Ep 118: Tucker Vs Ted: The Israel Throwdown

00:00Ezekiel is like, I can fix it, I'm gonna give God wheels.

00:05We're gonna mobilize the throne so that God can just go

00:09and crashin' out of the temple and voom, go.

00:12God's like where we're goin', we don't need roads.

00:16(upbeat music)

00:18Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:22- And I'm Dan Beacher.

00:23- And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast

00:26where we increase public access to the academic study

00:28of the Bible and religion.

00:30And we combat that ever-present spread

00:34of misinformation about the same.

00:37How are things today, Dan?

00:38- Things are good.

00:39We're waitin' in Chest Deep on this one today.

00:42- Yeah, yeah, we're goin' in hard, we're goin' in heavy.

00:44- Yes, we are.

00:47We are gonna cause, we're gonna ruffle some feathers today.

00:52But I don't think without--

00:55- It might be deeper than Chest Deep.

00:56- We might need snorkels at this point.

00:59- We'll see.

01:00- I don't think it is not

01:01Kondrasan as the kids are sayin' these days, I believe.

01:07In other words, it's not unjustified,

01:09but yeah, we're gonna be waitin' into some controversy.

01:13Which, you know, we don't ever do, so.

01:15- We've managed to avoid it for so long.

01:19It's finally time.

01:21So let's, the first half we're gonna be talking

01:24about a subject that has come up thanks

01:29to of all people, one Ted Cruz.

01:32Thank goodness for him, we're all just so happy

01:36that he's around, and Tucker Carlson,

01:40I feel similar about him, and then in the second,

01:45and that's gonna be, oh, heaven help us,

01:48it's gonna be about Israel.

01:50And then in the second half of the show,

01:53we're going to talk about a psalm

01:55that is interesting, I'm gonna give it that.

02:00- Maybe, one might say.

02:03- Maybe a little problematic for many of us,

02:07so we'll dive deep into that.

02:10But first, let's get into a taking issue.

02:14(upbeat music)

02:17And this week's taking issue, we're taking issue with

02:21something that this interview that Tucker Carlson

02:25did with Ted Cruz, the main thing that sort of went viral

02:30was Tucker grilling Ted Cruz about,

02:37you don't know anything about Iran,

02:39and you wanna blow 'em off the place of the earth,

02:40and there's all this Iran stuff.

02:42But sort of what got lost in the shuffle

02:45was the thing that you picked up on, Dan.

02:49When he was talking, when they were talking about Israel,

02:54and specifically what happened was,

02:56Ted Cruz said, well, I'm a Christian,

02:59and in the Bible, we are commanded to bless Israel.

03:04- Yes, it's one, which he seems to interpret to mean,

03:10never question, but always blindly support.

03:15- Right, but before we get there,

03:18Tucker Carlson immediately jumps on him,

03:20Tucker Carlson is such a jerk in this interview.

03:24They're both jerks, they're both just insufferable humans.

03:28- You would think they would be friendly to each other,

03:30though, but they're on the same team,

03:33they both support the same bad president,

03:36and they're both fascists.

03:38- For the most part, they are in 100% agreement,

03:41but apparently not on this point.

03:43- Yeah, and so, Tucker Carlson just, if you disagree

03:48with him, apparently, you're his enemy,

03:49and he's coming after you with both barrels.

03:53And so he was like, okay, well, what scripture is that?

03:58This scripture that says that you support,

04:02you need to bless Israel, and Ted Cruz didn't know.

04:06- Yeah, well, I loved that he was, he was like,

04:10oh, I don't remember it somewhere in the back.

04:12And he's like, pull up Google and look for it,

04:14and then immediately, Tucker Carlson's like,

04:17it's in Genesis, with as much venom as he could muster.

04:22It was like, you child, it is in the book of Genesis.

04:28- Well, and Tucker Carlson had clearly been planning

04:31his gotchas, so of course, Tucker knew where it was,

04:34because he was planning this gotcha from the beginning.

04:37- Yeah.

04:38- But it is in Genesis, specifically Genesis 12,

04:42is that correct?

04:43Genesis 12, which is the beginning of the Abraham cycle.

04:43- Yes, that is correct.

04:46So this is immediately after we have Genesis 1 through 11,

04:51the primeval history.

04:53So this is the second main set of narrative arcs

04:57of the entire book of Genesis.

05:00And here we basically have,

05:01and it's pretty early in Genesis 12,

05:05because you have in Genesis 11 that Tara,

05:09who's Abraham's father, he dies,

05:12he was 205 years old, he died in Heron.

05:14And then Genesis 12 begins,

05:16now the Lord said to Abraham,

05:18go from your country and your kindred

05:21and your father's house to the land that I will show you.

05:24I will make of you a great nation,

05:26and I will bless you and make your name great,

05:28so that you will be a blessing.

05:30I will bless those who bless you,

05:32and the one who curses you, I will curse.

05:36And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

05:40And in you could, I think that's probably an instrumental bait.

05:44So buy you through you as, you are the instrument

05:49of their blessing.

05:52- And so the idea is Abraham's offspring,

05:52- Right.

05:56which right off the bat, one thing to point out

06:00is that Abraham had a lot of offspring,

06:03according to the Bible,

06:04which includes like Ishmael,

06:08which is supposed to be the Arab people,

06:12and an awful lot of people beyond just the 12 sons of Israel.

06:17And so.

06:20- Yeah, and that's important to point out, Israel,

06:22AKA Jacob, right?

06:24Is that, am I getting that right?

06:26Who is Abraham's grandson?

06:30- Yeah.

06:31- Okay.

06:31- Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.

06:34- Right, so yeah, you're right.

06:37Like that's one line of the thing,

06:39but yeah, the Arabs, the Muslims, another line of,

06:44I mean, if we're going to take this seriously, literally,

06:48then this is not the actual ancestry of the Arab people.

06:53- No, of course not, but if Ted Cruz

06:56were actually going to take his own theology seriously,

07:00he wouldn't be talking about the state of Israel,

07:04the current nation state of Israel.

07:07I guess he'd be talking about all of the occupants

07:11of that whole region, including the Palestinians,

07:15the Iranians, everybody.

07:18- Yeah, if you take this lineage seriously.

07:23But, and most people I think would,

07:27I think the audience of Genesis 12,

07:30and this is probably an exotic post-exilic layer.

07:35This is probably written by people who were coming back to

07:40or who had recently come back from exile.

07:45So, 'cause, you know, Abraham, stranger in a strange land,

07:48story kind of resonates quite a bit

07:50with the people who are coming back to the land,

07:54the whole sojourner thing.

07:56So, in this time period,

08:00they would have understood Abraham's main offspring

08:05to represent Israel.

08:08They would have been like, eh, you don't care about

08:12the Edomites, we don't care about the Arabs,

08:14we don't care about all those other folks

08:15who are also ostensibly descended from Abraham,

08:18they probably had in mind Israel.

08:21Now, the question is, what does that refer to?

08:24It certainly doesn't refer to the nation state

08:27that was founded in the middle of the 20th century CE,

08:30because the author was living sixth century BCE,

08:35he had no concept of any of this,

08:38and was probably not living in a period

08:40when there was an actual nation,

08:44where they had autonomy and their own identity.

08:47And so, Israel almost certainly referred to

08:50the people of the house of Israel,

08:53who were actually scattered well beyond

08:56the land that is labeled Israel in the Bible.

09:00- And so, Israel is the name of Jacob,

09:00- Right.

09:03the legendary eponymous father of the 12 tribes of Israel,

09:07themselves, the legendary origins of the 12 tribes

09:12of Israel, the people of the house of Israel,

09:15who the 10 tribes get carted off in the force exile,

09:21force migration in 722 BCE, they are disintegrated,

09:26they're no longer around, you have mainly Judah,

09:29a little bit of Benjamin, a smattering of the other tribes

09:33that are in Judah and Jerusalem,

09:36and they kind of take on the identity

09:39of the house of Israel.

09:41And so, the people of Israel are,

09:44who knows how far dispersed into the world

09:49and diffused among the world's populations,

09:51but overwhelmingly, they are identified today

09:54with the Jewish people.

09:56- Right.

09:57- So, I think if you do actually take,

09:58and he says it's a commandment, but it's not.

10:02- No, it's not.

10:04- It's just like a thing, all right.

10:08If people bless you, I'll be happy with them.

10:11I'll bless them.

10:12- Yeah, and if they curse you,

10:15and it's not like those are the two options.

10:17It's not like you are either blessing or you are cursing.

10:20There's a lot of indifference.

10:22There's, it's a mixed bag,

10:24and nobody unilaterally responds the same way.

10:29And so, yeah, this just doesn't make sense as a commandment.

10:32It doesn't make sense as something

10:34that we should be expected to follow,

10:36but Raphael Edward Cruz says,

10:39this is, I don't remember what his exact words were,

10:43but basically he said, I was taught growing up

10:46in Sunday school.

10:47- Right. - To bless the nation of Israel,

10:50which after Tucker pushes them on this,

10:55he identifies specifically as the government

10:58that is currently headed up by Benjamin Netanyahu.

11:01- Right, and this is a weird sort of thing that has happened.

11:06I like the fact that he said I grew up with this,

11:11sort of ties him in with a movement that is,

11:15that's been around for a long time,

11:16but I think it really caught on in the middle

11:20of the 20th century, this idea of Christian Zionism,

11:25which became a thing that, you know,

11:30like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson talked about,

11:34which is this idea that we need to support Israel

11:38and we need to support the Jews of Israel specifically,

11:41not, and kind of specifically in opposition

11:44to the Palestinians of Israel or whatever,

11:47like any other claim to it.

11:49- And frequently in opposition to the rest

11:52of the Jewish people.

11:53- Yeah, that's true.

11:55- Which makes up the majority of the Jewish people.

11:58- And all of this came from this idea that the,

12:03excuse me, that the Jewish reoccupation of that land

12:08that happened in the middle of the 20th century,

12:12was fulfillment of prophecy in the Bible.

12:17- This is the first time since 63 BCE,

12:22when this area was annexed by Pompey,

12:26the Roman general, that there has been

12:29a formal autonomous nation of Israel.

12:34So it was a big deal.

12:37- Right.

12:39- Fulfillment of prophecy.

12:41I don't think we can go that far,

12:43but for Christian Zionists,

12:45this is opening the door to the rest of the events

12:50that are supposed to proceed the second coming

12:52and usher in Jesus' return.

12:55So for Christians, it's an even bigger deal

12:59that has nothing to do with the well-being

13:01of Jewish folks per se.

13:04It primarily has to do with their own eschatology

13:07and their own idea of the end times

13:12and the licking of the chops for the world to be destroyed.

13:17- Yeah, and it's so interesting

13:19because there's this, you kind of hinted at it before,

13:23but there's this dichotomy between we must support Israel,

13:27we support the Jews, we're so anti-Jewish hate

13:30and all this stuff.

13:31And it's so disingenuous.

13:36There's no mention, like I read several articles

13:39by Christians about why we need to support Israel

13:43and whatever, and there was always this,

13:45like they're very anti-antisemitism,

13:49which by the way, the word anti-Semitism

13:52becomes this bludgeon where no one's allowed to question us

13:56because if you question our support of the nation of Israel,

14:00then we get to call you a Jew hater,

14:03we get to call you an anti-Semite

14:05and just never address any of your concerns

14:09because you're obviously just bigoted.

14:12But they never mentioned, like I saw one article

14:17and there was a whole thing about Jewish hate

14:19is nothing new and it was decrying Jewish hate.

14:22Not mentioning who had been doing the hating for centuries.

14:27- Yeah, which it's, when we're looking at,

14:32at least when it comes to Zionism,

14:34I mean, most of the Jewish folks I know

14:36are vehemently anti-Zionist.

14:39Not all, but an awful lot of the Jewish folks I know

14:42are vehemently anti-Zionist.

14:43- Right.

14:44- And so we have a situation where you have a lot of Jewish folks

14:49who are being accused of anti-Semitism

14:52for pushing back against the Israeli government,

14:55which is problematic.

14:56And this is particularly sticky

14:59because there is an awful lot of anti-Semitism

15:02that attends Christian and non-Christian,

15:06non-Jewish anti-Zionism.

15:08Like there's definitely a problem with the anti-Semitism

15:12that we frequently see attending a lot of the anti-Zionist

15:16rhetoric on the part of people who are Christian,

15:19who are atheists or who are other things.

15:23And that's a big problem.

15:25And it becomes a matter of just lumping in everybody.

15:30And we end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater,

15:32I think when, well, we got to avoid anti-Semitism

15:37and identifying criticism of a government

15:42as indistinguishable from anti-Semitism.

15:46- Right.

15:47- And what's funny is I see, it's not funny,

15:50it's actually rather tragic and horrifying,

15:53but I see a lot of Christian nationalists

15:56who seem to be doing the same thing with Americans.

16:00Like I saw somebody on Twitter today who said,

16:03I used to love Colorado and now it's disgusting

16:07and I wish Americans would take it back for themselves.

16:12It's like Colorado's one of the whitest states

16:15that has ever graced the face of this planet.

16:18- Right.

16:19- It's overwhelmingly Americans who are making it

16:23what it is today and so it sounds like they're saying

16:26if you don't agree with Christian nationalism with America first,

16:31if you're a progressive or a liberal or a leftist

16:34or any of those other labels, you're not even an American.

16:37- Right.

16:38- Which kind of sounds an awful lot to me

16:39like this idea that if you don't support Netanyahu,

16:44that that makes you anti-Semitic

16:46as if he constitutes Judaism

16:50or is the essence of Jewishness, right?

16:55As if Trump is the essence of being American

16:59or anything like that.

17:00There are a lot of attempts to reduce this down

17:02to these simple and ridiculous binaries

17:06on all sides of this and related arguments.

17:08So I get really annoyed by those attempts

17:11to try to reduce everything.

17:12(upbeat music)

17:15- And there's this sense, you know,

17:19I think one of the problems here is the linguistic problem

17:23that we so often run into, which is, you know,

17:26one word is a synecdoche for other words

17:29or it can be like, the word Israel can be used to mean,

17:34you know, the new name of the guy, Israel,

17:38the, you know, the character of Jacob in the Bible

17:41or it can be used to mean his offspring

17:44or it can be used to mean, you know,

17:47a political group of people or it can be used to mean,

17:50it can be used to-- - A territory, yeah.

17:52- Yeah, it can be, yeah, a land mass.

17:55It can be used to mean any number of things.

17:57And if you, if like Ted Cruz says,

18:01if it's just, and he, and you know,

18:04Genesis 12 isn't even about Israel.

18:06Israel has not even been born yet.

18:09So Genesis 12 is about Abraham,

18:12which is a very different thing,

18:14but then can be used as a synecdoche for other things,

18:17you know, the Abrahamic religions we often hear about.

18:21So it's like, if we cannot get specific,

18:26if we cannot, if, you know, at one point,

18:30Tucker Carlson actually makes the point to Ted Cruz

18:33about what is Israel?

18:36Are they talking in ancient, in the Bible?

18:39Are they talking about the modern nation state?

18:42And Ted Cruz goes, ah, you don't know what Israel is?

18:47And it's such a dodge, it's such a pathetic dodge.

18:52- Yeah.

18:53And it, I don't know if it's insincere

18:57or just profoundly ignorant, because he,

19:01I would think that Senator Cruz would understand

19:05that Israel can refer to geography,

19:08it can refer to government, it can refer to ethnicity,

19:12it can refer to Jacob, it can refer to all these things.

19:16And so either he knows that and is just being dishonest

19:21and evasive, or he just doesn't know that.

19:25- Yeah.

19:26- In which case, holy crap, we have a lot of work to do

19:31to weed profoundly unfit public servants

19:35out of government.

19:38But, and here's the part that I dislike the most about this.

19:43If this were a commandment to unilaterally support

19:48and endorse and champion the actions of a government,

19:53it would basically endow that government

19:58and whoever's in charge of it with unilateral

20:02infallibility, inerrancy, authority to do whatever they wanted.

20:06It could never be wrong.

20:08- Yeah.

20:09- And the notion that anyone merits that kind of authority

20:13is just so far beyond the pale.

20:18Like that's, there's no case to make it.

20:19- Oh, absolutely, it's impossible.

20:20- Yeah.

20:21- Like honestly, if an almighty God made that kind

20:25of a declaration, that God would have to make sure

20:28that in perpetuity, the leader of that nation,

20:31whatever nation it was, could never make a mistake.

20:34- Yeah. - Because that's the only way

20:37in which that kind of a commandment

20:40to support something could possibly make any sense.

20:44- And even within an organization, a global organization,

20:47that does assert infallibility.

20:51- Yeah. - You have an awful lot

20:52of people being like, "Yeah, well, you know."

20:55- Right.

20:56- And a lot of people who push back against the one person

21:00who is endowed with that infallibility,

21:03however they conceptualize it,

21:05whether they say, "Well, he's got to be wearing this robe

21:07and it's got to be this kind of day

21:09and the weather's got to be such and such."

21:11And even the people who want to reduce the context

21:15for infallibility down as tiny as they can make it,

21:19they're still like, "Man, they give a lot more wiggle room

21:23to that than this idea that, "Well, bless is real.

21:27You got it. - Yeah.

21:28- You got it."

21:29Because I was taught as a child in Sunday school this,

21:34and let me, like, the things that you are taught

21:38as a child in Sunday school, you should have outgrown.

21:41Because a lot of them are being taught to you

21:45precisely because you're a child.

21:47- Right. - And you're not thinking

21:49about these things in the ways

21:52that they need to be thought about.

21:53And the frameworks that people use to transmit these ideas

21:58and these identity markers and things like that,

22:00two children, you're supposed to outgrow those.

22:03Unfortunately, a lot of people, instead of outgrowing them,

22:06they just find ways to rationalize their preservation.

22:11Even if it means, you know, creating institutions

22:16that go out and try to create pseudoscience

22:19to defend the notion of a 6,000 year old earth

22:21and a global flood and a boat that all the animals

22:26on the entire planet descended from the animals

22:30that were on there.

22:32Like, it's, you're supposed to outgrow those things.

22:35- It's so interesting, you know, that I went onto a website

22:40called Christians United for Israel, which claims

22:45and may well be the largest organization

22:49for the promotion or in defense of Israel

22:55in the country, as they claim to have over 10 million members.

22:59And you would think that that would be a comforting thought

23:04to Jewish people around the world.

23:09It is not most Jewish people that I know of

23:14and, you know, in polling most Jewish people,

23:18wildly mistrust the Christian,

23:22especially the evangelical Christian defense of Israel.

23:26- And as the kids are saying,

23:28(speaking in foreign language)

23:29yeah, they should distrust that because it is,

23:33there's an agenda that is motivating that support,

23:38which is very much one-sided and isolated and very hard.

23:43- Right, it's a poison pill because these people,

23:48you know, like we said, they believe that this is all

23:52in service of getting to the end of days,

23:56getting to the eschaton.

23:58And at that point, they assume that Israel will be

24:03then handed over to them, the Christians,

24:06as the fulfillment of that prophecy and blah, blah, blah.

24:09It's like, preserve it for the Jews so that we can have it.

24:14- Yeah, so that God can then say,

24:16"Thank you, I'll take that now, this goes to them."

24:19So yeesh, yeah, it's pretty bad.

24:24And the notion that these ideologies are so deeply entrenched

24:29in the halls of the U.S. government,

24:33in among the people who make decisions about going to war.

24:38And this is one of the reasons that a lot of people

24:43think Tucker Carlson was pushing back against Senator Cruz.

24:46A lot of people have pointed out,

24:48he seems to be very pro-Russia, Iran is a big supporter

24:53of Russia that they're mutually supporting.

25:00And so it's not that Tucker Carlson

25:03suddenly had a bout of conscience.

25:05It's that he has a very isolationist

25:10and in many ways pro-Russia approach to America first.

25:16Whether that's the case or not, whether that's motivating

25:18things, I don't know.

25:20It certainly is reason to not throw your hat

25:23into the Tucker Carlson ring.

25:25- Yeah, don't put us because you might line up

25:30with him once on a thing, don't get pro-Tucker by any means.

25:35- But yeah, the notion that we would be going to war

25:39with Iran using Israel as a proxy,

25:45even though they are not developing a nuclear weapon.

25:48Like all of the experts are in pretty widespread agreement

25:50about that is baffling to me.

25:55And yeah, trying to leverage the Bible

25:59as rationalization for that.

26:01Gotta do better, man.

26:04- Do you wanna know one of the biblical references

26:09that I saw made about Iran and Israel?

26:14- Did it have some to do with Gog and Magog?

26:16- Yes, Ezekiel 38.

26:19I don't know what that is.

26:20Like I read it and then I went and checked out Ezekiel

26:24and was like, wait, that's not about now.

26:27But none of this is about now.

26:29That's the other thing is that like one of the things

26:30that you and I have talked about a lot is that all of these

26:33people who are very into the idea that, you know,

26:37this is all the fulfillment of the prophecies

26:39of Revelation and Daniel and whatever.

26:43- No, no, it was very clearly about a very specific time

26:47and that time was a long time ago.

26:50- And when you look in Ezekiel,

26:52like Gog and Magog are a place and a ruler of a place

26:57as near as we can tell.

26:59When we get into the book of Revelation,

27:01they seem to be both rulers of places rather than one

27:06and the other.

27:07Like even the authors of the New Testament

27:10are at quite a distance from the composition

27:13of that quote unquote prophecy

27:15and so are interpreting it in different ways.

27:17And now people are like, oh, it's Iran, it's Russia,

27:19it's China, it's Turkey, it's all.

27:21And it's-- - It's whoever I don't like.

27:24- Yeah, that's really all it is.

27:26It's, you're just looking at the world

27:28and through the lenses of, this is coming,

27:31this is in the post, this is gonna happen.

27:33So I gotta be ready for it.

27:35And which is literally understanding the Bible

27:37is kind of a Ouija board as a way to define, define.

27:42Divine the future, which as we have talked about

27:45in the recent past is something a lot of people

27:49kind of unwittingly use the Bible to try to do,

27:52but looking at these things that were,

27:55Ezekiel's about the sixth century BCE.

27:58Daniel's about the second century BCE.

28:01Revelation is about the late first century CE.

28:04The Gospels are about the late first

28:06and early second century CE.

28:09They're not looking beyond that.

28:11They're looking at their own times,

28:13they're trying to prognosticate out into the near future.

28:18And they're hoping that something happens.

28:20They're worried that something happens.

28:22They're warning people that if they don't change

28:23their behavior, maybe this will happen.

28:26That's what those prophecies are.

28:28And the fact that geopolitical events

28:32will, can pivot on somebody's interpretation

28:37of one of these biblical passages just like I,

28:41just makes me so disappointed in humanity.

28:45Like, come on.

28:47- Well, the other thing is that like when we say,

28:49oh, that was fulfillment of prophecy.

28:51Oh, that was fulfillment of prophecy.

28:54That totally disregards the fact that events

28:59since the first century CE have been said

29:03to be the fulfillment of the same prophecies

29:06throughout the centuries.

29:07- Yeah.

29:08- When some world event happens, you know,

29:10in the 1600s, in the 1600s, in the whenever,

29:14somebody was saying, that's the fulfillment

29:16of this prophecy, the eschatanas around the corner.

29:21- Yeah.

29:22- That's been a line, an unbroken chain

29:25of proclamations since revelation began,

29:30since revelation existed.

29:33You know what I mean?

29:34When everything is a fulfillment of prophecy,

29:36nothing is a fulfillment of prophecy.

29:38- Right.

29:39- Like we, people can find ways to interpret anything

29:42as a fulfillment of prophecy, as 666,

29:46as the Antichrist, as all of these things.

29:49And yeah, it's all how they're negotiating,

29:52using this text to inform their experiences,

29:55give meaning, give significance to their experiences today.

29:59And there's not really a circumstance

30:02where somebody's gonna be like,

30:04"I can't see anything that fits, sorry."

30:06Like everything gets to be a fulfillment of prophecy,

30:09which again means nothing is actually a fulfillment

30:13of actual prophecy.

30:14- Well, and not for nothing.

30:15None of them has actually led to the eschaton.

30:18- Yeah, it has yet to happen.

30:21- It won't happen this time.

30:22- Unless you're a predatorist.

30:24- Oh, sure.

30:26- We gotta do a segment on preterism at some point.

30:29- Yeah.

30:30- Yeah.

30:30- Somebody remind us that we wanted to do that.

30:32(laughing)

30:34I'm not writing it down right now, so I don't know.

30:36All right, well, I think that was fascinating

30:39that I think, yeah, watch out for your friend.

30:44Maybe give a little gentle nudge to your family members

30:48who think we're in the final days

30:50and just be like, no, what's happening

30:52is just geopolitical turmoil.

30:55And we shouldn't support war of any kind,

30:59especially the kind that...

31:01- It's really, really hurting a bunch of people.

31:03- And especially not because a book from 2000 years ago

31:08commands you to support the actions of a government.

31:11There's no such thing.

31:13- Yeah.

31:14All right, let's move on.

31:17Our next thing is going to be a chapter and verse.

31:21(upbeat music)

31:24And this week's chapter and verse

31:28is a psalm.

31:30- Yes, we're in the psalms.

31:32(laughing)

31:33- Where are we at?

31:34We're in 137, yeah.

31:38And this is a, there are nine verses in this psalm

31:40and I actually wanna go through the whole thing

31:42just because it starts in an interesting way.

31:47And there's actually a passage in here

31:49I've used many times in the past in my scholarship

31:52that is distinct from the one I wanna land on.

31:55But some-- - It is a mercifully short psalm.

31:57- Some of them could be.

31:58- Yeah, it's one verse longer than Psalm 82.

32:01My, the psalm I've probably done the most work with,

32:05but it begins by the rivers of Babylon.

32:09So we're in the exile.

32:10So not written by David.

32:12- Oh, how dare you.

32:15- There we sat down and there we wept

32:18when we remembered Zion.

32:20On the willows there we hung up our harps

32:24and there are captors asked us for songs

32:26and our tormentors asked for Mirth

32:29saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion."

32:32And here I'm thinking of blazing saddles.

32:36(laughing)

32:37- Yeah, yeah, okay.

32:38- Swing low, chariot?

32:40And here's the verse that I've used before

32:45where they say, "They lament.

32:47"How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?"

32:51And this is a passage I use to illustrate the fact

32:54that Adonai's purview or authority sovereignty

32:59was understood to extend to the borders

33:01of the nation of Israel, but not beyond that.

33:04Once you get beyond that,

33:06that's the purview of some other deity.

33:08And this is why we have Ezekiel is like,

33:10"I can fix it.

33:11"I'm gonna put, you know, I'm gonna give God wheels.

33:15"We're gonna mobilize the throne."

33:17And he, and so that God can just go

33:20and crash and out of the temple and go, "God's like where we're going,

33:24"we don't need roads."

33:26And like that's Ezekiel's way of solving the problem.

33:29And then Psalm 82's way of solving the problem

33:32is God sue the other gods.

33:36God stands up and presents their reave, their lawsuit

33:41and deposes the other gods of the divine council.

33:43And then the psalmist calls on God to rise up

33:46and inherit all nations. In other words,

33:50the seats of the divine council sit empty.

33:53You now take over all of the divine council for yourself

33:56and that universalizes Adonai's rule.

33:59But here we have another reflection of this idea

34:01that we're in a foreign land.

34:03We can't access Adonai.

34:04We can't see Adonai.

34:05We're not gonna sing the songs of Adonai.

34:07And then we get in verse five.

34:09"If I forget you O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither,

34:12"let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth.

34:15"If I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem

34:17"above my highest joy.

34:20"Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites,

34:22"the day of Jerusalem's fall, how they said,

34:24"Tare it down, tear it down, down to its foundations.

34:27"O daughter Babylon, you devastating.

34:31"Happy shall they be who pay you back

34:33"what you have done to us."

34:36And then we get the imprecatory.

34:38Happy shall they be.

34:39And the word here in Hebrew is ashre,

34:42which is the exact same word

34:45that is translated in the Septuagint as makkadi,

34:50which is what is in the Beatitudes.

34:52Blessed, fortunate, happy.

34:55Happy shall they be who take your little ones

34:58and dash them against the rock.

35:01- Yes. - Seen.

35:03- Yes, that's the end of this passage.

35:06So it's a lament, it's an axilic lament.

35:09They're lamenting the fact that they're outside

35:11of Adonai's purview and they're fantasizing

35:14about the folks responsible for this forced migration

35:19getting their comeuppance.

35:20And the climax is the very end, happy,

35:25or blessed shall they be who take your little ones

35:28and dash them against the rock.

35:29In fact, I think the Septuagint,

35:31yeah, the Septuagint here has makkadios,

35:33the exact same word that's in the Beatitudes.

35:36So what do we do with that?

35:40- Right, it does seem a little makkab.

35:43- Yes.

35:44- And maybe the claim here, you can help me out with this,

35:51is part of the claim here that Babylon,

35:55when they took over and kicked everybody out,

35:59that they went and dashed Israel's little ones

36:04against the rock?

36:05- I think that the assumption is that,

36:08'cause it says happy shall they be who pay you back

36:11what you have done to us.

36:12- Right, yeah.

36:13I think the assumption is that this would be reciprocal.

36:18They would be doing to Babylon what was done to Israel.

36:24Certainly there would have been as a part

36:26of the conquest of Jerusalem and this forced migration,

36:29there would have been people who would have been executed

36:33in the course of the conquest,

36:35and also probably for show afterwards.

36:38Like we see that from the Assyrians.

36:40We see that even in the wall relief in the palace

36:45in Nineveh that shows the sacking of Laquiche,

36:50you see people being impaled,

36:55you see babies dying, you see this kind of thing.

36:57So yeah, certainly that would have been a part

36:59of the Babylon's act.

37:01- So it's kind of the dark side of the golden rule coin,

37:05which is, do unto others as they did unto you.

37:10- The upside down of, yeah.

37:13And didn't we recently hear somebody say that?

37:17Do you know, I'm trying to remember when this happened,

37:19but somebody, some prominent commentator,

37:21I don't know if it was a politician, it might have been,

37:25but somebody said that golden rule was,

37:28do unto others as they've done to you.

37:30- Oh my gosh.

37:31- And the idea was we're gonna get you back.

37:35- Oh, I gotta look that up.

37:36I gotta figure out who that was that said that,

37:38'cause that deserves its own video at some point.

37:42But yeah, it is fantasizing about revenge, about vengeance.

37:47And I mean, if you're a group

37:50that's been forcibly migrated into another nation

37:53and people are trying to basically destroy your identity,

37:57I'm not saying I'm justifying it,

38:02I'm just saying I understand.

38:04And so the fact that it's included in the Psalms

38:08is not a huge surprise.

38:11But it does leave us with the question of, okay,

38:14now it's in the authoritative literature.

38:17And if you're a Christian, for instance, it's inspired,

38:22it's univocal, it's inerrant, it's infallible,

38:27so what are we gonna do with that?

38:29- Yeah, yeah, that's a tricky,

38:32like fantasizing about killing children

38:37seems particularly not balls.

38:42But I will say this,

38:43I peaked at the Psalm immediately proceeding this one,

38:49136, and it's a praise of God

38:55and his work in creation and history, it says.

39:00And one of the things that it talks about

39:03is this is the God who liberated us from Egypt

39:08by killing all the firstborn,

39:11and specifically calls out the killing of the firstborn

39:13as being this wonderful thing.

39:15So child murder is kind of in the zeitgeist here.

39:20- Yeah, and it's a time period, I think,

39:25when we've talked about this in a recent episode,

39:27there's an awful lot of ethnocentricity,

39:29there's an awful lot of othering,

39:31and you have that representation of God as,

39:36these are my people, everybody else,

39:38there's an awful lot of that,

39:41you gotta wipe out every living thing that breathes,

39:44leave nothing alive, there's an awful lot of that,

39:48which obviously includes children,

39:51and unfortunately, that rhetoric still,

39:54there are these vestigial bubblings to the surface

39:58of this kind of rhetoric when it comes to children.

40:01I know members of the LDS church are familiar

40:04with similar rhetoric back in the 19th century,

40:07where people would say that you and I'm forgetting

40:12exactly what the words are, but basically,

40:15you gotta kill 'em before they develop into Mormons,

40:19because then they become this, that, and the other,

40:21and you hear the same thing in the early to mid 20th century,

40:27the same kinds of things were said about Jewish folks,

40:30and today, the same kinds of things

40:33are being said about Palestinians,

40:35and so there's, that rhetoric is not unfamiliar,

40:39and the devastating effects of that rhetoric

40:44are still being felt, and so, it's a problem,

40:48but I wanted to share a little bit about some of the way

40:53early Christian and Jewish interpreters read this,

40:57because there's a guy, origin of Alexandria,

41:00and I think origin of Alexandria is one of the unsung

41:04influencers of early Christianity.

41:08Like, he was condemned as a heretic for some stuff,

41:11a little later on, even though he is responsible for,

41:16I would say, like some of the most important features

41:21of early Christian orthodoxy, origin was the one

41:24who put them on the road to where they went.

41:28Give me a time frame, where it was.

41:30Oh, origin is third century CE, in fact,

41:35if you'll give me just a second,

41:37and he was, I believe he was a presbyter in Alexandria,

41:42which is Northern Egypt, right by the Delta,

41:45right by the Mediterranean Sea.

41:46I believe you'll find it's in Virginia.

41:48We were just there at a hotel.

41:50We were just there, you should have known that.

41:55Born around 185 CE, died 253 CE.

42:01So Alexandria province of Egypt, Roman Empire, yeah.

42:07Probably somewhere around Tyre is where he died,

42:11which was still in the Roman Empire, but no longer in Egypt.

42:15So he's responsible for a lot of stuff,

42:18but here's what he says about this.

42:21Blessed is the one who seizes the little ones of Babylon,

42:25which are understood to be nothing else,

42:27but these evil thoughts that confound and disturb our heart.

42:31For this is what Babylon means.

42:35While these thoughts are still small and just beginning,

42:37they must be seized and dashed against the rock

42:39who is Christ.

42:41And by his order, they must be slain

42:44so that nothing in us may remain to draw breath.

42:48And that is going back to Joshua 11.

42:51Like I said, the command to kill everything

42:54leave nothing alive that draws breath.

42:57And so origin here is skipping over the literal sense

43:02and going right to what he calls the anagogical sense.

43:09There origin argued for four different layers

43:13of meaning for scripture.

43:15You had the literal, the allegorical, the moral,

43:18and the anagogical.

43:20And the anagogical was the highest.

43:22That's what we should be focused on.

43:24We should be striving to understand the scriptures

43:26in their anagogical sense.

43:28- I don't know what that word means.

43:29Can you explain what he meant by anagogical?

43:33- He writes that it is what you are to strive for.

43:38- Okay.

43:39- So it's a method of, and I'm just reading off of a website here,

43:44a method of interpretation

43:47that focuses on the spiritual or mystical meaning

43:50and its relation to the afterlife or ultimate destiny.

43:53So it's basically what is the ultimate goal

43:57or end of what's going on here.

44:00And for origin, this idea was that we are supposed to take

44:03the little ones of Babylon,

44:05which is a metaphor for our evil thoughts

44:07and inclinations and motivations

44:09and metaphorically smash them on the rock that is Jesus.

44:15- That's nice.

44:17I'm fine with that. - It's nice, sir.

44:18Yeah, it's a lot better than talking about actually

44:21killing children, that's much better.

44:24- Yeah, and this becomes pretty widespread.

44:29You have a handful of people within Jewish

44:33as well as Christian tradition that understand it this way,

44:38that this is about sinful thoughts, evil inclinations,

44:43because Babylon becomes a metaphor for all that is evil

44:46in the world, and so whether it's demonic spirits

44:49or the sinful desires of our heart,

44:52we gotta take those little ones

44:54and we gotta smash them against the rock.

44:57And in the Hebrew Bible, the rock is Adonai,

44:59the God of Israel for Christians, the rock is Jesus.

45:03So that becomes a widespread side-stepping

45:07of the apparent, phenomenally immoral blessing

45:13of those folks.

45:15And then you also have another common reading

45:19is to understand this as not a call for people

45:24to actually do this, but a hope that God punishes,

45:29folks who will murder other children in like manner.

45:34So it's basically saying, oh, this isn't talking about us,

45:39this is talking about God, he's the blessed one.

45:41So God is the one who is going to be meeting out

45:46these punishments that our response is in kind

45:51to whatever kinds of sins people commit.

45:53- Yeah, that seems a trickier interpretation

45:56considering the plural nature of the happy shell they be.

46:00- But actually, let me do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

46:02- Oh, oh, yep, you better, you better check that out.

46:04- I'm gonna check the Hebrew, check in the Hebrew,

46:06we're in 136, where's 137, there's 137.

46:12- Ashre, so that's a particle,

46:16and it looks like that's the masculine singular.

46:19- Oh. - Yeah.

46:20- So it'd be better translated as the happiest.

46:23- Happy should he be, or happy as he, who will pay you back.

46:28All right, well, there you go.

46:32- Yeah, so there are a bunch of different ways

46:34to handle this, but I think this is a good illustration

46:38of the fact that everything is negotiable,

46:41and everything has to be negotiated.

46:43If you wanna try to extract consistent principles

46:46from the Bible, you're gonna have to deal with these things

46:49that at first glance, and at correct glance, do not fit.

46:54And so you have to work your way around them,

46:56you gotta negotiate with them.

46:58- Well, and also, if we're gonna take Origen's theory

47:01as a jumping off point, the literal version of this,

47:06sort of the literal interpretation of this psalm,

47:10has nothing to do with anybody now.

47:13- Yeah.

47:14- It's like nobody is now lamenting their, you know,

47:19their exile and their, you know, the Babylonian conquest

47:24of their people.

47:26- So-- - No Babylonians around right now.

47:28- So literally, like, the only thing,

47:30the only way you could possibly make this relevant

47:33to yourself is to find some sort of either allegorical

47:38or metaphorical or figurative way to look at it.

47:43- Yeah.

47:46- Which inherently is an interpretation,

47:49is a negotiation, as you like to say.

47:51- Yeah, as is my won't.

47:53And that raises the other point.

47:57Does it have to be relevant?

47:59Do we have to preserve every last syllable of the Bible?

48:04Or can we say this was a vengeance fantasy

48:09that expired long ago.

48:12So we can just be like, huh, they had undergone

48:17an awful lot of trauma, trauma theory and trauma lenses.

48:21I think are a great way to look at an awful lot

48:23of what's going on in the Bible.

48:25Shout out Alexiana Frye, who's doing great work on that.

48:28And she's on social media too, if you wanna check out her work.

48:31And that's, you know, that stopped being relevant.

48:35- Right.

48:36- Over 2,000 years ago.

48:37- Yeah, yeah.

48:38- Or to see it as interesting literature

48:40that you don't have to think of as like sacred

48:43and holy to your life that you have to find the way

48:46to make it useful to you or whatever.

48:49- Yeah.

48:50I think the, you know, I'm sure that there are a lot

48:55of actors who have played roles where they did terrible,

48:57terrible things and learned things from that.

49:02But didn't like go on to be like, it's important

49:05that I kind of live this out.

49:10Like there are ways to learn, take lessons

49:13from awful, awful things without endorsing

49:17the awful, awful things.

49:19And, you know, if you then go to, you know,

49:23you go to Jonah from here, which is about the Assyrians

49:25who did the same kinds of things and even worse to Israel.

49:30And this is why Jonah was like, no, I'm not preaching

49:33destruction to them 'cause you're just gonna forgive them.

49:36And I would rather die than watch them be forgiven.

49:41Like you have a very similar sentiment

49:42and then God wags the finger at Jonah

49:45and is like, if I forgive them, you know,

49:49you got no case, you got no leg to stand on

49:51and the cattle consider the cattle.

49:54- Right.

49:55(laughing)

49:57- Forgot about the cattle.

49:58(laughing)

49:59- So you have differing perspectives

50:03between Jonah and Psalm 137.

50:06And, you know, when you impose that presupposition

50:09of univocality, which you get to choose

50:11which direction you're gonna go.

50:13- Yeah, I think that the, I mean, like,

50:16I guess thematically for the whole show,

50:18the idea is overcome the bad readings.

50:22(laughing)

50:23- Yeah.

50:24- All right.

50:25- Don't leverage the Bible to do harm and evil.

50:29That's a problem.

50:30- Yep, absolutely.

50:31- So, Manoseficos as they,

50:33one of the first things we learned in Spanish in the MTC

50:37went (laughing)

50:39- What was that?

50:40- Manoseficos means less effective.

50:42- Okay.

50:42- 'Cause they were, they were trying to teach us

50:44methods that were Efficos and Manoseficos.

50:48- Okay.

50:49- Because they didn't want us to learn like bad things

50:51like stupid.

50:52So we learned to call everything Manoseficos.

50:56- Okay.

50:57(laughing)

50:58All right.

50:59Well, hopefully this has been Efficos.

51:01Anyway, for some.

51:03Thank you all so much for joining us.

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51:40Thanks so much to Roger Goudy for editing the show

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