Ep 130: Blessed Baruch!

00:00- Maybe Paul read this, maybe Paul was into this thing.

00:04- Maybe Paul was, I think Paul was probably

00:06into a lot of the, you know, the more underground stuff.

00:10You've probably never heard of it.

00:12- I liked it, I liked it.

00:13- I liked it back when it was, I liked it early.

00:16- When it was Hebrew, yeah.

00:17(upbeat music)

00:20- Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:25- And I'm Dan Beacher.

00:26- And you were listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast

00:30where we increase public access

00:31to the academic study of the Bible and religion

00:34and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

00:38How are things today, Dan?

00:40- Good, you're coming in kind of mellow.

00:41You got an NPR vibe.

00:43I'm coming in hot, I always come in hot.

00:47I'm not gonna have a brash goofball, but yeah.

00:52I was just gonna say this week is going

00:53to probably be a slightly truncated show.

00:57Dan is being very kind and going and recording

01:01on a day that we normally don't record.

01:04He's taking time away from his family

01:06that normally they get some day and time

01:09because I have to go and take care of some family business

01:13and an emergency trip's coming up, so.

01:15- Yes, you must abandon our good nation.

01:18- I'm fleeing the country.

01:20- Yes. - Sleeing, I say.

01:21But it is all for a good cause.

01:26- Yeah, so hopefully be forgiving,

01:30O-O-Y-E of listeners, of listen, dumb.

01:34- Yes.

01:35- And we'll come back hot next week

01:38with something extra spicy just for you.

01:42- And it won't just be the chili.

01:44- Yeah, that's right, you're gonna be having it in Sensi.

01:48- You're going off to Cincinnati,

01:49I'm going to Canada, it's gonna be crazy.

01:52- All right, so we're only gonna be doing

01:52- Yeah.

01:56one segment this week and it's gonna be,

02:00is it canon?

02:01- Will it canon?

02:05- Will it blend?

02:07- And you can too.

02:08- And this week's, is it canon is interesting,

02:12so it's Baruch.

02:14Now we've mentioned the book of Baruch.

02:16- We have.

02:17- Before, in conjunction with the letter of Jeremiah,

02:24which is sometimes tacked on to the end of Baruch

02:27as just the final chapter of Baruch.

02:30- Yeah, it is chapter six, just right on the end there,

02:35although most scholars agree this is definitely not written

02:38by the same crew and it is included in other parts.

02:43- And as I read it, when I got to chapter five of Baruch,

02:47I was like, wait, this is literally

02:50exactly the same thing as the letter of Jeremiah.

02:55It is, it's like, I mean, it's not identical,

02:58but it just does the same thing and it's so weird.

03:03It's weird to tack on.

03:06Yeah, if I were to read that as one book,

03:10I would be like, why are we doing this again?

03:12It's like someone was trying to remember

03:15what they just wrote and wrote it again.

03:18- That's a funny thing.

03:19If anybody out there ever ends up like taking a course

03:24in like, euguritic or something like that.

03:27Which, who among us hasn't?

03:29- Yes, I mean, that's the perennial question.

03:32Every, when the leaves start changing

03:36and everybody wonders, is now the year

03:38that I take a course in euguritic.

03:41But are you in first year euguritic with me?

03:45Who do you have for euguritic?

03:48- But you read these mythological texts

03:51and there's an awful lot of repetition.

03:54The same thing over and over again.

03:56I don't know how many letters I translated

04:00where I would skip over the first line

04:02because I knew it was going to say,

04:04so and so, too, so and so.

04:06At the feet of my Lord, I fall seven times,

04:10even eight times I fall at the feet of my Lord.

04:13Just the, the, the, the gravelling

04:17at one's feet, it's gravel, it's gravel.

04:21But yeah, so there's gravel.

04:23I mean, you know, depends on what the feet are standing on.

04:26- Yeah, it depends where you are at the moment

04:28that you collapse at their feet.

04:30But yeah, there's a lot of repetition

04:32and there's just so much of this kind of rhetoric

04:35in the text of Greco-Roman period Judaism.

04:38- Yeah.

04:38- It's just over and over again.

04:39Look, we got to stop with the idols.

04:43We got to stop with the worshiping the other deities.

04:46We've been over this and over this.

04:50It's kind of like being on Twitter right now

04:53where it's like, no, we've been through this.

04:56We've been through this.

04:58But yeah, today we're talking about the five chapters

05:02of the, of Baruch.

05:06- Yeah.

05:07- And Baruch is the son of Nariah.

05:13So Baruch Ben Nariah and he is well known

05:17from the book of Jeremiah.

05:20So this is the prophet who operated toward the very end

05:24of the seventh century BCE and then

05:26in the early sixth century BCE.

05:29So he was the one who was getting in everybody's face

05:32out on the street about the coming destruction

05:37of Jerusalem and forced migration of the Judah heights.

05:41And this made him obviously very unpopular

05:45among the who's who of--

05:49- The Hoi-Peloy.

05:50- Well, no, not the Hoi-Peloy, it would be the elite.

05:53The Hoi-Peloy would be the masses.

05:57- Okay.

05:57- But yeah, there was some unpopularity there,

06:00but it was mainly like the king.

06:02- Yeah, okay.

06:03- There's a famous chapter, 36, Jeremiah chapter 36,

06:07where Jeremiah is God's like, okay, Jeremiah,

06:12write all the words of this prophecy down

06:14and send it to the king.

06:15And Jeremiah's like, Baruch, get over here.

06:18- Come here.

06:19- Write down everything I say in a scroll and Baruch is okay.

06:23And writes it all down.

06:24And then goes and reads it to the people.

06:27And you know, it's all the, the Jeremiah's basically,

06:32a Jeremiah is kind of a finger wagging,

06:36ranting at everybody for their sins.

06:40And somebody who's in the crowd,

06:43like goes and tells the, some of the officials,

06:47and they invite Baruch in to, to read the scroll to them.

06:50And he reads the scroll to them.

06:51They take it to the king.

06:51They read it to the king.

06:53And the king evidently is sitting there by the fire

06:56and has the person reading every section that they read.

07:00They use a pen knife to cut off that section of the scroll

07:03and then just plunk, drop it in a fire.

07:05And so the king is, is basically is really not happy

07:10with Baruch and Baruch goes back to Jeremiah

07:14and is like, they, they birthed the scroll.

07:17- They didn't like it.

07:19- Yeah.

07:20- And where is different one?

07:22- And, and then Jeremiah goes to God and God's like,

07:25well, I guess we'll just do it again.

07:27And has Jeremiah dictate the words of the prophecy

07:33all over again and Baruch writes another scroll

07:38and gave it to the, to the secretary Baruch,

07:42son of Nariah who wrote it at Jeremiah's dictations,

07:45all the words of the scroll that King Jehoiakim,

07:47by the way, of Judah had burned in the fire

07:50and many similar words were added to them.

07:52So the king is not on their side.

07:56And, and this is kind of how the,

07:59the story of, of Baruch the, the apocryphal texts begins.

08:04- Yeah.

08:07- But before we get to that, is there anything

08:10that you wanted to add about Baruch or you like,

08:14- I didn't know what I want to do is situate us.

08:14let's move it.

08:17So you've, you've connected this to Jeremiah.

08:20But, so like within the stories of the Bible,

08:26if we were to take them as true, then this is,

08:31this is like during the exile.

08:35- Yes.

08:36So Jeremiah, the Jeremiah 36,

08:38that's happening right before the exile.

08:40The exile comes in, in waves.

08:43And the main ones like 587, 586 BCE,

08:47that's when the Jerusalem temple is actually destroyed

08:49by the Babylonians.

08:50And that's the final wave of forced migrations.

08:54And so the letter of Baruch actually begins

08:57by situating itself five years after that.

09:02- Right.

09:04And so when, when we have passed, talked about books

09:07that are, that theoretically take place during the exile,

09:12it has been, you have, you have made it clear

09:15that these books were not written in that time,

09:18but were actually written much later

09:19in the Hellenistic sort of periods or whatever.

09:21- Overwhelmingly, yes.

09:23Now, now the book of Jeremiah,

09:25portions of that are thought to be authentic,

09:28to come from the, the exilic period.

09:32Baruch, no.

09:34Okay.

09:35Baruch is definitely coming from well after that.

09:38There's, there's an awful lot in Baruch

09:40that is quoting, alluding to, paraphrasing,

09:45other parts of scripture, including non-canonical texts

09:49and things that are written well after the sixth century BCE.

09:54And so most scholars would say Baruch

09:55was probably written first century BCE, first century CE.

09:59- Oh, okay.

10:00- So the century before the life of Jesus

10:02or the century of the life of Jesus, somewhere in there.

10:06- Okay.

10:07- And scholars suggest that it's divided into four

10:11kind of general pieces.

10:14And the first two pieces make up the first half.

10:16They go to Baruch three, verse eight.

10:20And this scholars suggest may have a Hebrew,

10:25an underlying Hebrew source text.

10:28So it might have been composed in Hebrew

10:30and then translated into Greek.

10:31All the manuscripts that we have of Baruch are in Greek.

10:34We don't have any existing Hebrew manuscripts.

10:38And then for the second half,

10:40which basically switches over to poetry.

10:44From 39 to 59, you have wisdom poem

10:49and then you have a poem about return from exile.

10:55And these are a little, there are fewer semidicisms.

11:00So one of the ways that scholars can tell

11:02if something has been translated

11:04is if the Greek is using constructions

11:09and sayings and idioms and things like that

11:11that are not very Greek, but are very, very Hebrew.

11:16So for instance, the master's thesis I wrote

11:19at the University of Oxford,

11:21which was about textual criticism of the Septuagint

11:24and anti-anthropomorphism, that old chestnut.

11:29I was making the argument that there's this passage

11:35in the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew, Exodus 24-10,

11:39where Moses and the 70 elders go up Mount,

11:42Horever Mount Sinai, and it says they saw the God of Israel.

11:46And under his feet, it was like a brickwork of sapphire

11:51and shininess and all this kind of stuff.

11:53And they broke bread, basically.

11:55In the Greek, it says, and they saw the place

11:58where the God of Israel stood.

12:01However, the Greek says it in a very weird way.

12:06It says they saw the place there

12:09where the God of Israel stood.

12:12And that's not how you would normally say that in Greek.

12:15However, it is a perfectly normal way to say it in Hebrew.

12:20And so it's this resumptive adverb thing.

12:24And so the argument that I made was that this suggests

12:30that the Greek, the disappearance of God,

12:34the translating it so that they're not actually looking at God,

12:37my argument was that this was not the work

12:40of the translator saying, well, I don't like that.

12:42I'm gonna change it because what they changed it to

12:44is not natural Greek.

12:46My argument was that they were translating something

12:49they found in their Hebrew source text.

12:51And it was written that way in Hebrew

12:54in a very natural Hebrew way.

12:56And then they very wouldn't be translated it

12:59into unnatural Greek.

13:00So that was the argument I made.

13:02There's a very prominent Septuagint scholar

13:04who heartily disagrees with me and has published

13:08the stuff on that.

13:09A ding dong about that.

13:11Well, maybe not a ding dong,

13:12but at least wrong about that.

13:15Yeah.

13:16And since that was something I wrote

13:19as a recent graduate of my undergraduate degree,

13:24I've just kind of backed away slowly.

13:27So I have not taken up that cross recently,

13:31but that's an example of one way that scholars can say,

13:35this was probably written in Hebrew

13:37is if the Greek is a little weird,

13:40but works well if you back-translated into Hebrew.

13:45But you don't really get that for the second half of Baruch,

13:48which maybe is an indication that the book came together

13:52in stages, maybe is an indication that maybe the author

13:57translated the first half from a Hebrew source text

14:01and then was like, I'm gonna roll,

14:02I'm gonna keep pumping out the text.

14:04Yeah.

14:05Why stop here?

14:06Yeah.

14:07(upbeat music)

14:10So we've got the four different segments divided into two.

14:16You can divide it in half.

14:18The first half is a little more narrative

14:20and talks about a prayer.

14:22You gotta admit the guilt.

14:24You got all these petitions that you offer.

14:26And then the second half is just poetry.

14:31But it's set in around 582-ish BCE somewhere in there.

14:36And one of the ways we know this is not actually written

14:41in 582 BCE is it starts with Baruch sending the words

14:46of this book to Jaconia or Jecconiah,

14:53son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah.

14:57And says, talks about passing the hat around basically

15:01to get a bunch of silver, send it to the priest in Jerusalem,

15:06and they basically want them to do these temple offerings.

15:11Right, right.

15:14And it says Baruch took the vessels of the house

15:16of the Lord that had been carried away from the temple

15:18to return them to the land of Judah.

15:20But the temple was destroyed.

15:24Right, it would not be rebuilt until like 519 BCE.

15:29So several more decades, and so this is probably being written

15:34by somebody who knows about the existence

15:36of the second temple, and for whatever reason,

15:38misunderstood the availability of the temple.

15:41Didn't get the timeline exactly right.

15:44Yeah, so got a lot of begats correctly.

15:48Like I got as Baruch, son of Nero, son of Mesas,

15:52son of Mesas, son of Mesas, blah, blah, blah, blah.

15:56But yeah, the timeline got a little wiggly there.

16:00And yeah, and this is kind of par for the course

16:04for Greco-Roman period Judaism.

16:05Like the book of Daniel does this as well.

16:07We've talked about that in the past, that Daniel was like,

16:10yeah, and then there was this other guy.

16:12And he did this and it's like, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh,

16:15there was like Darius the Meade conquered Babylon,

16:19and then Cyrus the Great came in after Darius,

16:22and it's like, no, Cyrus conquered Babylon.

16:25And then there was a Darius who was a Persian

16:28who came after Cyrus.

16:30And so even the most popular texts from that time period

16:35that made it into the canon, unlike Baruch,

16:38but Daniel made it into the canon,

16:39got a lot of the details wrong.

16:41So yeah, that is suggestive of somebody

16:45who's not writing in this time period.

16:48And so we have Baruch basically instructing the people,

16:53saying basically look, the exile is because

17:00y'all were naughty, and so--

17:02- Everybody, all of us.

17:04- Yes.

17:05- The entire people, we were all bad.

17:10And we need to now pray and admit that we were bad

17:14and say we're just so very sorry.

17:19- Yes.

17:20- And then one of the weird things,

17:22what do you make of verse 11 in chapter one that says,

17:26and pray for the life of King Nebuchadnezzar?

17:28This is the Babylonian king for the life of his son,

17:33Belshazzar, so that their days on earth

17:35may be like the days of heaven.

17:37- Oof.

17:38Yeah, and this is related to something that happens

17:41in the book of Jeremiah, where in Jeremiah,

17:45you have a bunch of people who are saying,

17:48let's get God to send us back home right away,

17:52don't even unpack your bags,

17:54and God's gonna send us right back in Jeremiah 29,

17:59Jeremiah writes a letter to the exiles in Babylon,

18:03and basically says, get comfortable.

18:06- Yeah.

18:07- You're all gonna be there a while.

18:08And then, and I think it's verse seven, is it seven?

18:11Yes, verse seven, but seek the welfare of the city

18:15where I have sent you into exile

18:16and pray to the Lord on its behalf for in its welfare,

18:20you will find your welfare.

18:23And this is something that has been appealed to

18:28by Christian nationalists.

18:30We talked about Charlie Kirk appealing to this passage

18:34to endorse Christian nationalism,

18:36the idea that you're basically,

18:40that your religion should be involved in statecraft

18:43and in ensuring the success of the government,

18:48even though really what's going on here

18:51is Jeremiah is just telling them, get cozy.

18:56- Buckle up.

18:57- Yeah, 'cause you're not going anywhere anytime soon.

18:59And so I imagine that Baruch here is kind of reflecting

19:03on that's where in order to try to draw lines

19:08of connection between what he's talking about

19:10and the scripture that already exists.

19:13- Right.

19:13- Everybody knows about, he's just kind of gonna touch

19:17those bases, hit those beats.

19:19So that they can be like, oh yeah, this is the guy.

19:21- This felt different from that though.

19:23It just felt weird to pray for the conquering king.

19:27You know what I mean?

19:28Pray for the guy that's oppressing us,

19:30not just for us while we're here or for, you know,

19:33for it to be a comfortable stay or whatever,

19:35but yeah, it just seemed a little weird.

19:38- Well, and for them to feel like they're in heaven.

19:41(laughing)

19:43- And the next verse says the Lord will give us strength

19:45and light to our eyes.

19:46We shall live under the protection of King Nebuchadnezzar

19:48of Babylon and under the protection of his son Belchazar.

19:51And we so serve them many days in fine favor in their sight.

19:56And then, you know, few years after that,

19:59it's 587, 539 BCE, Cyrus, the great comes in

20:04and conquers Babylon.

20:05And then suddenly everybody's like,

20:08Oh, pray for that guy over there now.

20:10- He's even better, great.

20:12- And Isaiah 45-1, I don't know why I'm confusing,

20:1745 and 47.

20:21Yeah, it's 45-1, begins with thus says the Lord

20:25to his anointed to Cyrus,

20:30whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations

20:33before him and strip kings of the rogue.

20:35So Cyrus is referred to as the Lord's Christ,

20:39the Lord's anointed, the Lord's Messiah in Isaiah 45.

20:43So you have some of that similar,

20:46this is our guy language,

20:48not just for Nebuchadnezzar and Belchazar,

20:51but also for the guy who conquered Nebuchadnezzar.

20:55- Right.

20:56- And Belchazar, at least their kingdom.

20:58- It just isn't so weird to do that

21:00when you're writing so far after the fact.

21:03- Yeah, and I think it really is just an attempt

21:06to try to draw points of contact.

21:09- Right, to make it sound like the other texts

21:13that have come before.

21:14- Yeah, and to make it seem like,

21:15Oh, this is Baruch, this is, you know, Baruch wrote,

21:18Jeremiah wrote that letter and said the same thing.

21:21So now our guy is saying the same thing.

21:23And there's, according to, I don't remember,

21:28if it's in the text of Jeremiah,

21:30if any Jeremiah scholars are listening to this,

21:32they're gonna be yelling at me.

21:34But Jeremiah was supposed to have fled to Egypt with Baruch.

21:39- Oh, they weren't even supposed to be in exile.

21:42- Oops, you don't even go here.

21:45Okay, so stop trying to make Baruch happen.

21:53So yeah, we have, I think that's the origin of that rhetoric.

21:58And yeah, you've got the confession of sins,

22:01you've got prayers for deliverance

22:03that are supposed to be offered,

22:05or you say, Oh, Lord God of Israel,

22:07who brought your people out of the land of Egypt

22:09with a mighty hand and with signs and wonders

22:11and with great power and that outstretched arm

22:13and made yourself a name that continues to stay.

22:15We have sinned, we have been ungodly,

22:17we have done wrong.

22:19Oh Lord, our God, against all your ordinances,

22:21let your anger turn away from us.

22:22- And there's, I gotta say, a lot of that stuff.

22:26- Yeah.

22:27- It is repetitive, it is just,

22:29Oh, we are not worthy, we are such pieces of crap.

22:34Please, please, don't be mean to us.

22:37We beg of you, we know that we're awful

22:40and it just keeps going and going and going.

22:42- Yeah, yeah, it is the Lady Doth protest too much.

22:47That's not what that phrase means.

22:51But yeah, there is an awful lot of that.

22:54That's, it makes it sound like the author

22:57is trying to kind of, I don't know,

23:01the more heartfelt the performance of this,

23:05maybe the more effective it will be.

23:08- I guess.

23:08- If you just go, maybe, you know,

23:10God's like, and 45 minutes.

23:14Okay, I'll go ahead and answer your prayer

23:18or bless you according to your wish.

23:22I just think of Evan Almighty.

23:25No, not Evan Almighty, Bruce Almighty,

23:27Bruce Almighty when he's getting all the emails

23:30from all the prayers and it's overwhelming him.

23:35- It makes me think of the very spot on joke

23:40that Monty Python made at one point where they did,

23:44and now do, you know, recite the prayer.

23:47Oh Lord, ooh, you are so big,

23:51so absolutely huge.

23:54Gosh, we're all really impressed down here.

23:56I can tell you, I mean, it's, that's barely satire

24:01of what this actually is.

24:04- Well, yeah, well, all it's doing is taking the sentiments

24:09and then articulating it in a way that is,

24:13is not hiding behind sophisticated

24:17highbrow, archaic language.

24:20- Right, right.

24:21- If you translate it into what it would be saying.

24:25- Down to earth, yeah.

24:26- So anyway, it is so obsequious.

24:30Yeah, so Lord God Almighty, God of Israel.

24:36Yada, yada, yada, yada.

24:37Have you ever yada, yada, repentants?

24:42- And so, and then we move on, chapter three,

24:46it just goes on like this.

24:48And then after verse eight,

24:49we get to the poems about wisdom.

24:54(upbeat music)

24:57- About wisdom, and then I think, as I read it,

25:03and a couple of times I had to sort of shake myself

25:06out of the stupor that this kind of biblical poetry puts me in.

25:11- Yeah, but as I read it, what was that?

25:14- It seems like it's about quote unquote wisdom,

25:18but basically what it's about is,

25:20you can't get wisdom in the big cities,

25:23you gotta just follow the rules of the law,

25:27and the end, that's all the wisdom there is.

25:30You don't get any more wisdom than that.

25:32- And it's, yeah, so wisdom is personified,

25:38it's this divine gift,

25:40but it's really identified with Torah, with the law.

25:43And so basically it's like, you want wisdom,

25:45there's your wisdom right there.

25:48- We already wrote it down.

25:49What do you want, more do you want?

25:50Stop looking for other wisdom, there's no more wisdom.

25:53We wrote down all the wisdom.

25:55- For Latter-day Saints, a wisdom, a wisdom,

26:00we already have a wisdom.

26:02We have no more need of wisdom.

26:05So it's, and this is riffing on Proverbs eight,

26:09that's where wisdom is personified,

26:11and was like, I was engendered before the hills,

26:14and I was birthed before God drew the circle of the earth.

26:19- And then we also have Sirach chapter 24,

26:23I believe is also related to this.

26:26So again, we're trying to create points of contact

26:30with scripture that's already in circulation,

26:33in order to increase the gravitas,

26:36the authority of our text.

26:40And Israel has forsaken wisdom,

26:44but then we have the promise of redemption

26:47from a figure who comes from on high.

26:51I think this is 3.29.

26:53Who has gone up into heaven and taken her

26:55and brought her down from the clouds?

26:57Who has gone over the sea and found her

26:59and will buy her for pure gold?

27:01No one knows the way to her

27:02or is concerned about the path to her.

27:04But the one who knows all things knows her.

27:06He found her by his understanding,

27:08the one who prepared the earth for all time

27:10filled it with four-footed creatures,

27:13anything more or less than that is of the devil of it.

27:16He called them and they said, here we are,

27:22they shown with gladness for him who made them.

27:24This is our God, no other can be compared to him.

27:26And yeah, he found the whole way to knowledge

27:31and gave her to his servant Jacob

27:33in Israel whom he loved afterwards.

27:35She appeared on earth and lived with humankind.

27:37She is the book of the commandments of God,

27:40the law that endures forever.

27:42Yeah, so we've got a lot of wisdom going on

27:49and then we get a bunch of encouragement for Israel.

27:53We've just been like, you gotta just, I suck.

27:56You're the greatest, I'm the worst.

27:59You're awesome, I'm awful, you're beautiful.

28:02I'm ugly.

28:04And then we get the wisdom poetry

28:07and then we get these poems of consolation

28:10as basically saying, it'll be okay, it's cool, man.

28:13You're gonna be all right.

28:15There's gonna be some joy, there's gonna be some,

28:18there was sorrow and now there's gonna be joy.

28:24Yeah.

28:26Yeah, and there's still some lamenting.

28:29I was left desolate because of the sins of my children

28:32because they turned away from the law of God

28:34in no regard for his statutes.

28:37They did not walk in the way of God.

28:39His commandments.

28:40(laughing)

28:42Is this how you treat me?

28:44After all I've done for you.

28:46It's the Jewish mother for sure.

28:49But we, how can I help you in verse 18

28:52for he who brought these calamities

28:54will deliver you from the hand of your enemies?

28:56Which sounds an awful lot like a lot of the prophetic texts

29:01that's like God, just beat you down.

29:06But God will be nice to you again.

29:07God's gonna pick you back up and everything will be okay.

29:10Not in your lifetime.

29:12(laughing)

29:13No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

29:14But yeah, your kids are gonna get a nice condo

29:18back in Judah when we're all done with this.

29:22Take courage, my children, cry to God

29:24and he will deliver you from the power and hand of the enemy

29:27for I've put my hope and the everlasting to save you.

29:29So it's kind of, there's a,

29:31I remember learning something called the,

29:34what was it called?

29:35I think it's called the criticism sandwich.

29:38When you're training, when you're like coaching people.

29:43The compliment sandwich.

29:44Compliment sandwich, yeah.

29:46Where you say something nice,

29:47give them some constructive criticism

29:49and then say something nice.

29:51You're actually more correct.

29:52They do say call it a compliment sandwich,

29:55but it's a criticism sandwich.

29:57The thing between the bread is the criticism, yeah.

30:00Is the, is what you name the sandwich after.

30:02So, so you're right.

30:03It is a criticism sandwich, not a compliment sandwich,

30:06but yeah, that's what we have here.

30:10Yeah.

30:11A nice MLT where the mutton is nice and lean.

30:15Yeah, exactly.

30:16Right.

30:17I sent you out with sorrow and weeping good,

30:20but God will give you back to me with joy

30:22and gladness forever.

30:24And it just goes on like that.

30:26Yeah, so you've got a lot more of that.

30:28And then Jerusalem is addressed in the vocative.

30:32Oh, Jerusalem, take courage for the one

30:34who named you will comfort you.

30:36So, yeah, the, and this is the second half.

30:40Chapter five is only nine verses.

30:42Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction

30:45of Jerusalem and put on forever the beauty

30:47of the glory from God.

30:48Put on the robe of righteousness that comes from God.

30:50Put on, this is sounding very Pauline.

30:52Put on your head, the diadem of the glory

30:55of the everlasting, for God will show your splendor

30:57everywhere under heaven.

30:58For God will give you evermore of the name,

31:00righteous peace, godly glory.

31:02Arise Jerusalem, stand upon the height,

31:05look toward the east and see your children

31:06gather from west to east.

31:08And it continues on like that.

31:10That's interesting that you say it's Pauline

31:12'cause you said there's a possibility

31:16that this could have been influenced by Paul.

31:19If it said at the very late window,

31:23chronological window of composition, who knows?

31:26I think it is considered a Jewish composition

31:29and not a Christian one.

31:31But yeah, the whole put on, you know,

31:32put on the robe of righteousness,

31:34put on your head, the diadem of the glory

31:36of the everlasting sounds an awful lot like Paul saying,

31:41put on the helmet of righteousness

31:44and pick up the shield of faith.

31:45- Or maybe Paul read this, maybe Paul was into this thing.

31:48- Maybe Paul was, I think Paul was probably

31:51into a lot of the, you know, the more underground stuff.

31:56You've probably never heard of it.

31:57- I liked it, I liked Berouq back when it was,

32:00I liked his earliest when it was Hebrew, yeah.

32:04Tell me this, because when I was looking at,

32:06you know, when I was doing some research,

32:08that essentially like this is a Jewish text,

32:13but Jews don't take ownership of this.

32:19- Jews now don't include this in their scripture.

32:22- So this is something that was included in the Septuagint.

32:27Now Septuagint is a designation that is more closely connected

32:32with Christian transmission of the scriptures,

32:35but it comes from an ancient Jewish tale

32:39of the pseudo-Aristaeus.

32:42And so it is part of the ancient Greek translation

32:46of the Hebrew Bible, which was in circulation

32:48on Greco-Roman period Jewish folks,

32:50probably until, you know, second and third centuries CE,

32:55as you're having this division of Judaism and Christianity

32:59at where Judaism kind of rejects the Greek foundation

33:03of what's going on in Christianity.

33:07Judaism, the rise of rabbinic Judaism

33:11is kind of based on a rhetorical, not entirely historical,

33:16but at least the rhetorical rejection of the influence

33:19of the Greek world and a return to the more ancient

33:24pristine original Hebrew worldview.

33:26And so it takes a while, but ultimately their canon

33:30settles on things that were composed in Hebrew and Aramaic.

33:37And so things that only existed in Greek

33:40were overwhelmingly rejected.

33:42And so they're preserved in the Greek Septuagint,

33:45which was the Old Testament of early Christianity.

33:49And there's a great book written by my thesis supervisor

33:53when I was at the University of Oxford,

33:55Timothy Michael Law called When God Spoke Greek,

33:58the Septuagint and the making of the Christian Bible,

34:02which talks all about how basically Greco-Roman period Judaism

34:06brings the Jewish scriptures from Hebrew into Greek,

34:10Christianity develops and runs with the Greek scriptures

34:16whereas Judaism goes, we changed our minds.

34:19We're going back to the Hebrew.

34:21And so a lot of these Jewish texts

34:24that were either composed in or primarily transmitted

34:28in Greek exist and were transmitted and perpetuated

34:32because they were used by Christians

34:35and not so much by Jewish folks.

34:40- Interesting.

34:41- Yeah, and so even things like a lot of the manuscripts

34:44of Josephus and Philo and things like that

34:46were not really preserved within Jewish communities

34:49nearly as much as within Christian communities.

34:53And so this is one of the things

34:55that would have been translated into Latin

34:58as part of the Vulgic.

35:00But then by the time we get to the Protestant Reformation

35:04and Martin Luther is like, oh, I don't like this stuff.

35:08And so that gets put into the Apocrypha

35:12and then Protestants in the 19th century decide,

35:16we don't want to hang around you anymore Apocrypha, go home.

35:21- Right.

35:21- And so yeah, Baruch is a Jewish text

35:24that primarily is preserved in Christian manuscripts

35:29like the Septuagint manuscripts

35:32of the fourth and fifth centuries CE.

35:36- Okay.

35:37- So yeah, it is, and that's a peculiarity

35:40of the development of rabbinic Judaism and Christianity.

35:45And in fact, when we look at,

35:47and I think we talked about this

35:50in one of the discussions that we had about ideas

35:54about fetal personhood and abortion,

35:58where Christianity sticks with the Greek philosophical

36:03perspective, whereas rabbinic Judaism returns

36:07to the perspective of the Hebrew Bible,

36:09abandons the Greek philosophical perspective

36:12and goes back to the Hebrew Bible.

36:15And so the parting of the ways whenever this occurs

36:19in a lot of ways is a question of who's going to return

36:23to Hebrew Bible stuff and who's going to carry on

36:27the Greek philosophical tradition

36:31as it overlaid upon the scriptures.

36:34- Okay.

36:38- All right, well, let's close this out.

36:40We're looking at, yeah, I guess the,

36:45as you say, Baruch 5 is short,

36:50but again, it is literally the same as Baruch 6,

36:55which is the letter of Jeremiah.

36:58It's all just, don't worry about the bad guys, gods.

37:07Don't worry about them, that's not, you know,

37:09you're not gonna, they can't do anything.

37:11- They're nothing.

37:12Yeah, they can't bake a cake, they can't do any of this stuff.

37:17Yeah, and it's interesting, you've got four different texts

37:22in like the Vulgates that are related to Jeremiah.

37:27You've got Jeremiah, you've got Lamentations,

37:29you've got Baruch, and you've got the letter of Jeremiah.

37:32And they're all basically doing the same thing

37:35in terms of trying to convince people

37:38not to adopt the worship practices of the people around them

37:42because that's what caused the exile in the first place.

37:45And it looks like in ancient Septuagint manuscripts,

37:50you have the orgo Jeremiah Baruch Lamentations letter of Jeremiah.

37:55Whereas in the Latin tradition,

37:57the Vedas Latina, the old Latin,

38:01when Jeremiah Baruch Lamentations letter of Jeremiah.

38:04So that's the same, although it looks like

38:08Baruch is appended to Jeremiah without a break.

38:13So Baruch is basically the end of Jeremiah.

38:16And then there, Jerome's Vulgate has Jeremiah Lamentations,

38:21but then omits Baruch and the letter of Jeremiah.

38:25So yeah, different people did different stuff with it

38:28and put it in different orders.

38:30But yeah, it's an interesting tradition.

38:33And if you want to understand how Christians would have engaged,

38:38at least for the first four centuries-ish

38:41of followers of Jesus, how they would have engaged these texts,

38:46you got to read Baruch.

38:48You got to see the lens through which they're looking at Jeremiah.

38:52And they weren't incredibly critical about where this came from

38:57and why it feels so Greek to them

39:00because everything they were dealing with was some kind of Greek.

39:05- Yeah, I've never thought of the Christian Jewish divide

39:10as being linguistic as well as sort of theological.

39:16But it does seem like that's as good a place

39:22to draw the line as any almost.

39:25- I think it was certainly a big factor

39:27because I think the use of the Septuagint,

39:30the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible

39:32became an identity marker for Christians.

39:35And in fact, you have folks like Origin of Alexandria

39:39who creates what's called the Hexapla, what did I say?

39:44The Hexapla, which is like a six column manuscript

39:49of the Bible where he's got the Hebrew

39:51and then he's got a transliteration of the Hebrew into Greek

39:55and then he's got the Septuagint

39:56and he's got different recensions of the Septuagint

40:00and he's got little annotations that he makes

40:02where the Hebrew differs from the Septuagint.

40:05And a lot of people were saying that the differences

40:09were because Jewish folks realized the Septuagint

40:13was their scriptures were too Christian

40:18and so they revised the Hebrew away from Christianity

40:23to make their scriptures sound less Christian.

40:26- Okay.

40:27- And so early Christians were like,

40:29those Jewish people, they're changing their text,

40:32they're changing the Bible to make it sound less Christian.

40:35So it's the complete opposite, obviously.

40:40The Septuagint was translated in a period

40:44of heightened messianism and Greek thought.

40:49And so it's really the sociocultural influences

40:53that gave rise to Christianity

40:56and that Christianity kind of ran with

40:58that are responsible for the differences,

41:00introducing the differences.

41:02And so I laugh when people today,

41:05buy a new translation of the New Testament

41:08and they're like, "They took out the verses!"

41:11And the unnamed "they" is doing all this stuff.

41:17And it's like, no, they're giving you a more faithful,

41:23more accurate Bible verses were added

41:26by other people after the fact.

41:29And so they're not taking stuff away from the word of God,

41:33they are restoring a more accurate version

41:36of the quote unquote word of God.

41:39So I feel like whoever the "they" is,

41:42whoever made the, when you do a new version of the Bible

41:46and you make the choice to make it more accurate

41:49to what we believe the original text would have been.

41:53And you take and you cut out some stuff.

41:55But what I'm saying is just yell about it.

41:58Just scream, "Here's what I'm doing, everybody.

42:02"Here's why I'm doing it.

42:04"I just want you to know,

42:06"don't just release the version,

42:09"don't just like put it out into the world

42:12"and hope that the people read the footnotes."

42:15- And I'm sure that there's a degree

42:18to which they try to do that,

42:19but it's never gonna be enough

42:21'cause they're always people.

42:22As many times as I've made that video and I've said,

42:26look, Matthew 1721 wasn't in the earliest manuscripts,

42:31that's why it's not there.

42:34There are gonna be, until the sun expands

42:38and consumes the earth,

42:40there are going to be people who make videos going,

42:43"I just discovered this!"

42:45And well, there's good clicks in outrage.

42:51- Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, so conspiracy theory, so.

42:55- Well, yeah, and we're, unfortunately,

42:58the internet and brain rot, mean culture,

43:02and all that stuff is just making it harder and harder

43:06for people to find good info, good data,

43:10and to think critically about it,

43:11because yeah, it's just, it's a mess.

43:15- Well, I'm upset about this.

43:17On that note, hey, everybody, share our stuff.

43:21It's 'cause we're out here trying to do some data,

43:24we're out here trying to do some critical thinking, so.

43:27- Yeah.

43:28- So share far and wide if you can.

43:31All right, I think that that's a good place to close it out.

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