive that come unto you?

44:11That's crazy, that's some crazy stuff.

44:15The new American Standard Bible says,

44:20woe to the women who sow magic beads on all wrists

44:27and make veils for the heads of persons of every stature

44:31to hunt down lives, these are very different.

44:36I think you can see that, and then NRSVUE says,

44:43woe to the women who sow bands on all wrists

44:49and make veils for the heads of persons of every height

44:53in the hunt for lives.

44:55So lives and souls become sort of interchangeable

45:00in these different translations.

45:04- Yeah.

45:05- But also, wah, what are we talking about?

45:10What are these women doing?

45:13- Yeah, this has long been kind of a puzzle.

45:16And we have the N-E-T, the new English translation.

45:21- Oh, another version, cool.

45:22- Yeah, so this is what the Sovereign Lord says,

45:25woe to those who sow bands on all the wrists

45:27and make headbands for heads of every size

45:29to entrap people's lives.

45:31And they, N-E-T is heavily annotated.

45:35And so for bands, the note says,

45:38the wristbands mentioned here

45:39probably represent magical bands or charms.

45:42And then there's a reference to Daniel Blox's

45:44Ezekiel commentary from the new international commentary series.

45:48And then the headbands says Daniel Blox suggests

45:51that given the context of magical devices,

45:53the expected parallel to the magical armbands

45:55and the meaning of this Hebrew root,

45:57it may refer to headbands or necklaces

45:59on which magical amulets were worn.

46:01So, yeah, there's a bit going on here,

46:06but there's a book that was published in 2015

46:09that I really enjoy and that I referenced a lot

46:13in my own dissertation by a scholar named Richard Steiner.

46:16And the book is called Disembodied Souls,

46:19The Nefesh in Israel and Kindred Spirits

46:22in the Ancient Near East.

46:23So, The Nefesh is the Hebrew word

46:25that is sometimes translated soul.

46:28- Right.

46:29- And the cool thing about this book is it is open access,

46:31just like my book.

46:32So, you can Google that title

46:34and you can just go find the PDF and you are able to read it,

46:38share it, consume it in whichever way blows your hair back.

46:43But the point of this book is to talk,

46:45one, to talk about what on earth is going on in this passage

46:49and then to talk about what significance

46:51that has to our concept of souls.

46:53And so, the words here that is translated

46:58in the KJV pillows, in the NAT and the NRSV bands,

47:02it is keset.

47:05And it only occurs here in 18 and I think again in verse 20,

47:09yeah, and then a verse 20 and it occurs in the plural.

47:12And scholars have long thought that this is cognate

47:16with an Akkadian term.

47:18- Passitu, and so, this is one of the ways

47:21that linguists try to figure out what words mean.

47:23They see if there's an equivalent term in another language

47:26and if their literature uses it in a way

47:29that makes it more clear what is intended there.

47:31But the Akkadian kesitu has something to do with binding.

47:36So, bands here has something to do with binding.

47:38So, I imagine somebody might think they've got bands

47:41that they're gonna go used to like,

47:44garat somebody or something like that to trap their life.

47:49But Steiner argues that we've got a much closer parallel

47:52in Mishnek Hebrew, which is probably deriving from Aramaic

47:57and that the author of Ezekiel is probably basing this

48:00on an Aramaic term where it would mean pillows,

48:05which is what we have in the King James version.

48:06However, Steiner goes on to argue it actually probably

48:08is just the pillowcase, not the filling.

48:11And the idea here is that they have these empty pillowcases

48:16and they also have kerchiffs on the head.

48:25They're hunting dream souls.

48:28They're gonna trap somebody's dream soul.

48:31So, we talked about this at night.

48:33The dream soul goes off on walkabout.

48:38And so, the idea-- - And then up naked at high school,

48:41I know, it's terrible.

48:42- Yeah, or is suddenly sitting down for a final

48:45that they didn't even study for.

48:48But the idea is that these women are going around

48:51to trap somebody's dream soul and then hold it for ransom.

48:55So, when it says hunt for lives,

48:58that's a specific interpretation of Neffesh.

49:00It's interpreting Neffesh as soul in the sense of synonym

49:04for a life. - Right.

49:06- So, like a ship manifest might say

49:08"We're 170 souls on board." - Right.

49:12- And the idea is hunting literally for souls.

49:15I'm gonna go steal souls.

49:17And then you send a message to the person,

49:20"You got your little tablet with your little--"

49:24Send a message saying, "I got your dream soul.

49:26"If you want it back, it's gonna cost so many shekels."

49:29- Or whatever. - Whatever.

49:31- What an interesting concept.

49:32- Yeah. - It's like a snipe hunt,

49:36but for souls. - But you remember the conversation

49:40between the man and his boss where the boss like,

49:42"Oh crap, if I'm away from this body

49:45"and I'm not getting the sustenance,

49:47"then I'm gonna wither away and die."

49:49And the idea is, "Hey, pay me my money,

49:52"or else I'm gonna hold onto your dream soul

49:55"and you've only got so many days

49:57"before the absence of your dream soul

49:59"will result in your own demise."

50:02- Interesting. - And so, they don't even have

50:03to do anything other than hold up a sack

50:07and say, "I got your soul and now you owe me money."

50:11So this is probably something that was going on

50:13somewhere around this time period.

50:15This is one of the ways that people were trying to con

50:18other people and take advantage of them.

50:21- It's a good con. - It's a great con.

50:23- It's hard to prove you don't have my soul.

50:25I don't know. - Yeah, yeah.

50:26And probably most people in this time period

50:30in any given day are probably feeling pretty down

50:34So if somebody was suddenly like,

50:34on their luck.

50:36"Hey, things been going wrong recently,

50:37"it's 'cause I took your soul."

50:39You know, half the time, they're probably gonna believe you

50:43because things have been going poorly for them.

50:46- You know, you've got the pillowcase,

50:49you've got the kerchief on your head,

50:50obviously you're a soul stealer, so.

50:53- Yeah, and I don't know if everybody else

50:56has the same experience that I have,

50:58but every now and then you'll just get some random text

51:00from some random number where somebody's like,

51:03"Hey, good to see you the other day.

51:04"How you doing?" - Right.

51:06- And black.

51:07But, you know, one out of every thousand of those,

51:10somebody's gonna be like, "Who's this?"

51:12And then they're gonna be able to take advantage

51:15of them, so. - Right.

51:16- Probably something similar going on.

51:17But this reflects the idea that,

51:19anciently, they did have this notion

51:21that a soul could depart from the body.

51:24You had the dream soul, a specific kind of soul

51:26that probably departed during sleep,

51:29but then you also had your main soul

51:31that, you know, after you died was probably,

51:34you hope to keep it close to your body

51:36until the body disintegrated

51:37and you hope to provide a home for it.

51:40And this makes sense of one of the ancient Aramaic

51:43and Greek words for a divine image,

51:45a battle, which is a bite L, or bait L,

51:49which means house of God,

51:51which is what Jacob refers to

51:54with the standing stone,

51:56that it literally houses the deity.

52:00- Right.

52:01- And so they, you know, and in Ezekiel,

52:03they had, maybe they had pillowcases

52:06that they used to capture

52:08and wrestle to the ground, your dream soul,

52:11which might have been, you know, a stork

52:14that was, that you snatched out of the sky or something.

52:18(laughs)

52:19- I, now I'm, okay, so now I'm picturing women

52:22with kerchiefs and a bird in a bag going around saying,

52:27I will release your, your dream soul for money.

52:33- Yeah.

52:34- I mean, it does, the, the, the--

52:36- It was the Wild West.

52:37- The scripture does go on to reference birds,

52:40to ensnare people like birds.

52:42I will tear them from your arms.

52:44So yeah, I guess there's a bird thing.

52:46- And you have in Isaiah and elsewhere,

52:48you have the association of birds and souls.

52:52'Cause souls, souls chirp like birds and things like that.

52:56And remember, they're flying around.

52:58So they, the bird is, is one symbol for the soul,

53:02not just in ancient Egypt, but in parts of the Bible as well.

53:05- Interesting.

53:06- And that's something that you can learn more about it.

53:07- This is Kooky, man.

53:08- In Christopher Hayes' book.

53:10- Covenant with death.

53:10- Yeah.

53:12Yeah, it's, it is bananas.

53:15- I mean, it's Kooky, but like instinctively,

53:18and I think this is kind of the point

53:19that you were making earlier, instinctively,

53:22I kind of get it.

53:24Like you think about your soul and you think it flies.

53:27I don't know why, but it just feels like it flies.

53:31It feels like, like, you know, all of this image.

53:33And maybe it's because of all the imagery that we've seen

53:36of like, you know, you think about this idea that we die

53:40and then, you know, in movies, in, in paintings, whatever.

53:43The soul rises from the body.

53:48You know, I'm thinking of the movie Ghost, right?

53:50- Yeah.

53:51- Or a Langer Girl.

53:53- He's got your dream soul.

53:55- Any number of ideas, like, I think it makes intuitive sense

54:00that not only that we have a non-ematerial part of us.

54:06And again, this is not a belief that I have.

54:16It's just, it just makes intuitive sense.

54:18- Yeah.

54:19- That there's this divorced from my body.

54:22There is this immaterial thing that is bigger than me

54:26or that moves, that houses my personality or my essence

54:31that isn't locked to my body.

54:37I think that, you know, we can put the lie to that concept

54:42fairly easily, you know, when someone gets a brain

54:46injury, their entire personality changes.

54:48And suddenly it's like, okay, well, that was in the brain.

54:52You know, at least that part of that personality

54:54was clearly a brain thing.

54:56- Yeah, it's all, it's all material.

54:58Like thoughts are our material things.

55:02- Right.

55:03- And this is, this is all projections of the mind.

55:07And you mentioned the passage that talks about birds.

55:10And, and I think this is one of the good,

55:11one of the things that, that supports Steiner's argument

55:16in verse 20.

55:16This is from the NRSVUE, but I'm gonna replace the words

55:19with what Steiner argues they are.

55:21Therefore thus says the Lord God,

55:23I am against your pillow cases with which you hunt souls.

55:28I will tear them from your arms and let the souls go free.

55:33- Oh wow.

55:34- The souls that you hunt down like birds.

55:38- Yeah.

55:38- And it's a pretty good illustration of the, the concept

55:42that they are, they are literally taking these pillow cases

55:45and like, oh, I got your soul.

55:48And, and then God is like, you naughty little minxes.

55:53I'm gonna grab those pillow cases and I'm gonna open them up

55:55and the souls are gonna be able to get back out.

55:58And, and who among us has not had a dream

56:00where we suddenly discovered one day, oh shoot, I can fly.

56:04- Yeah.

56:05The other thing about that verse that makes it the,

56:08I hadn't really caught on to the time I read it.

56:10You know, when I read it earlier is that it's clear that

56:15that, that the author of this, of these verses

56:20believes that this is a real thing.

56:22- Yeah.

56:23- Believes that, that these, these women,

56:26and it is specifically women, can, can use these bags

56:30and catch people's souls.

56:31Like, that's, that's, that's, I, I'm, I'm still praying

56:38for processing that.

56:39- Yeah.

56:40Yeah, absolutely.

56:42This is, and you know, like we, I mentioned the Necromancer

56:45of Aindoor, like that story represents the Necromancer

56:48as successfully calling up a deceased person.

56:52- Right, yeah, that's a real thing that can happen.

56:54- Yeah, and, and they, they condemn it,

56:57not because it's not real, but because, you know,

57:00you're, you're messing with the, the, the wrong side

57:03of the, of the spiritual tracks here.

57:05And so you're not supposed to be doing this stuff.

57:07- The dude you call forth might be, might be real mad.

57:10- Yeah.

57:11- And then, then what are you going to do?

57:14- Yeah.

57:14All right.

57:15Well, this is a really interesting conversation.

57:20I think the whole concept is fascinating.

57:22And I think people are going to have a lot of fun with it.

57:25And here's the thing, if you're a patron of this show,

57:30our patrons have a fairly lively conversation

57:35in the comments section of our, of our Patreon page.

57:39So I recommend, if you want to have a conversation

57:44about this episode, you could become a patron

57:48and then go and be a part of that conversation.

57:50You could do that by going to patreon.com/dataoverdogma

57:55and become a patron.

57:56If you are a patron at the $10 month level,

57:59you will get our after party, which is bonus content.

58:04If you're a patron at a $5 month level,

58:06you will be able to get early, add free versions

58:10of every episode and be able to participate

58:14in that conversation.

58:15So I recommend you go there.

58:18It's certainly the way, the main way that we pay our bills.

58:22And also, if you need, want to get in touch with us

58:27for anything, please feel free to reach out

58:29at contact@dataoverdogmapod.com.

58:34Dan, thanks for a great conversation

58:36and we'll talk to you all next week.

58:38- Bye everybody.

58:39(upbeat music)

58:42- Data Over Dogma is a member

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58:47It is a production of Data Over Dogma Media LLC,

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