Ep 13: Does God Regret this Podcast?

00:00The question becomes how could God regret or repent himself of something, and someone

00:12online has this answer to that.

00:15So the Hebrew word for regret is nacham, and it's difficult to translate into English.

00:19Well, I'm going to have to say, all right, let's see it.

00:24Boom, baby!

00:25That's a golden phrase right there.

00:28Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan, and I'm Dan Beecher.

00:35And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast where we try to increase the public's

00:40access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation

00:45about the same.

00:47How are things going this second time around, Dan?

00:50Where things are going great.

00:52Okay.

00:53Well, you've done a nod to the fact that we started to record this and then had a technical

00:59difficulty in the form of my brain not having done so much it very much needed to do.

01:05And now everything is running smoothly, and we're rocking on all four cylinders.

01:11So we've already had a mulligan, so if we screw it up this time, that is totally on

01:15us.

01:16Yeah, if we screw it up this time, you're just getting the screwed up version, and that's

01:19that.

01:20We're not going back again.

01:23Dan, you, my friend, have just come back from what sounds by all reports, like an amazing

01:30trip to the Holy Land.

01:36Israel, Palestine.

01:37Yes.

01:38I was leading a tour group there.

01:40I was there from June 10th to 21st, had a great time.

01:48It was the first time I've led a tour group out there.

01:52We visited a number of spots in Israel and in Palestine, and helped a lot of really cool

01:57people better understand not only the archaeology and the history and the literature, but also

02:04understand a little better what's going on today between these two areas and their people.

02:10And they got to meet a bunch of great people from both sides of that tension that's that's

02:16going on out there.

02:17Oh, do they have a little tension out there?

02:19There's quite a bit of tension out there.

02:21I hadn't heard of it.

02:22Is that new?

02:24Is that a new thing?

02:26Quite old, actually.

02:29And I was supposed to be going with my wife, as you know, and then it sounds like the State

02:36Department is having trouble with ye old passport renewals these days.

02:40They're taking a lot longer than they normally do.

02:43And so she was not able to go with me, but we had a contingency plan in place.

02:50And I had the treat of getting to text a couple of close friends to mine of mine who know the

02:57area very well and had wanted to travel there with me at some point and say, hey, do you

03:01have two weeks off in a passport?

03:03And one of them did.

03:05So a friend of mine named David Burnett joined me for the trip and had a wonderful time.

03:11He's doing a PhD at Edinburgh right now.

03:14And we are actually organizing a conference on monotheism for next year at Brown University

03:20and I'm hoping to have him on the show at some point soon.

03:23He's a very gregarious person.

03:28I think you'll enjoy him.

03:30And yeah, we had a great time and I was a little nervous about what kind of weirdos

03:35would pay a bunch of money to travel to Israel, Palestine with me.

03:38And it turns out very cool weirdos.

03:40So nice.

03:41Yeah, it was a wonderful time.

03:44I met some great people and I got to eat a bunch of great food.

03:51I got to enjoy an area that I love.

03:54I got to visit some places I hadn't been to before and got to share it with a good friend

03:59of mine.

04:00So all in all, it was a wonderful trip.

04:02That's awesome.

04:03I should say that this is something that we are working towards you and I for this show.

04:09We're working towards doing some tours, various tours.

04:15We're in talks with a travel company right now.

04:20So if any of our listeners would like after hearing some of this stuff, that would be

04:26a fun thing to do or an interesting thing to do.

04:29You can let us know right now.

04:31We don't have anything planned.

04:32Our first tour will probably not be till the spring of next year.

04:37But send us an email which is contact@dataoverdogmapod.com.

04:44And let us know that you're interested in joining us.

04:47We'll compile, we'll keep a list of all the people who are interested, maybe put tour

04:52in the subject line.

04:54And then we can let you know when we're going, how much it's going to cost all of that sort

05:01of thing.

05:02Because I think a lot of you are going to want to do this, especially after hearing some

05:06of what Dan, you have to say today.

05:09Yeah.

05:10Because we're going to be talking about some of the stuff that you that you went.

05:15So let's dive into that.

05:17Let's look at archaeology of Israel.

05:21Yeah, absolutely.

05:22One of the, there are a bunch of different ways to do a tour in Israel.

05:25Some of the tours are all about contemporary geopolitics.

05:29Some tours are school children go on tours to learn about their own history, their people.

05:39Sometimes it is about getting, having spiritual experiences in churches, very old churches

05:45or less old churches.

05:47And what I tried to do was make this tour predictably more about putting data over dogma

05:53and so trying to understand the history and the archaeology.

05:56And so we spent a lot of time at sites that many tours don't go to, don't visit because

06:03they may not be directly mentioned in the Bible or directly relevant to the Bible, but

06:09they are archaeologically interesting and help us to fill out a better background and

06:15backdrop for understanding the Bible.

06:18And one of those places was one of the places we visited on the very first day of the tour.

06:24The first day we started out in Tel Aviv and we kind of went down what's called the Shvelah,

06:29which is the transition from the coastal plains to the hill country.

06:36So these valleys that kind of run east and west up to the hill country.

06:40So we stopped at Bezhemesh, which is in the Sorek Valley.

06:46We stopped in the Valley of Elah, which is where David was supposed to have defeated

06:52Goliath.

06:53And one of the things we did in the Valley of Elah, we're sitting there looking at this

06:57valley talking about the account in 1 Samuel 17, also talking about what may be the original

07:03account of Goliath's defeat at the hands of El Hanan.

07:06I was going to say, you said David defeated Goliath, point of order, sir.

07:13No, I saw it on a newscast, yeah, it was a long time ago, I swear it was David.

07:22And they had all the people on the roof cheering for David.

07:26But interestingly enough, there's a site like right over the hill from the Valley of Elah

07:31called Kiyafa.

07:34And some scholars identify it as the biblical Shaddai, which would be the city of two gates.

07:40But there's an excavation that has been ongoing there for a long time that has uncovered some

07:45interesting artifacts.

07:48And there's even been a handful of books published about some of these artifacts and

07:54an inscription that some scholars argue is the oldest known inscription in the Hebrew

07:59language that may date to around 1100 BCE.

08:02But I would side with a scholar, Chris Rolston and some other epigraphers who argue that

08:08this is not yet what we can label Hebrew.

08:12This is still an early alphabetic inscription hasn't transitioned into the Phoenician alphabet,

08:18which is what is picked up when Hebrew is committed to writing.

08:23So a lot to debate about that.

08:26But we went further south.

08:28We went to visit Lakish, which a lot of people don't know about, but played a very important

08:32role in the history of Israel.

08:36There is a, there is a bar relief, a wall relief from Nineveh that depicts the Assyrian

08:45king's Sennacheribs siege of the city of Lakish, where they have siege engines going

08:52up the the siege ramp that they built to break down the wall.

08:56And they have the the people, the inhabitants of Lakish throwing, throwing torches and boulders

09:03and things over the cliff and have somebody with a with a big ladle, like throwing water

09:10on top of the siege engine to try to put out the fires that are being thrown down on top

09:15of them.

09:16So this is like a mechanical thing that they would use to try and I'm picturing.

09:21I don't know.

09:22I'm sure it's not like Iron Man, but that's all I've got in my mind right now.

09:26So siege engine is basically a big battering ram on wheels, okay, that they had some kind

09:32of front to that was intended to protect them.

09:35And so they would throw torches down on it to try to set it on fire to get, you know,

09:40the people to abandon it and scatter, which is why you have the guy with the big spoon

09:44throwing water on top of the same time to put out the fire.

09:49But Sennacherib memorialized the siege of Lakish in these wall reliefs that are on display

09:56in the British Museum now, but cover several walls within his palace in Nineveh.

10:03And this became his base of operations for his siege of Jerusalem, when King Hezekiah

10:10threw off Vassalage to the Syrian Empire when King has Hezekiah basically said, I'm not

10:17paying you any more tribute.

10:19And Sennacherib said, we'll see about that.

10:21And so attacked and destroyed a bunch of towns in Northern Israel, and then made it all the

10:27way to Jerusalem, but was unable to take Jerusalem, the city of Jerusalem.

10:31And so had to abandon this campaign and go back to Assyria.

10:36And this lines up with events in the Bible.

10:40Yes.

10:41Yeah.

10:42So we have archaeological evidence for events that are also detailed in the Bible.

10:48Yes.

10:49And we also have what's called the Sennacherib prism, which is a cuneiform text written around

10:56a kind of prism-shaped pillar where Sennacherib boasts about taking all these towns and taking

11:03all these people.

11:04And then it says he trapped Hezekiah in his royal city like a bird in a cage, which was

11:09basically him trying to make it sound like he was winning when he had to ultimately abandon

11:15the campaign.

11:16You visited Lakeish where you can still see the siege ramp.

11:20You can still see the stones that were that were gathered to create the siege ramp and

11:26you can go up and see the city gates and it's just a fascinating place that I really like.

11:33And that many people who read the Bible, it's mentioned a couple of times in there, but not

11:37in any important stories.

11:40And then you also have Lakeish playing a large role in the Babylonian exile when the Babylonians

11:46come to take Jerusalem, and they succeed in doing this a little around 587 BCE.

11:52Lakeish and Azekah are two cities, two of the last cities that fall before Jerusalem falls.

12:00And they discovered some texts at Lakeish that talk about this event where we have this

12:08very kind of terrifying text where they're talking about how the Babylonians are coming.

12:14And there's a statement at one point where they say, "We can no longer see the fire signals

12:20of Lakeish."

12:22And this is Azekah, somewhat like Lord of the Rings where you light the fires.

12:27The fires of Gondor calls for aid kind of thing.

12:31But the signal fires are to indicate that they're there and they're fighting.

12:37And then at one point they can no longer see the fire signals of Lakeish, which is kind

12:42of this ominous Lakeish has fallen where next, which is ultimately what happens, the cities

12:49are destroyed and then Jerusalem is destroyed.

12:51So how far would you say Jerusalem is from Lakeish?

12:57Jerusalem from Lakeish, not incredibly far.

12:59I would say if you're driving, it's maybe 20, 30 minutes, drive on foot, obviously it's

13:07going to take an awful lot longer, particularly because you've got to weave through some valleys

13:12and to get up into the mountainous region in which Jerusalem is located.

13:19I only ask because like part of the thing, I think that would be useful about the kind

13:26of trip that you took is just getting a sense of the size, the scale of things because one

13:33of the things that I've always struggled with as I read the Bible was, this is like when

13:38we talked about the Moabite King in a battle with all the, and I had to go and look up

13:49how big each of these kingdoms were, because I just don't have a sense of how it's by

13:57a sea, as the dead sea, as the sea of Galilee, how big is it?

14:03The word sea sounds really big.

14:06And then you do a little bit of research and you realize, oh, that's just a lake, not very

14:12big lake.

14:13Yeah, it's smaller than Bear Lake in Idaho, it's much smaller than the Great Salt Lake,

14:20and the dead sea itself, much smaller than, several times smaller than the Great Salt

14:24Lake, also a lake fed by the Jordan River, and the entire region that we know of as ancient

14:33Israel is smaller than the state of New Jersey.

14:38So it's actually, when you're talking on foot, it kind of grows two sizes because you're

14:46moving a lot more slowly, but in a car, yeah, you can get around fairly easily, as long

14:51as the traffic's not too bad, which it sometimes isn't, yeah, and as long as you're in parts

14:57of driving around in parts where there are not a lot of people, which for some of the

15:02spots that we were visiting, yeah, there were not a lot of people there.

15:07That's awesome.

15:08Such as the last place we visited on the first day, a rod, which is a place in the Negev,

15:15which is the southern desert of Judah, and a rod is mentioned a handful of times in the

15:22Bible and specifically as a place where there's a king of a rod who comes out to fight Joshua

15:27or something like that and gets defeated.

15:31But in the '60s, archaeologists discovered at the top of a big hill, a Judahite fortress

15:37that had been in existence for probably around 300 or 400 years, and it was destroyed or

15:45at least decommissioned out of service somewhere around the year 700 BCE, and in the corner

15:52of this fortress, they discovered a Judahite temple, and they discovered texts that referred

15:59to the house of Adonai, which is probably a reference to that Judahite temple.

16:04This is not some foreign temple.

16:07This was a temple run by Judahites, obviously, was administered from Jerusalem, was part

16:16of the hierarchy's network of sacred precincts, and also texts that talk about different priestly

16:26families that are known from the Hebrew Bible as well.

16:29So this is a temple that was integrated into this biblical world.

16:37When it was discovered, it was covered in about six feet of earth, and when they removed

16:41all this soil, they found in the temple a very well-preserved sacrificial altar made

16:50of unhewn stone, they found the Holy of Holies, they found a standing stone, so a divine image

16:59laying on its side in the Holy of Holies, and they found two incense altars laying on their

17:04side, just outside of the Holy of Holies.

17:07And the archaeologists who excavated this in the '60s, I think this was Yedin, insisted

17:17or concluded that this was all a product of Hezekiah's reforms.

17:22There's a part in the text where it says that Hezekiah went and dismantled all the high

17:26places, and cut down all the altars to Baal and things like that.

17:33Oddly enough, though, when this kind of thing was done, when you destroyed a temple because

17:39the worship was considered inappropriate or unsanctioned or something, you always broke

17:45the divine images and the vessels that were used in the worship.

17:49And none of these were broken.

17:51These were all just laid on their side and covered in soil.

17:54And so some other scholars have postulated that this is all happening around the same

18:00time that Sennacherib is getting set to come through and wreak havoc on everything.

18:04And so another possibility is that this was not a temple that was destroyed, but a temple

18:10that was decommissioned and then hidden, so that it would not be destroyed by Sennacherib.

18:17Because following Sennacherib's invasion, pretty much all of the sacred precincts in

18:22the temples outside of Jerusalem, which Sennacherib did not destroy, were gone.

18:29And this created something we've talked about before on the channel, this de facto cult centralization,

18:36where because everything else was destroyed and nobody had any choice but to take their

18:41worship and their talents to Jerusalem.

18:45So there are competing theories about what is responsible for the decommissioning, the

18:50ending of the use of this temple at Arad, but most people don't visit this.

18:55It's quite a bit out of the way.

18:58And it is not directly related to the Bible, and I imagine that a lot of folks who go to

19:04Israel Palestine to go on tours are not interested in hearing about this extra temple that happens

19:11to have a divine image of Adonai in it, that you can go walk up to it, the originals, the

19:18actual items are now on display in the Israel Museum.

19:23And I have a video on my TikTok channel where I'm from the Israel Museum where I'm showing

19:29you some of these items and showing you, for instance, that the incense altars had burned

19:35substances on top of them.

19:37And those were all sent off for testing and analysis.

19:40And the smaller incense altar had three different types of cannabis that had been burned on the

19:46top of it during its, during its use as when it was being used for work.

19:50Interesting.

19:51They were definitely having spiritual experiences.

19:54Yeah, they were definitely communing with the most high.

20:00Yeah.

20:01Well, do me a favor, paint me a picture because you've mentioned standing stones.

20:06You've mentioned altars.

20:08What size is a standing stone?

20:11You say it's a divine image.

20:14Give me a sense of the scale of this thing.

20:17Well, the particular one at Arad is probably about three feet high and maybe a foot and

20:23a half, yeah, about a foot and a half wide and it's shaped like a headstone.

20:30And yeah, so it's flat on the sides and then has curves off and has a rounded top.

20:35And then it's kind of flat on the front side and then the back side is a little more rounded

20:40off.

20:41And it's inscribed?

20:44So it's the one, the ones that we found there were actually two standing stones discovered

20:48in the Holy Holies at Arad.

20:50One of them, however, was incorporated into the wall.

20:53So it had become part of the architecture.

20:55They had repurposed this as material for the wall.

20:59And then the other one was free.

21:01So scholars for a time thought that both were on display at the same time in the Holy

21:07of Holies, but I think the consensus view now is that only one at a time would have been

21:12in use.

21:14And it would have been probably would have been painted, anciently, and probably would

21:20have had the divine name perhaps painted on it.

21:24There was there's nothing inscribed into it that we can tell.

21:28But how it looked, anciently would have would have been quite different from how it surface

21:35looks today.

21:36It's weird.

21:37It's weird that the paint didn't survive the centuries in dirt and the end dirt.

21:42Yeah, it's pretty dry dirt, but but yeah, the paint did not survive.

21:48So there are still debates about this.

21:50And in my own book, I talk a bit about the functionality of the standing stone, how this

21:58maybe helps us understand a little better how they thought about and use divine images

22:03anciently.

22:04And we're going to talk about that in a forthcoming segment of the show.

22:09But yeah, and then from the top of this fortress, you can actually it's it's a pretty high hill,

22:18but you can look down on a lower portion of the hill where there is a Bronze Age Canaanite

22:24settlement.

22:25Wow.

22:26With it has a big well.

22:29You can see this whole city or at least the ruins of this whole city.

22:33And so it's a fascinating place to go.

22:35It's part of the National Parks system, but not a lot of people visit it.

22:40So I've visited there twice and both times our group has been the only group on the property.

22:46That's a great thing to be.

22:48I'm looking at an image of it.

22:49And and yeah, it's it's the it's it's a top of a hill.

22:55And you can see, I mean, it's one of the higher hills in the area it looks like.

23:01And you can just see for for for miles in every direction, it looks like it looks really

23:05fascinating.

23:06Kilometers in every direction when you're when you're in there.

23:10I can see I can see for miles because I'm American.

23:14Other people can only see for kilometers.

23:16Miles are better miles and longer.

23:17So that means I have better eyesight than than Europeans.

23:21I think.

23:22Well, and that's something that a lot of people noted when they were up there, they were like,

23:25I can see why you would want to build a fortress on top of this place.

23:29So one, you can see forever.

23:31And then two, anybody coming at you, you know, they're running across open desert.

23:36And then they got to climb this steep hill the whole time you're throwing stuff at them.

23:40Like it's yeah, it would not be an easy place to to attack.

23:45Right.

23:46So yeah, but how it came to an end is still a mystery to some degree.

23:51So but but I was very excited to be able to return to there and I was excited to be able

23:57to give the folks in our group that experience of understanding a bit about the history of

24:03Israel that is a little off the beaten path, not what most folks can really cool.

24:09Yeah.

24:10And and then from there, we we actually had to race because they were like, we are closing

24:14down in like 30 seconds until we get everybody on the bus on the bus on the bus and out of

24:20there.

24:21And and then we just cruised on down to the coast of the Dead Sea, which is quite an experience

24:26because you have these kind of plateaus and and ridges and then you just descend hundreds

24:33of meters down into the bottom of this Rift Valley where the Dead Sea is and we stopped

24:38at a hotel right on the coast and got to go swim in the Dead Sea, which is which is quite

24:44an experience.

24:46It's unlike any other place you will ever go swimming in your entire life.

24:50The only place I've ever been where if you weighed out and the water starts getting up

24:55to your hips, you start to kind of lose your balance because the buoyancy of what is under

25:00the water is starting to lift you off the bottom a little bit.

25:04And so you can't like plop down and sit on the bottom.

25:08You can plop down and you will just just kind of float to the top.

25:12And so everybody got a kick out of going out and sitting down and then just kind of laying

25:16back and being like, Oh, and you're just floating above the water.

25:21And it is it is an odd experience and if you go that there were two warnings that we were

25:27given that I'm glad we were given these warnings.

25:29One, bring flip flops, they said, because it's sand for about two feet into into the

25:36water and then it turns into just rock salt and salt crystals and just little chunks of

25:45salt all over the bottom.

25:47And then the other warning they gave was whatever you do, don't get the water on your

25:51face.

25:52So the somebody was telling everybody when they were in the water, Oh, you know, taste

25:58some of it.

25:59See what it's like.

26:00And everybody who did that regretted doing that.

26:02I've tasted salt.

26:04Thank you.

26:05I'm okay.

26:06Yeah, it is the salinity of the Dead Sea is is around 10 times what the salinity of

26:13sea water is.

26:15And it's even a few times more saline than than the great salt lake.

26:20Surprisingly, it does not stink like the great salt lake does.

26:25Well, it might be too.

26:26I mean, the great salt lake smells bad in the summertime because of the brine shrimp,

26:31which then die and then their carcasses wash up on shore and rot.

26:35Yeah.

26:36Maybe that the that the Dead Sea is too saline even for even for brine shrimp.

26:42I don't know.

26:43Yeah.

26:44Maybe I didn't see anything living in the water there.

26:48And if there's one thing I wouldn't want to live in it, that's right.

26:51If there's one thing that I always do when I'm near a body of water is look for fish.

26:56Critters.

26:57Yeah, there's a there's a there's an old far side cartoon where there are a bunch of like

27:03medieval knights storming a castle and they're running over the drawbridge over the moat

27:08and one of them points down and goes, look, a fish or something like that.

27:13Yeah.

27:14That's me.

27:15I would be I would be combing the area.

27:18I grew up fishing.

27:19So like when I'm near a body of water, I'm just automatically instinctively I'm scanning

27:24where the fish going to be.

27:25Can I see a fish?

27:27So no luck, no luck on that one.

27:31Not that time.

27:32And that reminds me there's a there's another thing.

27:35One of the other things that we did the very last day of the trip was walk through has

27:39a Kai's tunnel, which is a tunnel that was dug in order to divert water from the ghee

27:45home spring, which was outside of the city walls cover up that spring and divert the

27:50water to inside the city.

27:52This was something that has a kaya did in order to be able to provide water to the inhabitants

27:57of the city, but the and so you can go walk through this tunnel and it is an unnerving

28:03experience to be a hundred feet below the bedrock that is the city of David in a little

28:11tunnel where for parts of it, like if you've got broader shoulders, you've got to kind

28:15of squeeze in together, you're kind of bouncing off the sides of it and parts of it, you have

28:20to squat down because it's only maybe five feet high unnerving.

28:24But when you get to the end, there's a little pool area and the first time I came out, the

28:29first thing I did was go scan the water for the dishes and I have a photograph on my phone

28:35of I saw a fish swimming around and I was like, sweet.

28:39So I have a little picture of this fish.

28:41And after I took the picture, I looked at it and I noticed that the fish was swimming

28:45right above a band-aid that was sitting in the water and it's like, okay, I'm out.

28:51That's a little less enticing.

28:55But that little pool at the end of Hezekiah's tunnel was long thought to be the pool of

29:01Siloam because that's where Jesus was supposed to have done one of these miracles, but it

29:08doesn't really fit the description of one of these pools that would have existed in

29:11Jesus' day.

29:14And yeah, the archaeology suggests that this little pool at the end of the tunnel was probably

29:19built around the Byzantine period.

29:21And so people are like, do we call it the pool of Siloam anyway?

29:26When's the Byzantine period?

29:27I don't know when that is.

29:28Byzantine is like four through sixth century is the main kind of the height of the Byzantine

29:34period and this is where we have the empires in Byzantium that are kind of running things.

29:43And so this is a few centuries after Jesus, but when you're in this area, most everything

29:50that is identified with some event, particularly in the New Testament, probably originates

29:56in the Byzantine period because that is when Queen Helena, the mother of Constantine, came

30:03to the area to kind of map out where everything is.

30:06And so they literally went around and asked locals where things happened.

30:11And so you have-

30:12And any enterprising local would be like, yeah, totally take you there.

30:17Not much money are you paying, I'll definitely show you where Jesus was born.

30:21For sure, it's absolutely right.

30:23So one of the things you run into when you go and do tours in this area, whether it's

30:29Israel or in Palestine is you're going to run into a lot of traditional locations and

30:35almost without fail, those traditional locations were identified in the Byzantine period.

30:40And then a church has been built over it.

30:43Some of them in the Byzantine period, usually in the 6th or 7th century, or sometimes 8th,

30:52they are destroyed either by conflict with Muslims or because of a couple of major earthquakes

30:58that happened in those centuries.

31:00And then usually they are rebuilt in the crusades in the crusader period.

31:05So you hear that repeated a lot.

31:07In fact, when we were there, it was kind of like, okay, Byzantine or crusader, what do

31:13you think?

31:16Interesting.

31:18But unlikely to be the actual place that it purports to be, is that what you're saying?

31:23For the most part, there are some exceptions.

31:27For instance, there's a place called Mount Zion.

31:32And Mount Zion is not the Temple Mount.

31:35It is a mountain on the other side of what's called the Central Valley or the Toropoyon

31:39Valley.

31:41And so when you look at Jerusalem, you have the Temple Mount, you have the city of David

31:44to the south, and then just to the west, you have this other mountain.

31:48It would have been inside the city gates in the time of Jesus, but it's called Mount Zion.

31:53And they have a church there called the Church of St. Peter in Gallicontu or the Church of

31:59St. Peter at the crowing of the cock.

32:03And the church, when you go visit it today, what you see is something that was built,

32:09I think in the early mid-20th century, but it is built over some old crypts.

32:18Some of them are probably wells.

32:25They are probably, for some reason, I'm blanking on the name of a place where you store water.

32:32A cistern?

32:34Cistern, yes.

32:35Thank you.

32:36I said that word a billion times, two weeks ago.

32:39So some of them were cisterns that were later converted into like dungeons.

32:45And the traditional identification of this site is the place where Jesus was held overnight.

32:52It is also identified with the Palace of Caiaphas.

32:56Now most archaeologists would say, this is something that was probably, these were cisterns

33:02that were probably converted to dungeons in the Byzantine period, or maybe the Crusader

33:09period.

33:10But there's a set of stairs, there's a staircase that runs just north of Caiaphas's palace

33:17that has been unearthed that's archaeologists date to around the first century CE.

33:23So this staircase, if Caiaphas's palace is anywhere in Mount Zion, and some people think

33:31it could be further up the hill where the richer homes would have been, this staircase

33:36would have led up there.

33:38And so if Caiaphas's palace was on Mount Zion, then that staircase would have been where

33:43Jesus would have been led to go from Gethsemane to Caiaphas's palace.

33:49So there's a mixture.

33:51Some of it is later stuff.

33:53Some of these are traditional sites, and some of it is earlier.

33:58But on trips like this, we try to let people know, there's no metaphysical significance

34:06to these sites.

34:07Like whether it's the actual place where something happened or not, the point is not

34:11to take you in and let you feel the power of this site that is, you know, rigidually residing

34:18there since the first century CE.

34:20It's to give you an experience so you have something tangible, something material, some

34:27kind of experience that makes those events more real for you, that gives you a material

34:35tether to what's going on.

34:36So you can, in your mind, return to that spot and you can kind of experience that materiality

34:44and the reality of that place when you're imagining these stories, when you're reading

34:49these texts.

34:51And so it's more about recreating what things would have been like than about saying this

34:55is the very spot where this happened.

34:57I think that is a great way to look at it.

35:00A good reason to want to go out there and a fantastic place to end our segment today.

35:07All right.

35:08So thank you for that, Dan.

35:11And let's move on to our next segment.

35:16All right.

35:17All right, Dan, yes, sir, something has come across our desk from the internet that we

35:24need to answer.

35:26It is a question from Genesis six.

35:31We are Genesis six.

35:32We are about to get into a very famous story in which the Lord makes a pretty big decision

35:42for the whole earth.

35:44Yeah.

35:45One of his better known genocides.

35:47Yeah, it's a pretty popular one.

35:52Basically everybody's going, but one family, but we'll get to that another time.

35:56The question at hand is comes from a Genesis six verse five, no, verse six.

36:07And there's different versions of it.

36:10The King James renders it and it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth

36:17and it grieved him at his heart.

36:21The NRSV says this verse six and the Lord was sorry that he had made humans on the earth

36:29and it grieved him to his heart.

36:31So the question becomes is God capable of, you know, we're talking about someone, an omniscient

36:43and omnipotent being.

36:46How could God regret or repent himself of something and someone online has this answer

36:57to that.

36:58So the Hebrew word for regret is nacham and it's difficult to translate into English.

37:03Well I'm going to have to say, all right, let's see it.

37:07Boom, baby.

37:08That's the golden word.

37:10That's a golden phrase right there for for for McClellan fans.

37:15That's the, that's the, that's the good stuff.

37:18This creator has some more stuff to say.

37:21Let's listen to some more.

37:22Okay.

37:23John Walton notes there's no English word that readily captures the meaning of nacham.

37:26And Genesis 24 refers to Isaac being comforted over the loss of his mother.

37:31And Genesis 27, it refers to Esau comforting himself while planning to kill Jacob.

37:35And Deuteronomy 32, it refers to having compassion and in Genesis two, it refers to God moving

37:40to fill pity for his people.

37:41So right off the bat, I notice a concern from the perspective of a linguist, the idea that

37:48we should expect an English word or a, an English conceptual framework to be able to capture

37:55all of the different meanings of this verbal root is fallacious.

38:02That's just not something we should expect because these languages are not just giving

38:06different labels to the exact same conceptual content.

38:12These languages develop the, the conceptual content very differently.

38:16And so I would have a concern with an attempt to try to reduce a bunch of different usage

38:21in a bunch of different contexts down to a single kind of root concept.

38:27There are times when that's appropriate, but the assumption that that framework can

38:33be imposed on any word or any verbal root, I don't agree with.

38:38So I'm going to say that these different places where it can mean different things is just

38:45a product of different contextual uses rather than some confusion on the part of translators.

38:52So right off the, it does seem like, I mean, you know, we have the same concept in English.

38:57There are plenty of words that mean very different things and you just have to use context clues

39:03to understand which version of the, of meaning there you, you know, which version of that

39:09word they're using for this particular moment.

39:12Yeah, and here the reference to John Walton is a reference to a scholar named John Walton

39:16who in this case, it's to his NIV application commentary on the book of Genesis where Walton

39:25is, is trying to make the case that there is a way to reduce this all down to one set

39:33of concepts.

39:34But let's let this creator, and this is a creator who goes by inspiring philosophy,

39:40by the way, let's let him take over.

39:46Okay.

39:47The word has been translated in multiple ways because as commentators note, there's no English

39:50word that can really capture its meaning.

39:53What the verse is getting at is that God was deeply saddened by the actions of mankind,

39:57but still needed to act to do something to fix the situation.

40:00So if we look at Walton's commentary here, what he's trying to do is trying to figure

40:06out a way to interpret this in a way that does not allow God to be repenting.

40:13And this is pretty explicit.

40:14He starts off in this commentary.

40:16I'm going to read through some of the commentary so we can see what Walton is doing.

40:21And he points out that we have a bit of a dilemma here.

40:24The passage seems to be saying that God regrets or repents and he says there are three ways

40:29to seek resolution one, we can simply rethink our view of God.

40:34This is exactly what is happening in the new theology called the openness of God.

40:37Two, we can justify the terminology by seeking to understand ways in which anthropomorphic

40:42language is used in describing God's actions without imputing human limitations to him.

40:48This is the path followed in most commentaries.

40:51Three, we can reassess the lexical data to see if we are on the right track when we translate

40:56terms in particular ways.

40:59And this is the tactic that Walton is going to take and is actually going to introduce

41:03a brand new understanding of this framework because the other two ways of approaching

41:12this are unacceptable.

41:13And so we already have a theological dogma that we are trying to avoid.

41:21We cannot accept that God regrets.

41:23And so we have to find another way to interpret this passage.

41:27Yeah.

41:28The phrase reassess the lexical whatever data.

41:32It seems like that's just saying, that's just a fancy way of saying, let's just change

41:37the meaning of the words.

41:39Well, he goes on a little further, the job of the lexicographer is to come to an understanding

41:45of categories of meaning that exists for a word and to identify the common denominators

41:49that define and bring cohesion to each category.

41:52And so here's where he's saying, we should be able to distill everything down to a single

41:58root, and what he says is that this word can be best understood in accounting terms.

42:08And now keep in mind that the root here is nacham, which is related to a noun that refers

42:16to the womb and generally has to do with great feelings of pity or regret or compassion or

42:23things like that.

42:24So, we're nowhere in the lexical graphical universe of accounting.

42:31But he continues in bookkeeping, the ledgers must always be kept in balance, debits equal

42:36credits.

42:37If the books get out of balance, something must be adjusted.

42:40The nifal of nacham, now nifal is one of the stems that is used.

42:48And basically this is a patterns of how we change the verbal root in order to give it

42:54specific meanings.

42:56And so the nifal usually gives it either a passive or a reflexive meaning.

43:01And so like if you have the word love, usually in a transitive sense, you love someone else.

43:10But in a reflexive sense, you would love yourself or in a passive sense, you would be loved.

43:16So the nifal stem, which is what this verbal root occurs in indicates it is reflexive or passive.

43:25The nifal of nacham can be viewed in terms of acting to keep personal, national or cosmic

43:29ledgers in balance.

43:31Now my concern here is that Walton provides no argument for this.

43:37Does not say if we look here, we see that it's referring to bookkeeping.

43:41If we look over here, we can see it's occurring in the context of bookkeeping, of accounting.

43:49There's no argument for why we should look at bookkeeping.

43:55He just says, let's try bookkeeping.

43:59And then the next, let's do it in the context of zoo keeping.

44:03And then we'll see what it does if we do it in that way.

44:06So he comes up with a few examples.

44:08If someone has suffered personal losses and is in mourning, his ledgers are brought into

44:13balance by some action or situation that gets him back on his feet by a silver lining he

44:17sees to the cloud and has a bunch of different passages where this verb occurs and then says,

44:23these can all be understood in these bookkeeping terms.

44:27Taking this information back to Genesis 6, we're now in a position to suggest that nacham

44:32in Genesis 6 verse 6 through 7 has nothing to do with regrets grief or being sorrow,

44:37being sorry, excuse me, Adonai is seeking to redress the situation.

44:40He is auditing the accounts because he had made humankind.

44:46So this is a tortured argument to begin with.

44:49This is an argument that you can't find in any lexicon, that you can't find in any theological

44:56dictionary.

44:57This is something that Walton invented in order to escape, recognizing that the text

45:05is explicitly saying God regrets.

45:08And here's my biggest concern with that.

45:11If we go look back at these ways to seek resolution, he says, we can simply rethink our view of

45:16God.

45:17Now, ostensibly, one's view of God derives from the biblical text if they are the ultimate

45:23authority about God.

45:25Why would we need to rethink our view of God in order to understand a text in the sixth

45:33chapter of the Bible?

45:36Shouldn't this text have helped us formulate our view of God?

45:40Right.

45:41If we're returning to this text and saying, we have a view of God and it seems to be out

45:47of place with where we get our view of God, the problem is not with the text, the problem

45:55is with the view of God.

45:56Yeah, this should have been, this verse should have been formative in your view of God, not

46:01your view of God needs to then inform how you view this verse.

46:05Yeah.

46:06And so it indicates one, the view of God is not based on the Bible and I wouldn't, and

46:13that's perfectly accurate.

46:14I think very few people's view of God, if anybody's view of God is unilaterally derived

46:20from the Bible, it come from tradition.

46:23And those traditions are usually tethered in some way to the Bible, but more of it has

46:31to do with how their view of God is interacting with their circumstances and how their view

46:38of God serves their interests and their structuring of power and values and how their view of

46:43God interacts with other groups, views of God.

46:47And so toward the end of this, he says, despite the discomfort of not having an English term

46:53to use in translation, this proposal, the conceptual framework that he just made up and

46:58said, let's just slap it on there and it'll work, says, this proposal lends a credible

47:05cohesion to the meaning of the root, something that we don't have to have and resolves the

47:11theological difficulties by eliminating any need to explain how God could be sorry, sorry

47:17or repent.

47:18In other words, this text can be reinterpreted, so it doesn't conflict with the view of God

47:24that we did not get from the text.

47:27So what confuses me about it is that you're trying to, I mean, I understand that it is

47:36difficult if you have a, you know, omnipotent and omniscient view of God, it's confusing

47:45to say God regret regretted something because how could he have not seen it coming and created

47:52it differently or, you know, how could he, you know, blah, blah, blah, that I understand

47:57that difficulty.

47:59But in the next few verses, God then acts on that regret that like, it's very clear that

48:08he, like, he created a whole race of people, a whole group, a whole, you know, species,

48:15and then didn't like it and literally floods the entire earth and gets rid of them all.

48:23So like, yeah, okay, even if you found a way to sort of work around the language that says

48:31God regretted, he did the action of that regret.

48:35So I don't understand what you've solved.

48:38You know what I mean?

48:39Other than just that one little phrase.

48:41It's trying to offload responsibility from God because for God to say, for the text to

48:46say God regrets, it means ultimately this is God's doing.

48:51And in the text, it's pretty explicit.

48:54So Vayinachim Adonai ki asa et ha-adam.

48:59So and whatever Naham, it Naham'd Adonai, that he made, that he had made humanity.

49:10So like his own action, God's own action is the proximate cause of whatever feeling God

49:18is having that is descends from this root that refers to the womb and the gut and feelings

49:24of compassion and remorse and things like that.

49:28And so to then say, well, very clearly, God is upset with what humanity did is like it's

49:37two steps removed from the text itself.

49:41It first has to reread the verb and then has to try to reinterpret the rest of the sentence,

49:48which clearly puts the burden of this action directly on God themselves.

49:55And so it just does not work for me, but it is such an excellent illustration of what

50:04I've described in the past as the life cycle of religious dogmas.

50:09The text is when the text is written, nobody had a problem with the idea that God regrets

50:14or repents.

50:16Later on down the road, we develop this idea that God is omniscient and omnipotent and omnipresent.

50:23And the this idea developed slowly over time as ideas about God are competing with other

50:30ideas about God and are just kind of enmeshed in this milieu of being used as identity markers

50:39and things like that.

50:41And in the competition, you always want to one up the competition.

50:46Our God created this.

50:47Oh, well, our God created all this.

50:49Oh, well, our God created all this until you get to this idea.

50:52Yeah.

50:53Well, our God created everything and you get to these superlatives and nobody can, nobody

50:59can trump a superlative.

51:02And so the superlative becomes kind of the pinnacle of the concept of God in the this

51:10marketplace of ideas about God.

51:13And so our God knows everything is going to happen in the future.

51:16Yeah.

51:17Well, our God also knows everything that happened in the past and our God knows everything that

51:20you've done.

51:21Yeah.

51:22Well, our God knows everything you're thinking about.

51:25And then ultimately you get to our God knows all. Yeah.

51:29And so you get to that superlative.

51:30So then you have omniscience and then you have our God can can do all things.

51:36That's superlative, which is omnipotence.

51:38And then you have, yeah, well, our God is everywhere.

51:42And so you get to that superlative of omnipresence and you can't go any further.

51:47But now you have to deal with the consequences of those doctrines.

51:53And so once you get to omnipotence and omniscience and omnipresence, you turn around and you

51:57see, Oh crap, that text says God regrets and God repents.

52:03Well, time to reread that text.

52:07And this is because this is not a static thing.

52:10You're always having to engage with these negotiations between the texts and the ideas

52:17and the groups that are competing with them.

52:20And so every dogma that you can find in groups that read the Bible confessionally, whether

52:27Christian or Jewish or somewhere in between is having to constantly negotiate with what

52:35the text says and try to refigure out ways to make the dogmas that they've developed

52:41fit with the text because ultimately you want everything to have descended from the text.

52:46And the reality is that it does not, it is a product of the interaction of people in circumstances.

52:54And the text is usually the authority, it's usually just a proof text.

53:00And so they got to look back at the text and be like, how are we going to resolve this

53:05issue?

53:06And you know, they're explicit about it.

53:07We have to seek resolution.

53:10We have this theological difficulty.

53:13And we've got to try to make everything fit together, which is just a manifestation of

53:19the fact that these dogmas don't derive from the text.

53:23The text is the proof text for the dogmas and the further you get, the further the dogmas

53:28get away from the text, the more and more work and the more and more creative and crafty

53:36you have to be in order to make it sound like the dogmas and the texts are not at odds with

53:41each other.

53:42It's an interesting thing because in that moment where your theology sort of clashes

53:50with the text of the book, if the text were truly the, you know, if the Bible were truly

54:01the genesis of your theology, then that moment would be a moment, not where you say we have

54:07to fix the text, but it's where you say we have to fix the theology.

54:12Like my theology is what's the problem here.

54:15But clearly that's not the response that many people have when they encounter this moment.

54:21And that's not wrong.

54:23But it just says that like, if your claim is that your theology comes directly from the

54:29Bible, then you're going about this backwards.

54:32Yeah.

54:33And I think it illustrates and I think you're right that it's not wrong.

54:37It's an inevitability because there's, you know, the Bible does not exist in a vacuum.

54:43The Bible exists in an ever-changing world made up of different people in different groups

54:47who are all vying for the resources and the power and the values and everything.

54:53And so it's constantly changing and it's just an inevitability that we have to negotiate

54:59with the text.

55:00But yeah, I think that's an illustration that the Bible is not the ultimate authority.

55:05The tradition is the ultimate authority.

55:09Whatever your group decides is best for the group is the ultimate authority.

55:13And the text is just there for you to point to as the proof text, as the authority when

55:20in reality, it has the least authority.

55:24You can decide it means whatever the group decides it needs to mean.

55:31Yeah, that's one of my big concerns with arguments like this.

55:36And I've looked around to try to see if there are other examples of people picking up this

55:42argument, of linguists, of lexicographers going, "Oh yeah, Walton noticed something

55:48that we all missed and I have not been able to see anything."

55:52But the argument does the job for this volume, which is written for evangelical Christians

55:59who want to be told that it all fits, that it all works.

56:04And so if Walton can make an argument that is semi-plausible and that most of the readership

56:12will be like, "Okay, yeah, I get it, I, you know, hooray for us.

56:15We got it right," then it will have done the job.

56:19And I think that's what we're looking at here.

56:22And unfortunately, we have a content creator on TikTok who is then trying to spread that

56:31rhetorical shoehorn even further.

56:36There you go.

56:38You know, it's a thing that happens all over the place.

56:40At some point, Dan, I'm going to make you come with me to Kentucky and we'll go to

56:44the creation.

56:45And see what Ken Ham does because he's the master at these kinds of things.

56:53I'm amazing.

56:54That's a great idea.

56:56We honestly need to do that.

56:57We're going to do it.

56:58All right.

56:59I'm not sure if they'd allow us to record it now, though.

57:02No, no, no, but I mean, we can be sneaky.

57:05We'll figure it out.

57:06Anyway, thank you all for listening.

57:08If you would like to become a part of getting Dan and me to Kentucky, you could become a

57:13patron of the show.

57:15That would be really helpful.

57:16You can go to patreon.com/dataoverdogma to do that.

57:20I hear it's pretty easy.

57:22You just head north and then kind of turn west.

57:25Oh, shoot.

57:26What's the line?

57:27Last of the Mohicans, when he goes on the way to Kentucky.

57:30Dang it, I forgot the line.

57:33You are a flowing font of pop cultural references.

57:39So just a reminder, you can reach us at contact@dataoverdogmapod.com.

57:45And if you want to be on the list to get information about our tours or whatever tours

57:53we have, please send in an email and we will keep track of that.

57:58And other than that, hey, thanks so much for listening.

58:01We sure do appreciate you.

58:02We'll talk to you again next week.

58:04Bye, everybody.

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