Ep 105: Wandering in the Wilderness with Angela Roskop Erisman

00:00The reason that we look for an exodus and a Moses in the late Bronze Age is because we

00:07understand this story as history writing.

00:11But once we understand that, oh, this started at least its life as fictional biography that

00:18is political allegory, suddenly the whole world can look different.

00:23Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan and I'm Dan Beecher and you're listening to the Data

00:31Over Dogma podcast where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible

00:36and religion and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

00:41How go things, Dan?

00:42Man, it is spring is sprung here in Salt Lake City.

00:48We hit the 70s for the first time.

00:50The high 70s, my friends.

00:52The high 70s, I was out for a walk and was sweating a little bit, so life is good.

00:57I'm happy.

00:58Some of the trees are getting leaves and the world is just coming back to life and I'm

01:04into that.

01:06The SAD is hitting the bricks for a lot of folks around my neck of the woods, which is

01:10always nice.

01:11Hey, let's stop jabbering and get on with our, because we got a guest here in the house.

01:18So why don't you introduce our guest?

01:21Say hi everybody to Angela Roskop Erismann, who is joining us from Cincinnati, right?

01:29Yes.

01:30Awesome.

01:31Fantastic.

01:32Thank you so much for joining us this evening, Angela.

01:35And we are here to talk about a few different things, but first off, we were talking a little

01:43bit about your background and that you are an independent scholar who specializes in

01:49Torah or Pentateuch or whatever you want to call the first five books of Moses.

01:56And you have a bit of a non-traditional background when it comes to your Bible scholarship.

02:02You want to talk about that a little bit?

02:04Sure, sure.

02:05I have a pretty traditional path through graduate school.

02:09I went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Hebrew Union College here in Cincinnati.

02:15You know, that's a pretty standard path, but I married a bourbon distiller and needed

02:20to stay near Kentucky.

02:25You know what?

02:26That is a good reason to stay near Kentucky.

02:27Isn't it though?

02:28I will give you that.

02:29The heart wants what the heart wants.

02:31Right.

02:32I guess so.

02:33As does the liver, apparently.

02:35Right.

02:37So, you know, I've done, I've done a variety of different things.

02:41I'm one of the founding editors of the Marginalea Review of Books and I do editorial work for

02:48various clients and I've taught in various places.

02:51And of course, I am very busy also with my own scholarship.

02:56And I share your interest in making sure that everybody gets access to the Bible.

03:05And so, I care very much about those issues and so, I'm just delighted to be here.

03:11Well, you mentioned the Marginalea Review of Books, which means you know Timothy Michael

03:16Law.

03:17I certainly do.

03:18He was, he was my thesis supervisor at Oxford.

03:22Yeah.

03:23Yeah.

03:24And he, I think that was around the time he was writing when God spoke Greek.

03:29Yeah.

03:30So, yeah.

03:31Wonderful guy.

03:32Yeah.

03:33I have not talked to him for a while.

03:34He was gallivanting around the world, doing all kinds of entrepreneurial stuff.

03:38He is.

03:39He is.

03:40So, well, that's, that's great to meet another, another person from the Marginalea Review

03:44of Books.

03:45I've really appreciated some of the stuff that they have put out.

03:48Just for those of us who aren't deep in the, in the world of biblical academia, tell us

03:54what that group is.

03:55Like, what is the Marginalea, I don't know what that word is even.

04:01So, help us out.

04:02Yeah.

04:03It started, oh gosh, 2012, 2013 is as an online review of books in the field of religion and

04:13ancillary fields.

04:15And they brought me on initially as someone who would acquire reviews in Hebrew Bible.

04:22And then they realized that I have a background in editing and publishing, which became a

04:29little bit useful in that context.

04:31So, you know, we, that's, I believe what the Marginalea Review of Books still does.

04:37I haven't been affiliated with it for several years now.

04:41But they're still putting out great stuff.

04:43You know, high level long reads, but you know, making it available, the same thing you guys

04:48are doing.

04:49Yeah.

04:50Love it.

04:51That's great.

04:52It's been, it's, I've, I've really enjoyed it as a, as a resource.

04:55It has also been a while since I've, I've been deeply involved in, in that reading.

05:00But when, when we talked about having you on the show, one of the things that I appreciated

05:05was that you told me you were going to go pick out a shirt.

05:08Because I have a reputation, and the folks, the folks who are, who are listening to this,

05:15you know, we'll just have to imagine things.

05:17But I am wearing a shirt that I was actually, I got for free at a comic con.

05:22That is, it's several of the Avengers, but eight bit graphics.

05:26So it's got, they're the eight bit Avengers. And every time I wear this in a video, people

05:31ask me where I got the shirt. A lot of people like it. But can you, you told us there was

05:35a story behind the show.

05:37There's a story behind my shirt. And it's not a gaming shirt or, well, it is a kind of

05:41gaming shirt because it's related to our major league soccer team, FC Cincinnati.

05:47Oh, okay.

05:49But it says, as you will see, hell is real.

05:53Okay.

05:56So I have to tell you, the story behind hell is real.

05:59So, you know, being here from, from the Midwest, and I've lived my entire life in the Midwest.

06:05I went to Wisconsin. I grew up in Minnesota.

06:10We have a lot of kitschy things in the Midwest, including road signs.

06:13Okay.

06:14In fact, here in Cincinnati, we have a whole museum dedicated to American road signs.

06:19It's pretty cool.

06:20Come through. You should check it out. But on the interstate between Cincinnati and Columbus

06:27is a great big sign that some guy decided decades ago that he would put in his cornfield

06:33or whatever he's growing there that says it's giant and it says hell is real with a red

06:40H and it's a black sign and the other letters are outlined.

06:45If you Google hell is real sign, you can see it. Okay.

06:50Yeah.

06:51So doing it now, doing it now, the soccer connection is because the rivalry now between the Cincinnati

07:00and Columbus MLS teams is called the hell is real Derby because of the sign.

07:07So it's a, it's a piece of Cincinnati catch.

07:12Okay.

07:13So here knows the hell is real sign. Yeah. Anyway, you know, the truth is that coming

07:20from Salt Lake City as I do, I read that when I think about Major League soccer, when I

07:25read that, it says, hell is Ray all because, because Ray all salt Lake is our, is our

07:32local team.

07:33Yeah. Yeah. And of course, you can buy a beer at the stadium, uh, hell is rail.

07:38It's a kind of beer also. Anyway, but this, this shirt has a, has a, has a significance

07:45to what we're doing today because of course that sign setting aside the soccer, the purpose

07:50of that sign is to scare people into religious belief. Right. Right. Yeah. And so, and, uh,

07:59as you probably know, I deal with the rhetoric of fear in my book. Yes. That was something

08:06that kept popping up. Uh, I didn't notice that. Yeah. There were a couple other things

08:10that kept popping up too, which I want to talk about. Yeah. Sure. So I, I don't, I don't

08:13want to, um, uh, make you start in a particular place. Uh, but I thought that when I was looking

08:20for a kitschy shirt to where I was like, that is the one. I love it. Ties that really ties

08:26the room together, uh, to quote the great poet, um, yeah, which, which brings up, uh, one of

08:32the things we're here to talk about the, your recent publication with Cambridge university

08:36press, the wilderness narratives in the Hebrew Bible, religion, politics and biblical interpretation,

08:42which just came out, uh, the beginning of this year. Correct. It did. Yeah. Okay. Congratulations

08:47on that. By the way, I hope you so much. I hope you've been getting wonderful feedback.

08:53So far, it's, it's early, you know, as you know, as you know, as you know, books are

08:59new for like three years and that is true, which is so weird. My, my trade book is coming

09:08out shortly and like there are already reviews out. Yeah. It won't get published for over

09:13a month and there are already reviews out. And I, I particularly liked it because one

09:17of them was from, oh gosh, some, um, some very big literary outfit and it was, uh, and

09:23it was a very glowing review. And then the same day I looked on Goodreads and, and there

09:29was a review that had given my book one star. And, and so I posted the two of them next

09:33to each other. I was like two new reviews of my book. One was very glowing. And then the

09:37other one said one star, I didn't really read this. I said I was sorry about that. I

09:44thought it was funny. Oh, luckily the channels through which, uh, biblical scholarship gets

09:51peer reviewed tend to weed those kinds of things out in the world of trade publishing.

09:58We have no such luck. Um, but your book obviously dealing with the wilderness narratives is

10:03going to be about Exodus numbers, uh, some of the events and the characters, uh, that

10:10are in that, but I noticed something that I, that I really enjoyed reading through the

10:14introduction. You talk quite a bit about genre, uh, which is something that's, you know, it's

10:19so hot right now, um, at least for, for biblical scholars, but I wonder if you wouldn't mind

10:24because most of our listeners are not going to have the background that I think you're,

10:29you're the reader you projected for this book, uh, would have on these debates. Can you talk

10:35a little bit half of the podcast co-hosts of this don't have the background for this?

10:42Almost 50% of them. Um, would you mind talking a little bit about this, this background that

10:47you're, uh, you're alluding to this, uh, debate and the intellectual history regarding historicity

10:54and genre so that we can get a foundation for where you're taking this discussion. Sure

11:00thing. I would, I, I would if I may separate those two issues, genre and history. They

11:06have a lot to do with each other, but, um, let's talk about genre first because that

11:11was really, um, what, what made me want to undertake this study because we have these

11:18episodes throughout the wilderness narrative, the complaint episodes, you know, so the Israelites

11:23complain and Moses responds and God comes in with a miracle and either everything is

11:29okay or everybody gets punished. Right. That's the gist.

11:33Unquote punished. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, you know, so there's this, this plot structure, um,

11:41is repeats itself over and over again, but the stories are all so different. So why is

11:48that? And so, uh, what I wanted to look at is why is, is how that plot structure was

11:55combined with different genres that we know from the ancient Near Eastern world. Also

12:02the Mediterranean. So we have, uh, we have some, uh, biography. We have some political

12:08allegory. We have, um, we have some stuff from the Greek world. We have some tragedy.

12:14We have some rhetoric, all of which is getting mixed in with this plot structure. So, um,

12:20that's, that's really what genre is about. And, um, the reason why genre is so important

12:27is because we can't interpret a text without knowing without a sense of what kind of text

12:34we're reading. And this matters immensely for the second thing, Dan, that you, that you

12:40mentioned, uh, the issue of historicity or what we might just say, broadly speaking,

12:46if I, if I may be super loose about this, the way that a literary text relates to history.

12:53Now we usually think of that happening in only one way. Well, it, it somehow must match some

12:58set of historical events that we then try to go and find. But that is not the only way

13:03that literature can relate to history. We, when we write literature, and this is true

13:09of literature in, in really any period, it's situated, right? The stuff that the author

13:16knows, not just, not just historical dates and people and, and events, but, but also

13:23places and even genres are historically situated. Right. Right. So genre then becomes a way

13:32that we can understand a different kind of relationship between literature and history.

13:37And I think it was one that for me was just, um, mind blowing in my, in my study. And I

13:43came into this with a lot of experience studying this and I, you know, my mind was blown repeatedly

13:49by what I discovered. So is that fun? Yeah, it's very fun. Can you guide us through a

13:58little bit of, of like what specifically was blowing your mind where give, give us some

14:03of the, some of the broad strokes of, of the, the things that you discovered as you were

14:08exploring this? Sure. Well, the big one. And, and I, I, I wage you're going to ask me about

14:13this one anyway. So we may as well start with, with, with the man himself, Moses, right?

14:20I, I'm a big fan girl and, uh, uh, even more so, uh, now, so who's Moses? Right. We, you

14:29know, as, as probably you've dealt with on episodes of your podcast that I haven't listened

14:34to or videos of, you know, of the search to try to find a historical Moses. And we, you

14:39know, where do we look for that? And, you know, as, as many of your listeners may be aware

14:45whether from here or, or other, uh, poking around that, you know, there's really not

14:50a lot to say. Right. And, and so, you know, we basically go around banging our heads on

14:57brick walls and becoming bloody over this. Right. Um, well, so in, in looking at, um,

15:06uh, at the episode in which Moses gets water from a rock in Exodus, like, how does that

15:13make sense? And, uh, to make a lot of something that I get asked about all the time, people

15:19are like, that doesn't make any sense that he gets, he doesn't get to enter the promised

15:25land. He's kind of cursed as a result of this weird story where he's got to draw water

15:29from a rock, but, but the water keeps coming up multiple times, not only in the wilderness

15:35narratives, but in your book, it comes up. It does repeatedly as an important symbol.

15:40It does. Sorry to interrupt, but no, no, no, this is a chat. It's wonderful. I shouldn't

15:44be blabbing the whole time. So that's the other rock water story. We want to maybe come

15:53back to that a little bit later, but the one I want to talk about first is the one in Exodus,

15:58where he succeeds in, uh, in getting water from a rock and it's a good thing. So how,

16:05how do we make sense of this story? And, um, to make a long story short, I realized that

16:10it's linked to the Exodus story, to a version of the Exodus story, um, that involves, um,

16:20Moses's birth story. And, uh, as, as, uh, biblical scholars have long recognized that

16:27story of, you know, the baby in the basket, we all, we all know that story. Um, uh, it's,

16:33uh, modeled on a, a text about, um, the Assyrian King Sargon II, uh, who has a, who has a similar

16:43story of being abandoned and adopted. And this is the story of how he becomes king. And

16:50the genre of this story is fictional biography. Okay. These are, these are royal texts and

16:58the Sargon's is not the only one, but it's the one that has the closest relationship with

17:03the Exodus story. Um, uh, these, these are royal propaganda, right? They're, they're designed

17:10to convey, uh, to, uh, to others that the king is legitimate. Right. So, uh, I realized

17:20that these elements of the Moses story are not just in Exodus two, but you can track the

17:25plot, a plot line all the way to Exodus 17. And, um, so the question then becomes, and,

17:33and these, these fictional biographies in Mesopotamia are political allegory. Right. The,

17:40the Sargon narrative is a, is a narrative about the neo Assyrian king Sargon, but it

17:46looks like it reads like it's about Sargon the great, the king from millennia earlier,

17:52the first ever emperor. Um, and so, uh, uh, the biblical story is modeled on that. Why?

18:04Why would we tell the story of Moses as an Assyrian story? Well, that, that ends with

18:15drawing water from a rock. Well, we know a king who was entangled with Assyria. Uh,

18:25his name is Hezekiah. Right. And, um, uh, he was faced, uh, with threat from Sargon's

18:34son, Sennacherum. And, uh, to survive that threat of siege, uh, well, we have to take

18:45a step backwards and, and understand quickly why he was under threat because he had allied

18:52against Assyria with Egypt. Hezekiah's story starts in Egypt, just like Moses's story starts

18:59in Egypt. Right. But that rebellion failed and Sennacherum is coming and we are in a

19:07lot of trouble now. Right. Not gonna, not gonna win this one. Right. Well, how do we survive

19:15it? If we can't win it, how do we survive it? And as we know from the books of kings

19:19and Isaiah, uh, one of the things that Hezekiah did was build an aqueduct to bring water

19:24into the city to enable his people to sustain the siege. Well, what do we think the rock

19:29water story is about? It's about this seven. Okay. Okay. Right. The, this, this early version

19:36of the Exodus narrative is political allegory. Right. That is probably designed, I suspect,

19:44uh, to convince the Assyrians to leave him on the throne. Hmm. So you're, so sorry, just,

19:51I'm just trying to process this. So the idea is that, uh, the Exodus, or at least that

19:57part of Exodus was written in the time of Hezekiah as an allegory that hit that the

20:02people of that timeframe would have understood it allegorically. It was written allegorically.

20:09This is an important difference because in the history of, of biblical interpretation,

20:15there are key interpreters like Philo, uh, Philo of Alexandria, um, and, and others

20:22who interpret the Bible allegorically, which means you can kind of take anything and make

20:27an allegory out of it. Right. What, what I'm saying, Dan, uh, is, is, is, is what you

20:34just said, which is it's written as allegory. It's meant to be allegory. Uh, and, and that's

20:40a very important difference. Um, so, uh, Moses, right? The water drawer, who's the water

20:47drawer who started in alliance with Egypt, but ended up independent. It's Hezekiah, right?

20:58Right. So we have a historical Moses. We do, we do. Right. We have a historical Moses,

21:08but what's, what's important here is that, well, there's a lot of important things,

21:13but one of them is that we don't lose a conduction to history. We just get a different one. Do

21:22you see that? Well, and that, and that's what allows the texts to gain purchase on an

21:26audience. If it, if it's not somehow informing their experiences or allowing them to, you

21:32know, view themselves in their background through the lens of the story, then it's not

21:37going to remain very salient for them. It's not going to remain important, but if they

21:41are reading it as, oh, this is an allegory for our day, uh, then it is something that

21:47already has some built in, um, links that already has some, some relationships built

21:53in. And yeah, that was, that would have been considered a pretty monumental achievement

21:58of Hezekiah to reroute the Gihon spring underneath the, uh, the city of David to, to feed down

22:04to the, the pool of Siloam. And I have walked through that tunnel on multiple occasions

22:09and I'm unsettled by it every single time. I am beneath, I don't know how many feet of,

22:16uh, of bedrock. Uh, but yeah, that, that would have been, uh, quite the feet. And so it,

22:22it makes for an interesting, uh, kind of historical, um, I don't know, uh, something for the, the

22:30story to, uh, orbit around, uh, in the minds of, of later readers. So, so you're putting

22:35this toward the end of the eighth century. Um, just, just out of curiosity, are you

22:40imagining this to be the, the very origin of the character of Moses and the tradition

22:46of the Exodus or is this being appropriated from something pre-existing maybe from the

22:51northern kingdom? What are your thoughts on, on those ideas? That's a great question.

22:56Um, we usually think of the Exodus as being as originating in the northern kingdom because

23:01it's mentioned in Hosea, uh, and, uh, the northern prophet Hosea. Um, the thing is, uh,

23:09that, that the reference, those references, um, refer to what, at least as I track in

23:15my book, our later versions of the story. Okay. I, I do not think the Exodus story has

23:21a northern origin. I think this is, I think this is it. And, um, uh, you know, can we,

23:29can we, a different question is, can we track a Moses character back through oral tradition

23:35as we used to call it, now we call it cultural memory, um, um, which, which, which is a concept

23:42that is really, it's a valid concept to be sure, but sometimes I wonder if it isn't oral

23:48tradition come back as a zombie. Yeah. Well, it's, it's, it's not something that we have

23:56a lot of data for. We're, we're basically reconstructing it as, uh, as we go and just

24:00trying to figure out what fits the best with our reconstruction of the past. Right. That's

24:05right. And, and, uh, you know, this all fits together so beautifully. Right. And yeah,

24:11it also go ahead. No. Yeah. So I, I don't, you know, I, I don't want to take anyone's

24:19Moses away. On the other hand, um, you know, I, I, I think there's, it's

24:27harmful even to ourselves as Bible readers to get stuck on things that we wish were there.

24:35Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And, um, and there's just, there's no evidence.

24:42Right. So why should, why when we have a, a compelling story of how it originated,

24:48would we bother? And I say that with empathy, uh, and understanding how hard it is to let

24:56some of those things go. Right. Sorry. Just to clarify, just, just because I'm, I'm worried

25:02that I'm getting lost here. When you say that there's no evidence, you're talking about for

25:05a historical exodus for, for, for, for the story of the exodus and Moses to have actually been

25:11real. If one assumes it was history, but you, you see what, what, what I've just shown you is that

25:18it is a very real story. It's just a very different kind of relationship between story and history

25:26than we understand. And this goes back to genre because the reason that we look for

25:32an exodus and a Moses in the late Bronze Age is because we understand this story as history writing

25:40in some sense. Okay. But once we understand that, Oh, this started, at least it's, it's life as,

25:48as fictional auto fictional biography. Right. That is political allegory. Suddenly the whole

25:56world can look different. Is there a sense in which, uh, because when I think of, uh,

26:03when I think of allegory, uh, like purposefully written allegory, it, it occurs to me that like

26:09each element of it, each plot point, each, uh, moment of it that seems, you know, each big moment

26:15of it, especially would be, uh, would be representative of something, uh, would be an allegory for a

26:24specific thing that happened in the, in the story that's being, that's being presented. Do you have

26:29is there, is, is there, uh, are these, are those mark, mark, sort of, uh, marking posts there that

26:37you're seeing, uh, as the, you know, when you, when you're connecting it to, uh, to, I'm sorry,

26:44did you say Zechariah? Who did you? Hezekiah? Hezekiah? Hezekiah. I mean, I look, I, I, yeah,

26:50I'm, I'm so, I'm, I'm, you got a lot of reading to do before your comps on the, on the Israelite

26:56kings, but that's exactly what you do. Look, I, no one ever claimed I was the scholar in this one,

27:02in this scenario. Well, that, that, that raises a great, great question. You go through several

27:07chapters where, um, I, I think what you're trying to show is how what we see in the allegory can

27:13reflect what's going on on the ground in late 8th century, uh, Judah. Right. It can, uh, but it,

27:22it doesn't come in complex ways. Um, I think the idea what, what, uh, what the, the other Dan is

27:29talking about is a, is a, is a very one to one, uh, uh, thing thing. A B. Yeah. You know, and, um,

27:39uh, the great literary scholar, Northrop Fry, who had a lot to say about allegory, um, uh,

27:47talks about allegories as working like it's like listening to a Bach fugue.

27:56Right. So you have, and the, and the voices are, um, are the, the literature and, and the, and the

28:04history. Right. And it's, instead of thinking, making it at one to one correspondences makes it

28:11what he calls a naive allegory. Um, and it's, it's very wooden. Right. And unsatisfying, but

28:18have you ever listened to a Bach fugue? Of course. Yeah. Well, the voices are doing interesting

28:25things. They're having, they're having conversations like we're, you know, like we're having here,

28:30and, um, and the, the totality is more than the sum of the parts. Right. And so I think that's, uh,

28:38you know, not to say that people don't write wooden allegories, but this is not a wooden allegory.

28:44Right. It has, it has this very complex relationship with the historical

28:49situation. It allegorizes because, uh, if, if, um, if my reading of it is right, it was probably

28:58meant to convince both the Judean elite that Hezekiah had a plan for not running Judah into

29:07the ground here. Right. It's in grave danger of extinction in this moment. Um, uh, and, uh, he

29:15that he had a plan and probably also to show the Assyrians that I'm like you. Right. My story

29:23is your story. Right. And you can leave me on the throne. So, um, uh, the text may have had, we

29:31don't have documents to track it out, but, um, may, it would seem to have had a rhetorical function

29:37or meant to have a rhetorical function, uh, in conversation with the very thing it allegorizes.

29:43And that adds up to a kind of complexity that a one to one idea of how allegory works

29:49can't do justice to. Now you, you mentioned previously that fear is something that comes up

29:56over and over again. I'm curious how that is a through line through some of these allegories,

30:00because it doesn't strike me that, that fear is a particularly useful rhetorical instrument

30:07in speaking to the Assyrians. It seems like that would have more value in speaking to

30:12other Judah heights, but how are you addressing fear in, in the book? Fear, fear doesn't really play

30:20a role in that particular version of the story. Um, it comes into play. So, so in, in Exodus 17,

30:29when the Israelites come to, when the elders come to complain, um, they're really not a, you know,

30:36often in these stories, they're, they're complaining because they're ticked off or they're afraid,

30:43right? In this, in this version of this story, they're really just holding him accountable. They're

30:48like, man, you know, we got this problem here. It's a really big problem. Right? What are you

30:54going to do? You know, you got a plan? What's going to happen? You can't let us, right? It's

30:59your, you're the king. It's your job to sustain us and make sure that, um, that we survive. Um,

31:06but as the story gets retold, um, uh, emotions come into play, including fear and disgust and

31:18anger, fear and anger, they're all very closely related, discuss less so, but fear and anger are,

31:24um, uh, and blame our bedfellows. And it shows in, uh, this shows up in philosophy on this subject.

31:31Martha Nussbaum has written on it, um, uh, a philosopher that folks might, uh, have heard of,

31:38uh, before, um, among other people. Um, but, uh, uh, so when they start complaining out of fear,

31:49the dynamics start to change. Um, and so then we see, um,

31:55we see different things start to happen. And, uh, we can jump ahead to, uh, to numbers on

32:05the Korach episode where, uh, where, uh, fear plays a role. I don't know if you want to

32:14dive in there, man. Let's talk about it. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Well, I, um,

32:21this, uh, this episode comes significantly later as I see it in the literary history of

32:28the wilderness narrative. By this time, um, the Israelites have, uh, the Judeans have been, uh,

32:36destroyed by the Babylonians. They have experienced exile. Um, and I, uh, along with many scholars

32:44now would situate the Korach story, uh, in, uh, in the Persian period after they have

32:50come back and are striving to reestablish some kind of society.

32:55And, um, so there are several episodes that I discuss in the book, uh, that are background for

33:03this where there's negotiation about who plays, who plays the leadership role, right? Is it Moses?

33:10Is it Caleb? Is it Aaron? Right. Um, uh, so, um, fear comes into play here because, you know,

33:20now you have a people in, in a very different kind of historical circumstance. They're not just

33:25afraid of the Assyrians and holding their king accountable. Um, they've been through hell, right?

33:33Hell is real. Hell is real. Uh, they've been through hell and back. Um, I, I listened to your

33:41episode with David Carr, where he had a lot to say about trauma is he's, he's worked on

33:46significantly and, and how much trauma influences biblical literature. So, you know, I think that

33:53this is a, this is a feature of this. And, um, in this episode, uh, fear, the fear doesn't drive

34:02the complaint. In fact, bravery does, right? Korach, this is not how most people read it.

34:08But what, either way, it takes some hotspot to, to, to stand up to Moses and Aaron and say, hey,

34:15what are you doing? Why are you lording it over us? Who gave you all this power?

34:20Right? Um, that's dissent, right? And, and, and to speak truth to power as, as we know in theory,

34:28and as we are, um, seeing all the time, uh, takes a great deal of bravery. Um,

34:34and so in the Quark episode, this bravery is met with manipulation. Now, this is not how it's

34:44usually read as I, as I mentioned. Um, Korach is usually seen as the bad guy, right? The, the,

34:52the rebel. And of course he is framed that way. Um, but you know, whether, whether a rebel or a

35:00hero depends on where you stand, doesn't it? Right. Right. So, um, so as I was looking at, gee, how,

35:07how does genre come into play in this episode? I found a lot of rhetorical techniques.

35:13And I'll mention a couple. And, and these led me to read the episode very differently.

35:20Um, uh, uh, so they, they hold Moses accountable. And, uh, instead of answering their charge,

35:30Moses says, who are you to complain about who is holy? Right? Not your job. That's God's job to say

35:40who and what is holy. So what, what Moses does, it sounds good. Right? It sounds like humility.

35:47Right? It sounds like, um, let's, let's leave that up to God and let God decide.

35:52But note what he does in that story. He establishes a procedure for determining God's

35:59word on, uh, on this point of contention that involves Korach and the 250 laypeople. Korach is a,

36:10is a Levite, um, who are with him that involves them offering incense. And if we go back to the

36:18beginning of the book of numbers, we, uh, learn that even handling the objects required to offer

36:26incense is a death sentence. You, you are doomed to die unless you're Aaron, right? Unless you're

36:35Aaron, you're not supposed to handle those things. You're not supposed to offer incense. You're not

36:40supposed to handle those things. So this is a setup, right? Right. Bit of a self-fulfilling

36:47prophecy. Yes. It's a setup, right? It's, it's not, it looks like, like, uh, Moses is, is, uh,

36:55setting up a, a, a trial by or, you know, a trial by ordeal, right? A decision that, that God will

37:02make, but it's conclusion if you've read the beginning of numbers is for ordained, right? You

37:08know what it's going to be even before they, uh, before they, they go and offer the incense. And, uh,

37:14as, uh, as we know, they're incinerated when they do it. So it's a terrifying story.

37:20So the fear in this story, um, the purpose of this story, as I read it, is to stamp down dissent,

37:30right? It's not aimed at the rebels, right? It's aimed at dissuading us, reading the

37:36story from being rebels because this is what's going to happen to you if you challenge authority,

37:41right? So, um, there's some dirty pool happening in this, in this, in this story. And it was really

37:50shocking to see. And I have to be honest that, you know, as excited as I was to discover how,

37:58how the rock water story works, it took me a couple of months to accept that this is how the

38:05core story works because I didn't want that to be there. You know what I mean? We, and, and I, I,

38:13I want to say that because I think a lot of probably your, your, your audience, people listening to

38:19date over dog, but don't want to find dirty pool in the Bible. We're not looking for dirty pool

38:24in the Bible, right? But, but it's there, right? And it's, and, and when we think about what it's

38:33designed to do, that it's, it's manipulating fear, right? Fear of death to, to coerce obedience to

38:43power. Yeah. We all know how destructive that can be, right? It's also very interesting political

38:51thinking because it, it, it portends, you know, in almost a mind-boggling way. This is Thomas Hobbes's

39:00argument in Leviathan for the modern state, right? That, that, right? That, that you, you,

39:08fear of death is what gets people to, to submit to the state, right? So there's some,

39:17yeah, Machiavellian approach to, to how we run the government.

39:22And, and you talk quite a bit about the political allegory running through all of this and the,

39:32and the role of politics. And do you have in mind, so we're talking about the Persian period,

39:38do you have in mind any particular specific time period or ruler whose, whose sovereignty is

39:45intended to be rendered unquestionable or inviolable by this? Yeah. Are you able to get so granular

39:53with, with when you think this is operating? Yes. Okay. Yes. And, and I should, I should probably

40:01shouldn't be so confident about that because we are rightly, we are rightly cautious. We should

40:07be cautious about these things. But once I realized it was allegory and was able to start tracking

40:13these things, there's a similar dynamic happening in the books of Haggai and Zechariah, right? Where

40:22we have a priest jockeying for political power. There, the priest's name is Joshua Ben-Yehotsadok.

40:29That is Aaron's historical alter ego. Okay. So this is, has a budding rod somewhere

40:41in, in his house. Right. Yeah. Well, of course, the budding rod is itself. And I write about this

40:49in the book. It's, it's a wonderful mishmash of, of images, right? You know, the, the idea of a

40:59wooden rod that sprouts, you know, evokes Isaiah 11 and the, right, the, the, the shoot that shall

41:06come from the stump of Jesse. Right. So this is all royal imagery. And it's so beautifully

41:12intertextual, right? These scribes were, you know, if there's anything I came away from this book

41:21with that I didn't have before, it was a such a deep sense of how incredibly intelligent and

41:29talented and creative these scribes who are responsible for our Bible were.

41:36Yeah. And this is something that I have to push back against quite frequently on, on social media,

41:41the idea that these are the, the scribblings of goat herders from, from usually people say the

41:47bronze age or the iron age. But yeah, I, I think they don't appreciate exactly how skilled these

41:54folks were in, in, in these languages, these are among the most, the most talented and the well

41:59educated, most well educated people in that part of the world. Absolutely true.

42:03Yeah. And, and I think there's, there's an awful lot that, that we can learn about how

42:09genre worked in this time period by, by understanding that unfortunately for folks who,

42:14I find that a lot of folks who are drawn to the kind of content I produce sometimes bring with it

42:20a degree of cynicism and, and even, invective regarding the qualities and the value of the

42:26Bible that, that they tend to gloss right over an awful lot of that stuff, which is quite unfortunate.

42:33Yeah. And, you know, to, to those folks, I would say, and I, and I know that we find them across

42:38the spectrum, right? I've, I've taught in Christian context, I've taught in Jewish context, I've taught

42:43in secular context and, and I think that, that what I would say is that the Bible is for everybody.

42:55There's something in it for everybody. Nobody owns it. We all share it. And, and we all,

43:02there's, there's a, there's a great beauty in getting together to talk about what's going on

43:08in it. And it's, it's, it's, you know, it's full of messages that are, are meaningful in spiritual

43:16ways. It's full of political theory, not theory in the philosophy, the philosophical sense, but

43:23they weren't writing philosophy, but they were thinking about these same ideas. There's no question,

43:29and it's really rich. You know, such great material for, for folks who are interested in that. It's

43:36the literary creativity is mind boggling. And so, it's beautiful. And I just want to invite people in.

43:45Now, a question I have before we move on is, what do you think these allegories are trying to say

43:54about the relationship of the palace to the temple? Because that, that is something that is kind of

43:59woven throughout the, the Exodus story. If Moses is representative of royalty of, of political power,

44:07we do have over and against that power is the power of the priesthood. Do you think this is,

44:15this is an attempt to hierarchize things so that everybody understands the, the palace has priority

44:21over the temple? Because there are also instances where, where the, the privilege of the priesthood

44:29seems to come out on top. Right. Right. Well, I, I think that that's a great question. I don't think

44:40it's the right question for this narrative, because the only version of it that I understand to be

44:46pre-exilic when there would have been both a temple and a palace, is that earliest Exodus

44:53story, that story about Moses, that's really a story about Hezekiah.

44:57And so the rest of it is exilic or post-exilic. So even in those, even in those stories that I

45:07think are, are, you know, our post-exilic, we have to understand them in a context where the king was

45:18the Persian emperor, right? There was, there was no king, right? So there was no palace, right?

45:24But why are they talking about kingship and sovereignty? Why all the royal imagery, even in the, even in

45:31Aaron's vestments, right? There's a lot of that is royal imagery, the rosette, on his, on his

45:40turban, on his headdress is, is a royal image, and a Syrian royal image. I find that the most helpful

45:52idea for this, for me, came from the scholarship of Ian Wilson.

46:00He talks about kingship discourse. Yeah. And I think this is really important because it helps

46:08us understand how we can, how the literature can still be using ideas and images about kingship

46:15to talk about political power in general, right? So even though there was, there was no king,

46:22and again, we have to get away from these texts being merely descriptive, right? They weren't just

46:27describing what was going on. They were interacting with trying to shape the world they lived in,

46:33right? Yeah, absolutely. So, so to use the deep history of kingship imagery to jockey for

46:41political power, whether you're Zarubival, or, or Joshua, or Nehemiah, right? And I think we might

46:51be seeing some of all of that happening, getting worked out in sort of what you might call loosely

46:57an epic form in the wilderness narrative. And we see similar things today with a, with a lot of

47:04people trying to cast themselves as players in some kind of mythical golden age thing, you know,

47:10the tea party where we're going back to a time period where those kinds of things don't really

47:18happen anymore. Those roles aren't operative anymore in our society, but people want to cast

47:23themselves in those roles. And it seems to me sometimes in an attempt to try to invoke the same

47:31outcomes to try to influence the future towards getting out of their present what happened in the

47:38past. So in another way, using the past to inform their experiences. Yeah, yeah, in the present.

47:44Yeah, the imagery is powerful. And I think it matters. This, this is an issue that comes up in

47:51my book. I think it, I don't talk about it in the book, but I'm going to in the, in my blog as I

47:58write sort of more readily accessible versions of what I've talked about in the book. It matters

48:05how you use it. So we have this, this dirty pool rhetoric in the, in the quark story. But the story

48:13doesn't end there. Thank goodness. Right. And so we see Moses in other episodes trying to use

48:20rhetoric in a different way, instead of to drive wedges in the community and, and terrify people

48:26to hold God and Israel together. Right. We, we see, we see cases like that. So I was, I was listening

48:37to a book the other day, an audio book by a philosopher named Jason Stanley, how fascism works.

48:46And early on in that book, he, he points out, and I can't remember the context,

48:51but that it, it, there are good actors and bad actors. Right. And it matters which one you are.

48:57Right. Rhetoric itself is not bad inherently, but in the hands of bad actors. Right. It can

49:07do a lot of harm. Right. In the hands of, of, of good actors, it can repair relationships

49:13and restore wholeness. And, and defend vulnerable groups. Yes, dissolution. That's,

49:22that's something that I think we see an awful lot in the Hebrew Bible as well. We see,

49:26we see marginalized groups, at least in the, on the broader geopolitical scale, trying to defend

49:32their themselves and trying to survive, even if it does involve some dirty pool here and there.

49:39Yeah. One of the things that I, I want to acknowledge is, is it's uncomfortable to see these stories

49:45that are just deeply manipulative, right? Trouble. What is Phyllis tribbles term for this troubled

49:51text trouble? I can't, I can't remember it exactly. Yeah. But just problematic texts that just don't

49:58sit well with us and rightly so. But I, I think there's value in them being in scripture because

50:05they show us possibilities that we might not otherwise want to think about, but that are

50:12important to know about. Right. They show us our ugly side. And I think it's important to know

50:17our ugly side as a community, because if we don't know it, it can come up and bite us in the rear.

50:24Yeah. And if we, if we are never exposed to it, we think we don't have one and we're, we're never

50:31wrong. And, and I, I think of Alexiana Fry when you mentioned Phyllis Tribble, because I think the

50:37phrase is text of terror. That's it. That's what you're thinking about. Yes. Yes, I am. Thank you.

50:41Alexiana Fry who does a lot of work with trauma theory and the Hebrew Bible. She has a series on

50:48social media where she talks about texts of terror. And then she talks an awful lot about

50:55very, very traumatic stories, but, but showing that a lens of trauma can help us understand

51:01operationalize these texts in ways other than, than how they were probably intended.

51:07But the, you know, the wilderness, there's a through line through the wilderness narrative and

51:13it starts at the sea. Exodus 14 is one of these complaint episodes. It's just a very complex one.

51:21And, and, and, you know, in it, Moses engineers survival. And, and, and it's a great way to start.

51:29And this, you know, and this, this, this line runs through the entire wilderness narrative

51:34of healing and repair from the damage that the Aaron character has done.

51:40Right. There are several episodes that directly counter this dirty pool rhetoric.

51:48And so we see the possibility of even healing from what's broken.

51:52Yeah. And, and Aaron does a lot of damage and, and doesn't seem to face too much accountability

52:01for it. He manages to survive through, through the narrative, which is, which is, which is unusual,

52:10particularly when he's creating an idol for everybody to worship right before Moses says,

52:15oh, that means death with the, with the commandments. I, I had a question you.

52:20The last time you brought up the word complaint, it reminded me of some work that I've done on

52:26the complaint genre within the Psalms, particularly related to Psalm 82, because I talk about that as,

52:32as kind of a hybrid of, of different genres, the divine council motif is being combined with the

52:37gods complaint or the God complaint so that Adonai is issuing a complaint to the gods of the divine

52:44council. And, and I'm curious if you see any, any resonance between these complaint episodes

52:50and the complaint genre within the Psalms where you have this pattern of, of saying,

52:55here's our problem. Here's what you have done for us in the past. We know you can help us

53:01get up and do something. Do you see any resonance with the, the complaints that you're identifying

53:10in these narratives? There, there's certainly, I, I haven't really thought about that, but

53:16there's certainly an emotional resonance. Right. Do we have any, and do we have any questions

53:24where the complaints begin with why are you doing this? Why are you allowing this to happen?

53:29How long are you going to allow this to happen? That kind of stuff? Not how long, but certainly why.

53:35Okay. The word, the word llama, llama occurs in many of the complaints. Okay. But those are generally,

53:42there are exceptions, but generally addressed to Moses.

53:46Yeah, you do make a distinction in the book between cries to God and complaints to Moses,

53:54specifically. Yeah. When, and talk a little bit about, about the differences between those,

53:58between those two kinds of complaining. Well, you know, they're effectively the same,

54:05it's just a question of, of who the Israelites perceive is their leader in any given situation.

54:13Right. Who the, who the royal figure is. Right. So, in what I see to be the

54:22axilic version of the narrative, they are imagining, very much like Deuteros Isaiah,

54:29they're imagining a march home from exile. Right. And the royal language in Deuteros Isaiah,

54:36and also in the wilderness narrative for God, is no accident. Right. In the absence of a king.

54:42Right. In a, in a, in a story, whether it's poetic or in narrative form, where they are imagining

54:52liberation from their oppressive foreign emperor, they imagine God, all those, all those, that kingship

55:00discourse, right, that role is occupied by God. Right. But sometimes in the wilderness, even when

55:08they ought to know that it's God who brought them out of Egypt, right, in that version of the story

55:14out of Babylon, right, out of exile. The story gets revised, right. And then this becomes the,

55:22the, the allegorical situation. They, you know, they, they should know that God liberated them,

55:32but yet they're still addressing their complaints to Moses. Right. It's like they don't quite trust

55:39that, that, that God is going to play that royal role, right, and have to learn that. And that's

55:44an important part of the, you know, the dynamic in the wilderness is, is learning to trust one's

55:50leaders. Right. Of course, it's also about what constitutes a trustworthy leader and what doesn't.

55:57And it's also interesting in light of Exodus 7 1, where God tells Moses, I will make you a God

56:05to Pharaoh. And, and Aaron will be your spokesperson. And if he's there, it seems like there could be

56:13some ambiguity in what role Moses is, is playing in the wilderness narratives. In light of that,

56:21he is taking the place of God in the minds of some of the folks who are coming.

56:26Well, I think the key to that one is Aaron is his spokesperson. Right. That text legitimates Aaron

56:33as right, as a, as a purveyor of Torah. Right. And then later he's, he becomes the antagonist

56:42in a lot of ways. Yeah. Yeah. But of course, the text in which he is an antagonist,

56:49also, and I write about various of these bits in the, in the book, also manipulate existing law.

57:00Right. So Aaron is wielding Torah. Right. There you go. I, sorry, go on. No, he's, he's, he's,

57:11even when he's not mentioned in the text, sometimes he is behind the scenes. And you can see the same,

57:16you know, rhetorical maneuvers that, you know, that fit with like what's going on in the Korach

57:23episode. Huh. I love it. I, I, I wish I understood more. I'll be honest with you. There's a, one of

57:31the things that, that did happen as I dove into, to the book was that I had to text Dan and just say,

57:39give me more context for this because I, I do not have the, I don't not have the background to,

57:46to really know what I'm looking at for a lot of this stuff. I, I enjoyed, I enjoyed what I read,

57:52but didn't, but, but, but I always felt like I, you know, I, I was a little, I was a few steps

57:58behind. This is not a trade book. This is, this is an academic book. And, and I was, I, I was like

58:06Moses in the reeds. I was, I needed to be taken up and, and, and, and swaddled.

58:12Yeah. Well, I, I am starting up a blog called the Moses Chronicles. So if you, if you visit my

58:19website, subscribe, I'm also on sub stack, the Moses Chronicles. And I'm going, there's not much

58:26there yet, but I'm going to be, for people like you, Dan, right, who, this is important stuff. And

58:33I want to make it available to you in a, in a, in a fashion that's, that's digestible and

58:40meaningful. So I'm going to be doing that. Love it. What is your website specifically?

58:46It's Angela Roskop, erissman.com. Excellent. Just my name simple.

58:52Perfect. Uh, well, thank you so much for joining us. I'm, uh, we are out of time. I'm sure you and

58:59Dan could go on for several more episodes worth of worth of time discussing this. And I would just be

59:05delightfully, uh, watching from the wings. Uh, but alas, we are done, but you are going to join us

59:13for our, uh, our afterparty for our, our patrons. Is that correct? I, I am indeed. Excellent. Well,

59:20wonderful. Thank you so much, Angela Roskop, erissman, for, for joining us, uh, friends at home. If you

59:27would like to hear the afterparty or if you would like to participate at very least in helping make

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59:51at dataoverdogmapod.com. And we'll talk to you again next week. Bye everybody.

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