Ep 115: Did the Bible Steal its Stories?

00:00This seems like something that was just appropriated by the Solmist, the worshipers of Adonai,

00:07who were like, "Like the sound of that, why don't you shove that in your bag real quick?"

00:12Right, right.

00:13Let me just cross out the word "ball" here, and we'll just say, "Lord, that'll be funny."

00:21Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan, and I'm Dan Beacher, and you're listening to the

00:28Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the

00:33Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

00:38How are things today, Dan, apart from feeling like crap?

00:42I am fighting a cold, which is not fair, because the weather is warm, and that's not

00:49how that's supposed to go.

00:50No, that's true.

00:51But I'm feeling great.

00:52Otherwise, in good spirits, mostly, we just got back from our tour.

00:58Yes.

00:59In listener time, that was weeks ago, but in our time, we just barely got back.

01:05Yeah, just a few days ago, I flew back from D.C., you trained on to New York for an arts

01:13gallery.

01:14Oh, yeah, the Met has an extraordinary John Singer-Sargent special collection going right

01:22now.

01:23Highly recommend it.

01:24Very, very good.

01:25But, yeah, we got to meet all kinds of people, we have met several of the listeners to this

01:30very show, and that was what a treat that was for us.

01:34It was definitely wonderful to get out on the road to meet some of y'all, to hear your

01:39stories, and to get to sign some of these books and enjoy each other's company for a

01:45while.

01:46It was a great time.

01:47So, thank you to every single one of y'all who came out to see us, and to hear us, and

01:51in various ways, figurative, and literally to contrast us.

01:54Sorry it was terrible, but we had a good time.

01:59Most of the jokes landed, and if they didn't, we just moved right on ahead.

02:03Right, right.

02:04Absolutely.

02:05Yeah.

02:06So, we should probably do a show, I guess, if we must.

02:11Yeah, if we want to have a show, we should do a show.

02:15So, we're going to do two different segments, as we usually do.

02:21The first one we're going to be taking issue, and the issue we're going to be taking, is

02:26mythological in nature.

02:29We almost called it Good Mythical Evening, as an homage to friends of the show, Rhett,

02:40and his friend Link.

02:42Link we haven't met, but we met Rhett, and he is great.

02:45But I used to play the video game, Zelda, all the time when I was a kid, so that's Link,

02:53isn't it?

02:54Yes, I think so.

02:55Link is the carrier.

02:56Okay, yeah.

02:57Any who.

02:58That's not here nor there, of course.

03:01We're off on all kinds of tangents, but Rhett and Link are, anyway, but what we're going

03:07to be talking about is mythological in nature, or rather is stories in nature, and we're going

03:12to talk about how stories come from how they may have been transmitted into the Bible from

03:21various external sources, and that's exciting and interesting.

03:25And then in the second half of the show, we're going to do a chapter in verse, and we're

03:30going to talk about Haggai, the book of Haggai, and I read the whole thing a couple times,

03:40and will require your assistance in knowing why I read those things.

03:45So that'll be great, but I actually am excited about it.

03:49I'm looking forward to learning about the second year of Darius.

03:55But first, let's take issue.

04:00And the issue that we're taking, as I said, is with the notion, I suppose, that the Hebrew

04:08Bible, that the Bible in general is only stories that erupted of their own accord or that became

04:16or that are stories that were belonged exclusively to the Israelites, the Judah heights, etc.

04:24It's different than that, and this might not be great for some people.

04:29Some people might not be happy about this one.

04:31Yeah, this is an accusation you hear an awful lot from people who are critical of the Bible.

04:36They'll say that what the Bible stole, the story of the flood from Atrehasis or the stole,

04:43the creation account from this, that or the other, from the Anuma Elish.

04:49And there are other folks who say, no, no, these are, you know, you find them in different

04:53cultures just because they're true and they really happen, and so everybody has a version

04:57of this story.

04:58And of course, there would be other writings about a global flood.

05:04Remind the fact that only one guy survived it, like all the other people, of course, they

05:10would have writings about it.

05:12So you have two sides to this argument about where a lot of these mythological traditions

05:19come from, and I think there are three main positions.

05:22One is that these are, you know, the accounts that we have in the Bible are verbatim accounts,

05:29they're literal, they are historical, and they either originate with or have not been

05:35at all altered by the biblical authors.

05:39So the authors from ancient Israel, ancient Judah.

05:41The other is that the authors of the Bible were just rummaging around through the pockets

05:48of their neighbors after they beat them up and stole these stories from them.

05:53Right.

05:54So somehow in a nefarious attempt to subsume the other cultures, like what was that video

06:04game where you roll the thing and it gathers all of the detritus in the world, and the

06:09ball gets bigger and bigger.

06:11Man, I don't know what tax bracket you were playing video games in as a kid, but I don't

06:16want that recognized.

06:18No, yeah, there are a few of our listeners who are going crazy screaming the name of

06:23a, of a, I want to say Tamagachi, but that's the wrong thing.

06:27So I don't, it's different anyway, anyway, some, so a bunch of people know it and love

06:33it anyway.

06:34No doubt.

06:35Yeah.

06:36And, and then the third position is that these are stories that are in the Bible because

06:42the Bible shares an ideological and ethnic a cultural background with many of the nations

06:48around them.

06:49They're just drawing from a shared literary and mythological inventory or matrix.

06:57In other words, it's just, it was in the air and in these nations.

07:01And so this is just the Israelite or the Judahite version of this kind of generic thing that

07:07was just around.

07:08So it's not that it was stolen.

07:10It was just one version of one of these kind of more generic stories.

07:15Yeah, it may be as a bit of sort of set dressing for this to sort of set the scene for this.

07:21Let's talk a little bit about how, because, you know, we have these stories because someone

07:28wrote them down, yes.

07:32But was the, was the sort of surrounding area was, was this generalized area and period?

07:41I mean, we're talking a period of probably, what, a thousand years for the, for the Hebrew

07:46Bible, 800 years, give or take a, yeah, about 1000 to 1100 years if you go from the earliest

07:52poetic fragments down to the book of Daniel.

07:55Okay.

07:56So, so yeah, I mean, there's a lot there, but it, it occurs to me that there would have

08:02been a lot of oral tradition as well as just written tradition.

08:07Absolutely.

08:08I've definitely been oral tradition, and this is why I think you have, and this is

08:12what I'm talking about in another video that I, that I posted on, on my channels a few

08:18days ago where we don't really, we can't really speak about what's, what's known as

08:24an ear text, a base text, an original autographic text of books like Genesis and Deuteronomy

08:30and Isaiah and the majority of the books in the Hebrew Bible and even some New Testament

08:35books, because the, what we know as the book of Genesis has come together over numerous

08:40centuries as different traditions were brought together and woven into a single narrative.

08:48And many of those would have been in circulation as oral traditions.

08:52And who knows how many times different people wrote them down and how many times those written

08:58down versions may have collided with each other and then been woven together.

09:03And then collided with another version or something like that.

09:06Like we, we don't know the, the, um, background of the transmission, oral and textual of all

09:13of these traditions, but we know it's probably pretty complex.

09:16And this results in things like, uh, you know, the story of Abraham, uh, coming into, I think

09:22it was Garar and telling the king, oh, this is, this isn't my wife.

09:25It's my sister.

09:26I promise.

09:27And then God gets angry with the king for, uh, for making a move on Abraham's wife.

09:32Like that story happens twice and separate from each other.

09:37Right.

09:38And then you've got stories like the two creation accounts where they're just abutted one after

09:42the other.

09:43And then you've got stories like, uh, Joseph being sold into slavery in Egypt where they

09:47have taken two complete narratives and basically stitched them together.

09:51And then you've got other things where they are supplementing one story with another,

09:56or they're, they're weaving things together in different ways.

09:58So you got a bunch of different ways that these stories come together and, and it's,

10:02you know, we, we want to try to tease them apart in whatever way we can, but it's not

10:07very easy.

10:08But yeah, what I want to talk about tonight is, or this morning, whenever you happen to

10:12be listening to this, you know, you might be on the way to work at four 30 in the morning.

10:16Um, there you go.

10:17Department of flat circle, everybody.

10:20But, uh, what I would like to talk about is where these come from, are these original

10:25two, the nations of Israel and Judah, are they from the shared heritage that Israel

10:32and Judah has had with, uh, other nations around them?

10:37And this is a big, this is a point that a lot of people don't know about.

10:40Most scholars these days would say that's the nations of Israel and Judah are Canaanite

10:47that's the Bible is just the records of a group of Canaanite tribes that just at one

10:53point began to distinguish themselves more, uh, more aggressively from the other nations

11:00that were around them.

11:01And really they're all based on, you know, the same kind of ethnic roots.

11:06And this is why we find some of the stories in the Hebrew Bible that maybe we find in

11:10the Eucharistic literature or that maybe we find in, in other texts or traditions or

11:16rituals that come from the nations around ancient Israel.

11:19What were the Eucharitic people also considered Canaanite?

11:23Oh, they, I think they would have been, um, labeled Canaanite had they been around when

11:28the Bible was being written.

11:29But the city of Ugarit was destroyed somewhere around 1200 BCE.

11:33So just that's like right around the time Israel begins to be a thing.

11:39And so, uh, they wouldn't have been known about really.

11:42However, we do have preserved and, and I guess this is one of the first things we can

11:46talk about, some people have pointed to Leviathan as something that seems to have been, uh,

11:51snaked from other traditions, pun, definitely intended because Leviathan is a serpent, uh,

11:58creature seven headed, uh, serpent dragon thing.

12:02That's the worst kind.

12:03What you, I, you give me a seven tailed serpent.

12:06I'm feeling fine.

12:07About it.

12:08Yeah.

12:09Seven legged.

12:10I mean, yeah, sure.

12:11Absolutely.

12:12It's the head that's all that.

12:13That's the problem when you can't, when it comes to a serpent, seven eyes.

12:15I can deal.

12:16Um, but, but, uh, so Leviathan, you have a seven headed serpent, uh, we, well, we have

12:26in Psalm 74, there's a reference to Adonai crushing the heads plural of Leviathan.

12:33And so this seems to reference this multi headed serpent entity, but we have a more direct

12:39connection to, uh, the mythologies of other civilizations around ancient Israel and Judah.

12:45And I think we've talked about it before on the channel and that would be, uh, Isaiah

12:4927 one, which is an, it's about the eschaton, the end times.

12:55And it says, in that day, Adonai will visit punishment with his hard and great and strong

13:00sword upon Leviathan, the wriggling serpent and upon Leviathan, the writhing serpent.

13:07And he will kill the monster, how tanine, the dragon, whatever that is in the sea.

13:13And so this is, if this is original to the actual, uh, prophet Isaiah, then this dates

13:19to somewhere in the late eighth century BCE.

13:22Okay.

13:24And there's a text from the Eucharitic literature, part of the ball cycle, K T U one five one

13:31lines one through three, where there's a praise that has been directed at ball, the Northwest

13:38Semitic storm deity says, and it refers to when you struck low ton or leeton, depending

13:44on how you vocalize it, the wriggling serpent.

13:48You finished off the writhing serpent, the powerful one with seven heads.

13:54And so the, the words that I've read, and these are my translations of both Isaiah and, and

14:00this Eucharitic text, but the words I've translated wriggling and writhing are direct cognates.

14:06There it's, it's one in, in Eucharitic.

14:10And it is the same word in Hebrew, uh, leeton or lowton is cognate with Leviathan.

14:16Right.

14:17The difference is the powerful one with seven heads or the potentate with seven heads is

14:21different from the, the dragon that is in the sea.

14:24However, this was still a dragon.

14:26This was still associated with the sea.

14:28And as we've seen in Psalm 74, they had more than one head, Leviathan had multiple heads.

14:34And so it's pretty safe to conclude that this was a seven headed sea monster that the Bible

14:38is talking about.

14:40But this is an attacks that was written in Eucharitic, a language that nobody who wrote

14:45anything in the Bible probably ever really knew about, and it was written five or six

14:51hundred years before the book of Isaiah was written.

14:54So it's very, very unlikely that an author was like, Hey, I was up north in Syria and

15:02I dug up this text and then I happened to decipher the language.

15:05And I'm just going to quote this.

15:08It's not quoting the ball cycle as found in the Eucharitic literature, most likely.

15:14But a better conclusion is probably that this is just a tradition that was in circulation.

15:20And as far back as probably the 13th century BCE further up north in Eucharit, and then

15:26was in circulation in the 8th century BCE in Israel and Judah.

15:32And so this was something that the author of Isaiah drew from.

15:36And so interesting that those, that those adjectives would make it through that this

15:42is the wriggling and the writhing serpent that like, I want, I want like that, those

15:50markers seem so specific.

15:52It's fascinating that that has made it through the centuries, through the languages, like

15:58across across all of these boundaries and borders, and just, and that's been preserved

16:05the whole time.

16:06Yeah.

16:07And I think it was the idea, it's very short.

16:12It's probably just this motif that was just shared widely, you know, and, you know, as

16:18Latter-day Saints, we have this saying about with all your heart, might, mind and strength.

16:25And that's something that, you know, kind of takes on a life of its own a lot.

16:28And there are a lot of sayings from the Bible that people just use without knowing they're

16:31from the Bible by the skin of his teeth, for instance, is from the Bible, but people use

16:38that all the time.

16:39And, and it becomes a little kind of tiny little motif that just has its own circulation

16:45and its own life.

16:46So I imagine this, this idea that there was some chaotic seven headed sea dragon that was

16:53a wriggling serpent and a writhing serpent and had seven heads.

16:58And it was the responsibility of the storm deity to defeat it was just something that

17:03was around in circulation.

17:04Yeah.

17:05And so that's, that's an example of something where I would say it's unlikely that this

17:10could be referred to as stolen.

17:11This is not something where they were like maliciously where like I'm taking this.

17:16This, this seems to be something that was just a part of their tradition because they

17:20grew out of an ethnic and a literary stock where this was just, you know, in the air.

17:28It was part of their literary and their mythological heritage.

17:34Well, and it occurs to me that stories like these that the mythos of a region would cross

17:48boundaries wouldn't, wouldn't need to stick in its own, with its own people.

17:52It, it would have a larger scope as people tell, relate these stories to their friends

17:57and neighbors.

17:58And then they taught, you know, they, someone goes traveling and relates to the story and

18:03on their travels and then they're like, Oh, that's a cool story.

18:05I'm going to tell my friends that and it just, you know, like, yeah, it seems very easy for

18:12stories like that to transmit their way through various populations and just sort of ebb and

18:18flow and move and change and, and just become part of, and then, you know, if it's retold

18:25enough times, it's now part of your local lore.

18:28Yeah.

18:29And, and at which point ownership is, is kind of a, you know, to the degree you can talk

18:35about ownership is kind of a moot point.

18:37Right.

18:38And there's a, there's another one I want to talk about that is similar because it's,

18:45it's about the storm deity still, but this time it probably is an example of someone stealing

18:52something from other cultures.

18:55So this is Psalm 29.

18:57And I think we've probably referenced this Psalm once or twice on, on the show before,

19:03but this is where the Psalmist is singing praises to Adonai and they're singing praises

19:10to the voice of Adonai, Cole Adonai.

19:13And there are, it's a sevenfold praise thing, where you have seven different ways that,

19:19that God's voice is spectacular.

19:22And all of the imagery has to do with storm deity imagery.

19:25So the voice, so the Cole Adonai is over the waters, the God of glory, thunders, Adonai

19:32over mighty waters, the, the Cole Adonai is powerful.

19:36The Cole Adonai is full of majesty, breaks the cedars, breaks the cedars of Lebanon,

19:41makes Lebanon skip like a calf and Siri on like a young wild ox flashes forth flames

19:47of fire, shakes the wilderness, shakes the wilderness of cadet causes the oaks to whirl

19:53and strips the forest bear.

19:56And, and so you've got the sevenfold praise of a storm deity and particularly the voice

20:01of the storm deity, which is likened to, to thunder and lightning.

20:04But the weird thing is, it mentions several toponyms, some several place names, yeah,

20:10Lebanon, Siri on cadet, all of them north of Israel in the territory of another storm

20:19deity, specific specifically ball.

20:23So a lot of scholars are like, huh, isn't that peculiar?

20:27That does seem very strange.

20:29Yes, it seems like the kind of poem that might originally have been dedicated to the storm

20:36deity who actually occupied that region and was worshiped in cadet and in Syrian and in

20:44Lebanon.

20:45In other words, this seems like something that was just appropriated by the psalmist, the

20:51worshipers of Adonai who were like, like the sound of that.

20:54Why don't you shove that in your bag real quick?

20:57Right, right. Let me just cross out the word ball here.

21:00Yeah.

21:01I'll just add, I'll, we'll just say, Lord, that will be fine.

21:06And so instead of the coal ball, we have the coal Adonai and this is a, and then that becomes

21:14one of the very cool little mythological pieces of poetry that we find in the Psalms.

21:21And I love how it starts. Verse one says, ascribe to Adonai, sons of the gods, ascribe

21:29to Adonai, glory and strength.

21:32So it's, it's being sung to other gods as well, which I think is, is wonderful.

21:39And it, Benaeleim is the word for sons of gods and Aleem is, is the more basic plural

21:45of the Hebrew noun El, which means deity. And, but you have, we, I've heard you use the

21:52phrase Benaelehim. Yeah, Benaelehim is, is more common in like Genesis six and Job and

21:58places like that. Okay, but this would mean roughly the same thing.

22:03Roughly the same thing, although more clearly plural, because Benaelehim, you could interpret

22:07that to mean children of the God, okay, namely the, the one head deity.

22:13But Aleem is, is definitely plural. Oh, okay. This is not a singular noun. This is a plural

22:18noun. So it's sons of gods. And you know, when you look in like the King James version,

22:25I think it says, sons of the mighty, that what it says, but yeah, given to the Lord.

22:35Oh, ye mighty, which is, yeah, which is a pretty slippery way to get out of acknowledging

22:42what's really going on here. Yeah, NRSVUE has ascribed to the Lord, oh, heavenly beings.

22:48Yeah, and you'll notice there's a footnote there that says Hebrew sons of gods. There

22:53you go. Okay. But I'm curious about, there are some other translations that, that can

22:59get a little squishy when it comes to this kind of, I'm curious where the, oh man, where

23:06are all my, my translations? I'm curious what the NIV and the ESV and those, you go

23:14NIV. I'll go ESV. Okay, what, looking for the NIV. I have the ASV, the American Standard

23:21version says, Oh ye sons of the mighty. Okay. ESV has Oh, heavenly beings. Oh, heavenly

23:30which is, which is, I think that's a silly way to talk around it. Like it says gods.

23:37Heavenly beings is just means you're, you're too chicken to say God's. Right. Well, and,

23:43and the ESV also has the same footnote, Hebrew sons of God or sons of, well, no, sons of

23:52God, singular or sons of might interesting. Yeah. And this is based on a very outdated

24:00etymology for the word L. There, there, one, one etymology is that this comes from a verbal

24:06root that means to be mighty or powerful. Now this has been largely rejected for 70 years

24:13or so. Oh, there was a, there was a scholar named Marvin Pope back in 1955 who wrote a

24:18book published a book on L in the Eucharitic text. And what he points out is that the word

24:22elu or L, the Northwest Semitic and Hebrew word for God is etymologically and like you,

24:30you cannot evaluate it any further than that. It just means deity or God. It's just a basic

24:37noun that means God or deity. So yeah, the ESV is appealing to some very outdated scholarship.

24:44So I, but we digress a bit, but it's still, I think it's a fascinating song that was likely

24:54borrowed if we're being kind, swiped if we're not being so kind from praise that was probably

25:03directed at ball the Northwest Semitic storm. So interesting. So that's an example of one

25:09where I would say, yeah, we could probably say the author is stealing that, that from

25:16the nation around them. And so we've got other examples, I think, of things that are being

25:23borrowed. And they're being like responded to. So for instance, Genesis one, the creation

25:31account in Genesis one, you've got the seven creative periods. A lot of people have noticed

25:36some resonances with the ways that the creation is described in a numelish. And there it's

25:43not like, you know, the, the juda heights are in Babylon or have just come back from

25:48Babylon when this is being written. But they probably were not saying, Oh, I'd like the

25:53sound of that yonk. They were probably writing this text in order to engage with the other

26:00text, the other tradition in order to say, Oh, let me tell you how I heard it. And this

26:06is our version. And you can, there are points of contact, but those points of contact are

26:12intended primarily to allow the story to gain a little purchase. Right. If people are like,

26:16Oh, that sounds, that sounds a little familiar. But it's going in a different direction. That's

26:22still going to allow it to gain a little purchase and allow it to spread a little more within

26:28this, this literary context into which it is proliferating. And so you, you probably have

26:34tahom is the Hebrew word that is for the deep or the abyss. And this is probably cognate

26:40with Tiamat, the Akkadian chaos monster who is split into by Marduk and half of the body

26:50becomes the heavens. The other half becomes the earth and what happens in Genesis one,

26:56the depths, the waters, the tahom are split into. And then there's a dome that holds up

27:02the waters above. And then the dry land is able to appear as the the depths recede. And

27:10so it's not the exact same thing. But there's just as just enough of a vibe for people to

27:16be like, I, I'm picking up what you're putting down. Yeah, it's not unlike when, when peddlers

27:23of, of new age ideas use quantum physics talk, quantum physics words to sort of say, Hey,

27:33look at the, you know, look at the vibrational blah, blah, blah. And then, and then get all

27:39of the quantum physics wrong. But what does it make it sound sciency?

27:44Or and you see apologists do the same thing when they try to appropriate the methods and

27:49the theories of critical scholarship and, and science, right, in order to try to, to prop

27:55up their own apologetic ends, you know, they'll, they'll be like, well, you go to gender chronology

28:01when you look at the global flood. And, you know, so yeah, if you've ever been anyone

28:07who like me has been to any of Ken Ham's establishments, including the creation museum and the Ark

28:14encounter, you see so much. And it, it always baffles me. I'm mystified by it, but so much

28:22really smart science talk to explain the flood and to prove that the, you know, the Grand Canyon

28:29is there because the flood carved it out. And here's why we know that and blah, blah, blah.

28:34And it's actually really so much really good effort went into that. And it's like, yeah,

28:42but the rest of like the thing that we do with science is we make sure that all of the scientists

28:49are, you know, that the scientific literature as a whole is taken into account. And then

28:54fringe things are usually basically easy to sort of shunt aside. And, and so why bother

29:01even using the science talk? Just don't use it. You could just say the words miracle and

29:06be done. You don't have to, you don't have to pretend like this is in the realm of science.

29:14But I, and I think that's an example of, of engaging with the authoritative knowledge

29:20and demonstrating the engagement by using the words. Yeah. But really what you're trying

29:25to do is tell a different story. Right. And so I think with like Genesis one, that's

29:30probably what's going on there rather than them being like, we're too dumb to come up

29:35with our own thing. Let's just steal their thing. Like, right. The folks who think of

29:41the Bible as, you know, the, the scratchings of Bronze Age goat herders have absolutely

29:48no clue what they're talking about. These were some of the most well trained and the

29:51most intelligent and the most sophisticated writers of this time and place. Right. And

29:56they're, they're engaging with the literature around them, not because they're their thieves,

30:02but because that's what you did when you wanted to try to challenge the dominant narrative.

30:08You had to engage it and show you could engage it while telling your own story. So well,

30:13and also there's this sense of, you know, like we were talking about before, this is

30:18the, these ideas and these stories are not owned by one group. They are, they are proliferated.

30:25Yeah. And so, so yeah, it's, it's, it isn't a matter of theft. You can't steal something

30:32that belongs to everyone. Yeah. You can just, you can just, you know, write it your way

30:37and see and see how people, how people glom onto it. Yeah, it would be like a kid growing

30:44up today and going off and creating his own comic book where it's a superhero who flies

30:53and has a cape, but has, you know, totally unique powers and a totally unique name and

30:58all this kind of stuff. And somebody else being like, well, they, you can see that this

31:03is stolen from, from Superman because he flies and has a cape. And so obviously, and you know,

31:08a kid could grow up today and never hear the name Superman, never read a Superman comic

31:13and still be exposed to enough of, of that imagery and those traditions to come up with

31:19a superhero who flies and has a cape and who maybe is not directly influenced by Superman.

31:23I mean, they could come up with it just from watching the T shirts on your channel. I mean,

31:28you're going to see some Superman. No, that's, well, yes, you know, there's nothing I can

31:33do about that. That's just comes with the territory. But I, and I just want to share one

31:40real quick one other example. This one is a fascinating one of, in Proverbs, Proverbs

31:4522 and 23, Proverbs is wisdom literature. We've talked about wisdom literature, an awful

31:50lot. This is, you know, people just waxing wisdomly, I guess, about about how to live

31:57a good life, about how to proverbially waxing, I guess, proverbially. Yes. Those are big words.

32:05But anyway, in Proverbs 22 and 23, you have a bunch of references don't move in an ancient

32:13boundary stone or an croach on the fields of the fatherless, for instance, don't rob

32:19the poor because they are poor or crush the afflicted at the gate. Incline your ear,

32:25hear the words of the wise for it will be pleasant if you keep them within you. And a lot of scholars

32:30have noted, Hey, a lot of this sounds an awful lot like this Egyptian wisdom text from several

32:36hundred years before the instruction of Amenemope, who is not a creature that lives in the sea,

32:46but is a dude's name. I'm just going to say don't try to steal the thunder of the goofball

32:51name thing because that's the second half of the show. But, but this is probably an example

32:58where there is probably some direct influence where the person who is responsible for collating

33:05or compiling or writing these Proverbs was probably inspired by some of these other texts

33:13that they knew about that were written in Egypt many centuries before, but we're still

33:18in circulation around the Persian period. And you know, whether it was writer's block

33:21and they were just like, well, I'll just take some of Amenemope stuff he's not going to know.

33:27Or or if you know, this was just kind of again, had become embedded in their their kind of

33:35literary psyche or matrix or whatever, it's not clear. But there does seem to be some kind

33:44of literary influence from these Egyptian texts. So it comes from far away. And you know, like

33:50Psalm 104 seems to have some sun God imagery that a lot of scholars would suggest is taken

33:55from a hymn of praise to to Aten the sun deity during the reign of Akhenaten. So there's an

34:03awful lot of that you can find it sprinkled throughout the Hebrew Bible where there is

34:07inspiration, whether it's it's either from a shared sociocultural matrix, or it's engaging

34:14with these traditions in order to try to one up them or build upon them, or it's just straight

34:20up stealing. Yeah, from from the the nations that are around them. And it helps if what

34:26you're stealing is a hymn of praise to a Northwest Semitic storm deity, because Adonai

34:32is a Northwest Semitic storm deity. I mean, the the story we haven't talked about, is

34:37how the deity themselves, Adonai the God of Israel seems to be taken from the divine profile

34:44of the existing Northwest Semitic storm deity. So that's kind of maybe that was the elephant

34:49in the room, the whole time that the deity themselves seems to be based on somebody else's

34:54divine profile. But the notion that the Bible is just all just pure ex nihilo Israelites

35:05tradition that this is this is something that was revealed to these authors who had no other

35:11influences whatsoever. That's just pure and utter nonsense. They're very clearly aware

35:16of engaging with. And in some cases, apparently, swiping the literature from the nations around

35:24them. Swiping left on. Swiping left. Well, I was going to say I was going to go the kids

35:30route and do a swipe or no swiping. But you know, that's that's door of the explorer for

35:35those who don't have don't have the kids running. Yeah, I didn't catch it. All right. Well, that's

35:42I think that that's a great way to look at the yeah, it's a great way to muddy the waters

35:50a bit. Well, no, it's a little bit. It's such a better viewpoint than than the either the

35:57other stealing and therefore it's all stupid or the it's all perfect. And you know, and

36:03therefore, you're not allowed to ever question it and blah, blah, blah, like it's just it's

36:09just such a better way of viewing the world. So that's that's what a lot of early Christians

36:13did. They were like play that was trained by Moses. It resonated so well that they were

36:21like, I think they might have taken this from us. So that's amazing. All right. Well, let's

36:28move on to chapter and verse. And our chapter and verse today is Haggai, the entire book

36:38book. It's chapters and verses. Or we get to say book the book. Yes. Yes. And Haggai. Okay.

36:49I think I said this at the top of the show. I read it multiple times. I'm I'm interested

36:57to know what's that said baffled. But well, I'm interested into why you wanted to talk

37:03about it. Because when I read it, it seemed like it said in 300 sentences, what I could

37:10say in four. Yes, like the first I'll just do a quick summary. And then the Dan version,

37:21which I think the the DBV will be would be a much shorter Bible. I think we can all look

37:27forward to that. But the Dan Beecher version is Haggai one is, Hey, you guys should build

37:36a temple again. And Haggai two is, Hey, your your temple looks like crap. Do better. Did

37:45I do it like those are the those are the main like that. Yeah, those are the things that

37:57the whole narrative pivots on more. I will say this, one of the things that interested

38:03me was that I somehow accidentally when I first when I when I was first looking at this, I

38:12clicked on the wrong book. I didn't click on Haggai. I accidentally clicked on Zechariah,

38:19which is directly after Haggai. And more interesting book in many ways, they start almost exactly

38:26the same. Like they both start with a a time marker. Zechariah starts in the eighth month

38:33of the second year of Darius. And then when I went to Haggai, it starts in the second year

38:39of King Darius in the sixth month. So they start two months apart. Yeah, that's really

38:45interesting. Yeah, they have a chapter two starting in like verse 10. That's like, that's

38:56like a month after Zechariah is starts. Yeah, because it's because chapter one is like,

39:02it's August of 520 BCE. Chapter two says one month later. Right. And then the the end of

39:10the chapter two is like two months later. The thing that's interesting to me about that

39:14is that I always sort of think in my mind as I'm reading these stories, I always want

39:18it to be like, there's one group of people, there's one kingdom, there's one prophet,

39:23there's one high priest, there's one king or whatever. And and I want that to just and

39:30then, you know, one guy dies and another guy takes his place. Yeah, but this is all happening

39:34concurrently. And it's different prophets and it's different people and it's and they don't

39:39seem to be aware of each other. Yeah, they're very confusing. Yeah. So maybe, maybe set the

39:45table a little bit with like Darius and where we are, where we are. Okay. And all that sort

39:50of thing. So this is, this is what's going on in the Persian period. So 587 BCE, we have

39:57the destruction of Jerusalem. We have the forced migration of the people of Judah to Babylon

40:05in 539ish BCE. You have Cyrus the Great, besieges lays siege to Babylon and conquers it, effectively

40:17ending the Babylonian Empire and taking over. And now we have what we affectionately refer

40:23to as the Persian period. So the Persian Empire has taken over Mesopotamia. Okay. And shortly

40:31afterwards, we have Cyrus, and this is, you know, praised in the book of Second Isaiah,

40:40allows the Judah heights to return to their land. Some of them go, some of them stay.

40:46Some of them are coming back and forth, because this is now one of the provinces. And it's

40:51under, you know, the supervision of a Persian governor of some kind, but they appoint locals

41:00and things like this. So we're around 520 BCE. So this is like 19 years after the conquering

41:11of Babylon by Cyrus the Great. So the Judah heights have been under Persian hegemony,

41:17or hegemony, for 19 years now. Okay. So they're kind of settling in. And the story is we're

41:28in, we're back in the land of Israel. And how are things going? What will we have? What

41:35would we expect to have happen by now? Well, we hopefully we would have the restoration

41:41of the temple and everything is flourishing. Because this is, this is supposed to be the

41:46fulfillment of the prophecy about the return. And it's supposed to be grand and all of this

41:53stuff. And that's what we get into chapter one, where you said, Hey, what's going on

42:00with this temple? Because, you know, they're taking care of their own houses and their

42:08own crops and stuff like that. And there's, you know, there's a bit of a famine and a

42:13haggos like, it's because y'all are neglecting the temple, you're neglecting God's house.

42:19That's what you need to prioritize. Because otherwise this is covenant rebellion. God's

42:25not going to fully fulfill the prophecy, unless you're actually following the rules. Right.

42:32And it does say that it does talk about how you have so much and harvested little you

42:38eat, but you never have enough you drink, but you never have your fill. So yes, the God

42:43is. And the idea here is that God is punishing everybody. Because because the temple ain't

42:50built yet. Yes, it is in more or less in ruins because

42:56they got more important things to worry about. And haggos like, this is the most important

43:02thing for those of that. Yeah. And I gestured for those of you who are listening and just

43:08have the audio, it was, you know, you should have seen it. Anyway, and then we get into

43:14chapter two of Haggai, the other chapter of Haggai. Yes. And it starts one month later.

43:22So you got to imagine your little bikini bottom one month later. You get in there and they're

43:28starting to rebuild the temple. And it's just not as grand as we should be clear for one

43:35thing about who Haggai is talking to. The governor of Judah, is do would you say that

43:43name, please? Zaruba Bell, Zaruba Bell, which that's super fun. Or yeah, son of, and

43:50that's Sha'altiel or Shealtiel is as it looks on the page. This is where this is where the

43:59sporting goods store got their name from. Yeah, exactly. They just they cut it down a little

44:02bit. But yeah, so that's it. So Zaruba Bell is the governor of Judah and Joshua son of

44:10Jehozadak is the high priest. So this is interesting. Jehozadak is, you know, that that name begins

44:19with a version of the tetragrammaton. Right. So for folks who were like, well, they didn't

44:24say the tetragrammaton. If they said this dude's name, they kind of did say the tetragrammaton.

44:31Yeah, and Jehozadak, that would be like Melchizedek. I mean, my king is said, which could have

44:39been the name of a deity or it could just mean righteous or righteousness. And this is Adonai

44:44is righteous or righteousness or something. Okay. So and Shealtiel, that is the first common

44:52singular affix form of the verb Sha'al, which means to ask. So this is I asked, and then L would be

45:01the God. So I asked this of God would be what that name means. But yeah, they have to be

45:08confused with Sha'al Teo. No, that would be that would be different. So you've got, yeah,

45:14you've got one that's still around. So you still know people named Josh. Not too many Zaruba

45:20bells. No, I think it's, well, we do have one of the one of the best names is Oh gosh, now I've

45:30forgotten his name, because I know it's not the exact same. But Isaiah was supposed to name his son,

45:36Maharshelal, Maharshelal Hashbad. And so we have Maharshelal Ali is the one actor who's got most of

45:46that name. But yeah, the in the 19th century, it was a lot cooler to have bizarre biblical names.

45:51Biblical names. Yeah. Mafiba chef, and stuff like that. So I would have loved to have known Zaruba

45:59bell or Jehozadak or Shealtiel or two, but I'm just gonna name drop a little bit. Maharshelal Ali,

46:06when he was giving his Oscar acceptance speech, name checked my own acting teacher as one of his

46:13influential acting teachers. Oh, very cool. So I share a little bit of that Oscar right.

46:18But you don't share any of the infamy of that other actor you've talked about, who was kind of a jerk.

46:26But did he study under the same acting teacher? Okay, there you go. So you win some you lose some.

46:32Yeah, exactly. They can't all be home runs.

46:38And so we get into chapter two, it's one month later, and the elders who were like,

46:45I was a little boy when Solomon's temple was around, they're like, that doesn't look like Solomon's

46:49temple, man. That's that's kind of, what are we doing here? And to which Haggai is like, hey,

46:57come on, man, remember the promise, God's future kingdom. This is just a shadow of things that are

47:04to come when, you know, in that day kind of language where we're going to have the new Jerusalem and

47:11everything's going to be happy, happy, joy, joy. Yeah, since I'm since I'm in old cartoon. Yeah,

47:19mode. And then that so that's like chapter two versus one through nine. And then we get a call

47:27to covenant faithfulness in verses 10 through 19. And this is two months later. We have this

47:34discussion about ritual purity, which I think is I want in fact, I want to read some of this. Let me

47:38just do do. So on the 24th day of the ninth month and the second year of Darius, the word of the

47:45Lord came to the prophet Haggai saying, the says the Lord of hosts asked the priest for a ruling.

47:50So he's on the golf course. He's like, I need a, I need a ruling over here. Right. So they call

47:56the priest over. And he says, if one carries consecrated meat in the folds of one's garment,

48:03and with the fold touches bread or stew or wine or oil or any kind of food, does it become holy?

48:09And this is kind of a theological question. It's like, I've got this holy piece of meat.

48:15I stuck it in my pocket. If I touch other stuff, does that stuff now, does the whole,

48:20the property of holiness transfer to the other stuff? Right. Right. Can this make my stew holy?

48:26Because I would like to have holy stew. Yeah. Who doesn't want who doesn't want their stew

48:31to have a little bit of holiness to it? What is it? All I said was that dinner was good enough for

48:36Jehovah. Stony. Not any women in the crowd. No, no, no, no, no, no. The priest answered, no.

48:49Then where'd I go? There it is. Then Haggai said, if one who is unclean by contact with a dead body

48:58touches any of these, does it become unclean? So now we have the reverse of this. So we've got

49:05uncleanliness. Does is that the transitive property of uncleanliness? Does that transfer over?

49:12And the priest answered, yes, it becomes unclean. Haggai then said, so is it with this people and

49:19with this nation before me says the Lord. And so with every work of their hands, what they offer

49:25there is unclean. But now consider what will come to pass from this day on. And the idea is basically

49:31that they are ritually impure. They're doing stuff wrong. And they're going to try to rebuild God's

49:38temple, which is supposed to be holy. And it's not that building the temple creates something holy

49:44that then transfers holiness to them. They're building something holy while they're unclean,

49:50meaning they're transferring the uncleanness to the temple. Basically, you're trampling dirt

49:56all around in my temple. I mean, I don't know if you've ever been on a construction site,

50:01but you're going to get dirty. It seems like uncleanness is kind of the

50:07derigure sort of thing there. Yeah. And obviously, this is not about literal

50:14physical right uncleanliness. But but yeah, it is they are sullying the temple. And so Haggai

50:21is saying, Hey, we're going to do this right. If we're going to do this in a way that helps to

50:25bring about God's kingdom, the this future, you know, New Jerusalem that's going to happen,

50:31we need to ensure that we are all holy. So we need to be obedient. We need to put behind us all

50:40this unfaithfulness. It's it's basically he's checking them on their faithfulness to to God's

50:47requirements. And then the last few verses 23, 23, this is the final segment, and it's on the

50:54the exact same day. So we got August 520, we got one month later, we got two months later,

51:00and then we got later that same day. The word of the Lord came a second time to Haggai,

51:05speak to the Rubabel governor of Judo saying, I am about to shake the heavens and the earth and

51:09overthrow the throne of kingdoms. I'm about to destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations

51:13and overthrow the chariots and the writers and horses and the writers shall fall. Everyone by

51:18the sort of a comrade on that day says the Lord of hosts, I will take you, Ozirubabel, my servant,

51:23son of Shealtiel, says the Lord and make you like a signet ring, where I have chosen you,

51:30says the Lord of hosts. And this is a weird way to finish this story, because this has mainly been

51:36about Haggai going, come on, guys, and then the very end is kind of like, you're my boy is a Rubabel,

51:47and you know, this has some kind of this has some messianic undertones. This future kingdom is

51:53supposed to be ruled over by this anointed one. And so is feels like, and let me just throw this

52:01out there. Okay. If all of that last bit of prophecy had come true about overthrowing the

52:09throne of kingdoms and destroying the strength of kingdoms and the nation above the chariots and

52:14the writers and blah, blah, blah, it feels like we would have heard more about Zirubabel.

52:19If that if he had been raised up in this grand way that that Haggai has seems to have promised.

52:29Yeah, but the really all you hear about him is that the temple that was built is named after him.

52:35Okay. The second temple is known by a number of folks as Zirubabel's temple, at least up until

52:44the period when Herod kind of renovated everything. Well, you have the Hasmonean kingdom, it gets

52:49desecrated, it gets it gets rededicated, they do some construction work, and then Herod does

52:56some construction work. So there are constantly people doing work on it. But

53:01finally, they call it the Delta Center again.

53:04And I think I think 519 is the traditional dates of the reded the dedication of the second temple.

53:13So like it happens shortly after this. But yeah, this promise seems to suggest something big

53:19should have happened toward the end of the sixth century BCE. But no, Persia is going to be in charge

53:25for a while like down until around the the second half of the fourth century BCE. So it's gonna be

53:33like still another 190 years or so before the Persian kingdom gets overthrown by Alexander the

53:42Great. So so yeah, this this is kind of a hinting at something messianic that doesn't really seem to

53:49come to pass. Can I propose an alternate interpretation propose away? I think that what the lesson we

53:57are to learn from this is if you want to get a big project done, and I think I've seen this many

54:04times in modern day, if you want to get a big, let's face it, this is a real estate deal. If you

54:12want to get a big project done, what you do is you promise the governor that he's going to be

54:19famous, he's going to be the biggest thing ever. Everybody's going to love you big, big beautiful

54:25temple. Yeah, oh, everybody. Look, you're going to be everyone's going to think you're the biggest

54:29thing that that's ever happened. You you butter them up as much as you can. And then you get,

54:35you know, the gold and the silver for the for the temple. Otherwise, you know, what is going

54:41to give up his gold and silver? No, he's not going to do it. And we didn't cover Haggai's name.

54:48No, we didn't remember. Haggai seems like a masculine plural version of a hog, which is a

54:58pilgrimage or festival or something like that, and it might have a first common singular

55:02pro nominal suffix. It might be like my celebration or festival or something like that. It's exactly

55:09what it means is is debated, but it could indicate that Haggai might have been born during one of the

55:14one of the big festivals that was celebrated. So that's like that. And that root word is probably

55:19the same root word as the as the Arabic Haggai, which is the the pilgrimage to to Mecca.

55:27There is probably some metamological link there, but my Arabic is a boy model.

55:34So okay, fair enough. But yeah, it is a yeah, I forgot what I was going to say.

55:41I had something and well, I derailed you. Yeah, that is my job is a little nudge. It was a little

55:47nudge. But yeah, but that is, yeah, Haggai is and like I said, one of the I don't remember if I

55:56said this, but like I was thinking, one of the reasons I wanted to go over this is because

56:00this is one of those texts that a lot of people just don't know about. Yeah, you could stop most

56:07people who say they read the Bible a lot and be like, tell me about Haggai. And I'll be like,

56:12no, that's he was a prophet. I'm pretty sure. But but now you know, it was about the the

56:22cleanliness of the people there their priorities related to the temple, looking forward to

56:28the new Jerusalem and God's kingdom, making sure they were pure enough, ritually clean enough to

56:36be able to participate in the building of this temple. And then some weird promise at the end,

56:41that Zaruba Bell was going to be the next hot thing that doesn't seem to have come to pass,

56:48but they did get a temple out of it. That's the most important temple.

56:51Second, you say what you got to say to get that temple,

56:54which lasted until 70 CE in some form or another, you know, it's the the temple of Theseus to some

57:00degree, because, you know, it was being it was being renovated. It was being built over again.

57:07It had different things. Not unlike the temple here in downtown Salt Lake City,

57:12which is currently under deep renovation also. Yeah, didn't they say they were going to be done

57:16in 2025? They did say that. I think they originally I think now April 2026 is when they're like,

57:23that's when we're going to have our opening soft opening celebration.

57:27No, they're going to have. There you go. Yeah. So and behold, Zaruba Bell said to the people.

57:34Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you for that. This has been an interesting journey into Zaruba Bell the

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58:44Bye, everybody.