Ep 125: Holy Sex Work?

00:00Well, if you use "an", you don't pronounce the "h" because that's why it's "an" because

00:05they didn't pronounce the "h".

00:06Don't tell me how to pronounce things.

00:08People are in our comment sections telling us how to pronounce things, and frankly, "pedantry"

00:12is the most boring thing in the world.

00:14Hey, I make half my living off of pedagrees.

00:17Don't be bad at nothing, pedagree.

00:22Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:27And I'm Dan Beacher.

00:28And you're listening to the "Data Over Dogma" podcast where we increase public access to

00:32the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation

00:37about the same.

00:39How go things today, Dan?

00:41They go.

00:42They go.

00:43And they go.

00:44That's what they're supposed to do.

00:45We're diving in.

00:46We're having fun.

00:47We get to talk about sex work today.

00:49Sex work is work.

00:51We get to find hidden secret scriptures.

00:54That's right.

00:55I almost forgot about the secret psalm.

00:59Yeah.

01:00Yeah.

01:01We did.

01:02It's only the masons and other very clandestine organizations know about this.

01:09Not even the Mormons have this one.

01:11No.

01:12Like this is super, super devil extra secret.

01:16They may come for us.

01:17I don't know.

01:18QAnon might get us or something.

01:19Yeah.

01:20I'm not sure who's going to come for us, but we're going to reveal the secrets of the

01:24psalms.

01:25But first, we got to take issue and this week on taking issue, the issue that we're taking

01:35is with cult prostitution question mark.

01:40What are we doing here?

01:41What are we talking about?

01:42I'm already chopping the air because I don't know what's going on.

01:45So in the recent interview that CNN put out with what's his name, that Doug, Doug Guy,

01:53Doug Wilson.

01:54Oh.

01:55The guy who says really stupid stuff just to have all of America go, what the hell is

02:01wrong with you?

02:04He was listed on by Google as Doug Wilson theologian.

02:14I guess you could call him that.

02:16I'd probably call him a pastor.

02:18Yeah.

02:19But, you know, I mean, that's, that's what he is.

02:22Although he does, he did like start a school.

02:25Well, that's true.

02:27I think he founded, what do they call it, New St. Andrews?

02:31Yes.

02:32Which is, which is just basically rip off St. Andrews.

02:34Yeah.

02:35Yeah, yeah.

02:36What the clout?

02:37It's one better.

02:38It's St. Andrews.

02:39But new.

02:40Plus.

02:41Yeah.

02:42This one goes to 11.

02:44Yeah.

02:45Exactly.

02:46But he said in, in this infamous interview, he was talking about punishment for homosexuality.

02:53And he talked about how two kings, Asa and Jehoshaphat, ran the homosexuals out of ancient Israel.

03:04And this, this was the point he was making was that there's a, there's a range of potential

03:10punishments for homosexuality.

03:12That could be reinstated that fall short of the death penalty.

03:18And he brought up Asa and Jehoshaphat.

03:20And I, I saw this and was like, that never happened.

03:29Whatever he's talking about, it wasn't that.

03:32And he's gotten something wrong.

03:34Yes.

03:35And I, all I could think of was that he was confusing a handful of passages in, in First

03:42Kings and in Second Kings.

03:45And I think it's Genesis and Deuteronomy or something like that as well.

03:51I assumed that he was confusing those passages for references to homosexuals.

03:57And the reason is probably because he was going off the King James version.

04:04Because we have in First Kings 1512, here's a reference to, we've, we've got some reforms

04:11that are taking place.

04:13And First Kings 1512, this is the King James version, content warning going to be using

04:19some pejoratives, some homophobic, homophobic terminology.

04:29First Kings 1512 says, and he took away the sodomites out of the land and removed all

04:34the idols that his fathers had made.

04:37And so I was like, well, okay, it sounds like he's looking at this passage.

04:43And he thinks this is talking about just homosexuals in general.

04:48And in addition to the fact that it would only be talking about males, not, not females,

04:55because female same sex intercourse is never once mentioned anywhere in the entire Hebrew

04:59Bible.

05:00It's not addressed, no, but this is also a mistranslation.

05:06And I looked up the translations that came before it as fans of this show, hopefully,

05:13have had drilled into them enough.

05:14The King James version is not an original translation.

05:16It is just a revision of earlier translations.

05:19And the vision, sorry, that cow, that sacred cow has been slaughtered long ago.

05:26I know I've heard from some evangelicals here.

05:30And these United States, I'm pretty sure that the King James version is actually the original

05:34version, not a translation, just the original.

05:38It was written by God, indirectly into old ye, oldy English.

05:45I saw a pastor one time stand up and he was being tongue in cheek, but everybody took

05:50him to be literal and said he can, he uses the King germ James version to correct the

05:55Greek.

05:56And I was like, you don't know Greek.

05:59He who knows Greek likes the King James version, but anyway, it's also a mistranslation.

06:06In the earlier translations, I couldn't understand the Bishop's Bible because it said the sues,

06:14S-E-W-E-S.

06:15And I was like, I do not know that word.

06:18And I looked it up and it's evidently like a 1500s word for a brothel.

06:27Oh, so yeah, so and then earlier passages referred to like houses of ill reputed or something

06:36like that.

06:37So, but the word in Hebrew there is ha-k-de-shim, which that's the masculine plural form of

06:46this noun and the feminine form is k-de-shah.

06:51And these passages, there are a handful of passages that have either the masculine or

06:55the feminine, Genesis 38, 21 and 38, 22, and this is Judah and Tamar.

07:00Deuteronomy 23, 18, 1 Kings 14, 24, 15, 12, 22, 47, 2 Kings 23, 7, and then we got once

07:09in Hosea 4, 14 and once in Job 36, 14.

07:12But this has led to the notion of cultic sex work in the Hebrew Bible.

07:20Okay.

07:21So we're not, we're not talking about homosexuals, we're talking about, or at least you're saying

07:28the Kings version thinks it is.

07:30And I'm going to, down the road a piece, we'll talk about how this connection is made, but

07:36also how that connection should be obliterated.

07:38Oh, interesting.

07:39But yeah, we're going to start with boiler alert.

07:42You just gave away the game.

07:43All right.

07:44It's a scriptees.

07:45You got to let them know what's coming.

07:50And so the, these passages led to this idea that, okay, so one of the things that was

07:56going on in the temple, that was one of the things that Hezekiah and Josiah and these

08:02others all got rid of as part of their reforms was cultic sex work.

08:07And I think the main clue about this is, well, we can start in Genesis 38, 21 and 22.

08:15We have discussed the events of Judah and Tamar and how she, she pulled one over on him.

08:23And he was her father in law, father in law.

08:27And then her, her husband died, tell me if I'm getting all this right.

08:32And then he was not like, he was supposed to take care of her, but he wasn't going to,

08:37he wasn't doing it.

08:38And so she, he was supposed to give her his next son and he was like, you're the black

08:44widow.

08:45I'm holding off for a bit.

08:48And then she was like, oh, oh, we'll get this figured out.

08:52Yeah.

08:53And, but, but her scheme is that she, she becomes, she like, pretends to be a prostitute.

09:00And he goes ahead and pays, like she veils herself so that he doesn't know who it is.

09:07He patronizes her establishment.

09:10Right.

09:11Yes.

09:12But he partakes of her wares and then, and, and in exchange for, and there's a whole thing

09:21about he gives her his bell.

09:22Yeah.

09:23He's like, I don't got the cash on me, but you can hold on to this.

09:26There's collateral in the form of a goat, if I'm not mistaken.

09:30Yeah.

09:31Anyway.

09:32So she takes goats.

09:33Yeah.

09:34Okay.

09:35So, so she pretended to be a sex worker.

09:37That's probably, that's probably the only salient part to what we're talking about.

09:41So when, and, and then he comes back and he can't find her.

09:46And he's like, hey, where is the cadet cha?

09:50That was here.

09:51And they say, uh, no, there's no, uh, there's no cadet cha here.

09:57And earlier the, the word that had been used was zona, uh, which is, uh, sex worker, female

10:04sex worker, uh, usually it gets translated more vulgarly than that.

10:10Like, ho, is it, is that what they do?

10:15No.

10:16And lo, she went on to him as an ho.

10:20I just want that to be in one translation.

10:22Can we just do that?

10:24And ho.

10:25Okay.

10:26Well, if you, if you use and you don't pronounce the H cause that's why it's and because they

10:29didn't pronounce the H.

10:30Don't tell me how to pronounce things.

10:32People are in our comments sections telling us how to pronounce things.

10:34And frankly, pedantry is the most boring thing in the world.

10:38Let's not worry about it.

10:39If you understand what we're saying, then, Hey, I make half my living off of pedantry.

10:43So don't be bad.

10:45Nothing.

10:46Pedantry.

10:47But.

10:48All right.

10:49So there's, there's, there's this, uh, parallelism.

10:53It sounds like he's using cadet cha as a synonym for a sex worker.

11:00Mm hmm.

11:01So, uh, then we move on to, uh, Deuteronomy 23, and it says, none of the daughters of

11:05Israel shall, shall, uh, serve in, uh, or so they will not be cadet cha and they will

11:14not be, and then there will be no, um, cadet or male among the, the sons of Israel.

11:21And it's not exactly clear what's going on here, but, uh, elsewhere, you have a, right

11:26around here, you have a statement about not bringing the, the price of a dog into the temple,

11:33which is right next to a reference to a zonah.

11:37And so like, there's just a lot of proximity here to the concept of sex work, uh, but cadet

11:45cha and, uh, cadet cha are based on a word cados or codesh, which means to be holy.

11:54And it has something to do with the temple.

11:57And so we've got some kind of conceptual proximity to the field of sex work.

12:03And then we've got, uh, we also have an etymological foundation in reference to holiness and the

12:09temple.

12:10So what's going on here and, and there for a long time, was this notion that there was

12:17sacred sex work going on in the temples, like you would go and you would make your sacrifices

12:21and then you'd just be like, I'm going to go, uh, I'm going to go in the other room.

12:27Yes.

12:28Now, um, you would have females and males and the assumption is just that if you have males

12:34there is probably for other males.

12:37So they would have been there to, uh, be in the role of the receptive part.

12:44Right.

12:45Um, that's probably where negative connotations would, uh, have become associated with that

12:52concept.

12:53And this is an assumption, like there's no hard evidence that this took place, but it

12:59kind of, you can see how it makes sense to arrive at this conclusion.

13:03Yes.

13:04Although I can also see that you in your videos frequently yell at people about the etymological

13:09fallacy.

13:10Yes.

13:11This fallacy is a big one, um, but we've had, uh, we've had a bunch of scholars since the

13:17nineties just shaking their fists, uh, at other scholars because there's just no evidence

13:25that, uh, this notion of cult sex work or sacred sex work or anything like that took

13:30place.

13:31And I think the best discussion, uh, there was a book published in 2018 by Phyllis Bird.

13:37Uh, the title was harlot or holy woman, a study of Hebrew, Kadesha.

13:42And, uh, back in the nineties, she published a paper called the end of the male cult prostitute,

13:47a literary historical and sociological analysis of Hebrew cadets, cadetshe, uh, when she takes

13:53scholars to task for this and, and uses linguistic evidence, use the archeological evidence,

13:59uses the literary evidence, uses, um, everything that she can marshal to show that the idea

14:04here is somewhere between either it just refers to a regular old sex worker, not a sacred

14:11one, or it refers to some kind of cult personnel that was not a priest and was not, and it

14:19was unrelated to sex work.

14:21And so we might have different senses in different contexts.

14:24Okay.

14:25Um, this is the, I'm interested in this because, uh, NSR VUE, uh, you gave me a V.

14:33And RS, uh, look, arrange the letters, how you need to make it make sense.

14:40Uh, but I looked out, you gave me several of these, um, scriptures.

14:45Yes.

14:46And I'm looking at first Kings 15, Mesa reigns over Judah and the, the, uh, verse 12 that

14:54you said earlier, uh, you see, and, and you had, you were doing the King James version,

15:01right, which, I avoided the NRSVUE because that would have given away the whole strip

15:07teeth.

15:08Right.

15:09Right.

15:10Right.

15:11So, but let's get to it.

15:12King James said, what do you remember?

15:13What King James said on that?

15:14He took away the sodomites out of the land.

15:16Right.

15:17Now, NRSVUE, are we ready for this?

15:19Is this?

15:20I don't maybe.

15:21Yeah.

15:22Yeah.

15:23So NRSVUE says he put away the illicit priests out of the land.

15:26Yes.

15:27The illicit priests, so this is, so this is based on, that does sound like sex work

15:32priests.

15:33I know what, what else could an illicit priest be?

15:38This is the priest from Fleabag, right?

15:41Yeah.

15:42Um, no, illicit here doesn't necessarily mean, um, you know, naughty.

15:50It means a priest who's not authorized, a priest who's not one of the, one of the right

15:56priests, he's not, uh, he's not from the Levitical priesthood.

16:00It's not from the right line, um, but I, I think they used a, they may have used illicit

16:06in order to try to split the difference a little bit.

16:08Right.

16:09It does sound like they're, they're walking a line, yeah, purposefully not making a choice

16:14on that.

16:15But there's, there's, there are those who will argue that this cultic personnel, whatever

16:22their, um, functionality, they weren't priests.

16:26They may have had to do with like circumcision, they may have had to do with things dealing

16:32with menstruation.

16:33Uh, we know there was even, uh, there may have been, it takes place in some other societies.

16:40Uh, maybe, uh, before a woman got married, she went to the temple to have her hymen intentionally,

16:48uh, broken, oh, broken.

16:51Oh, the idea being, let's make it so there's not a mess.

16:57And you're not making your husband, uh, uncomfortable, uh, so there are a variety of things that

17:03could kind of bump up against the, uh, the, you know, the conceptual semantic field of

17:09sex work that are not actually sex work that the, these cultic, uh, this cultic personnel

17:17could have been responsible for, we're not sure, but what most scholars these days will

17:23say is whatever it is, cultic sex worker, probably not it.

17:29Why, why do you have to ruin the fun parts?

17:33Well, I got to say like the idea of the, the temple gets a lot more interesting if it does

17:40have, uh, official cultic sex work.

17:45Yeah.

17:46Yeah.

17:47Yeah.

17:48And that raises all kinds of issues.

17:50The main reason I was, um, I was annoyed about, um, uh, master Wilson, Doug, uh, bringing

17:59this up that that doesn't, probably doesn't mean anything outside of Utah, um, okay, what

18:07if I said hello, Douglas, um, hopefully that means something outside of Utah, but, um, he's

18:13trying, he's trying to say this refers to all homosexuals, even if we understand it

18:18as cultic sex worker, it's only referring to sex workers, which would actually lend credence

18:25to the argument that a lot of people make that when the Hebrew Bible does condemn same

18:31sex intercourse, it's condemning sex work, right, not just same sex intercourse in and

18:38of itself, or it's condemning abusive or exploitative, uh, or other types of male same sex intercourse.

18:45So, so Doug by appealing, blithely to a text that he very clearly doesn't understand.

18:51By the way, he has no relevant training or expertise.

18:54Um, he has a, a bachelor's and a master's in philosophy.

18:59And you know what that gets you.

19:01Um, so yes, a job as a river rafting tour guide.

19:06He's, he's making a case against the, the foundation of his, uh, bigotry, uh, if he's

19:18going to appeal to the Bible for that bigotry.

19:20So, so his argument is garbage, but also at the same time, I think people should be aware

19:24that you're going to hear about cultic sex workers an awful lot.

19:29If you are around arguments about the Bible and particularly human sexuality and homosexuality

19:35and all that kind of stuff, but the notion that they, uh, you know, put the, you know,

19:40when the, the teenagers, they were, they were like, you know, he's, he looks like he might

19:44be meant for, uh, uh, to be a one of the kettishim or something like that.

19:49You know, the notion that, that they had these men that were just in the temple that

19:53were there for, for that, uh, doesn't really fit the data.

19:58Uh, and so there probably was not an occultic sex work going on in ancient Israel.

20:03And whatever Asa and Jehoshaphat, uh, whoever they were running out of Israel, uh, it was

20:10on, and even if it is sex workers, it's not clear that it's same sex sex workers.

20:18It's certainly not the case for the women because it was Judah who patronized what he

20:23labeled a cadet Shah and that would not be same sex.

20:26So it's not even clear that it's a homosexual sex work.

20:31It's probably either just regular old sex work or it has something to do with the, uh,

20:38the non-elicit functionality of the temple, uh, but yeah, I, uh, our is, sorry, I'm just,

20:48I'm just trying to get an idea of like, is cadet Shah, are the, are the fi, is the female

20:53version of this treated significantly differently throughout the Bible as the cadet sheem.

21:00Um, you do have so, um, you have, uh, hosea refers to the cadet shote, uh, and that is

21:09used in parallel to the zone note.

21:13So, uh, here, I'll read that passage in the NRSVUE.

21:16I will not punish your daughters when they prostitute themselves, nor your daughters in

21:20law when they commit adultery for the men themselves go aside with prostitutes and, uh,

21:29and with the cadet shote, they sacrifice.

21:34Okay.

21:35So the, the NRSVUE says in sacrifice with female attendants.

21:39So it's not clear exactly what's being condemned here are the, is it because they're offering

21:45sacrifices with the help of a woman being the one who is, who is, uh, engaged in the, the

21:54cultic activity is that is, they're like, for shame, they had a woman offering a sacrifice.

22:00What it, sorry.

22:01What does this, this suffix oat mean?

22:03Uh, that's the plural for the female, female plural, okay, sorry, um, you said, oh, uh,

22:11like there, something more significant than, uh, yeah, just the, the feminine plural.

22:16Um, so the, they, they're sacrificing with the cadet shote.

22:21Okay. So, so there the context is, is an actual cultic activity, sacrifice.

22:26Yeah.

22:27So this while it's parallel to zonot, which is the feminine plural of zonah, um, it's

22:34not suggestive that they are there to do.

22:37And you know, it's not like the, they come out of the room and it's like, let's go do

22:40a sacrifice together.

22:42Yeah.

22:43And, um, like that, that's kind of a, um, a bizarre, uh, reconstruction of what was going

22:49on in the, uh, in the temple, but I think you have cadet Shaw occurs in Genesis, um, three

22:56times in Genesis 38, there's in Deuteronomy 32, 23, 18, excuse me.

23:03Um, and then it's masculine the rest of the time up in Dalhosea four, 14.

23:09Okay.

23:10So yeah, we don't have a ton of context to be able to gain a lot of contextual purchase

23:15on what exactly is going on here, which is why a lot of people will retreat to references

23:20in a cadian literature or in eucharitic literature, where the, the resonance with sex work is

23:28even less prominent, less clear.

23:31So, um, so yeah, there's not a good case to make that, uh, this is a reference to, uh,

23:38cultic sex workers could be a reference to regular sex workers.

23:42I don't think there's a decent case to make that when it's in referring to males, that

23:47is a reference to, um, same sex sex workers, but that's a possibility or it could just

23:53be a reference to, uh, cultic personnel could be different from one context to the other.

23:59Mm.

24:00Um, yeah.

24:01I mean, that, yeah, none of this precludes the possibility of it meaning different things

24:04in different contexts.

24:05Right.

24:06Same words frequently do that.

24:08Yeah.

24:09So that's tricky, this is all very tricky, Dan.

24:13It's not easy to figure out.

24:15That's what we do here.

24:16Yeah.

24:17Muddy the waters and then we scamper away.

24:19Yeah.

24:20Giggling.

24:21The, the giggling is important.

24:22I mean, it's not like, you know, cultic or, and we, when we use the word cultic, we should

24:28probably figure out what we, what we mean by that.

24:30It's sort of to do with, uh, ceremonial slash religious, uh, yeah.

24:41So, so in whatever, I don't know, the word cult has overwhelmingly, and for the, uh, the

24:48overwhelming majority of the existence of the word, it has referred to the, yes, the,

24:53the ceremonial features or aspects of religious life.

24:58Right.

24:59Uh, people try, every time people hear me say the word cult, they imagine I'm using

25:03it in the Jim Jones sense and no, I'm using it in the every religion has a cultic dimension,

25:12not every religion, but the, the main religions that we talk about on this channel, religions

25:16associated with the Bible, whether that's prayer, incense, sacrifice, um, those things

25:23are all that religions cult.

25:26Now, it, and I mentioned earlier, we, uh, we need to do a show on, on cult with, uh, with

25:33some specialists who are getting quite annoyed, uh, with the use of this word recently.

25:39But yeah, when, when we are talking about a cultic something, we're talking about, uh,

25:45some kind of religious activity that has to do with ceremonial worship practice related

25:50stuff.

25:51Right.

25:52Uh, sorry, but we, I derailed something.

25:57Let me, let me see if I can get us back on track.

25:59I don't, I'm, I don't remember what, uh, oh, just, just the, there is no, so what, what

26:08I was going to say is there are historical and ancient precedence for cultic sex work

26:16or cultic sex at least.

26:18We don't really have clear evidence for it's, um, like there's, I'm, I'm, I'm saying just

26:24like it may not be in, in this context, but like ancient Greece, right?

26:29Yes.

26:30Um, no, this, this is kind of, uh, in all of, uh, ancient West Asia, the, uh, the notion

26:37of, uh, cultic sex work is, is widely just assumed.

26:41There's not a lot of good evidence for the conclusion, whether it's, uh, Greece or Rome.

26:48Now you have an awful lot of just run of the mill sex work going on in all these places.

26:54Sure.

26:55And frequently they are attached to institutions.

26:59Um, and so I, I don't know that they were, uh, a lot of this has to do with the assumption

27:04that fertility cults included sex work and that's something for which we do not have clear

27:12evidence because those kinds of cults, you know, people weren't out there, uh, writing

27:17texts about, here's all the things that happened in my mystery religion today, um, because

27:23they're a mystery religion, you're not supposed to talk about them.

27:25That's the first rule of mystery religion you don't talk about, mystery religion.

27:29So, um, you know, this is why people, uh, we'll talk an awful lot, um, about, uh, and

27:36now I've, I've completely forgotten a dude's name.

27:39I keep my, I have Osiris in my head and it's, and it's not Osiris, but there's a

27:45Toroctany, uh, the guy kills a bull, uh, as, as part of this and there were sacred meals

27:51and things like that.

27:52And then had to do with, uh, with the sun and we don't really know because they didn't

27:56leave any texts explaining what was going on and what their, what their thinking was.

28:01And without texts, uh, we're like, what could be, could be this, but, but everybody's like,

28:07I mean, it'd be more fun if there was sex.

28:10Let's just, let's just chuck it in there.

28:14I just think someone's been sleeping on the couch for too long and, uh, and he's just

28:18like, man, you say everything is about sex.

28:21So, uh, but no, if you say this, I, I have watched plenty of, uh, cult in the bad way

28:28documentaries, uh, and yeah, usually sex is involved.

28:32Sex gets involved.

28:33Let's just, let's just get real about it.

28:35Like, especially in the early days of any new religion, uh, it, it, the, the religious

28:42leader, unless it happens to be a lady person, which is more rare than it ought to be, uh,

28:49and sometimes when it happens to be a lady person, uh, it, and it ends up being about

28:54like getting that person's, getting that leader some, some strange.

28:58Yes.

28:59Yes.

29:00It veers into that, um, quite quickly, pretty quickly, but, uh, yeah, we, we just don't

29:07have a ton of evidence for, uh, temples, like hosting or having their own, uh, sex work

29:18industries, so to speak.

29:20So, and for, and you know, if you go to an archeological dig and they, they find something

29:27and it's not immediately clear what it is, like the next thing they'll do is go, okay,

29:33probably cultic.

29:34Like if it's, if it's some, you know, like if you look, Gary Larson's far side tools

29:40for cows, like one of the things is clearly a saw and Gary Larson knows he screwed up

29:45by making one of the things look like you could be identified, but all the other stuff, like

29:50we find that kind of crap in archeological digs and they all stand around and go probably

29:56cultic.

29:57This was probably used, uh, as a ceremonial something.

30:02Yeah.

30:03And probably sex is probably a ceremonial dildo or, um, oh, that's, that's, at some

30:13point we need to do a segment on the, uh, on the dildo in Ezekiel.

30:18Yeah.

30:19Yeah.

30:20Yeah.

30:21Yeah.

30:22We do.

30:23What?

30:24Yeah.

30:25You guys remind us to do a thing about the Ezekiel dildo.

30:27That's, uh, yeah.

30:28That's a good one.

30:29All right.

30:30But, uh, yeah, so far as we can tell, no, uh, cultic sex workers in, in the Bible.

30:36So sorry, Doug.

30:37I'll try to, I'll try to mask my, my own disappointment.

30:41Doug's disappointed for an entirely different reason.

30:44Doug's disappointed on the exact opposite side of the spectrum from my own disappointment.

30:48Uh, but yes, uh, let's not, let's, let's not let brother Wilson's, uh, bad misinformation,

30:56uh, get away from how stupid his, the bigotry.

31:00He's trying to run off his.

31:02Yeah.

31:03Yeah.

31:04It's so bad.

31:05Uh, all righty.

31:06Well, let's let us then move on to our, our next, uh, thing, which is a chapter and verse.

31:16And this week's chapter and verse.

31:19Everybody open your Bibles right now and go to Psalm 151.

31:25And as you start flipping through, we're going to giggle to ourselves because you're not going

31:31to find it.

31:32Well, hang on.

31:33Uh oh.

31:34Wait a minute.

31:35I may have spoken too soon.

31:36I'm curious if the SBL study Bible has Psalm 151 because it has the apocrypha.

31:40Yeah.

31:41Okay.

31:42Um, and but if it is included, it seems to me like it would be in a different section,

31:48but I'm just, uh, scrolling, scrolling, I'm looking in my, in my trusty, uh, Gideon Bible.

31:55It's not in the SBL study Bible.

31:57And it's not.

31:58Yeah.

31:59The, uh, the King James ends in 150.

32:01So what are we even talking about Dan?

32:03There's no one 51.

32:04Oh, no.

32:05Wait.

32:06There it is.

32:07Six, six, eight, 16, 24.

32:08It is in the, the apocrypha section.

32:10So, um, yes, yes, well, it's just, it's a sneaky song.

32:16You underestimate the sneakiness, uh, that is good old John Chatero.

32:23Yeah.

32:24Okay.

32:25That one I remember.

32:26You remember that one?

32:27All right.

32:28Uh, the Psalm 151 is a Psalm that is included in the Septuagint and it is not included in

32:35the Masoretic text.

32:37Now, uh, when I mentioned this to you, I was like, yeah, I was written in Greek.

32:43Wait a minute.

32:44Holy crap.

32:45No, it wasn't.

32:46It was actually written in, it was actually, um, written in the Septuagint.

32:50It was in Greek.

32:51Yes.

32:52And we've known about it for a long time because the Septuagint was in circulation before Jesus

32:59was even born.

33:00Right.

33:01And so, um, you know, it, it is in some translations of the Vulgate and stuff like that.

33:06But Psalm 151 claims to be a, uh, autobiographical account written by David.

33:14Yeah.

33:15It's written in first person, uh, in the character of David.

33:18Yeah.

33:19Yes.

33:20So I'll, I'll go ahead and read the whole thing.

33:21Ooh.

33:22And then we can get into, uh, the nitty gritty this psalm.

33:27And this is a, uh, this is a, like, what is not a prologue.

33:32There's, there's a part of it that introduces it and says this psalm is ascribed to David

33:37as his own composition.

33:39So autobiographical after he had fought in single combat with Goliath.

33:45Mm.

33:46So this is a, um, yes, post, um, killing.

33:50I was small among my brothers and the youngest in my father's house.

33:54I tended my father's sheep.

33:56My hands made a harp, my fingers fashioned a liar.

33:59And who will tell my lord, the lord himself, it is he who hears it is he who sent his

34:05messenger and took me from my father's sheep and anointed me with his anointing oil.

34:11My brothers were handsome and tall, but the lord was not pleased with them.

34:14I went out to meet the foreigner and he cursed me by his idols, but I drew his own sword.

34:21I beheaded him and removed disgrace from the people of Israel.

34:26So this, this psalm was probably composed after a tradition develop that the Psalms were written

34:34by David.

34:34And somebody was like, we don't, we need something.

34:37We need like a first person, uh, I'm David, uh, here's what I did, uh, kind of psalm and

34:44could it not have been composed?

34:46Could it not have been the genesis of the idea that David wrote these, wrote the psalms?

34:53Um, I know because we have, I think I just broke scholarly ground.

34:58I think I just, I just blew the doors off.

35:00Well, there are a bunch of psalms that say, um, me's more la David, which means Psalm

35:08two David, belonging to David of David, something like that, like the exact sense of la David

35:14is, is unclear.

35:16It's open to interpretation.

35:18So no, a lot of the psalms lend to this idea that, that David was the, either the possessor,

35:25the intended audience for, or the author of the Psalms.

35:29And so, um, I think, I think this is just, um, in those waters without necessarily being

35:34the, the origin of it, but for a long time, uh, there, nobody had any evidence of any Hebrew

35:43version of this psalm.

35:44We had it in the Pashira, which was a, uh, translation into Aramaic with the earliest

35:52versions of which are date two shortly after the New Testament.

35:57Um, so that's a, uh, that's a Semitic language, but no Hebrew.

36:02And so, uh, like a hundred years ago, there's a, there's a quote from, um, a scholar says,

36:10there's no evidence that Psalm 151 ever existed in Hebrew, done and dusted, right?

36:15Until we discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls and found, guess what?

36:18Not only a version of Psalm 151 in Hebrew, but two separate psalms, which were probably

36:25the origin of the single Psalm 151, so they exist.

36:32Psalm 151a and 151b. Yes. And, uh, we have 151a is in, uh, is in Hebrew. And this was

36:42discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's a part of the great Isaiah scroll, uh, 11q5

36:48or 11q Psalms is another way to refer to it. But this is just a bunch of columns of, of

36:54Psalms one after the other and they're, they're grouped together, but they're not arranged

36:59exactly as we find in the Masoretic text, which lends credence to, uh, the theory that

37:06the arrangement of the Psalms is actually pretty late is actually something that, that

37:11occurred, uh, quite late in the, in the life of these texts. But, uh, so 151a has pretty

37:18much all the seven verses that we talked about. Yeah, but, um, 151b, or actually, no, 151b

37:28has the reference to Goliath. 151a doesn't. Right. Uh, we have, uh, the mountains cannot

37:37witness to God. The hills cannot proclaim him, but the trees have cherished my words,

37:41the flocks, my deeds who can proclaim, who can announce, who can declare the Lord's

37:45deeds. God has seen everything. God has heard everything. God has listened. God sent his

37:51prophet to anoint me, Samuel, to make me great. My brothers went out to meet him, handsome

37:55and form an appearance. They're stature tall. They're hair beautiful, but the Lord God did

38:00not choose them and said he sent me or said he sent and took me from following the flock,

38:06anointed me. God made me leader for his people, ruler of the children of his covenant. And

38:11then 151b is where he says I went out to attack the Philistine who cursed me by his idols.

38:16I cut off his head and so I removed the shame from the Israelites. And so it looks like the

38:22Greek version is kind of, folding the two together. Right. Is there a, is there a possibility?

38:33Cause look, we've talked about David. We've talked about the fact that there was another

38:38guy who also slew Goliath. Yes. And, uh, and so now I'm wondering if 151b and, and the,

38:48the harmonizing of the two for the Greek is actually that, if that actually arises as

38:56a set, like it is an apologetic. Yeah. As a sort of like, we got it. We got to get this

39:02Goliath. Like, like the original David story didn't include the Goliath thing. And when

39:09they decided to attribute the Goliath thing to David, they went back and sort of retrofitted

39:15the Psalm with a little bit of Goliath action just to, uh, just to spice it up.

39:21Well, I think the, the attribution of, of, uh, Goliath killing to David is, is much earlier

39:27than this Psalm, but you do have the tension. You do have, because first and second Samuel

39:33probably were not, you know, it's not like, uh, they wrote first and second Samuel from

39:39beginning to end. And then we're like, who, that was, that was a lot of work. Now we have

39:43the whole thing. Now it's all gets published at once. It was probably, um, those two books,

39:50which anciently were one book probably would have circulated as independent stories first.

39:55And so it's probably not until the collation of the books of Samuel, whenever that happened,

40:01that people were suddenly like, well, wait a minute. We, we got first Samuel 17 over here.

40:07We got second Samuel 19 over here. Uh, what's the deal with that? And that's when that's

40:13probably around the time that Chronicles was looking at this and was like changed that

40:18word to lock me brother of Goliath. Right. Uh, and it's probably around that time that

40:24Psalm 151, uh, was composed or at least these constituent parts. So yeah, I imagine that

40:31it could have had something to do with trying to clarify that issue, but it certainly wasn't

40:36the, um, it certainly wasn't something that goes all the way back to the original. Okay.

40:41Let's say David did it. Um, that's, that's centuries earlier. So, uh, yeah, but all right,

40:48it's, it's, it's, it's very interesting. One of the funny things about this is that as

40:54I read it, it offers very little in the way of life. It doesn't elucidate anything. It

41:00doesn't, it doesn't make any claims that aren't made elsewhere in the Bible. It is, uh, it

41:06is, uh, it's not tremendously useful. Well, and it also oddly is, is kind of, um, it's

41:13kind of thin on like the praise. Yeah. Because it, you know, you have the, the Lord hears

41:19stuff, uh, but for the most part, it's like, and then I did this and then I did that and

41:25then God did this. And then I did that. And so it's my brothers were tall and handsome,

41:32but I still got it. So on them. Yeah. And the, I'm looking for the word for, yeah, the foreigner

41:42alafile I think is what we have in the, uh, I think the Greek says alafile, which would

41:50be, um, which has been interpreted as foreigner, but I, uh, is a reference to, uh, is used

41:59in, in reference to Philistines. Oh, yeah. I think it meant, I think it just meant foreigner,

42:06but that's what the, um, the Greek has. I don't have the Hebrew. I don't have the Dead

42:11Sea scroll fragment in front of me, but I suppose I could, suppose I could pull it up.

42:17Call Kip. Let's, let's, uh, let's get him on the line here. Not, not, not, not so that

42:24we can see the, but so that you can actually have a physical fragment in front of you.

42:28I'm sorry. I don't think he carries them on him. Um, you don't think he's got one in

42:34his wallet, a little, just a little, a little Dead Sea scroll bit. Hey buddy, you want to

42:40see something cool. Whips it out on his Tinder dates to show off. Um, yeah. 11 Q Psalms.

42:49A. Okay. There are, there's the Psalm scroll. It would take a while for me to dig through

42:55here to find the, uh, the Hebrew of this particular one, but it, it probably says, it probably

43:01says Philistine cause alla, alla file was something that was pretty typical of the, the

43:06Greek. Okay. Rather than, than Hebrew, but, uh, yeah, I, I, when we were talking about

43:12this, um, you said secret psalm and, and I immediately cause, you know, it's David talking

43:20about himself. I was like, I heard there was a secret psalm that David wrote and, you

43:25know, they're the, the writing is just mom, but he's his mom. There you go. Uh, but you

43:31don't really care for, uh, for scriptures do your scripture anyway. Yeah. It goes, it

43:38goes like this, the harp the liar. That is a, the, the, the harp and liar, uh, thing in

43:46mind, it's translated. My hands made a musical instrument. My fingers strung up a lap harp.

43:52A strong, a lap harp. Well, musical instrument, like man, that's punting if, if ever, uh, anybody

44:00wants to take a stand, man. Yeah. Stand for something, man. Um, you're looking at it. Oh,

44:08like it's on this other one instrument, but, uh, on this, on, on the, uh, the translation

44:13of 151 a, the Hebrew, it actually says my hands made a flute. My fingers a liar. So that's

44:22interesting. Who knows? I, I, I, you're, you're the one that can translate these things, but

44:29I, I just like that, uh, he's, he, he's a very musical fellow this David. He, yeah, that's,

44:36uh, that's the rumor. And apparently he made his own instruments, which maybe that's impressive

44:41too. I don't know. I think that's probably also legendary. Um, he was, you, you don't

44:49think that he was actually a luthier? I don't think so. I certainly not on par with, uh,

44:55with your Martin or your less Paul or, or, uh, right, or anything like that. I exclusively

45:01play Martin, by the way. Oh, okay. Uh, that's what that was sitting, uh, against my wall

45:06right now for those in the video, but I am awful. So don't ask me to play anything.

45:11Well, then it's good that you picked an exclusive maker of your instruments because it's funny

45:18that, uh, the, the only two people in the Bible, or at least in Christian tradition who are

45:24like known for being these cool musicians are David and Satan.

45:31Yeah. Wait, what is Satan play? Now, I don't know. This is just part of, this is just part

45:38of Christian tradition. It's not actually real. Oh, it's not in the Bible. It's no, it's not.

45:44But, um, so in Ezekiel 28, we have the, uh, the proclamation against the king of Tyre.

45:52And this is where we have, um, uh, God says, uh, you compare your mind with the mind of

45:58a God. Therefore I will bring strangers against you, blah, blah, blah, um, mortal, raise a

46:04lamentation over the king of Tyre and say to him, thus says the Lord God, you were the

46:07signative perfection full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of

46:12God. Every precious stone was your covering and then lists precious stones after precious

46:17stone. So, you know, I'm maybe the guy who did your translation would be like this kind

46:22of precious stone and then a different kind of precious stone and then there's a, yeah.

46:29And then there's one part, um, where I think that the NRSVUE, uh, renders it more clearly.

46:36It talks about, uh, yeah, worked in gold where your settings and your engravings. Now, uh,

46:44that's using some unusual Hebrew words, but traditionally that was understood to refer

46:52to musical instruments. Oh, in fact, if we, if you give me just a second, I want to pull

46:57up and see what the King James, uh, has to say, silly King James. Um, verse 13, the workmanship

47:07of thy tablets and of thy pipes was prepared in the, in the day that thou was created. Um,

47:16and, and then it goes on to say, thou art the anointed cherub that covereth and I have

47:21set thee so thou was to pawn the holy mountain of God, thou hast walked up and down in the

47:25midst of the stones of fire. That was perfect. And it goes on like this. Yeah. Now this is,

47:32this is a very unique Eden tradition that is using the, the King of Tyre, the Texas,

47:40constantly calling the King of Tyre mortal, mortal, you mortal, you know, the contrast.

47:44I'm God, you mortal. Um, and, and then it's talking about Eden and talking about the King

47:51of Tyre as if the King of Tyre was Adam, since Adam means human mortal, but it gets

47:57misinterpreted as a reference to Lucifer because there's a later translation that understands

48:02Lucifer as an angel. And so when it says, uh, thou art the anointed cherub, obviously

48:08that's got to be Lucifer. He's the only other one who is in the Garden of Eden, even though

48:12at this time period, Lucifer Satan had nothing to do with the Garden of Eden, but it talks

48:18about his, um, his musical prowess. And then there are some other later traditions that

48:23have him being this super sexy angel who was the prettiest and you know, the most talented

48:29in everything. So you, you will hear that a lot that Lucifer was this awesome musician,

48:36like the angel of music. Um, and now I don't even know if I'm allowed to sing angel of

48:43music or if we'll get in trouble for that. So I'll just, I'll just, and nobody wants to

48:47hear me sing. So we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll skip over it. Yeah. It's, uh, yeah. Well,

48:53that's interesting. It's a mess. It's a, that's a fun little side note. The music of the Bible,

48:58uh, apparently not much. Well, the, the Psalms are quite musical and, um, although the ancient

49:07Hebrew, the musicality was, was enjoyed for different reasons. But, um, if you, I, I found

49:14this out one time I was in, uh, Athens and I went to a Bible store. Uh, it was, I forget

49:21what it was. It was the Bible society of some Bible society because I wanted to check and

49:26see what kinds of versions of the Bible they had. And I picked up a, um, a translation

49:33of the Septuagint. Now it was a translation from ancient Greek to modern Greek, but it

49:39was all the Septuagint and, and you know, did it do a side by side? Yes. Yes. Oh, wow.

49:44And then the, um, the, uh, Orthodox church uses the Septuagint, uh, Greek Orthodox. Sure.

49:52And so they have Psalm 151 in there. So this, this is a part of the, the liturgy and part

49:59of scripture for a number of groups around the world. Um, Christian groups, particularly

50:05Orthodox Christian groups or any that descend from the tradition of the Septuagint. Uh, and

50:11so there are those who, who treat this as scripture. So, uh, Psalm 151, um, should not

50:17be dismissed offhand and particularly because we have a, uh, two versions of the, the original

50:25two elements of it, uh, preserved in, uh, among the Dead Sea Scrolls and 151. Like,

50:31so it's placed in the, like in the Bibles that included, uh, specifically the, the Orthodox

50:39Bibles that you're referencing. Is this Mavonic? Is it placed in at the very end of the Psalms?

50:45Is it the last Psalm? Yes. It is the, the last Psalm. That's weird. It doesn't feel like

50:50a last Psalm. No, it's not. It was like the beginning of a something. Yeah. You don't

50:55tie off the whole book of Psalms with. And then I cut his head off. Right. Right. I would.

51:00Yeah. This feels like the, the, or like it feels like the opening gambit of an origin

51:06story or something. Yeah. Yeah. You would, you would expect some, there's no resolution

51:10here. I mean, in music, you got to resolve things. You can't be ending on this kind of

51:16crescendo. Um, so yeah, it does, it does feel a little out of place. Yeah. Uh, and who knows

51:23if there was a Psalm 152 that, uh, you know, for whatever reason was left out, there are,

51:30um, there are a number of places in the, well, not a number. There are a few places in the

51:34Bible where people, scholars have been like, this story is weird. Something's missing.

51:42We don't know what. And, and there are, um, fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls that like

51:48preserve the missing part. Yeah. Yeah. Like there's this weird story in, uh, in first

51:54Samuel, uh, 10 and 11 where it's, it's talking about these, uh, this dude named Nahash, which

52:02means serpent. Uh, and he's, uh, he's like, come on, you know, make a, uh, come over here

52:10and make a deal with me. And I'll gouge out your right eye. And it's kind of like, well,

52:15that was odd. It just kind of comes out of nowhere. And scholars are noted for a long

52:20time. This is weird. And it turns out is there were like four sentences that were left out

52:25because of something called homo yotaleotan, um, which is, which means like ending. And

52:32the idea is basically the guy who's copying this, when you're copying something, you

52:36got to look at the source and then you go over and you look at your paper and you write

52:39it down, you go back to the source, you find where you were, and then you remember what

52:44you see and then you go write it down. And if the thing that you remembered ends a specific

52:50way, you run the risk of returning to the source text and picking back up in the wrong

52:57spot. Yeah. If there's another similarly ending word or phrase somewhere else. And

53:04so like if you're, if the last sentence you wrote down ends with the phrase ends with

53:10like, and that's why we go to the market. And then three paragraphs down, there's another,

53:16there's another paragraph that ends with, and that's why we go to the market, you could

53:20jump back, you could jump to the wrong place and just continue on from that. If you are

53:25three paragraphs off from where you just were in your source text, you probably need to

53:31sit a few plays out. You were sleepy that day. It's not my fault. Normally it's like a couple

53:36of words or a line or two. Here it was like three or four sentences. And the funniest

53:41part is that the Dead Sea Scroll manuscript, a little fragment that preserves the missing

53:46portion, they did the same thing in the missing portion. And they had to scribble the text

53:53in between the lines.

53:55Oh crap. Oh crap. Hang on. No, let me get this part in, which is, which is just a testimony

54:01of the risks that that transcription has because they got like the first couple of lines of

54:07the missing portion. And then they skipped over a line and they had to come back in later

54:13and write in the missing line between the problem with hand scribing because a clippy

54:17doesn't pop up. Hey, it looks like you went to the wrong place.

54:21I think you missed a spot. Yeah, you don't get the red squiggly lines telling you, you

54:29spelled, what is the name, do it? Yeah. You, when you did the find and replace from Dwight

54:37to whatever, you misspelled the name once. And so it didn't, that's, that's how they get

54:43you. But, but that's, that's, I think an interesting story of how the Dead Sea Scrolls have helped

54:50fill in some gaps. And here it helps restore knowledge of an original Hebrew version, not

54:55just an original Hebrew version, but two different Psalms that were combined into one

55:01to create the source text for what was later preserved in our Septuagint. Meaning it should

55:06probably be included in versions of the Bible, though, I'm just going to say I will repeat.

55:14It's kind of boring. It doesn't really matter. Well, and yeah, and, and what should be or

55:21shouldn't be in our Bibles is, you know, I mean, we still have nobody, nobody's going

55:26to take the ending of Mark out of their Bibles. But we, we know that we're tearing it out

55:31right now. Wait a minute. We're, except for Thomas Jefferson, who famously took a, took

55:37a scalpel to, to his New Testament, but he shredded that thing. Yeah, there, there are a bunch

55:43of things we know are secondary editions, but it's like, we love it so much, though.

55:47We can't let it go. And, and similarly, there, there are some things that we, we didn't have

55:52that we now know were there that why not throw him back in there? Yeah. In the case of Psalm

55:58151, because it throws off the balance of the, the composition, but hey, let's, you know,

56:04the, the order of the Psalms isn't written in stone. Yeah. So I will just say this. Y'all

56:11can just do with it as you please. It's your Bible. Go, go with what pleases you. Yeah.

56:17Cut out what you want and leave in what you want. Chuck some new stuff in there. It's all

56:21like, as I've, as I am, won't to say, it's all negotiable anyway. So, um,

56:28Throw in some spider man. I don't know. Have some fun with it. I mean, hey, look, New York

56:32City, we know the place exists. We can go to New York City. We can even go to Hell's

56:37Kitchen. I mean, like daredevil too. You got to throw that in there. And I think the NRS

56:43VUE, the, the SBL study Bible, I've lost my place, but I believe they stuck Psalm 151

56:51right before 3rd Maccabees. Yeah. So it's right after the prayer of Manasseh and right before

56:563rd Maccabees. And I think it's odd that they have all four Maccabees in here, but not one

57:02after the other. It's so you got to break up the Maccabees. Otherwise, they just, they

57:08do much Maccabees is, they start bullying the other books. It's, it's no good. You gotta,

57:14you gotta put them in different parts of the classroom. Well, two, three and four are basically

57:18the same store, at least three and four are kind of retelling a lot of the same stories.

57:22So that might be where they're like, move it down a little bit. He'll forget that what

57:28the story was. They'll think it's a new composition. They need a reminder later. Let's let them

57:33read a Psalm in the middle of the week. And this is why Luther was like, this is all crap.

57:37This is nonsense. I'm moving this all to a, to a, the back of the book. Yeah. Yeah. All

57:45right, friends. Well, that is it. We, we have done our job of muddying waters. So thank

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