Ep 97: The Neighborhood of Make-Believe

00:00- Is it me or is this bush not really burning, man?

00:05I can't tell.

00:06It looks like it's just on fire, but never burns.

00:09You got any more of that in manna?

00:11- Manna.

00:12(laughing)

00:13(upbeat music)

00:16- Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan, and I'm Dan Beecher.

00:20- And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast

00:23where we increase public access to the academic study

00:26of the Bible and religion and combat the spread

00:29of misinformation about the same,

00:31and we're gonna be doing a little both today, aren't we Dan?

00:33- Yeah, a lot.

00:35- A lot of both a bit of the two, yeah.

00:38(laughing)

00:40- Absolutely.

00:41- Looking forward to today, these are topics

00:43that come up all the time and a little topical

00:46when it comes to what's in the news.

00:49- Oh, sure, sure, sure, some of it.

00:51I don't know that our first thing might not be too topical,

00:55but the second thing will be.

00:56- It's talkable, it's not necessarily topical,

00:58but the second one, yeah, at least at time

01:01of recording the second one is on the minds

01:05of an awful lot of people.

01:06- Yeah.

01:06- So, and we'll talk about that.

01:08- Yeah, we're, our first segment is gonna be

01:11an artifacts and fiction segment.

01:15We're gonna be diving into the Red Sea and won't it be nice?

01:20- It'll be very shallow, very walkable.

01:22- Oh, yeah, it'll be, yeah.

01:24- Apparently you can just sort of wave your arms

01:26and just walk straight through.

01:28So, that's gonna be great. - It's gonna be

01:29talkable, a topical, a walkable day to day.

01:33- All right, yeah, exactly.

01:35- And then later on in the show, we're gonna do a chapter

01:40and verse about a good Samaritan.

01:43We'll see what happens with that.

01:45- Yeah.

01:46- But to start us off, artifacts and fiction.

01:50(upbeat music)

01:53And today's topic, I'll give a brief introduction.

01:57I know that you're prepped to talk about it.

02:00More in depth, but I love that the main guy.

02:05You gotta love it when Google trolls a dude.

02:11Because when you Google Ron Wyatt,

02:14it says, Google comes up and it says Ron Wyatt,

02:19American nurse esthetist.

02:22- Yes, that was his day job.

02:25So, that is not at all what he is known for,

02:30and not remotely.

02:31- I don't know, in the community of nurse esthetist,

02:35and we're not in any way, shape or form whatsoever,

02:38mocking or deriding that community or that job.

02:42Those are very important people as I and my wife

02:45can both attest, and that is very important work.

02:48However, yes, he's more widely known for other stuff.

02:53He kind of abandoned his field of expertise

02:56for a field in which he had no expertise.

03:00- It's the zero expertise.

03:02- Yeah, and apparently it got started.

03:04I was just reading about this guy,

03:06and apparently it got started

03:07because he saw a picture in Life Magazine

03:10of a hill in Turkey, and said that looks like a boat shape

03:15and decided it was where Noah's ark landed,

03:21and that sent him on the amateur archeology path forever.

03:26- That is hilarious.

03:33I have not heard that story.

03:35However, obviously he's talking about the Durapunar site.

03:39- Correct.

03:40- So, this is a hillside in Turkey.

03:41So, when you looked into this,

03:43had someone already said we think this is Noah's ark,

03:46or was this, he just saw a picture in a magazine

03:49that somebody was like, "Look at the lush green hillside,"

03:51and he was like, "There's a boat!"

03:54I think it was like maybe a little bit of both.

03:56I think people were already buzzing

03:57that there was a possibility that there was boat shaped

04:02and what if, and he just took it way too far.

04:05- He got the tingle and just decided this is how

04:09he was going to be remembered for all time

04:12and in all places as someone who was not an archeologist.

04:17- But was determined to be one anyway.

04:21- And do a lot of harm to the field of archeology.

04:23- Oh my gosh.

04:24- He has done.

04:25- Yeah.

04:26- Yeah, well, in his life,

04:30he made over a hundred trips to the Middle East

04:34from 1977 until his death in 1999.

04:38So, he knows what he's talking about.

04:41- He knows the area at least.

04:44- Yeah, but today we're gonna be talking.

04:47Look, he has claims about Noah's ark

04:51and timbers on Noah's ark and all of a sudden,

04:54like I think he claimed that he found a pillar

04:58from Noah that had inscriptions on it and whatever.

05:02He claimed he found Goliath's sword, that's amazing.

05:06But today we're gonna discuss a scuba diving trip

05:11that he took as well as some other things that he did.

05:14- Yeah, he was hunting for seashells

05:16and was, what's this?

05:19But to just for those who might be curious

05:22about the Derupinar site,

05:23this is a geologic formation on a hillside in Turkey.

05:28And you can tell it's a geologic formation

05:30because it's a little teardrop-shaped thing

05:33that is surrounded by, and it looks like

05:35kind of like rock outcroppings coming up

05:39that create this little teardrop shape.

05:42And there are other identical rocky outcroppings around it.

05:47Like there are a bunch of rocky outcroppings in the area.

05:50- You said teardrop-shaped, I think you mean ark-shape.

05:53I think it was very ark-shaped.

05:57It looks kind of like a,

05:58almost like a football sort of thing.

06:00- Yeah, yeah.

06:01And there's been, so actual scientists have gone there

06:06to study it, and there's a paper

06:07from a journal called Journal of Geoscience Education

06:12from, there's a paper from 1996.

06:14This is volume 44, if you're curious.

06:17Lawrence Collins and David Fassold wrote this paper

06:20called Bogus Noah's Ark from Turkey

06:22exposed as a common geologic structure.

06:26And so all the stuff they're like,

06:27we found the rooms, we found the beams,

06:30we found the walls and everything.

06:32And they're like, oh, what did they say?

06:34They said they found rivets, metal rivets.

06:36They said they found anchor stones

06:40and all this stuff nearby.

06:41- Oh, that's right.

06:42I don't know, metal rivets.

06:42Remember the anchor stones?

06:44Did they even have metallurgy to do riveting in Noah's time?

06:48Like what they even had that?

06:50- When you date it, they had,

06:52yeah, it depends on when you date it, really.

06:54But what this paper goes through,

06:56it addresses all of the claims one by one

06:58and points out that no,

06:59these are all entirely natural geologic formations.

07:03And also the, what they call drogue stones

07:07or the anchor stones,

07:10they're large standing stone steeli

07:15that have little holes near the top of them.

07:17And they're like, they tied them together

07:18and they hung from the side of the boat

07:20to help anchor them in stormy weather and everything.

07:23And like no, if you tied,

07:27if you tried to hang them from a boat with a rope,

07:32it would have snapped the top

07:34because the holes are drilled or cut

07:36so close to the top edge of the stone.

07:38Like there wasn't enough to secure the--

07:41- Also quite famously,

07:43that particular boat was not made to anchor.

07:46It was way to just float sort of randomly

07:49until it's set down gently.

07:50- The idea is the weight hangs from the boat

07:53and kind of steadies it.

07:54So even if the water is rough,

07:57the boat is a little more,

07:59is holding a little more still.

08:01- Okay.

08:02- So totally nonsense,

08:04the claims about the Duropinar site.

08:06- Yeah, okay, but let's move on to better claims,

08:11for more fun matters.

08:12- Yes, because Ron Wyatt was very interested

08:17in proving the Bible through finding stuff

08:23in the Middle East, aka making stuff up.

08:28Oh, did I bear, I gave away the ending.

08:30Spoiler alert, he made up stuff.

08:33And just so you know, over 100 years before Ron Wyatt,

08:38actual professional archeologists already tried to do that.

08:43And that's what resulted in critical scholarship

08:46and the field of biblical archeology

08:48because they went there and developed their techniques,

08:51their methodologies by trying to prove the Bible

08:55and failing over and over and over again.

08:58And so while there are certainly many parts

09:00of the Bible that are historical,

09:02they were there basically to prove the supernatural parts

09:05and they never could.

09:06And so actual archeologists morphed into critical scholarship

09:11as they were like, well, let's develop these methodologies.

09:14Let's just try to do the best we can

09:15and we'll see what we find.

09:17And that turned into biblical archeology,

09:20which would become critical scholarship.

09:22But if you don't have any training

09:24and you're just there to try to make money

09:26because you're not gonna be a nurse anesthetist

09:29when you're spending all your time in Turkey and Syria

09:32and Palestine, you have to kind of pay the bills

09:36and so you just make stuff up, which is what he did.

09:39- Another way of putting it is

09:42all those trained guys were so mired

09:46in their own secular thinking

09:49that they couldn't see the truth

09:51that was right in front of them.

09:52So let's talk about that.

09:54- Let's talk about the truth that Wyatt uncovered.

09:58- I wanna talk about three main places.

10:00One is a valley that ends in a little beach

10:04on the side of what's called the Gulf of Akaba.

10:09And the beach is called Nueba Beach.

10:12And then I wanna talk about two mountain tops,

10:14Jabal Makla and Jebel El-Laws.

10:17Both of which are, depending on who is talking about it,

10:22both are kind of conflated and asserted to be Mount Sinai,

10:26even though they are two entirely separate mountain tops.

10:30- Can we just call them Mounts Sinai?

10:32- Mounts Sinai.

10:33Yes, you gotta make sure you get that glottal stop

10:36in there just to emphasize the S.

10:38And a lot of this is coming through representation

10:42of Wyatt's findings from Kent Hovind.

10:46So I just went and found a Kent Hovind video

10:48and he was like, "Here's what we have."

10:50And then I just wrote down all the points

10:52to respond to them.

10:54- Kent Hovind once challenged me to a debate.

10:56I think he was just going down the list

10:58of famous atheists or really of quasi-prominent atheists

11:03and he challenged me to a debate.

11:07He even offered to host me at his little very sad,

11:14rural amusement park,

11:17like biblically themed park sort of thing.

11:21And I googled it and looked around and was like,

11:23"Oh, I'm not going there."

11:25- So this is like the righteous gemstones

11:28but without all the money.

11:29- Yeah, it was very much that.

11:31- It was the less righteous gemstones, yeah.

11:33- The tolerable gemstones.

11:37So one of the first things he talks about

11:40is that there is this valley with a dry river bed

11:43that runs down to this beach, Nueba Beach.

11:45And I don't know how much Wyatt emphasized this

11:50but Hovind made a big deal out of the fact

11:53that the rocks are all moved to the side.

11:57So that it is flat enough

12:02and there are no obstructions

12:04so that you could carry, you could wheel carts

12:07and things through there.

12:09Which is one of the most laughable things

12:11because it's a dry river bed.

12:15And one of the things about dry river beds

12:18is that sometimes they have water in them,

12:20particularly when there is a flash flood

12:22or something like that.

12:23This is what a waddy is in this part of the world.

12:28And so it is not people

12:31who have moved the rocks and the debris out of the way

12:34so that they can get carts on through 4,000 years ago

12:38and nothing has moved in the 4,000 years since then.

12:43The fact that there are flash floods in the area

12:46that move rocks and debris out of the way

12:50so the water can get through.

12:51But this leads to this beach.

12:54It's a little bit of a delta.

12:57When you get the flash flood,

12:58you're going to move a lot of silt

12:59and it's going to get deposited

13:01once the water hits the red sea.

13:03And so Nueba Beach kind of sticks out a little bit.

13:06It's a little bit of a dry river delta.

13:09But Wyatt claimed that he found two pillars.

13:14A pillar on the Nueba beach side

13:16and another pillar on the other side in Saudi Arabia.

13:20And these are like eight foot tall cylindrical pillars

13:25that he says were erected by King Solomon

13:30around 1,000 BCE to commemorate the crossing of the Red Sea.

13:35And he says the pillar that was found

13:37on the Saudi Arabia side had an inscription

13:40that was written in old Hebrew that talked about it.

13:45And he has no photos or anything of the pillar

13:50that was on the Saudi Arabia side, as is his won't.

13:54He says that as soon as the Saudi government

13:57found out what was there, they came and absconded with it

14:00and are hiding it so that nobody can see it.

14:03But he does have pictures of the pillar

14:05that was on the Nueba beach side,

14:09which is a Roman era cylindrical architectural pillar

14:14that has a base and everything.

14:18And when you look in the passage that he says talks

14:21about the standing stone that was erected,

14:25the standing stone is matzevah,

14:28which is not an architectural pillar,

14:31is not a cylindrical pillar.

14:33It's a standing stone that is a little taller

14:35than it is wide, has a flat front and then a rounded back.

14:39And the idea is the flat front functions as a face

14:42and you write things on it.

14:44So if there were an inscription,

14:45it would have been written on the flat side of the pillar.

14:47But if you just got a Roman era architectural pillar,

14:51there's no inscription on there.

14:52So he has entirely misunderstood what this pillar is for

14:57when it's dated.

14:59He doesn't even know the difference

15:01between an architectural pillar and a standing stone.

15:04But that doesn't stop him from making stuff up.

15:08- And surely he lacked the ability to translate

15:13the ancient Hebrew that he claimed was on the other stone.

15:17- Well, it's always experts in Hebrew who told him what it said.

15:21- Oh, okay.

15:22- And he never names them, just because they're made up.

15:25- Just experts, why do you need to know?

15:27Shut up, you don't have an expert, that's you.

15:31- Yeah, and you know,

15:34plenty of people around the world like that right now

15:36who have press conferences and people say,

15:40"Well, how do I know this?"

15:41And they say, "Because I have common sense, man."

15:43- Yeah, exactly.

15:44- It's just so obvious.

15:46- And then something else that they noticed

15:49about this new wave of beach was the sand

15:51appeared to them to be pretty like glassy,

15:56like it had been melted and turned into glass.

16:00- Oh, hey.

16:01- Kinda, because it was still like,

16:03it was still very grainy sand

16:06and there were rocks embedded in it and everything.

16:08But the top, it looked like it was all concretized,

16:11like it had been melted and then, you know,

16:14the claim is that it takes 3,000 degrees to melt sand.

16:18And so the idea is this is where the pillar of fire

16:21must have landed and melted new wave of beach.

16:25And they have some photographs of that.

16:28And the people these days,

16:29you'll see videos all the time that talk about this

16:32and they always have this audio of some dude saying,

16:35"You can almost see like footprints in the glass."

16:40And then for whatever reason, people always show photographs

16:44of White Sands National Park in New Mexico,

16:48in the United States, which has footprints

16:51from 20,000 plus years ago, but they always say that.

16:55And it's like, "Yes, because the Israelites were like,

16:57"Look, the glass is bubbling and turning to sand.

17:00"Walk around in it in your bare feet."

17:02- Right, yeah.

17:03- It's always a good idea.

17:05- Man, but all this is is,

17:07this is a perfectly natural occurrence.

17:09It's called beach rock.

17:10And it happens when certain things have to come together,

17:15you get a lot of calcite and other materials

17:20and the seawater evaporates quickly

17:24and you get something that basically concretizes

17:29all of this sand and dirt and rock and stuff.

17:33And so it looks like somehow this has all become

17:37a layer of concrete, but beach rock occurs

17:40all over the world, it's perfectly natural.

17:42- Now, I'm gonna challenge you on something, fine.

17:45I'm gonna accept that the beach rock wasn't the sand melted.

17:49I'm gonna accept that a dry river bed looks like

17:52you moved all the rocks out of the way, blah, blah, blah.

17:55- How do you explain, sir?

17:58How do you explain chariot wheels and human remains

18:03at the bottom, the man went into the water.

18:07- And he found it.

18:08- He did go into the water and there are a bunch of claims

18:10associated with him going into the water,

18:12including yes, two photographs that I know of

18:15that have been linked to Wyatt.

18:17One is of a coral formation that has,

18:20there's like a pillar kind of formation

18:24and then a flat top.

18:26And in the photographs, you always see a chariot wheel

18:29superimposed upon it.

18:32And so if nobody ever pulled it out.

18:33- If they were good enough at Photoshop for that.

18:36- Nobody ever pulled it out.

18:38Nobody ever found a chariot wheel.

18:41They just took a picture of a coral formation and said,

18:43"Doesn't that remind you of a chariot wheel?"

18:45And then it's kind of got an image that looks like a circle.

18:49So that's the thing superimposed on it.

18:53There's another one that I've seen

18:54and I don't know if this came from Wyatt

18:56but it's always included in the photos

18:58that are supposed to be Wyatt's.

19:00In very shallow water, there's some loose sand

19:03and then there's a shiny four spoke chariot wheel

19:06that's supposed to be sticking out of the water

19:09and it's just a modern boat steering wheel

19:12that has just fell in the water.

19:14And there's a little chunk of coral

19:17that somehow drifted on top of it and people are like,

19:20"Yes, it's a 4,000 year old gold plated chariot wheel."

19:24And just because the middle of it has a big thread

19:29for screwing this thing onto a boat

19:32doesn't mean anything.

19:35So nobody ever pulled up any chariot wheels at all.

19:38There are just some photographs.

19:40And then human remains there's like a femur

19:44or something like that.

19:45And it's never been dated.

19:47Nobody's ever, in fact, the site where it was discovered

19:50wasn't even documented.

19:52There's just a piece of bone on a table

19:56and it's a photograph of a piece of bone

19:58covered in some that's been calcified that's on a table.

20:01Famously, this is salt water that we're talking about.

20:05Famously, when they went and did research

20:10into the Titanic and searched that,

20:14there was no sign of any human remains anywhere.

20:18Human remains don't last 70 years,

20:21let alone thousands of years.

20:24So if you found a femur, Ron,

20:27you should probably call the police.

20:28(laughing)

20:29- They would take it away

20:30and then you wouldn't be able to put it on a table

20:33in your righteous gemstones amusement park.

20:37- Right.

20:39- No, no, that was Kent Hovin that had--

20:41- That was Kent Hovin, okay, so.

20:42- Ron Wyatt, just to be clear,

20:45has there is, or at least there was,

20:48a little museum,

20:52the Ron Wyatt, or the Wyatt Archaeological Museum

20:56in Cornersville, Tennessee,

20:59which looks very much like, I don't know,

21:03like a 1960s high-five shop or something from the outside,

21:08it doesn't look inviting nor confidence-inducing

21:14as a place where you would see actual artifacts.

21:19It doesn't read well from the outside anyway.

21:24Anyway, sorry, move on.

21:25We, so we don't have any chariot wheels

21:30or remains of people.

21:32- There is, however, there's also a,

21:34the SS Thistlegorm is a--

21:39- It's my new favorite name of a boat ever.

21:40- Yes, it is a great name.

21:41It is, it's from the 19th century.

21:45It was sunk in 1941 in the Red Sea by German Bobbers,

21:50and it had railway equipment on it,

21:52which includes wheels, and so there are a bunch of people,

21:58and I don't think this is Ron Wyatt who said this,

22:00but there are people who will show you photographs

22:03of what look like very large metal wheels covered in coral

22:08that actually is from the bottom of the Red Sea,

22:12nowhere near Nueba,

22:13but it's actually from a 19th century shipwreck,

22:16the SS Thistlegorm, so just be aware

22:20that that's out there as well.

22:22- And these days, there are a lot of AI generated images.

22:26(upbeat music)

22:29- And to be clear, the place that we're talking about

22:34on the Red Sea isn't like the middle of the Red Sea.

22:37It's one of the two little rabbit ears

22:39that come up from the top that are quite thin,

22:42quite narrow.

22:43- Yes, very narrow.

22:45- But that's always where the crossing would have been

22:47on one or the other of those rabbit ears.

22:50- Yeah, 'cause otherwise you've got,

22:53because of where they're supposed to have left from,

22:56that's up in the Delta region.

22:58And if they're crossing the Red Sea proper,

23:01they would have had to have traveled very far south

23:04before deciding to veer to the east across the Red Sea.

23:08- Let's turn left, what do you think?

23:10There's a giant lake there, but yeah.

23:13- Right around Cantuck E,

23:15we're gonna kind of real easy like turn left.

23:20And so, one of the other claims that Wyatt made,

23:24he is from my knowledge he revised this claim.

23:28But he originally claimed that there was a natural land bridge

23:31at Nueba.

23:32At the water only got to a couple hundred feet deep,

23:36right at the Nueba part.

23:38So that if it wouldn't have taken much,

23:41according to Wyatt, for the water to get out of the way

23:45so the Israelites could have scampered across

23:48and made it to the other side.

23:50And there is no such land bridge.

23:52It is a little shallower there than the deepest part

23:55of that particular Gulf.

23:57It's about 200 feet shallower,

24:00but still it still gets down to like 800 feet there.

24:05And it's still quite steep.

24:07So a lot of, and Wyatt originally made that claim,

24:10oh, it's a land bridge.

24:11And then I was like, okay, we looked and it's pretty deep there.

24:15But you still have people who will produce images

24:18of this area as if there was this natural land bridge.

24:22Yeah, I think I've seen that where it's like the claim is that,

24:26look, it's deep on this side and it's deep on this side.

24:28And then whoop, it just goes right up to just basically

24:32at the surface right here.

24:33Yeah, yeah.

24:34It's amazing anybody drowned at all.

24:36Like, you don't only comes up to your knees.

24:39There's an old episode of Quantum Leap.

24:43Every time somebody brings up drowning

24:46where he's leaps into some kid's body,

24:50they're doing a hazing ritual.

24:52And his buddy has to tell him it only takes two teaspoons

24:55of water to drown a person.

24:57And for whatever reason, that's always in my head

24:59whenever people mention that.

25:00And I thought now would be a good time to bring it up.

25:02Yeah.

25:03For you young people, that quantum leap

25:05was a television program back in the middle,

25:09in the late 1900s.

25:12All right, let's move on.

25:14So let's just say that we've crossed our land bridge.

25:18We've crossed the land bridge.

25:19The nonexistent land bridge in the chariots

25:22that aren't actually down there.

25:24We've made it to the other side.

25:26And of course, we know that the next step

25:28in the Israelites journey was to a mountain.

25:32Yes, that's.

25:33Or as you pointed out earlier, two mountains.

25:36Multiple mountains, yes.

25:37We've got two mountains that are vying

25:39for the title of Mount Sinai.

25:42And there are features of each that a lot of apologists

25:46would really love to be just the features

25:48of one individual mountain, because that would come together

25:52and just really ring that bell in their loins.

25:56And the two mountain tops in Western Saudi Arabia,

26:01one of them is called Jabal Makla.

26:03And the other one is, I think, like eight or 10 miles north

26:07of that, and it's called Jebelel Laws.

26:10And the thing that they like about Jabal Makla

26:13is that if you're looking at it from the east,

26:15down in a little valley area,

26:17and there's stuff down in the valley area

26:19that we'll talk about as well, but if you look up,

26:21it looks like the mountain top is burnt.

26:25Just like the sand of Nueba Beach,

26:28it seems like fire has burnt the mountain top

26:31because the rock is all black,

26:33and the bottom of the mountain is not black.

26:36And that would be significant because somewhere in the text,

26:38it says something about a fire on the mountain, or whatever.

26:42- Yes, somewhere in the text,

26:43it does say something about God descending upon the mountain

26:46in fire, you have the pillar of fire,

26:48and then you have the pillar of the cloud

26:51that follows them by day and by night.

26:53Now, the interesting thing about this idea

26:55that this pillar of fire is burning sand

26:57and burning the tops of mountains

26:59is the only time you ever have any reference

27:01to what the fire that attends God's presence does two things

27:06is in Exodus three, when it's burning the bush,

27:10but it's not actually burning the bush.

27:12It's not consuming it.

27:14- And so the only time the text ever tells us

27:14- Right.

27:17about this fire that attends God's presence,

27:20it says it doesn't burn stuff.

27:22- Well, the bush wasn't made of rock or sand.

27:25- Yeah, it was a good bush.

27:29- Yeah, it was made of something else,

27:34and that's why everybody really, really enjoyed being on the,

27:37on the, on the, on the, on the mountain top.

27:40- Is it me or is this bush not really burning, man?

27:44I can't tell.

27:45It looks like it's just on fire, but never burns.

27:48You got any more of that in manna?

27:50(laughing)

27:53- No, man, Moses isn't here.

27:55- No, it's me, man.

27:56- So, and just, and just heads up.

28:01What we, you know, we need to do a segment about this,

28:03but we know for a fact,

28:05- No, about, about cannabis.

28:09We know for a fact that cannabis was used in rituals

28:12in ancient Israel.

28:13- Yeah, man.

28:14- Well, we'll revisit that.

28:15- Yeah.

28:16- Let's get Cheech and Chong on the show

28:18and we'll talk about cannabis in the rituals.

28:21- Yeah, I think they would love hearing about that.

28:24- All right, Cheech.

28:25- The evidence.

28:26- Yeah.

28:26- This is, this one goes out to you.

28:27I know you're, I know you listen.

28:29I know you're a part of, you're a fan.

28:31- So, the, the, the problem with this observation, however,

28:35is that the top of the mountain is black precisely

28:38because it is covered in what is known

28:39as contact metamorphic rock, which is rock

28:41that has been exposed to a heat source

28:43and so has charred, burned, darkened the outside of it.

28:47And the problem is the heat source that does this

28:49is either underground magma or lava flows.

28:53And one of the ways that we know this is not because God

28:57rests, you know, dipped a toe on the top of this mountain

29:00is that there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds

29:02of square miles of western Saudi Arabia

29:05that are covered in contact metamorphic rock.

29:08So you can go look on Google Earth

29:10and find Jable Makla J-A-B-A-L-M-A-Q-L-A.

29:15And you will see that there's kind of a little black thing

29:18that, that surrounds the top of it.

29:20And that black thing then extends for miles and miles

29:25and miles to the west and to the south.

29:27And as you zoom out, you can see it's basically

29:30the majority of western Saudi Arabia

29:32that is covered in this stuff.

29:33- I mean, you don't know that God didn't burn,

29:36and visit all of those mountains.

29:38He was just kind of like, oops, I let my robe

29:41kinda drag a little bit.

29:44- He walked there, man.

29:46That's how he got there.

29:49- And so that's really the main thing

29:50that people like about Jable Makla.

29:52Now Jable-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-S is further north

29:56and near Jable-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-S.

29:58Well, there's one other thing at the base of Jable Makla,

30:01there's a pile of stones that's like 20 feet high.

30:04Natural rock formation.

30:06There's no way that a group of ancient Hebrews

30:10who were on the run from the Egyptians were like,

30:12"Hey, let's take multi-ton stones and create an altar."

30:17But there are, there are petroglyphs that include

30:21different types of cow-type animals

30:26and some of them they suggest

30:29are representative of the golden calf.

30:32However, there are a bunch of different animals

30:35that are depicted on this

30:36and they also depict people hunting those animals on this

30:39and archaeologists have already dated these petroglyphs

30:42to the Nabataean period,

30:43which is about 3rd century BCE to 2nd century CE.

30:48So around a thousand years too late for this to have anything

30:51at all to do with Aaron's altar or the golden calf.

30:54So that's definitely not that's altar and--

30:59Also, when you make a golden calf,

31:01you don't, you're focused on the golden calf.

31:04You're not drawing pictures of it on the rocks.

31:06You already have the calf, it's okay.

31:07Yeah, we got the calf, we don't need the picture.

31:09They're schematics.

31:11You just have to be creative about that.

31:14It was a study for the actual physical thing.

31:19And then there are a couple of other things

31:21that are found near Jebelah laws.

31:23For instance, what they call the split rock of Horeb,

31:26which is a very large like 60, 70 foot tall stone

31:30that does kind of look like,

31:32kind of looks like an upside down,

31:33like somebody took a guitar pick

31:34and stuck it in a pile of rocks.

31:36Only the guitar pick is a giant rock.

31:38And then it's got a split,

31:40just a perfectly vertical split right down the middle of it.

31:43And the argument is that this is where Moses

31:46struck the stone to bring forth the water.

31:49And they argue, look, the stones are all eroded.

31:54This is where the water came out.

31:56It's as if water has been pouring over these stones.

31:59Well, how could that possibly have happened?

32:02There have, this pile of rocks is in the middle of a wadi.

32:06And so there are actually two sets of erosion marks

32:11and they're not perfectly,

32:14but they're perpendicular to each other more or less.

32:17And none of them radiate out from the stone.

32:20They just go right on past the stone

32:22in the two different directions.

32:24And one of those sets of erosion marks

32:27is going perpendicular to the wadi.

32:31And this is actually what probably moved those stones

32:34into place and that would have been glacial flows.

32:38Oh, wow.

32:38And so you have these scars going over these rocks

32:42that are glacial flows just moving on past.

32:46And these rocks were put into place.

32:48And so that's, you're looking.

32:52- 'Cause it's templative.

32:53- Listen, I have seen images of Saudi Arabia.

32:57There are no glaciers in Saudi Arabia.

33:01- Checkmate on you, sir.

33:03- Well, you know what?

33:06There are also whale skeletons in the middle of Libya.

33:10And that's because the world was different

33:13millions and millions, or billions and billions of years ago.

33:18- So yeah, this happened a long, long, long, long, long time ago.

33:22And then you also have erosion marks

33:25going perpendicular to the glacial scars.

33:28And this is caused by the flash flooding in the wadi

33:31that this pile of rocks is in the middle of.

33:34And so you don't have any indications of erosion radiating

33:39out from the stone, except for wind erosion

33:42that is right around the stone itself,

33:45on the stone itself, not the stones that are down

33:48underneath the-

33:50- The split rock of Horeb.

33:52- So I mean, I suppose Moses could have

33:54smacked the rock with the stick

33:56right when a flash flood started.

33:58- And the-

34:00- Flash flood coming.

34:01(laughing)

34:03- That's the dinner bell kind of quack, quack, quack.

34:06- Everybody do that.

34:08- Now I'm thinking of the Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.

34:12- To the trees.

34:13- I need to get you off of 90s.

34:16- You've had your fill, you don't get any more 90s references

34:21for this episode.

34:22- So the last thing to talk about, however,

34:24is that they claim to have found animal pens

34:29next to what they think is an altar

34:31and 12 pillars in the area,

34:35which they believe are the 12 pillars

34:37that were set up by Moses.

34:39And of course, once you look

34:41at the actual archaeological reports

34:43and they point out, these are just animal pens.

34:45There is no altar.

34:46And the 12 pillars are, again,

34:49Roman era cylindrical archi-

34:51- Not archaeological.

34:52- Architectural pillars meant to hold things up

34:56and not meant as standing stones, matzevote.

35:00Then you can put the lie to those claims as well.

35:02So basically, absolutely nothing

35:05that Ron Wyatt found in this area

35:08in any way, shape or form whatsoever,

35:10even plausibly represents artifacts left

35:14by any historical Moses, any historical Joshua, anything.

35:19Most of it is either from millions of years ago

35:23or from a thousand years after

35:25any historical Moses or Joshua would have lived.

35:28- What's interesting is that none of this disproves

35:31the Exodus or anything like that.

35:35It's just, he's bogus.

35:38Now, there is no archaeological evidence for the Exodus,

35:42but at least not as it's presented in the Bible.

35:46But it's just so funny that people hold onto this guy

35:51and present him as being such a towering figure

35:55in archeology.

35:57(laughs)

35:59It's, you know, if your main arguments are that bad,

36:06you should probably pivot.

36:07You should probably figure out a different--

36:09- Or go back to, yeah, go back to your day job,

36:13which is a more honorable one than lying to the public

36:18in order to try to protect people's faith.

36:22- Go put some people under an aesthetic.

36:25It's a better profession.

36:29- Yeah.

36:30Hey, a good anesthetist is invaluable

36:34because, yeah, my wife is not an easy stick.

36:38She tells everybody that and they're always like,

36:40"Oh, I'm the best there is at this."

36:41And then they always have to go get the sound machine

36:46or the really good, yeah.

36:48So a good anesthetist is worth their weight in gold

36:52and does not find fake artifacts in the middle of Turkey

36:57or Saudi Arabia and then lie about it.

37:00Well, let's move on, we'll leave Ron Wyatt

37:00- Okay.

37:05to pass him to the dust.

37:09- Yes.

37:10- Just as, or I hope he was buried at sea, in the Dead Sea.

37:15I hope that's what they did.

37:17It seems appropriate.

37:18- I have not looked into it.

37:19- I haven't either.

37:20So we're moving on to chapter and verse.

37:23(upbeat music)

37:26All righty, and we're in Luke 10, Gospel of Luke.

37:29And I think it's important to point out at the beginning

37:31that the Gospel of Luke is most concerned

37:35out of all the Gospel authors for representing

37:38the marginalized and the oppressed.

37:41For instance, Jesus talks about and talks to women

37:45more frequently and in Luke.

37:47And we see the foreigner represented.

37:50We see the poor represented more favorably

37:52in the Gospel of Luke.

37:54And so in chapter 10, he deputizes the 72 disciples

38:00he goes, "Now you have the power to cast out demons."

38:04And they go off and they come back later and say,

38:06"Hey, we cast out demons in your name.

38:08"It was really great."

38:09And they all rejoice.

38:10And there was much rejoicing.

38:12- Yes.

38:13- And then we have a lawyer, an expert of the law,

38:17Anomikos, who stood up to test Jesus as the text says,

38:22and he calls him teacher, "Dedaskalay,"

38:26which could also be translated master.

38:29But he asks, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"

38:32And Jesus responded, "What is written in the law?

38:34"What do you read there?"

38:36He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God

38:38"with all your heart and with all your soul

38:40"and with all your strength and with all your mind

38:42"and your neighbor as yourself."

38:44And he said to him, "You have given the right answer.

38:46"Do this and you will live."

38:49And I wanna point out real quick here

38:52that we've got two commandments that are given here

38:54that have nothing to do with the 10 commandments.

38:56- It's true.

38:57- And there's no part of the Bible that actually says,

38:59"Oh, by the way, these are the two most important commandments."

39:03But this is the exact same answer that Jesus gives

39:05in the Gospel of Matthew when they ask him,

39:09"What is the greatest commandment?"

39:10And he does precisely the same thing.

39:12He quotes Deuteronomy 6.5 and Leviticus 19.18.

39:17And this is kind of part of the conventional wisdom

39:21of the day, like people, when you had big complex things,

39:24you tried to distill them down to their essences.

39:26This is kind of a Greco-Roman/Greco-Roman-Jewish thing

39:30that you did to show that you knew your stuff.

39:34And so the essence of the law,

39:36what Jesus says in Matthew is on these two commandments,

39:40hang all the law and the prophets.

39:43So Luke here is putting that statement into the mouth

39:46of this lawyer who's testing Jesus.

39:49And then we have, so Jesus says, "Yeah, that's all you gotta do."

39:53You did it.

39:54You came up with it where you're done.

39:56Yeah, good job.

39:57Get out of my face, kid.

39:59You bother me.

40:00But wanting to vindicate himself,

40:04he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

40:07Which is-

40:08Oh, scuntin' done.

40:09I mean, that is a, you know, that is a lawyerly question.

40:13You gotta love your neighbor as yourself.

40:16Okay, who's my neighbor?

40:18Is it the guy next door?

40:19'Cause he's a jerk.

40:20But I'll try.

40:22Yeah, and this is something that we see,

40:25this is something that we see all the time these days,

40:27including from, oh, the vice president and others

40:30where they say, "Now wait, we've actually got a hierarchy

40:33of love that we've got to pay attention to."

40:36Or a hierarchy of neighbors that we've got.

40:39Yeah, yeah.

40:40Look, some neighbors, everybody's your neighbor,

40:42but some are more neighbor than others.

40:44So let's-

40:44Yeah, let's not get into this equality of neighbors

40:49kind of nonsense.

40:52Don't commit the sin of empathy

40:56and think that everybody's your neighbor.

40:58Yeah, and, but that's exactly what the lawyer did here

41:03with Jesus, and Jesus replied with a story.

41:07'Cause that's just what you want

41:08when you ask a question.

41:10Yes, is a story.

41:12It's a parable, that's better than a story.

41:16It is a parable.

41:18It is probably the most famous parable

41:22in the world, and it's also entirely fictional,

41:25which I always get pushed back.

41:27Every time I say that, people are like, "You don't know that."

41:29Well, you don't.

41:30Oh, my gosh.

41:32Okay.

41:32Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho."

41:41So this is Jerusalem's in the hills.

41:44Jericho is in the river valley.

41:46It's just north of the Dead Sea, not a long trip,

41:49but you got about a 3000 foot elevation drop.

41:52It's pretty rocky.

41:53It's pretty treacherous in this time period.

41:57Not a lot of people are around.

41:58And fell into the hands.

42:00I remember even, I remember that Martin Luther King Jr.

42:04actually mentioned that road.

42:06He had visited with his wife,

42:08and he mentioned being on that road

42:12and how rocky and how many twists and turns it took.

42:17And he just said, "Yeah, it makes sense

42:19"that this would be where someone might fall

42:22"into the hands of robbers."

42:25Yeah, yeah, that's interesting.

42:26I didn't know he had been there and told that story.

42:29But yeah, like if Jesus was like,

42:31"Look man, somebody fell into the hands of robbers."

42:33They were like, "I bet it was on the way to Jericho."

42:36That place sucks.

42:37Yeah, that road is terrible.

42:39They need to put some guardrails up.

42:41Fell into the hands of robbers who stripped him,

42:44beat him and took off, leaving him half dead.

42:47Now by chance, a priest was going down that road.

42:50And a lot of scholars think that a lot of the priests

42:54who worked in the Temple in Jerusalem

42:56lived in Jericho at the time.

42:58I don't know how accurate that is, but-

42:59But we are talking about Jewish priests.

43:03Yes. Okay. Yes.

43:05So these would be the man's brethren.

43:08Right. So members of his in-group.

43:11Now by chance, a priest was going down that road.

43:14And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

43:17And you can imagine him going, "Goo," and you know,

43:20"Little, little pick up in his step."

43:23So likewise-

43:23He's got blood all over you.

43:24Yeah. (laughs)

43:26So likewise, a Levite, when he came to the place

43:29and saw him passed by on the other side.

43:31So we got a priest in a Levite who were supposed to be,

43:34they're the most privileged classes

43:37in among these Jewish folks

43:40who live in and around Jerusalem in this time period.

43:43And they're supposed to be the exemplars.

43:45They're supposed to be showing people how to live.

43:49And they are both like,

43:51I'm not gonna touch that with a 10-foot pole, don't wanna.

43:54And I've heard people say,

43:55"Well, they were just ensuring

43:58"that they were maintaining purity

44:02"because if he was dead, they don't wanna touch a dead body

44:05"because then they're ritually impure."

44:07Which is a nonsense excuse.

44:09Right. Because there was a hierarchy

44:12of these kinds of concerns.

44:13If somebody was being murdered,

44:16you don't go, "I can't do anything about this

44:18"'cause if he dies and I touch him, then," you know.

44:20Because one, ritual impurity was not sin.

44:23It was just ritual impurity.

44:26It was just something-

44:27And you can repurify yourself, right?

44:28Yeah. Yeah.

44:29It was, you were just like, "Oh, I got ritually impure.

44:31"All right, well, I'm not gonna be able

44:32"to make bowling tonight."

44:34But it didn't mean you did anything wrong.

44:37So that's not a, which still would characterize these folks

44:42as being like, "No, I don't touch that.

44:44"I got better things to do."

44:47But a Samaritan while traveling came upon him,

44:50and when he saw him, he was moved with compassion.

44:54He went to him and bandaged his wounds,

44:57treating them with oil and wine.

44:59Then he put him on his own animal,

45:00brought him to an inn and took care of him.

45:03The next day he took out two denari.

45:05It was like two days' wages.

45:07Gave them to the innkeeper and said, "Take care of him,

45:10"and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend."

45:14Which of these three do you think was a neighbor

45:18to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?

45:20He said, "The one who showed him mercy."

45:24Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

45:29So we've got an interesting twist here

45:30'cause the lawyer was like, "Well, who's my neighbor?"

45:34And so we go from object to subject.

45:37Jesus is like, "Wrong question.

45:39"It's not who's your neighbor.

45:41"It's, are you worthy to be called a neighbor to someone else?"

45:46As far as your concern, everybody's your neighbor.

45:48It's just up to you to be worthy of being a neighbor

45:52to everyone else.

45:54And there are a couple of more things to note.

45:57The lawyer doesn't say the Samaritan.

46:00He can't even bring himself to acknowledge that.

46:02'Cause we should quickly just mention what a Samaritan is.

46:07Yes, Samaritan, I always thought growing up

46:12as I heard this, that there was a group,

46:16an ethnic group or a country called Samarita or something.

46:22But no.

46:25Well, these are the folks who occupied Samaria,

46:28which is where the capital of the Northern Kingdom was

46:31in pre-exilic, pre-pre-exilic Israel.

46:35But according to the biblical narrative,

46:37when the Judah heights are exiled to Babylon,

46:39these folks are left behind at their own devices.

46:41And then you also had priests who are sent from Babylon

46:44to go minister to these folks who are left behind.

46:47And there were lions involved

46:49and basically things just went sideways.

46:52And so they are characterized kind of as this group

46:56that was left behind and is no longer one of us.

46:59They are, and they've gone--

47:00And it was like a religious group, right?

47:02It was still religion.

47:03Well, yeah, and they have the Pentateuch.

47:06They have their own version of the Pentateuch.

47:07It's written in a type of Hebrew called Samaritan.

47:12And it is, and so they are kind of a branch of Judaism

47:17that is characterized in the gospels.

47:20They try to make a big deal out of this giant rift

47:23where the Samaritans were hated.

47:25They were hated people.

47:26You wouldn't even walk through Samaria.

47:27You would take an extra few days

47:29to walk around Samaria just so you didn't have

47:31to dirty your sandals on there, filthy soil kind of thing.

47:35Now, the truth of that is debated.

47:39They probably were not quite so hated.

47:41The gospel authors are just trying to juice up this rift

47:45in order to make it more dramatic.

47:48And that's what they do here by showing the lawyer

47:50just going, oh, the one of them that showed mercy,

47:54answering honestly, but not condescending to name

47:59the Samaritan.

48:00- Right.

48:01- And so in doing so, the story is basically saying,

48:05hey, these are the people who be at the bottom

48:07of the list of people you want to call neighbor.

48:10And Jesus is representing the Samaritan

48:13as being more righteous than the priest and the Levite

48:17and the only one of those three who deserved,

48:20who merited the title of neighbor.

48:24But then showing him mercy is what indicates

48:28that he's being a neighbor and Jesus' command go

48:30and do likewise, I think fits in with Jesus' statements

48:35elsewhere about showing mercy, about prioritizing mercy.

48:40In fact, he says in Matthew, in the gospel of Matthew

48:43on two different occasions, he quotes Hosea 6/6,

48:45"I will have mercy and not sacrifice."

48:48Have we talked about the prophetic critique on our show?

48:53- I've heard you say that phrase before,

48:55but I'm not sure that I understand what it is.

48:57- Okay, well that might be worth talking about at some point.

49:00Basically, this is when the prophets say,

49:03hey, or the prophets have God saying,

49:06"I hate your temple sacrifices and your festivals

49:10and your sabbaths and all this."

49:12It's God saying, "I hate that stuff."

49:14And it's not because God's a proto-protestant

49:18and is like, it's all about faith, baby, faith alone.

49:21It's because God is, this represents the law

49:26as intending to generate in the people who obey it

49:30a merciful and a righteous heart.

49:34So the idea is the law is intended to create a merciful

49:37and a righteous society.

49:39But the wealthy folks who are out there

49:43doing all the public displays of piety in private

49:47are according to what Isaiah says, grinding the faces

49:50of the poor, neglecting and taking advantage of

49:54and exploiting the orphan and the widow

49:57and the oppressed and the needy and the poor.

49:59And the idea is because all of these outward performances

50:04of piety are intended to make you merciful.

50:08If you perform them but you don't end up being merciful,

50:12you're just performing them in order to exploit

50:14their function as credibility enhancing displays

50:17in order to advance your own personal interests

50:20and standing in which case the performance

50:23of those duties becomes sin.

50:27So that's a prophetic critique.

50:28And that's what Jose is saying,

50:30I will have mercy and not sacrifice.

50:32If you do the sacrifice and it generates mercy, awesome.

50:36If you do the sacrifice and then exploit the poor

50:39and are not merciful, sinful.

50:41So mercy takes priority over sacrifice.

50:44And so that's what Jesus says.

50:46And there's even a, people are like,

50:48well, you can't have mercy if you don't have,

50:51if you don't have justice or judgment

50:53or things like that.

50:54And there is a wonderful passage in the letter of James

50:59that I think speaks to this.

51:05Okay, for he that said, do not commit adultery.

51:11Also said do not kill.

51:12Now if thou commit no adultery yet,

51:14if thou, why am I reading from the King James version?

51:17Oi, for the one who said you shall not commit adultery,

51:20also said you shall not murder.

51:21Now if you do not commit adultery, but you murder,

51:23you have become a transgressor of the law.

51:25So speak and so act as those who are to be judged

51:27by the law of liberty.

51:29And here's the important part.

51:31For judgment will be without mercy

51:34to anyone who has shown no mercy.

51:37Mercy triumphs over justice.

51:41And so I think this is the important part.

51:44When you have the two of them, justice is supposed

51:47to result in mercy, mercy triumphs over judgment.

51:52And so what the parable of the good Samaritan is saying

51:56is yes, everybody is your neighbor.

52:00Deal with it and be a good neighbor to everyone else.

52:04And Jesus takes no prisoners there.

52:06And unfortunately have people who are like,

52:10well, that's not what he meant by neighbor.

52:12I mean, we really got to dig into who the neighbor is.

52:17That's where we find basically the rationalization

52:20for our nativism and our jingoism and our bigotry

52:25is in trying to parse some kind of hierarchy of neighbors

52:31from Jesus saying, no, you idiot, everybody's your neighbor.

52:34It does seem so weird to me when I see Christians

52:37or professed Christians, forget that.

52:41I'm not gonna do a no true Scotsman when I see Christians

52:44saying, you know, closing the ranks and saying, you know,

52:49we're us and everybody else is them

52:52and everybody else can fend for themselves

52:55and that we don't have to do anything for them

52:57and we only take, we take care of our own

53:00and all this stuff because it does seem like the central,

53:03like the thing that keeps happening over and over

53:06in the New Testament is we're expanding out.

53:11All of them, you know, the us is now everyone.

53:14The us goes out further and further and further

53:17and everyone counts as the us.

53:20- And also that rhetoric is entirely in sincere.

53:24They're like, we gotta take care of our people first

53:26and then like it follows in time after,

53:30then we'll go and we'll worry about the rest.

53:32And it's like, but you're not taking care of your own people.

53:36- Right, that's something to get you.

53:38- Yeah, when you say once we're done taking care

53:41of our own people, we'll take care of the other people

53:43and then you never take care of your own people,

53:47you never have to worry about the other people.

53:49It's a self-fulfilling prophecy and it's insincere

53:54and it's just a way to reduce the scope

53:58of your neighborly circle.

54:00Whereas in the Bible and what Christians throughout time,

54:04Christians who have not been all that great

54:06in a lot of other areas, but one thing that a lot

54:09of Christians have tried to do is say,

54:11no, the duty is precisely to expand it

54:15because for a lot of folks, Christianity is not

54:18about validating your access to power and resources.

54:22It's about trying to expand it to other folks.

54:26And yeah, unfortunately today, an awful lot of people

54:30who have been awful lot of power to access to power

54:33and resources ignore that and try to leverage their Christianity

54:38precisely to validate keeping it from the most vulnerable

54:42in our society as well as in the societies

54:46that are around us, which is a pretty crappy thing to do.

54:51- Not great, not great, all right.

54:54Well, that's it for today.

54:56Thank you all so much for tuning in.

54:59If you would like to be a part of helping make this show

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55:21If you'd like to reach us, it's contact

55:23at dataoverdogmapod.com and we'll talk to you again next week.

55:28- Bye everybody.

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