Ep 92: The Curses of Cain and Ham

00:00- It still goes on today, there are plenty of folks today

00:05who try to find ways to read racism into the Bible.

00:08We're still struggling with trying to figure out

00:10how to not read the Bible with the goal

00:13of hurting other people.

00:14So the dickish approach to the Bible

00:18is still very much in vogue.

00:20(upbeat music)

00:23Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:26- And I'm Dan Beecher.

00:27- And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast

00:30where we increase public access to the academic study

00:33of the Bible and religion and combat the spread

00:35of misinformation about the same.

00:38Our things today, Dan?

00:40- Good, we're going into combat mode for this one, man.

00:42When it comes to misinformation,

00:46this week we got some, we got some.

00:48There was, it's less employed

00:52the misinformation-y part of this episode

00:55than it used to be.

00:57- But the damage is done.

00:58- And it's still out there, it's still floating around,

01:00it's still in the ether.

01:01So it's time to dive into it, I like that.

01:06- All righty.

01:07- So we're gonna, so in the first,

01:09that's the first half of the show.

01:10The second half of the show,

01:12we're gonna, it's gonna be a lot of fun.

01:14We're getting biblical-ish with some apocrypha.

01:18So if you're of the Catholic/Orthodox persuasion,

01:24then this is just Bible for you.

01:28And if you're Protestant, this is heresy.

01:33So let's launch into our first topic with taking issue.

01:41(upbeat music)

01:44All right, and this week,

01:46what are we taking issue with, Dan?

01:49What's the biggest problem here?

01:51- We're taking issue with a couple of curses

01:54that happen in the primeval history,

01:56which is Genesis one through 11,

01:59the very beginning of the book of Genesis,

02:02because these curses have contributed to untold

02:07suffering, enslavement, death,

02:12and persecution and prejudice.

02:15And so, yeah, we're gonna look into the curse of Cain

02:19and the curse of Ham.

02:21- Yeah, which is funny,

02:22because we call it the curse of Ham.

02:24It'll turn out to not be the curse of Ham,

02:26but that's, we'll get to that.

02:28Let's start with Cain.

02:31And I'll just remind our listeners

02:35sort of where we are in the story.

02:39Adam and Eve, there were just two people.

02:42They came out of the garden.

02:44We're in Genesis four now.

02:48They make a couple of kids,

02:52and Cain, and we talked about this just briefly,

02:56a couple, a few weeks ago, I seem to recall, anyway.

03:00- Yeah, just for one.

03:01- They have a couple of kids,

03:02and suddenly one of them kills the other one.

03:07Cain kills Abel, that's bad.

03:10The Lord is unhappy about that very much,

03:14and pronounces some stuff about it.

03:19I guess I'll just read it.

03:20- Yeah.

03:21- The Lord says, this is Genesis four, verse 10.

03:26It says, and the Lord said, "What have you done?

03:29Listen, your brother's blood is crying out to me

03:31from the ground, and now you are cursed from the ground,

03:35which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood

03:38from your hand.

03:40When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you

03:44its strength, you will be a fugitive and wanderer on the earth."

03:51Cain said to the Lord, "My punishment is greater

03:55than I can bear, yet today you have driven me away

03:58from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face.

04:01I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth,

04:04and anyone who meets me may kill me."

04:08Then the Lord said to him, "Not so.

04:10Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance,

04:14and the Lord put a mark on Cain,

04:17so that no one who came upon him would kill him."

04:21Now, leaving aside the problem of who?

04:25Who would come upon you?

04:27There's only two other people left,

04:30because we talked about that and how there aren't just

04:34two people left, he lives in the land of Nod,

04:37and there are a bunch of other people,

04:38and that's a whole match.

04:40- He's already got a wife?

04:41- Yeah, that's right, but that's not what we're talking about.

04:45This mark that has been put on Cain.

04:49Talk to me about, because it sounds like a good thing.

04:54Like it sounds like the Lord is like,

04:56"I'll put this mark on you, and nobody will kill you.

04:59You are unkillable now."

05:01That seems positive.

05:04- It would seem like good news.

05:06- Yeah.

05:07- He's really worried about somebody killing him,

05:10but it certainly doesn't like the idea,

05:13and the mark has turned into something incredibly bad.

05:18The Hebrew word there is oat.

05:21This could mean a sign and omen.

05:25It is, we don't know what it is.

05:29Some got a mark, it's probably visible,

05:32so it's probably something on his person in some way.

05:37Some people think it was a character,

05:40like as in an alphabetic character,

05:43or a logogram or a syllabic character,

05:47something perhaps from Sumerian or something like that.

05:52Nobody knows exactly what it is, but it's something that--

05:56- It's not described in any way.

05:59It's not like we are not given any sense

06:01of what this thing is.

06:03- Yeah, but it's just supposed to identify him

06:06as the one you shouldn't kill.

06:08- Right.

06:09Otherwise, bad things happen to you.

06:12- Right, now that, okay, so that's the background,

06:17but it didn't just stay like, oh, it could be this,

06:21it could be that.

06:22- No.

06:23- At some point, somebody decided,

06:25hey, I know what it was.

06:28It was black skin, or dark skin, or something like that.

06:33- Yeah, how did that, do we know how that came to be?

06:38- When I first, 'cause I remember hearing this,

06:40I remember this being told to me.

06:43And it's just sounded like one of those things

06:48that we just knew for forever,

06:51since the beginning of Bible or whatever, but it's not.

06:55- Really, the further back we go,

07:02the more and more people are talking

07:03about this as some kind of a letter.

07:06However, in the medieval period,

07:09as European Christians are establishing their dominance

07:13over things like this slave trade and things like that,

07:18as they are setting out and making their way

07:22to other parts of the world

07:23and finding out that other peoples

07:25are already occupying those parts of the world,

07:29there began to develop a concept of race,

07:32not as a question of descent or nation or language,

07:37which is how the word race was always used

07:41prior to this time period.

07:42Now I became a question of skin color

07:44and you begin to have this hierarchy of the races

07:48based on skin color.

07:50And once you begin to have criticism of that,

07:54you need a defense of that.

07:57And so this is when this interpretation

08:00begins to become salient and prominent is,

08:04oh, we need a defense, oh, well guess what?

08:06It's in the Bible, Succah?

08:08- Yeah. - I'm allowed to

08:10'cause this is the curse that is put on cane.

08:13This is dark skin and this became really prominent

08:17once criticism of slavery became very, very prominent,

08:22particularly in Europe and in the United States.

08:27- Yeah.

08:28- And it wasn't just slavery, even, so yes,

08:31this was widely used, especially in the United States

08:35during the periods of slavery.

08:38But even after abolition happened here in the United States,

08:43it was also used by segregationists

08:48who wanted to make sure that the races stayed separate.

08:53- Yeah.

08:54- Yeah, this was.

08:55- Yeah, it's not a nice thing.

08:59And so was there any, like we talked about this,

09:03there's really no biblical basis for assuming

09:08that it is the mark of cane was to do with skin color.

09:13- Oh, none whatsoever.

09:17They didn't really have a concept of skin color

09:22as we understand it today in the Bible.

09:24There's no part of the Bible

09:26that divides up any peoples according to skin color.

09:30- Right.

09:31- So that wouldn't have been relevant to them.

09:34- Probably largely because everyone around them,

09:37everyone that the writers and readers of the Bible

09:42encountered would have likely had roughly the same

09:46skin color that they had.

09:47- And off a lot of them, they do make note of Ethiopians.

09:52And now they don't suggest that this is a different race

09:57or anything like that, but Ethiopians are a people

10:00who they recognize look different.

10:04And there are, and the folks who would argue

10:06that the curse of cane is relevant to racism

10:10would suggest that the Ethiopians are dismissed

10:13as wicked or evil or something like that in the Bible.

10:17And they're not, they're treated as other only in the sense

10:22that they are so far away.

10:25And they considered everything close to them to be good

10:28and everything far away for them to be bad.

10:30So the only time you ever have any kind of moral judgments

10:33associated with the Ethiopians,

10:35it's basically they're so far away, they're losers.

10:38- Proximity as a measurement of evil.

10:44- Yeah, it really was down to that in a lot of ways.

10:48And a lot of people look at the Bible today

10:51and they think, oh, well, this is about,

10:52it talks about white skin in ways that value it,

10:56but it doesn't, there's no part of the Bible

10:59that associates any kind of value with any color skin

11:02apart from ruddy skin, red skin, as in flush with blood.

11:07That is youthful, that is vigorous, that is lively.

11:11That's good skin to have, but that's also

11:13kind of a temporary thing.

11:17And then when it talks about white,

11:19it actually is using a word that means shiny.

11:22And the idea is that it's shiny like milk,

11:25not white like milk, shiny like milk.

11:28In other words, your complexion is glowing.

11:31- You're glistening, you're positively glowing.

11:35- And then the only time it ever talks about black skin

11:38is when it's talking about certain diseases

11:40that create necrosis and things like that.

11:43And then you have in the song of songs,

11:47the woman says, "I am blackened and beautiful."

11:51The idea being that she is a working class,

11:54she gets made fun of for being working class

11:56because her skin has been darkened by the sun,

11:58but she doesn't understand that as a harsh value judgment.

12:05But yeah, there's no part of the Bible

12:08that says anything about skin color

12:09as a moral barometer.

12:13So that's read back in by folks who want to feel like,

12:17oh yeah, white skinned good, dark skinned bad.

12:21But that's something that post-dates the development

12:23of the concept of race as a question of skin color.

12:25So it's like 16th through the early 20th centuries

12:30is when that's a thing and really most prominently

12:34in the 19th century when the debates about slavery

12:37are leading to civil war.

12:40Okay, yeah, there is one,

12:45what feels like glaring problem to me

12:49with the idea of the mark of Cain

12:51being the origin of skin-based racial divides.

12:56- Wouldn't happen to do with the fact

13:01that Cain's descendants would have perished in the flood.

13:06- Everybody was killed.

13:07The entire world was killed except for one family.

13:11And that does seem to be a big problem.

13:15That's just a few chapters later in Genesis

13:18when we get to the story of Noah and the Ark.

13:23- Well, this is a fun story for Latter-day Saints

13:26is there's a tradition that goes back to,

13:28I think it was Spencer Kimball's "The Miracle of Forgiveness"

13:32that popularized this story.

13:35But an early one of the first apostles told a story,

13:39evidently we don't have their account.

13:41We have somebody else decades later telling a story

13:44about how this early apostle was on horseback in the woods.

13:49And suddenly notice that there was someone walking along

13:54side of him whose head was level with his head

13:58sitting on his horse who was covered in hair

14:01and had a dark complexion

14:04and identified himself as Cain.

14:06- Right, and yes, that very Cain.

14:10- Yes, the very Cain who had been walking the earth

14:13ever since and his goal was to make humanity miserable

14:18or something like that.

14:19And this early apostle rebuked him in the name

14:22of Jesus Christ and that evidently told the tale.

14:27- And that's how the legend happened.

14:30- And this is true, plenty of Mormons believe

14:35that Bigfoot is Cain.

14:38- And this happened in like Tennessee,

14:42but in like 1980 or 1981 there were some Bigfoot sightings

14:47in like central and southern Utah.

14:49And that it was "Miracle of Forgiveness" in like 1970 or '71

14:54spread that story.

14:56And then in like a decade later it's like Bigfoot sightings

15:00and all of a sudden everybody's like,

15:01it's that old Cain up to his tricks.

15:03And so folks who grew up in the '80s probably grew up here

15:08here in the story about Bigfoot being Cain.

15:12I guess he was treading water through the flood.

15:16- Well, there was, I think it was Bruce R. McConkie

15:22or somebody was famously asked if Bigfoot was Cain

15:25and he was like, "Unless Cain turned into a duck

15:27"during the flood, he died like everybody else."

15:31- Well, so even the flood though is not a huge problem

15:37if you really, really wanna go hard with the racism.

15:42- Yeah, you have, you pick it back up immediately

15:45after the flood.

15:46- Because they've got another end with it.

15:49This is a story that we've also talked about a while back

15:52on the show.

15:54This is the story of the son of Noah, Ham who,

15:59and this is again, this is one of the most baffling stories

16:03for me, I've never really, even your explanation

16:06didn't help me out all that much.

16:08Which is that Ham sees his dad naked

16:10after his dad gets drunk.

16:13His dad gets drunk and passes out naked in a tent.

16:16Ham, his son, sees it, runs out, tells his two brothers,

16:21the brothers come in and sort of tiptoe backwards

16:25and cover dad up with a blankie.

16:28And then when dad wakes up, when Noah wakes up,

16:33he is furious with Ham.

16:36And it's not 100% clear what Ham's great sin was in this.

16:42- Yeah.

16:45- But regardless of what it was, it seems,

16:47it's no matter what, the punishment seems outsized

16:52and wrongly ascribed for what happened.

16:57Which is that Noah curses Ham and says

17:03that his son, Canaan, will be the lowest of slaves.

17:09- Well, there's no curse of Ham at all.

17:11- Oh, that's right.

17:12- Ham is absent from the narrative.

17:15- That's right. - Once Ham tells his brother

17:18what happened, Ham vanishes because it's ostensibly,

17:23Noah's three sons are Shem, Ham, and J. Feth.

17:27And they're listed in that order,

17:28which means that's oldest to youngest, Shem, Ham, and J. Feth.

17:32And then Ham does this.

17:35And verse 24 says, when Noah awoke from his wine

17:37and knew what his youngest son had done to him,

17:40it's like, whoa, that would have to be J. Feth, not Ham.

17:44He says, cursed be Canaan.

17:47- Who's not even involved?

17:49- This is all very confusing.

17:51- Yeah, and likely the original story had three sons,

17:56Shem, J. Feth, and Canaan.

17:58But Ham was probably written in there

18:01in order to round out the table of nations from Genesis 10,

18:06which tries to account for the three main

18:10broad populations that they're aware of.

18:13Basically, they've got Europeans,

18:15they've got Semitic peoples and they've got African peoples.

18:20And so the theory is that Ham was just thrown in there,

18:25but yeah.

18:27- Okay, I mean, it makes,

18:29although I will say, it's just sort of fading

18:32into the background and letting someone else take the fall

18:36seems like a very middle kid thing to do.

18:40- Yeah, Ham's like, I'm out, peace, sorry, son.

18:45- So anyway, yes, Ham's son, Canaan,

18:49takes the full brunt of the curse, confusingly.

18:55And the curse is that he has to be,

18:58he and his progeny presumably have to be slaves

19:02to the other sons.

19:05- Yeah, and the rhetorical point here

19:10is Canaan is the one who's cursed.

19:13And so the Canaanites therefore,

19:16they've been cursed by God,

19:17turns out we've got to invade the land,

19:20we've got to genocide them all, we've got to take over,

19:23they've, we've got to enslave them

19:25whenever we have the opportunity

19:26because that's what God said.

19:27So rhetorically, this is a later Israelite/Judahite attempt

19:32to denigrate the other that is around them.

19:40- They're neighbor in short.

19:41And say, oh, turns out you were destined

19:45to be enslaved by us.

19:47- Yeah, of course we're supposed to treat you badly.

19:50Look at what that one guy did all those,

19:55so many years ago, we don't know when it happened.

19:57- Yeah.

19:58(upbeat music)

20:01- And then when we had this development of,

20:05oh, suddenly we're gonna make race about skin color

20:08and we're gonna make enslavement based on skin color.

20:12Suddenly a new justification emerges where,

20:16this is the curse of ham.

20:18And we're gonna suggest that ham is the African peoples.

20:23And which is weird because Canaan,

20:26from whom the Canaanites are supposed to descend,

20:29is the one child of ham that is mentioned here.

20:32- Right.

20:33- And Cush is also supposed to be another son of ham.

20:38And this is one of the ways that they say,

20:41well, Cush is Ethiopia, so it's the African peoples.

20:46And there have been some, this is what I find fascinating.

20:50If you go back in and look in history

20:52and you go all the way back to Philo,

20:54who is like end of the first century BCE,

20:58first half of the first century CE.

21:01- Okay. - Philo argues that the name ham

21:05means black and means hot and means servant.

21:10- Okay, that's a lot of different things

21:15for one syllable name to mean.

21:17- Well, when you try to do the etymology of this,

21:20you find a bunch of different options.

21:22And rather than picking one,

21:24these folks went, it's all of them at the same time.

21:28Which is a common fallacy among isugites of the Bible.

21:33But it's also a false etymology.

21:35Ham has nothing to do with any of those things.

21:37And, but up until the early 20th century,

21:42a lot of people thought ham's name meant black and meant hot.

21:46And guess what Africa is?

21:48Well, it's hot and it also means servant.

21:51Well, guess what that means?

21:53That's justifies us enslaving Africans.

21:56But, and there's some really great scholarship

21:59that has looked at the etymology and has said,

22:02well, the first letter of the word ham, which is het,

22:06which is kind of a guttural pronounced letter,

22:09actually indicated two different

22:13continental values in early Hebrew.

22:17And when you go back and look at the Greek transliterations

22:20and translations like you find in the Septuagint

22:22and things like that, that one letter is translated

22:26or transliterated two different ways.

22:28So those two different continental values

22:30are preserved in the Greek.

22:32And when you look at that,

22:35the way that they spell ham in the Greek,

22:38preserving that the original pronunciation

22:42is the different value from all the words

22:45that mean black or hot or servant.

22:49And so, ham's name does not mean any of those things,

22:53but this was another one of the justifications

22:56for enslavement of black Africans.

22:59The notion that they were associated with ham

23:02because ham obviously had to be associated

23:05with the African continent because everybody descended

23:09from Shem Ham and Japheth.

23:10And the idea is, Shem is the Semites.

23:12Japheth is Europeans and Ham is Africans.

23:17And in addition to the fact that there are a lot more people

23:20than that in the world.

23:21Right. There's this old theory that Shem came from

23:26an Akkadian word, Sem that was supposed to,

23:29what was it supposed to mean?

23:31Oh gosh, I forget what it was supposed to mean.

23:34But the crazy one was that Japheth,

23:36they thought came from the Hebrew word Japheh,

23:40which means beautiful.

23:42And so, of course, even in the Hebrew Bible,

23:46they were like those beautiful Europeans.

23:49More beautiful than us.

23:52And then obviously Ham was those.

23:55Obviously Europeans are going to look for a reason

23:58why their person means beautiful.

24:00And then I think there was another etymology

24:02that tried to associate ham with hypersexuality

24:07or something like that.

24:09And they were like, yep, that tracks.

24:11And so that just added to the fuel

24:15that you have the, a bunch of things are coming together

24:20to point these people, a confluence, if you will,

24:27to point these people towards even stronger conviction

24:30than that all of this is justified.

24:33And that's Black folks were destined by God

24:36to be enslaved.

24:39Yeah, none of which is in the Bible.

24:43Although what's very odd is that there's plenty in the Bible

24:48through which to justify slavery.

24:50Oh, yes, slavery is in practice.

24:52Yeah, the buying and selling and owning of other human beings

24:55is fully two thumbs up approved from beginning to end

25:00in throughout the Bible.

25:03It's just that racial justification

25:06that ends up becoming the bugaboo

25:08that they end up making up all of this stuff

25:12over, which is so surprising.

25:15Like it's, I mean, it's nice when the Bible

25:20is more progressive than the modern people

25:25'cause it's rare.

25:26But yeah, I mean, the skin color doesn't seem

25:28to be a problem at all in the Bible.

25:32Yeah, there was no concept at the time.

25:35The concept of race as a question of skin color

25:37is an invention of European Christianity

25:40from starting in the medieval period,

25:43but really picking up steam

25:46once you get into the 15 and 1600s.

25:49So yeah, it's a problem.

25:52Yeah, well, if you're out there

25:55and you hear a reference to the mark of Cain

25:59or the curse of Ham or Canaan 'cause it wasn't Ham,

26:04like I can't get over that.

26:06I have heard the phrase, the curse of Ham

26:09for decades and never once did anyone point out,

26:14but he wasn't though.

26:17Yeah, what about that part?

26:19Yeah, you have to substitute Ham for Canaan

26:21and then you have to substitute Black Africans

26:23for Ham's line, which is supposed to be

26:28like Mesopotamians, Canaanites, and Arabians

26:33and then a little bit of Ethiopia.

26:37And so it's doubly problematic.

26:41And then we've got, we actually have support

26:45for that doctrine in LDS scripture

26:50in the book of Abraham, chapter one.

26:55Abraham has got a flea from the wicked priests

27:00and it talks about a king and it says,

27:06yeah, broke down the altar of El-Khennah

27:09and of the gods of the land and utterly destroyed them

27:11and smote the priests that he died

27:13and there was great morning in Chaldea,

27:14so Mesopotamia, and also in the court of Pharaoh,

27:18which Pharaoh signifies king by royal blood.

27:21Now this king of Egypt was a descendant

27:23from the loins of Ham

27:24and was a partaker of the blood of the Canaanites by birth.

27:30So we've got both Ham and Canaan

27:33from this descent sprang all Egyptians

27:36and thus the blood of the Canaanites

27:38was preserved in the land.

27:40The land of Egypt being first discovered by a woman

27:43who was the daughter of Ham and the daughter of Egyptus,

27:47which in the Chaldean signifies Egypt,

27:51which signifies that which is forbidden.

27:53When this woman discovered the land,

27:55it was underwater who afterwards settled her sons on it

27:57and thus from Ham sprang that race

28:00which preserved the curse in the land.

28:03So we have pretty explicit endorsement

28:09in the book of Abraham of this idea

28:13that there's a curse on Ham that relates to the Egyptians

28:18and probably the rest of Africa.

28:21Very explicit.

28:22I remember hearing the phrase cursed

28:26and marked with darkness,

28:28which I thought was biblical

28:32and was surprised to learn wasn't.

28:34- No, no.

28:36- Boom. - Yeah.

28:38Oh, and one other folk etymology,

28:41Kemet is the Egyptian word for Egypt

28:46and there was an argument that when the Egyptian

28:51made its way into Hebrew,

28:54the K sound was aspirated

28:58and the T on the end was dropped.

29:01And so Kemet would have been pronounced semi

29:05and then the E dropped off.

29:07And so Kemet, which refers to the black lands,

29:10dark soil, basically, according to this etymology,

29:16is the same as Ham.

29:18So they also had that one to suggest,

29:21yeah, this is definitely about Africans.

29:24- Yeah, which, yeah, as we can see, influenced an awful lot

29:28of people. - Yeah.

29:30- And oh, there's an awful story

29:34about when Brigham Young was trying to get Utah statehood.

29:39He said, "The curse of Cain required slavery."

29:46And if he argued that, and this is off of quotation

29:51from Wikipedia, he argued that because they did not have

29:53the right to govern the affairs of the church

29:55due to the priesthood ban,

29:56they should also not have the right to govern

29:58the affairs of the state, including the right to vote.

30:02He warned that if they made the children of Cain

30:03equal to them, they would be cursed.

30:06He also argued that if someone married

30:08a descendant of Cain, they would also have the same curse.

30:11- Yeah.

30:11- So-- - Brigham Young, for those of you

30:13who don't know, was the second president

30:16and prophet of the LDS, the Mormon church.

30:20- Yes, and profoundly racist.

30:24- Yeah, yeah, oh yeah.

30:25He loved him some racism, big fan.

30:30Well, there you go, reading racism back into

30:37verses that don't contain anything remotely like it,

30:42which is very interesting.

30:44- And we talk about this from the 21st century

30:47looking back like you numb skulls, but it still goes on today.

30:52- There are plenty of folks today who try to find ways

30:52- Oh yeah.

30:56to read racism into the Bible,

30:58to read jingoism and xenophobia and anti-immigrant

31:03and misogynist ideas about access to power

31:08and resources into the Bible.

31:10And so yeah, we're still struggling with trying to figure out

31:14how to not read the Bible with the goal

31:18of hurting other people.

31:19So the dickish approach to the Bible

31:23is still very much in vogue, unfortunately.

31:27- It is, and we're in a period of that worsening.

31:31So hopefully we can chill that out.

31:35- Yeah.

31:36- All right, let's move on to our next segment.

31:39This is Biblical-ish.

31:42(upbeat music)

31:45- All right, and what's Biblical-ish today

31:48is a one chapter book.

31:51It's one of my favorite things

31:52when a book is only one chapter.

31:53- Oh yeah.

31:54- That's an easy read.

31:56This one's called Susanna.

32:00Don't you cry for me.

32:03Though she does have reason to cry.

32:05- And the Lord will murder her.

32:07- Yes, and this book comes from,

32:07- She does.

32:12it's one of the additions to Daniel.

32:15So Daniel, as we have talked about

32:18multiple times before, composed early one,

32:21or at least brought together early 160s BCE,

32:25this is one of the stories

32:27that was probably just in circulation

32:29as part of the broader Daniel traditions lore, if you will.

32:34And it's found in different parts of Daniel,

32:39some places it's in the middle,

32:41some places it's in the end.

32:43- It's Daniel Fanfic.

32:46- Yeah, well, and there's an argument to make

32:49that it is as old as some of the other stories in Daniel,

32:54but it just wasn't included

32:55in one of the early versions of Daniel.

32:58So, but yeah, I think-

33:00- Is it ever, I mean, I read that this was, at one point,

33:03just included as a chapter of Daniel.

33:07- In the Greek versions, the early Greek versions, yes.

33:10- Oh, okay. - Yeah.

33:11- It's interesting that it was then extracted there from.

33:16- Well, it was not in the Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts

33:21that were considered more authoritative.

33:22So within one of the things that led to the kind of separation

33:27of the Jewish and Christian canon

33:28was the fact that the rabbinic Judaism was like,

33:32yeah, we don't want the Greek anymore.

33:34We're just sticking with the Hebrew from here on out.

33:36And Christianity was like, no, give us the Greek.

33:39And so they, the stuff that was preserved in Greek stayed,

33:44whereas the stuff that was not in Hebrew or Aramaic

33:50was left behind.

33:52- And just as a reminder for, you know,

33:56for people who haven't listened to our show

33:58all the way through with the most careful ears,

34:01why is this, why was this not in my Bible growing up

34:07but was in my Catholic friends' Bible growing up?

34:11- Well, that's a long and fascinating story.

34:14- Just broad strokes.

34:15We've talked about the Apocrypha before.

34:16- Yeah, we've talked about the Apocrypha before.

34:18- In broad strokes, like I said,

34:21Christians stuck with the Greek, the Septuagint primarily,

34:24that gave way to the Vulgates with Jerome around 400 CE

34:28and the Vulgate was the authoritative addition

34:32of the Bible for Catholic and Orthodox congregations

34:35all the way up to the early 1500s.

34:38And one of the first things that was done

34:41as part of the Protestant Reformation Movement

34:44was to translate the Bible into German.

34:47This was what Martin Luther did.

34:49Only instead of basing it on the Vulgate,

34:52he went back to the Hebrew of the Hebrew Bible

34:55and the Greek of the New Testament.

34:58And when he noticed that the Hebrew did not have

35:02a lot of these things,

35:03he separated them off and called them the Apocrypha

35:08and said, we're gonna put these in their own section

35:10and they're gonna be, initially he put them in the back,

35:13along with texts like James and Hebrews and Revelation

35:17and said, these all suck, I wanna get rid of them.

35:20Now that didn't fly, but the separation

35:24of the Apocryphal texts from the Hebrew Bible did fly

35:29and that was the new Protestant norm.

35:32And so Bibles after that would be printed with

35:35an Old Testament and Apocrypha and a New Testament.

35:38And then around the 19th century,

35:42when folks like the foreign and British Bible Society

35:45and the American Bible Society were busy churning out Bibles

35:49and trying to get them into homes all over Great Britain

35:54and the Americas, they decided,

35:57yeah, we're gonna make a smaller Bible without the Apocrypha.

36:02And that became very popular.

36:03And so by the end of the 19th century,

36:06the Apocrypha was just no longer a part

36:08of the Protestant Bible.

36:09So Catholic-- And yet those same dongs

36:11left in Revelation.

36:13(laughing)

36:15Yeah, unfortunately.

36:16And Catholic and Orthodox Bibles,

36:18they continued to include the Apocrypha.

36:22Now they also were like, okay, we get it,

36:25the Hebrew is better.

36:27And so they started to translate from the Hebrew

36:30and the Greek rather than from the Vulgate, but they kept

36:33all the other parts of it in place.

36:35So this is one of the additions to Daniel

36:37that is in the Greek Septuagint and the Vulgate,

36:39but is not in the Hebrew.

36:41Okay.

36:43So this is an interesting story.

36:46It's just, it's kind of,

36:49it's a very straightforward story.

36:51No, nothing confusing about it or anything,

36:56which is a relief and--

36:58Well, I think it's a fun illustration of the fact

37:02that awful men have been scapegoating women

37:05for their own awfulness for thousands of years.

37:11Yeah, yeah, we had the racism,

37:14now we're gonna get into the sexism.

37:16Yeah, big guy.

37:16And that is through.

37:19So what happens in this is that there are some,

37:23so Susannah is just a big deal.

37:28A beautiful woman who is married

37:31to a guy named Joachim.

37:33Joachim, anyway, Joachim, so they live in,

37:39I don't know, where do they live?

37:44Oh, in Babylon, it's us.

37:46Yeah, and Joachim is very rich.

37:49He's got a nice garden joined to his house.

37:53Yeah.

37:54And he was the most honored of them all.

37:55So they used to come by his house all the time.

37:59It's a walled garden,

38:01meaning you can lock people in and or out of it,

38:04that will be useful later.

38:06And it is also big enough of a garden

38:10that you can hide in it.

38:12So those are points to remember for later.

38:16So in this story, two elders are appointed as judges.

38:26Which I guess, you know,

38:28means that they get to decide the fates of people.

38:31And it says something about wickedness

38:36coming forth from Babylon.

38:39Yeah, it says that year two elders

38:43from the people were appointed as judges.

38:45And then it says concerning them,

38:46the Lord had said wickedness came forth from Babylon

38:49from elders who were judges,

38:51who were supposed to govern the people.

38:53And we don't know what's being quoted there.

38:56Yeah.

38:57This may be, it sounds kind of close

38:59to a couple of things that are found in Jeremiah, but.

39:02We're not sure where it comes from.

39:04Okay.

39:05Well, there you go.

39:06(upbeat music)

39:09Both of these fellers hang out at Jokim's house,

39:17apparently to do their judging.

39:21Their bikes are on the lawn in the front.

39:24They don't even knock anymore.

39:25They just come on in.

39:27Yeah.

39:28And if you need some judgment,

39:30don't go to their house.

39:33They're over at Jokim's place.

39:35So go to his place, get some judgment.

39:37And then Jokim play.

39:41Okay.

39:43And then everybody goes home at noon.

39:45Everybody takes a long lunch break and it's all done.

39:49So. A little bit of a, a little bit of a siesta.

39:51Yeah, it's great. Exactly.

39:53So then these two judges,

39:58both independently develop major crushes on Susanna.

40:03Yeah.

40:05Which is fine, except that they are intense about it.

40:10And one day, but they haven't told me.

40:15It's becoming a problem.

40:16Yeah, it's, yeah. And they are, they are disgusted

40:19with themselves and disgraced,

40:22but not about to stop.

40:25Right, right.

40:26And what ends up happening is they're both, it's one day,

40:31it's like, it's lunchtime.

40:32Everybody's headed home.

40:34Both of them are like, should we go?

40:36Let's go home and have lunch.

40:37And she's, and they're like, yeah.

40:38Okay, I'll see you next time.

40:40And they all, they both go and they take,

40:42they both take a walk around the block

40:44and end up back, heading back to spy on Susanna

40:49in her garden, and they see each other.

40:51And they're like, oh, why are you going back?

40:54Oh, why are you going back?

40:56And eventually they confess to each other

41:00that they both are just wanting to spy on Susanna

41:03in the garden, presumably because she takes baths there.

41:07And they want to keep.

41:12They are peeping toms.

41:13She gives them the tingles in a funny place.

41:16And so they are like, well, we got to do something about this.

41:19So we're going to team up.

41:21Yeah.

41:22And putting a team together to Ogle and Lear

41:26at this woman who is married to another man.

41:31And let me tell you something.

41:32Nothing goes well when men conspire to Ogle.

41:37The things get out of hand when that happens.

41:41So they're about to, Susanna does indeed decide

41:45to go and take a bath and tells her maids to go

41:50and lock the doors to the garden so that she's not disturbed.

41:54But she doesn't know.

41:57The two fellers have been hiding inside the garden.

42:02That old, old curves are hiding inside the garden, peeping.

42:09And as soon as the maid goes out, this, this was weird.

42:13The maid, the two fellers run up to her.

42:17It literally says they ran.

42:20They got up and ran to her from their hiding place

42:24behind the trees or whatever.

42:25And they said, and this is verse 20, they said,

42:31"Look, the garden doors are shut and no one can see us.

42:34"We are burning with desire for you.

42:37"So give your consent."

42:40Oh, that's nice.

42:41You'll learn later that's not what they were really asking.

42:45"Give your consent and lie with us.

42:48"If you refuse, we will testify against you

42:51"that a young man was with you

42:53"and this is why you sent your maids away."

42:56Skuntan, so yes, they are coercing her.

43:01Let us do what we want, have our way,

43:06or your, and the sentence, by the way,

43:10apparently for her having this affair

43:15that they're going to pretend she had is death.

43:19Yeah.

43:20So she's in a bad spot.

43:23Either do the thing, either do the thing

43:26that she should be sentenced to death for

43:28according to the law, or just get sentenced

43:32to death for it, and that's that.

43:36And then she did what Deuteronomy 22 says is advisable.

43:42She cried out with a loud voice,

43:49and this is the part I find comical in verse 24,

43:53and the two elders shouted against her.

43:57And so I'm picturing her screaming

44:00and then just trying to drown, like ah, ah.

44:04Yeah.

44:06Only what they're shouting is, you know,

44:09probably something like lines of, oh, who was that?

44:13Yeah, boy, we saw running away from here,

44:16that young whipper snapper, and why are we here?

44:19We're just, I don't know, but you did something bad.

44:24And says one of them ran and opened the garden doors

44:27when the people in the house heard the shouting in the garden.

44:29They rushed in at the side door

44:31to see what had happened to her.

44:33And when the elders told their story,

44:34the servants felt very much ashamed

44:36for nothing like this had ever been said about Susanna.

44:40Yeah.

44:40Yeah, that's not like Susanna.

44:43That's so weird. She didn't do that.

44:44She did that.

44:45Oh, no, it's mad at me.

44:46And why are you two trapped inside with her?

44:49That's odd, too.

44:50I find all of this very strange, but--

44:52Yes, and so they--

44:54But you two are elders and judges,

44:55so why shouldn't we believe you?

44:58Yes, they bring the people together the next day.

45:03They send for Susanna, daughter of Hylkiah,

45:05the wife of Joachim, and she comes with her parents,

45:09her children, by the way, she's a mother,

45:11and all her relatives.

45:14And she was veiled.

45:16The scoundrels ordered her to be unveiled

45:18so that they might feast their eyes on her beauty.

45:22Even when they're like trying to sentence her to death,

45:27they still want to see her.

45:28Yeah, they're still like, "I want another piece."

45:30And everybody's weeping, and they--

45:35It says they laid their hands on her head,

45:39and through her tears, she looked up toward heaven

45:42for her heart trusted in the Lord.

45:43The elder said, "While we were walking in the garden alone,

45:46"this woman came in with two maids,

45:47"shut the garden doors and dismissed the maids.

45:50"Then a young man who was hiding there came to her

45:52"and was intimate with her.

45:53"We were in a corner in the garden.

45:56"When we saw this wickedness, we ran to them.

45:58"Although we saw him have intercourse with her,

46:00"we could not hold the man because he was stronger than we,

46:03"and he opened the doors and got away.

46:05"We did, however, seize this woman

46:07"and ask who the young man was,

46:08"but she would not tell us these things we testify."

46:11Yeah.

46:12And everybody was like, "Hmm, sounds reasonable."

46:15Holy cow, that's a crazy story.

46:18She must be awful.

46:20Yeah.

46:21So then she cries out with a loud voice to God

46:26and basically says, "Listen, you know that this isn't right.

46:33"Please help, I need help right now.

46:38"This is bad."

46:39And initially, it does say the Lord heard her cry.

46:45She's about, like, but this is happening

46:49as she's being carted away to her execution.

46:52Like they are ready to rumble with this thing.

46:55There is no appealing the case or anything.

46:59They're just gonna kill her.

47:02And suddenly, a hero emerges and it's Daniel.

47:07And it's Daniel.

47:10God stirred up the Holy Spirit of a young man named Daniel

47:13and he suddenly cries out, "I want no part

47:16"in shedding this woman's blood."

47:19Yeah.

47:20And so I guess when it says a young man named Daniel,

47:24this is meant to be sort of the introduction of this guy.

47:28I guess so.

47:30Presumably before he's in Nebuchadnezzar's service

47:34or whatever.

47:36Guess so 'cause he's just kind of walking around for you.

47:39He's just a guy.

47:40He's not a prophet.

47:42He's not a man of God.

47:44He's just a kid who's like, "No, I don't like it."

47:50And they are like, "Pray tell, Daniel, what's up?"

47:55- What's the deal here, man?

47:57- Yeah, he says, "Are you such fools?"

47:59Oh, Israelites is to condemn a daughter of Israel

48:01without examination and without learning the facts,

48:03return to court for these men have given false evidence

48:06against her.

48:07So they all are like, "Oh, well, I can't argue with that."

48:11And they're like, "Oh, yeah, we didn't forget

48:13"to have a trial, didn't we?"

48:16I guess we should probably do that.

48:19And the rest of the elders said to him,

48:22"Come sit among us and inform us

48:23"for God has given you the standing of an elder."

48:25Daniel said to them, "Separate them far from each other

48:28"and I will examine them."

48:29And so basically does the,

48:32so tell me when this happened.

48:34- Yeah.

48:35- And interrogates the one and then brings the other back

48:39and interrogates the other.

48:41- Yeah, which is a technique used to this day

48:45in police procedurals throughout the land, separating,

48:50separating the bad guys and then having them tell their story

48:53and finding the inconsistencies therein.

48:56- Yes, I can imagine these authors,

49:01like let's check the Apocrypha.

49:04Maybe there's some inspiration in there

49:05for how we should, these writers of police procedurals.

49:09- Yeah, exactly.

49:11- And basically Daniel's like, "Gotcha."

49:14And they are guilty,

49:17the whole assembly raised a great shout and blessed God,

49:19who saves those who hope in him.

49:22- Yeah.

49:22- He basically, he asks them, "What tree?"

49:27This is his big gotcha.

49:28He says, "Which tree were you sitting under?"

49:30And one of them says, "The mastic tree."

49:33And the other one says, "The evergreen oak."

49:37- Yeah.

49:38- So, "Ha ha, two different trees."

49:42That means you're lying.

49:44- Now you guys are the bad guys.

49:46Susanna is redeemed.

49:49- And the people are like, "Look, we gotta kill somebody."

49:54- You interrupted a perfectly good killing.

49:58Let's do that, so then they kill those two guys instead.

50:02- Yeah, and thus, "Innocent Blood" was spared that day.

50:05And Hillkiah and his wife praised God

50:09for their daughter Susanna and so did her husband Joaquim

50:12and all her relatives because she was found

50:14innocent of a shameful deed.

50:16And from that day onward, Daniel had a great reputation

50:19among the people and seen.

50:22- And seen.

50:23- Yeah.

50:24- It is as neatly told and as neatly wrapped up

50:29as any biblical story I have ever read.

50:33- Yeah, yeah.

50:34- Like, by biblical standards, this is the most,

50:39the best told story that exists.

50:44- Yeah, there's no prerequisite for reading this story.

50:49There are no characters you already need to know.

50:51It's like, "Oh, we're gonna introduce everybody.

50:53Don't worry about it."

50:54- Yeah.

50:55- And it all gets wrapped up in a tidy little bow.

50:59I mean, I can't promise you that it did not take me

51:02exactly 22 minutes to read this chapter.

51:07That would have been pretty slow reading, actually.

51:10But yeah, it is basically a sitcom episode.

51:15- Yeah.

51:16- A pilot, if you will, and leaving you wanting more.

51:19Tell us more about this mysterious young man, Daniel,

51:23who was so tuned in to human behavior

51:28and was like, "I'm gonna ask him about trees

51:30is what I'm gonna do."

51:32- They're like, "Tune in next week for more

51:34in the amazing adventures of Daniel."

51:36- Well, and then according to the ancient Greek version,

51:39next week was, "Tune in next week to find out what happens

51:44when priests steal the food and say it was a deity.

51:51And then we've also got the dragon."

51:54- Yeah.

51:55- That famous story, that was next.

51:57- Okay, there you go.

51:59So, and by the way, I'm just gonna note

52:02that there were two footnotes

52:05that were of sort of minor interest to me to do with the

52:10trees that they both said they were under.

52:15- All right.

52:16- The note in the NRSVUE when the first elder

52:21says that he was under the mastic tree,

52:23he says, "The Greek words for mastic tree

52:27and cut are similar, which makes sense when Daniel,

52:33then after he says under the mastic tree,"

52:36he's Daniel says, "Very well, this lie has cost you

52:39your head for the angel of God has received the sentence

52:43from God and will immediately cut you into."

52:47So, I don't know what word that is,

52:52but there you go, cut is the same.

52:53And then when the other guy says the under

52:57and evergreen oak, the note says the Greek word

53:01for evergreen oak and split are similar.

53:05And then it's a, and Daniel says to the other guy,

53:08"Very well, this lie has cost you also your head

53:12for the angel of God is waiting with his sword

53:15to split you into."

53:18So, there's some clever word play going on also.

53:21- Yeah, yeah, that sounds like, yeah.

53:24And that sounds like this kind of literature.

53:26This is somebody flexing their rhetorical muscles there

53:31with some clever word play.

53:35- Well, and, but it's also an interesting sort of key

53:40to key you into the fact that this was probably written,

53:44this is probably invented in Greek as opposed to in Hebrew.

53:49So, probably a pretty easy thing to see

53:55that it wasn't original to the story of Daniel

53:58or crafted in the same time and place

54:01as the rest of the story of Daniel.

54:02- Well, at least not, yeah, the Greek in the,

54:05or excuse me, the Hebrew and the Aramaic portions,

54:07but it's probably a story that was being told orally

54:12around the same time.

54:14There's probably a lot of stories,

54:17many of which never got written down to many

54:19of which have been lost associated with this Daniel guy.

54:22In fact, a hero named Daniel

54:25goes all the way back to Eugoritic.

54:27- Oh really? - Yeah.

54:29There's a, it's Danell in Eugoritic,

54:32but there are stories about Danell going

54:35all the way back then as well.

54:36And so, yeah, this was, this was just your, you know,

54:41imagine Hercules.

54:43You got all kinds of different stories about Hercules

54:45in circulation, some of them better than others.

54:50None of them eclipsing the Disney masterpiece,

54:53Hercules. - Oh, of course not.

54:55- And the soundtrack, you can't,

54:57you can't hang with the Disney Hercules soundtrack,

55:00but it's a very similar idea.

55:05There are just characters who are just stories

55:10circulate about them and people make up new stories

55:13and alter old stories, and we don't need to talk

55:17about the rocks portrayal of Hercules.

55:21I shouldn't even have brought it up, forget I said that.

55:24- And not unlike Hercules, what's interesting is that,

55:28you know, with a lot of these stories,

55:31you pick a one thing that is sort of central

55:34to this person, this character.

55:36So with Hercules, it's strength, right, physical strength,

55:39and all of these stories that circulate

55:42are mostly just about how he can pick things up

55:45that are very heavy, or beat you up.

55:49With Daniel, it's the same, except that now it's like wisdom,

55:53right, so all of this. - Yeah, divine,

55:56he taps into God and has that divine wisdom.

56:01- So there you go, he's got enough wisdom

56:04to figure out how to separate two witnesses

56:09before interrogating them and ask them

56:13tree-related questions. (laughs)

56:16All right, well, that's it for the show.

56:19This Daniel has enough wisdom to know when a show is over,

56:21so I am going to, I'll call it right there.

56:24If you would like to become a patron of the show,

56:27head on over to patreon.com/dataoverdogma.

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56:36You can get access to an early and ad-free version

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56:56If you'd like to reach us about anything,

56:58you can email us at contact@dataoverdogma.pod.com.

57:03Thanks so much, we'll talk to you again next week.

57:06- Bye, everybody.

57:07(upbeat music)

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