Ep 14: Lilith Unfair

00:00(upbeat music)

00:02Lilith and Adam are in the garden

00:05and Lilith gets upset because she wants to

00:08and the text says be on top.

00:10And some people try to interpret this figuratively

00:13as an authority question.

00:16I think it is far more likely

00:18that this is a reference to sexual positions.

00:20That Lilith wants to be on top

00:22and Adam says you are not fit to be on top.

00:26I am the only one who is fit to be on top.

00:30And this would align with the long standing notion

00:34that the only sexual position appropriate for a man

00:37is the dominant one.

00:38And the only sexual position appropriate for a woman

00:41is the submissive one.

00:43And so for a woman to be on top,

00:45throws a wrench into the social hierarchy

00:48and dogs and cats running wild, it's pandemonium.

00:53I'm forgetting to go spusters.

00:54- Mass hysteria, come on.

00:55- Mass hysteria, yeah.

00:57(upbeat music)

01:01- Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

01:02- And I'm Dan Beecher.

01:04- And you are listening to the "Data Over Dogma" podcast

01:07where we try to increase the public's access

01:10to the academic study of the Bible and religion

01:12and combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

01:16How are you doing today, Dan?

01:17- I am doing fine, how are you doing?

01:20- I'm doing well, although a tinge of regret,

01:22someone told me that we really missed out

01:24on an opportunity to call our last,

01:26or episode 12, there's something about Mary.

01:30- Ah, so, well, that's true, we could have done it,

01:35we missed it, you know, I did title it

01:38after something that Elizabeth Schrader said in the show,

01:43so I thought I was at least honoring her with that title.

01:47- Yeah.

01:48- But, you know, we miss opportunities all the time.

01:52That's part of life.

01:53We win some, we lose some.

01:56Coming up on this week's show,

01:59we're gonna be talking about a famous and infamous lady,

02:04first, and then we're delving later

02:08into some of your personal work,

02:13some work that you have a lot of experience with.

02:17- Yeah, I'm gonna do a,

02:20what does that mean segment on the word "Steeli,"

02:24which I use every now and then,

02:25and I can count on getting a dozen references to "Steeli Dan."

02:28- I was gonna say, every time I say that word,

02:32and some people say, "Steila,"

02:34and then for plural, they say, "Steeli."

02:37I say, "Steeli" for the singular and "Steeli"

02:40for the plural, so.

02:42- S-T-E-L-E, is that what we're saying?

02:45- S-T-E-L-E, yeah.

02:46- Okay, all right, well, we'll get to that later on in the show,

02:50but for now, let's do our first segment, "Who's that?"

02:54(upbeat music)

02:57We're gonna talk about someone,

03:00a name that appears, I think, only once in the Bible

03:05if it appears at all in your version.

03:09It might not appear in your version whatsoever,

03:12but it's a person/thing/who knows what,

03:18well, hopefully Dan, you know what.

03:23It has become an icon of kind of,

03:28the modern feminism, this person,

03:32people of a certain age, you and I included Dan,

03:37we'll recall that back in the '90s,

03:39singer Sarah McLachlan named an entire festival

03:44after a music festival after this person.

03:49So, who is or what is Lilith?

03:54- Yeah, let's get into it.

03:57And speaking of Sarah McLachlan, a huge fan, by the way,

04:01if I had the money or the time or the know-how back

04:05in the '90s when I was in high school,

04:06I would have loved to have gone to the Lilith there.

04:11- If you're listening Sarah McLachlan, call us.

04:15(laughing)

04:16- She's not, she's got much better things to do.

04:19(laughing)

04:21But yeah, Lilith, so, well, we only have one passage

04:25in all the Bible that has anything at all to say

04:27about Lilith and that passage is in Isaiah 34 in verse 14.

04:32And here we're talking about a threat of destruction

04:38to Israel and part of this threat is to say,

04:43basically, I'm gonna turn you into a deserted land,

04:46a land that's going to be inhabited by a bunch of creatures

04:51that are associated with the wilderness,

04:53associated with a lack of habitation, a lack of civilization.

04:58So, in the NRSV, it says, "Wildcats shall meet with hyenas,

05:03goat demons shall call to each other,

05:06and thereto, Lilith shall repose."

05:10And the word in Hebrew there is lelet.

05:13And most scholars will tell you that this comes from

05:20a term in Akkadian, so from Mesopotamia,

05:23that ultimately derives from a Sumerian word.

05:27So, it's probably a borrowing into Akkadian

05:29from the Sumerian, which is a very different language

05:32from Akkadian.

05:33And I think the KJV renders screech owl, doesn't it?

05:40- Yeah, the KJV says, let's see, yes, it's so different.

05:45The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet

05:48with the wild beasts of the island,

05:50and the satter shall cry to his fellow,

05:53the screech owl also shall rest there

05:56and find for herself a place of rest.

05:58- Yeah, so it doesn't sound like they had a great idea

06:01of what to do with the lelet, the only time it occurs there.

06:06But it seems--

06:07- NIV, by the way, the new international version--

06:10- Oh, yeah, what does that say?

06:11- renders it as the night creatures will also lie down

06:16and find for themselves places to rest.

06:18- Night creatures, night creatures.

06:20- Night creatures.

06:21- Oh, I just realized, I probably shouldn't sing stuff

06:28because we might run into copyright issues.

06:31- Nobody reported us.

06:33- Yeah, that was for satirical purposes only.

06:36- Yeah, and obviously I changed the lyrics,

06:38but the new English translation,

06:42the N.E.T. has nocturnal animals.

06:45- Whoa!

06:45- No, I think I saw that movie.

06:47That's a really interesting--

06:48- With Nev Campbell from something like that.

06:53So when we go into Acadian, we find these terms

06:57that seem to refer to an entire class

07:00of some kind of demon or entity

07:06that is associated with stormy winds

07:10and with the nighttime,

07:12and with kind of predatory behavior

07:16as well as deviant sexuality.

07:20So there's a feminine dimension of what's going on here,

07:24but-- - Kind of like all those things,

07:26everything you just mentioned.

07:27- I'm kind of a fan. - This is your jam, huh?

07:29(laughing)

07:32- You are vibing.

07:34- And so in this literature,

07:37which spans many, many centuries,

07:40there's not a ton of consistency.

07:41So we can't really nail it down to one specific thing.

07:44We can just speak in broad terms

07:46about the different ways that it pops up.

07:50And when we get to some of the feminine aspects of it,

07:54this is some kind of creature or female entity

07:59that does not have a husband

08:02or seeks to ensnare men or husbands.

08:07And so it's kind of a deviant, apparent sexuality.

08:13And so these are creatures that you are worried about.

08:16And I think that's what they're trying to get across

08:19in Isaiah 34.

08:20This is somebody that you really want

08:24to keep outside the walls of your city.

08:27- Yeah, don't let her take her rest there.

08:29Are you kidding me? (laughing)

08:31- Very dangerous.

08:32- Yeah, and oh, it reminds me of a time when we,

08:37I was in Beersheva and I was walking

08:43through one of the little "streets" of the ruins of Beersheva,

08:48and a fox darted across the path right in front of me

08:54and into a little hole right under the ruins

08:58of a little wall of a house or something like that.

09:00And it reminded me of somewhere else,

09:03what is it, no, it's actually in the New Testament,

09:06foxes have their holes, but the son of man

09:09has not where to lay his head.

09:11But I kind of thought of this area,

09:15these ruins were now places where foxes

09:17were making their dens.

09:18Very similar idea that this is gonna be a place

09:21where it's uninhabitable to lie humans

09:24and it's inhabited by these creatures

09:26that occupy the periphery of civilization.

09:29You have this kind of idea of center and periphery

09:31that is very influential in the way they think

09:34about the world, anciently, where the city,

09:38inside the city wall, that is kind of the height

09:40of civilization, that's where the best people live,

09:44that's where the temple is, that's what's considered

09:46the center of humanity, human civilization.

09:50And then the further away you get from the city

09:52and the city walls and human habitation,

09:55the closer you get to kind of the unknown

09:57and dangerous boundaries of what is out there.

10:01And so that's where demons dwell.

10:03And that's where--

10:04- I've seen Mad Max, I know how.

10:05(laughing)

10:07- And that's where all the kind of unknown,

10:10kind of fuzzy creatures that you don't really want

10:14to be around, hang out.

10:16And so that's where they're gonna put these demons,

10:20the satir as the KJV calls it or the goat,

10:24I think goat demons as the NRSV puts it.

10:27- And then you gotta love the goat demons, man.

10:29(laughing)

10:30- And that's where you put Lilith and even in the Pentateuch

10:35when it talks about the scapegoat.

10:39This is the goat for Azazel was another demonic figure

10:43and where do you take the goat to send it off to Azazel

10:46out into the desert?

10:47Because the uninhabited region, you know,

10:49habitation is kind of corresponds to proximity to deity.

10:54And then the further away you get the more,

10:57you get the other half of the divine world,

11:00the malevolent half.

11:02And once you get to the sea,

11:05then you also have a similar situation

11:07where the sea is chaotic.

11:09And that's where ships get wrecked,

11:12that's where people drown,

11:13that's where things go wrong.

11:14So you have order and chaos, center periphery,

11:19civilization, uninhabitable land.

11:21- And how do we get from a screech owl in or some sort of demon,

11:26you know, thing?

11:34I guess you're gonna get us to feminist icon at some point,

11:39right?

11:40- Yeah, I'm gonna get us there.

11:41(laughing)

11:42But the next thing to note is that in the Dead Sea Scrolls

11:47in the Great Isaiah Scroll, it's not Lilith,

11:51it's plural.

11:54And so, yeah, the name is Lil Yote.

11:59So that's the plural of the name,

12:01and then the verb is in the plural,

12:03which suggests that kind of as a callback

12:07to how it originally worked in the Akkadian language

12:10that this was more of a category of entity,

12:13not a single entity, but a category.

12:15Now, when we get into early Jewish exegesis of the text,

12:20one of the things that the early rabbis

12:23in the early exegites or interpreters of the Hebrew Bible

12:28tried to do is find meaning in everything.

12:31And so they needed to find out what these words meant

12:35and they wanted to kind of associate it

12:37with something that would make it significant.

12:40With this, it's kind of difficult,

12:42but there was a reading of Genesis

12:46in early Jewish interpretation that set the stage

12:50for Lilith to become relevant

12:52several centuries down the road.

12:55And that reading had to do with how the early rabbis

12:58reconciled the two creation accounts in Genesis one

13:02and in Genesis two, and we talked about this

13:04in our very first episode,

13:06but you've got two different creation accounts.

13:09And Christians today try to harmonize these

13:13in a lot of different ways.

13:14Oh, one was the spiritual creation,

13:17the other was the physical creation.

13:19One was a broad outline, one was more detailed,

13:22one was the 30,000 foot view, one was only.

13:25Bunch of different ways to try to harmonize this.

13:27One way that some early Jewish interpreters

13:29tried to harmonize this was to suggest

13:31there were two creations.

13:33And in the first creation, you had man and woman

13:38or there are two references to creation.

13:40In the first one, you had man and woman created

13:42at the exact same time.

13:44But in the second one, the human is created first

13:47and the woman is created afterwards.

13:50And so one way to reconcile this is to say,

13:53when they were first created, Adam had a wife

13:57who was created at the exact same time as him.

14:02And then we've got this other woman

14:03who's created subsequently.

14:06And so this must be Eve is Adam's second wife.

14:10And so Genesis one--

14:11- As a friend of mine once put it,

14:14that becomes the first rolling out of the McRib.

14:17(laughing)

14:20- There are layers to that.

14:23And so there arose this tradition, not a majority tradition,

14:30but a tradition that Adam was created simultaneously

14:34with a first wife.

14:36And then there was a second wife that was made

14:39and that second wife was Eve.

14:41And so that then leads to the question

14:43for later exegetes, who on earth was this first wife?

14:46- Yeah.

14:47- And we get in a text called the alphabet of Ben-Sira,

14:51which was written sometime between around 700 CE

14:54and around 1000 CE.

14:56We get a text that links Lilith with Adam's first wife

15:02and suggests that according to this interpretation

15:06that has Eve as Adam's second wife,

15:08the first wife was Lilith.

15:10- I take it that this alphabet of Ben-Sira was not

15:13a children's book.

15:15(laughing)

15:16- No, it was not a picture book.

15:19It was a chapter book, it was all words.

15:21And now in medieval Judaism,

15:26the Lilith had become somewhat of a succubus,

15:29a one of these demons that kind of afflicts,

15:32particularly men, particularly their sexuality,

15:37causes problems for them,

15:39but can also cause problems for newborn babies.

15:42And in the alphabet of Ben-Sira,

15:44we have a bit of an etiology for this character

15:49as a succubus.

15:51In the story, Lilith and Adam are in the garden

15:55and Lilith gets upset because she wants to,

16:00and the text says, "be on top."

16:02And some people, so they try to interpret this

16:07figuratively as an authority question.

16:11I think it is far more likely that this is a reference

16:13to sexual positions, that Lilith wants to be on top.

16:17And Adam says, "You are not fit to be on top.

16:21"I am the only one who is fit to be on top."

16:24And this would align with the longstanding notion

16:28that the only sexual position appropriate for a man

16:31is the dominant one,

16:33and the only sexual position appropriate for a woman

16:36is the submissive one.

16:37And so for a woman to be on top,

16:39throws a wrench into the social hierarchy

16:42and dogs and cats running wild, it's pandemonium.

16:47I'm forgetting to Ghostbusters.

16:49- Mass hysteria, come on.

16:50- Mass hysteria, yeah.

16:51So, and we can go all the way back

16:54to ancient Mesopotamian text from a thousand BCE

16:58that talk about how if a man is on the bottom,

17:02that it robs him of his masculinity

17:05and his vitality, and we can go to,

17:10there's an early Jewish text.

17:11I'm blanking on what it is at the moment,

17:14but it talks about how if a man takes

17:17the bottom position in sex with his own wife,

17:20it will give him diarrhea.

17:23(both laughing)

17:25There's a notion that it renders one--

17:28- That's amazing.

17:29- Yeah, it renders one ritually impure.

17:33And so this is an ideology that exists for thousands of years

17:38and it's reflected in this idea that Lilith is like,

17:41"No, I want to be on top."

17:43And Adam's like, "We can't do this."

17:45- That's absurd.

17:46- Yeah, what kind of household am I running here?

17:49- It is amazing.

17:51It is amazing that the alpha male,

17:54the only male at the time had alpha male ideals

17:59about sexual positions, but there you go.

18:01- Well, and it kind of shows you that these are characters

18:05that are used to tell stories about ourselves.

18:08And so she gets upset and she storms out

18:12of the Garden of Eden and she just takes off.

18:15And God is told about this, is not happy with this.

18:21And so sends three angels after Lilith

18:26to convince her to return to the Garden of Eden.

18:31And they catch up with her and they say,

18:35"Hey, what's going on?

18:37"You need to come back to the Garden of Eden."

18:39And she's not having it.

18:41And these three angels are Sinoi, San Sinoi, and Simangalov.

18:46And yes.

18:48- Those are great names.

18:49- Yeah.

18:50And what Lilith tells them is, "I'm not coming back.

18:55"I am gonna go be a succubus.

18:58"I'm gonna go afflict men.

18:59"I'm gonna go afflict newborn babies.

19:01"I'm gonna cause illness.

19:03"I'm gonna cause death among newborns.

19:05"And the only way you can stop me

19:07"is if a newborn baby is wearing an amulet

19:10"that has your three names on it.

19:12"And if I see that amulet, I will have no power

19:15"over that newborn, that infant."

19:18- Weird that she put her own structures on herself.

19:21That seems like an odd thing to do if you're gonna just,

19:23if you're in an afflicting mood,

19:26don't make rules that you have to follow.

19:29That just seems weird.

19:30- Yeah, just arbitrarily limit yourself.

19:33So most likely this story is an etiology

19:38for why people were using amulets

19:41with maybe these three angels' names on them,

19:44Sinoi, San Sinoi, and Simangalov.

19:47Maybe they didn't have their name on it.

19:49- Which by the way, beautiful names,

19:50if you're considering naming your baby,

19:53I think if you're not gonna name them Dan,

19:55which obviously you should.

19:57- That's the easiest.

19:58- Go with Simangalov, or whatever you just said.

20:01- Simangalov.

20:02Yeah, and so this was likely a practice

20:06that was going on at the time,

20:08the use of apotropaic amulets to ward off evil.

20:13And specifically, the evil that is the succubus Lilith

20:18who would cause illness and death in newborns.

20:22- And there was probably-- - Which by the way, was so common

20:25in the era, like newborn death and miscarriage

20:30was fully like a third of children, wasn't it?

20:33Something along those lines.

20:36- Yeah, I'm sure it's changed over time,

20:38but certainly it's not until the modern era

20:40that infant mortality has dropped significantly,

20:44which is one of the main contributors

20:46to our huge populations these days.

20:50- That's the biggest mistake we've made as a species.

20:52- Well, a lot of people when they look

20:56at life expectancy in the ancient world,

20:58they're like, "Yeah, you lived to an age of 40."

21:02It's like, no infant mortality drags that average down,

21:07but even in the ancient world,

21:12if someone survived to adulthood,

21:14most likely they were gonna live to be 60 or 70

21:16or something like that.

21:17So the life expectancy has not changed to me.

21:20- I think you mean 969.

21:22- Oh, please don't get me started on your time.

21:28- Well, we'll do that on another show.

21:30- Yeah. - Oh gosh.

21:31I get asked about that all the time.

21:32People are like, "Do they mean months?"

21:35- It's just, all right.

21:38So we've got Lilith, she is going to afflict

21:43all of the children.

21:44She has made a deal with the angels

21:48that their names can protect them.

21:50I guess it makes sense to me that this woman

21:54who was meant to be brought in,

21:58at least in this story, which is non-biblical again,

22:02but this story where she is Adam's first wife

22:06and she refuses to subject herself

22:10to this sort of patriarchal notion

22:13that she is not equal to this man in some way,

22:17that he has to dominate her.

22:20Yeah, I'm starting to see Sarah McLachlan's point.

22:23- Yeah, yeah, you can see how someone like this

22:27would become an icon for femininity.

22:30Now, there are pieces of misinformation

22:35and circulation out there.

22:36Some people will argue that the original version of Genesis

22:41talked about Adam's first wife as Lilith

22:43or something like that.

22:44And there are no data that support that.

22:46This is a much later tradition that's building on

22:50not just earlier accounts of Genesis,

22:53but medieval interpretive traditions

22:56regarding the accounts of the creation

22:59and is kind of extrapolating and elaborating

23:02on those traditions to create this story

23:05of Adam having a first wife named Lilith.

23:09So that's something that that idea is created somewhere

23:12in that window between around 700 CE and 1000 CE.

23:15So only a little over a thousand years old.

23:19- And the reason that it became, sorry,

23:21I'm just, I'm trying to piece this together.

23:22This alphabet of whoever, sorry.

23:26- Ben-Sira.

23:27- Ben-Sira is taking the exegesis of the difference

23:32between the two creation stories

23:38and inserting this already existing concept of,

23:42but vague and not quote, not well understood idea

23:46of a evil night spirit, a succubus or whatever,

23:51and saying, let's create an origin story for both, basically.

23:55- Yeah.

23:56- Does that sound like a fair representation

23:58of what you're saying?

23:59- Yeah, I think so.

24:00It's taking the blocks that are around them

24:05and just building something new out of them,

24:09which is what is so often the case with the texts

24:13that are in the Bible and the texts that are next

24:15to the Bible and that inform the Bible.

24:18And it makes sense because these texts

24:22that become authoritative or these traditions

24:24that become authoritative, they're not gonna gain

24:26any traction, any purchase if they're just totally

24:30out of left field and they have no relationship whatsoever

24:33to what's already going on in the discourse.

24:35And so that's why you pluck from the existing discourse

24:40to find the building blocks for these ideas

24:45that you want to forward.

24:48And that way, once that new idea is out there,

24:51it's new in some sense, but in another sense,

24:54it's appealing to things that people already understand

24:58and have accepted and are already in widespread circulation.

25:01And that's how you build a tradition

25:03that's going to become popular and is going to last.

25:07If you come out of, again, of left field

25:11with something that has no relationship

25:13to what people are talking about,

25:15it's only going to have the novelty

25:18and that's gonna wear off pretty quickly.

25:20And so you'll find a lot of these extra biblical traditions

25:24and even a lot of biblical traditions

25:26are just incremental elaborations on stuff

25:30that is already out there and sometimes it takes

25:33on a life of its own and people confuse it

25:37for the original idea.

25:40- Well, I mean, if you want to wrangle jewel

25:46and lease a lobe and get them to rally around a cause,

25:51sounds like Adam's first wife is as good a one as any.

25:57Man, I feel all these restrictions on me now

26:01because I want to quote a bunch of song lyrics.

26:04Suddenly, I'm like, I probably shouldn't do that, so.

26:08- Don't get us into any more trouble than we're already in.

26:11All right, well, there you go, Lilith as the screech owl,

26:16which I'm sure that some people might say that

26:21about some of those singers that I just mentioned.

26:24But no, I think that's a really cool little tradition there.

26:29- Yeah, it is interesting.

26:32I think it's important to know the origins of that

26:34since that tradition kind of has some traction

26:37on social media and I think it's interesting

26:41to know why it has informed this kind of feminist approach

26:45to the creation account in Genesis

26:48and the origins of Adam's wife.

26:51But yeah, it's definitely something that comes much later

26:53down the line and originates in this ancient Mesopotamian

26:56tradition about some kind of rather amorphous demonic spirit

27:02of some kind associated with the nighttime,

27:04with the winds and with a deviant kind of sexuality.

27:08- And if you would like an amulet for your child,

27:10please go to our webpage where it's in a merch section.

27:14We don't have a merch section yet.

27:16We'll come up with one soon.

27:18Anyway, that's great.

27:20Let's move on to our next segment.

27:22Alright, let's do it.

27:24(upbeat music)

27:26- Well, Steely Dan, talk to us.

27:30What's that mean?

27:32- What's that mean?

27:33- We're looking into the Steelys.

27:38You teased it before, talk to us.

27:41What have we got here?

27:42- So I use this word a lot, Steely,

27:45and mainly in my writing, but also in some of the

27:49social media content that I put out there,

27:53and it's basically a standing stone.

27:56The Hebrew word here is matzevah,

27:58and the plural is matzevote.

28:00And when you see in your translation of the Bible,

28:03a reference to a pillar,

28:05sometimes it will be standing stone,

28:07sometimes it will be pillar.

28:09I can't imagine anybody is translating Steely,

28:13but this is a Steely.

28:16This is an upright stone.

28:18It is sometimes carved,

28:20sometimes as it is found naturally,

28:23but it is something that is taller than it is wide.

28:26Frequently, and in the periods of the composition

28:30of the Hebrew Bible, almost all the time,

28:33it had a flat front,

28:35and then the back was usually rounded,

28:37or angled, or something like that,

28:38and that flat front would be the face of the Steely.

28:43And this could be used for a number,

28:46well, not a number, a few different purposes.

28:49Now, we begin to find these in the area of the Levant,

28:54or ancient Southwest Asia,

28:55or Israel, Palestine,

28:59way back in the Neolithic period.

29:04And they're kind of scattered around the deserts,

29:06and archeologists identify two different uses for Steely,

29:14which is the way I refer to the plural of Steely.

29:18One use is as a commemorative marker for a burial.

29:23So it's very similar.

29:26And in fact, in many ways,

29:28it looks almost exactly the same

29:31as a contemporary headstone

29:33that you might see in a cemetery.

29:35You also find them in the Neolithic period,

29:39in groups, in arrangements that indicate to many archeologists,

29:44that they are there to represent or presence,

29:52give presence to manifest the presence of deities.

29:56Now, I've argued in my book

29:59that there's actually some overlap

30:02between these two different uses,

30:04that the concept of deities

30:08is very closely related to concepts of deceased ancestors.

30:13These are unseen imagined agents.

30:16And when I say imagined agents,

30:18I'm referring to agents that we cannot see,

30:21but can only engage with our minds.

30:25And so this is not to say fake, made up fairy tale agents.

30:30It's to say it's the exact same thing

30:32as talking about the United States of America.

30:36It's something that you cannot see or touch or smell or taste.

30:39It's something that you conjure up in your mind.

30:43And so these imagined agents,

30:46they are able to interact with people.

30:49And one of the main ways people try to interact with them

30:53is by offering things like food and water

30:56and light and shelter in exchange for,

31:00maybe not hurting them, maybe protection,

31:02maybe information about what's happening in the future.

31:05Now, these kinds of interactions

31:08take place with regard to deceased ancestors,

31:11as well as with regards to deities.

31:13And when you find these standing stones,

31:17sometimes they're set up in mortuary chapels,

31:20the little rooms that are designed for people

31:22to go and engage with their deceased kin.

31:25So they might go there annually and have a feast

31:29with the person.

31:30They might go there to recite their name

31:34so that their memory continues on

31:36so that their afterlife is extended.

31:39They might go there to petition them for help,

31:43leave what are known as little votive offerings,

31:46little objects intended to remind

31:49the deceased ancestor of them or something like that.

31:54And we see the exact same kinds of behaviors in temples

31:58where you go to have a feast,

32:01where you go to appeal to them for protection or for aid

32:06and where you go to recite their name.

32:09And so the difference between ancestors and deities

32:12is not a very clear one, anciently.

32:17So there are a lot of similarities

32:18between the way these things functioned in relation

32:20to deities as well as in relation to ancestors.

32:23And there was an interesting discovery from 2008

32:27that shines a lot more light on the overlap

32:30in the way these things worked.

32:32There was a steely that was discovered

32:34that had a drawing and an inscription on it.

32:38And the drawing was of a deceased person

32:40who was holding up some stuff

32:42and they're in front of a table with some pita bread

32:44and some duck and things like that on it.

32:46And they're holding a pine cone and a bowl.

32:49But the inscription is the really cool part.

32:51It identifies, it says, I am Khatumua

32:54who made this steely.

32:57And it is basically a prescription for

33:01what kinds of offerings should be given to the steely

33:05in their mortuary chapel on a regular basis.

33:09And it refers to giving these things to my nephesh

33:14which can be somewhat uncomfortably translated as my soul

33:21which is in this steely.

33:25Oh, wow, that, so okay.

33:28Somehow the steely has become the receptacle

33:33for the eternal nature of this person.

33:36- Yeah, and we see very similar ideas at work

33:41in most of the mortuary practices around this area.

33:46We see it in Mesopotamia, we see it in Anatolia,

33:49we see it in Egypt where somehow the deceased's something,

33:54spirit, soul, whatever you wanna call it,

33:56it's conceptualized in a variety of different ways.

33:59But somehow this thing is hanging around

34:03and you engage with it by creating some kind of material media

34:08to house it and that becomes the index

34:13and the medium for engaging with it.

34:16So, and this Khatumua steely is kind of making explicit

34:21this idea that my soul is going to reside in this steely

34:25and so put the food right in front of it.

34:28- Give me pine cones.

34:30- Pine cones and bowls and ducks with the head still on.

34:35- I need a duck and a pine cone or I'm gonna be mad.

34:39Get in here.

34:40- Take the cannoli and this steely

34:45is very much shaped like a contemporary headstone.

34:49- Can you give me the size, how tall are we talking?

34:52- There are different sizes.

34:53Some of them might only be like a foot high.

34:57So the earlier in time you get the smaller they tended to be

35:02but the Khatumua one is probably,

35:04if I recall correctly about a meter high,

35:07it might be shorter than that.

35:09But when you have spoken about the Judahite temple

35:15at a rod and if you go there, you can see a steely setup

35:20and you can actually enter the holy of holies.

35:22It's a reconstruction and the steely

35:25and the two incense altars are replicas.

35:29They're not the originals which are in display

35:31in the Israel Museum.

35:32And so like there's not a rope, you can walk up into it.

35:35You can stand on the incense altars, you can--

35:38- You can give it a duck.

35:39- You can touch the standing stone.

35:41Yeah, if you wanna, I'm sure no one would notice

35:45if you went up and poured some oil on it

35:47or something like that.

35:48- Bring a pine cone, who knows?

35:49- Rubbed his head for luck, yeah.

35:51And that's about a meter high as well

35:54and about a foot and a half wide.

35:56- Interesting.

35:57- And one thing I pointed out in my book is

36:00this is not unrelated to the way we engage

36:05with headstones today.

36:08'Cause you see it in movies, you see it in TV shows.

36:11Maybe some people who are listening

36:13have had the experience of talking to a headstone,

36:17visiting a cemetery.

36:19And because the headstone is kind of the only thing

36:22you have to focus your attention on

36:26and maybe the name on the headstone,

36:28that kind of becomes the medium for communication.

36:31That becomes the object that represents the presence

36:36or the agency of the deceased loved one.

36:40- Even if it's just metaphorical,

36:42it's just a stand in for that person

36:44so that you can process whatever you need to as you,

36:47I have been, I spoke to a headstone of my grandparent's headstone

36:52at one point, didn't anticipate that I was gonna do that,

36:55but I was there, I was having thoughts

36:59and I just thought, I'll just speak them to this headstone.

37:03- And it's cognitively natural

37:06because we want to have some kind of material media

37:10to represent these imagined agents

37:13that are in the world around us according to our perception.

37:18Sometimes people will just look up and just talk to the sky,

37:22but if you've got something that has the person's name on it,

37:26maybe even a picture of it, of them, excuse me,

37:29it just feels kind of natural to do that.

37:33And so we treat headstones in many ways

37:38just like they treated stelae,

37:42anciently and not just for a deceased kin,

37:44but it's the exact same thing for deities.

37:48They conceptualize the deity as inhabiting this stelae,

37:53the exact same way that Katumua conceptualized his headstone

37:57as his eternal inhabitation.

38:00And so in my book, Adonai's Divine Images,

38:05a cognitive approach, I make the argument

38:07that the cognitive motivations are the same

38:12and that the concept of divine images

38:15and particularly stelae builds on

38:19the exact same cognitive foundation

38:21as our engagement with headstones today

38:24and as ancient engagement with headstones

38:29as kind of the habitation, the home of the deity.

38:33And even in the Hebrew Bible,

38:36we have a reference to, Jacob refers to this place

38:40as Bethel, which means house of God.

38:43And in the Greek transliteration, we have Bethel.

38:48And Bethel in ancient Greek became a noun that meant a stelae.

38:53And so Jacob, when he talks about

39:00this will be the house of God, not saying this region,

39:03he's saying this object that I have set up

39:07and that I have anointed will be where God will dwell.

39:12And so this is, it's all interrelated.

39:17- Yeah, that's kind of crazy, this,

39:20I mean, yeah, you think of house of God

39:24and you think of a building or you think of a structure

39:27or something, but you don't think of it as being like

39:32a thing inhabited by like an object

39:37that is literally inhabited by God, that's fascinating.

39:42- I think so too.

39:44And there are other ways that we see this kind of

39:47bubbling to the surface and places in the Bible.

39:50And one of my favorites is the fact that standing stones

39:53seem to be a perfectly legitimate divine image

39:56in very, very early literary layers in the Hebrew Bible.

39:59We have standing stones set up.

40:01We have a standing stone that we discovered

40:04in a Judahite temple.

40:05Like this is divine images were in use

40:08in the first temple period.

40:09They represented Adonai.

40:11They represented the God of Israel.

40:14And then in the exilic period, we have a transition

40:18where we have some stories about Moses and Joshua

40:21being commanded to write the words of the law

40:24on standing stones and then they offer worship

40:31and burn offerings before Adonai.

40:35In other words, they're kind of combining the words

40:39of the law with the standing stone that represents

40:44or that reifies the presence of manifest,

40:46the presence of the God of Israel.

40:49And then, so this is kind of overlaying the law

40:52on the standing stone and the law has God's name

40:55repeated on it a number of times.

40:58In fact, the very first words of the Decalogue

41:01are Adonai, I am Adonai, I am the Lord.

41:06And so just like Katumua says, I am Katumua,

41:10here's my stone, the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments say,

41:15I am Adonai, here are my laws.

41:19And what are they written on?

41:21According to the tradition of Moses and Sinai, tablets.

41:27Right, which are many standing stones.

41:31So we go from Moses and Joshua writing the law

41:35on the big full-size standing stones

41:38that allow us to worship God to this commandment,

41:42hey, Moses write the words of the law

41:44on itty-bitty standing stones.

41:47Travel sides, travel sides, precisely,

41:50because what does that do that allows you

41:52to put them in the ark of the covenant

41:56and then carry them around.

41:58So they're not limited to a building that can't move,

42:02we can now mobilize the divine image.

42:05And we have numerous examples of what are called

42:10model shrines from the ancient world

42:13and from ancient Israel and from Israelite locations.

42:16And a model shrine is a miniaturized temple

42:19where you put a mini divine image inside

42:22and that miniaturizes, mobilizes and personalizes

42:27the divine space and the divine image.

42:30And so I argue that the ark of the covenant,

42:33which is treated precisely as a divine image

42:36in several places in the Bible,

42:38is exactly a model shrine or a shrine model.

42:43And the miniatures, the tablets,

42:45the miniature standing stones are miniature divine images.

42:49So it becomes almost a little, a temple unto itself.

42:54- Yeah.

42:55And if you're on the move, you can take it with you.

42:58If your army is going out to battle,

43:01you can trot your divine image, your god out before you.

43:06So in 1 Samuel 4, when the Israelites

43:09are going to battle against the Philistines,

43:11they trot out the ark of the covenant.

43:14And the Philistines say, "God is in their camp."

43:17And you have Moses in the book of Numbers,

43:22it talks about in the morning,

43:24they, you know, Adonai would come out with the ark.

43:28And in the evening, they would put Adonai back

43:32in the temple.

43:33And it's basically treating the presence

43:37and the movement of the ark of the covenant as isometric

43:42with God's own presence and movement.

43:44And so it's doing the exact same thing

43:48that divine images prior to the exile

43:53and divine images in the nations around Israel did.

43:58Only in this transition, we move away from standing stones,

44:02we have the full-sized standing stones,

44:04then we have the law, and we have miniature standing stones

44:08with the law, and then we have no standing stones,

44:11and we just have the law.

44:12But the law still has the divine name on it.

44:15And so if you go to a synagogue today

44:19and you look at the very front,

44:24they're probably going to have a cabinet of some kind

44:28that's been richly decorated,

44:30and they open up that cabinet

44:32and you have the scrolls of the law.

44:34And you know what they call that cabinet?

44:36They call it the ark.

44:39- Oh, interesting. - Because, yeah, this holds

44:43the text of the law, and go ahead.

44:47- Sorry, so I know that in Jewish tradition,

44:52the writing of the name of God or the speaking

44:57of the name of God is a sacred thing is a very,

45:00like you're not supposed to, you don't do it

45:02under most circumstances.

45:05So I'm taking that to, you know, you emphasizing

45:09that the name of Adonai is written on these things.

45:13That is of great import in this tradition.

45:18- Yeah, the name materializing the name,

45:21whether materializing it vocally,

45:23anciently and kind of intuitively,

45:28speech is a type of materialization.

45:33- And bring something into being.

45:35And literally, as well, we're moving particles.

45:39Well, waves.

45:41And so if you are writing or are speaking the name of God,

45:47there is a sense in which you are invoking God's presence

45:51or manifesting God's presence.

45:53Because on the standing stone, there were ceremonies

45:57that you would go through to and live in the standing stone.

46:00So in Mesopotamia and in Egypt,

46:03you had the washing of the mouth ceremony,

46:05and you had the opening of the mouth ceremony.

46:07And it was basically like, this divine image's mouth

46:10is now open.

46:11It can breathe.

46:12It is alive.

46:14The agency, however, that is conceptualized of the deity

46:18has now entered into the divine image,

46:20and the divine image is enlivened.

46:23And so there were ceremonies that did that.

46:26And inscribing the name was an integral part

46:31of the ceremony,

46:32because the name was considered one of the main vehicles

46:35for agency.

46:36And so to speak the name, to write the name

46:39was to materialize it.

46:40And in a sense, was to invoke that presence

46:44and was to manifest that presence.

46:46And this is why one of the cool things

46:50that we saw in the Israel Museum were two little

46:52silver scrolls, one of them's about almost four inches long,

46:55the other one's only a little over an inch long

46:58and about half an inch wide,

47:00and the other one's about an inch wide.

47:01They're called the Ketaph Hanom silver scrolls,

47:04and they have a version of the priestly blessing on them.

47:08But the divine name is written a handful of times on there.

47:12And these scrolls were, excuse me,

47:14found rolled up tight and buried with somebody.

47:17And they probably would have been an amulet

47:19that that person wore in their lifetime,

47:22and they were buried with.

47:23And the amulet probably had a patropaic functions

47:26or it functioned to ward off evil,

47:29much like the amulets of Sansenoi and Simangalov.

47:33The names allowed the amulet to be activated,

47:38to have that power.

47:40And so the divine name allowed those little amulets

47:44to ward off evil.

47:46- Wow.

47:46- And so the speaking, the writing, the name in some sense

47:49was like creating a little mini divine image,

47:52was creating something that could manifest God's presence.

47:55And so outside the temple, you weren't supposed to do that.

47:59And the destruct, once the temple's destroyed,

48:01there is no place where it's appropriate to do that.

48:04And so there are a lot of ways that the Torah scrolls

48:09and Torah manuscripts are treated like divine images.

48:12You have to go through certain procedures

48:14in order to create it.

48:16Once it has been created,

48:18you have to go through certain procedures

48:20if you have to dispose of it.

48:22And the divine name is treated particularly carefully

48:26in the creation and the disposal of these texts.

48:29And so one of the things I conclude in the book

48:33is that in many ways we didn't,

48:36they didn't outlaw all divine images.

48:38They just renegotiated what a divine image was.

48:42And it went from a big stone that you had

48:45in your holy of holies in the temple

48:46to the text of the Torah.

48:50And this is why even Christians today,

48:52many of them will treat their Bible as somehow

48:56metaphysically special.

48:58Like this brings God's presence.

49:01And when I read it, I can feel the spirit of God,

49:04the presence of God.

49:05That's exactly how a divine image function.

49:08A divine image wasn't necessarily for worship.

49:10It could be for worship, but the primary function,

49:13the overarching function was to facilitate God's presence.

49:18And so if you are looking at your Bible,

49:21if you're reading your Bible to facilitate God's presence,

49:24you're doing the exact same thing with your Bible

49:27that they did anciently with divine images.

49:29- Now, I'm gonna keep our conversation

49:32in the sense since we already have been

49:35playing around with feminism in this episode.

49:40You know, when I was doing some research

49:44before our interview with Francesca Savracapullo,

49:47who talked to us about Ashra,

49:50there was a whole thing about Ashra polls.

49:53Now, would these be similar

49:55in to this idea of a standing stone,

50:00of a steely of a whatever, is it the same kind of concept?

50:05- So it's a related concept.

50:07In some of the earlier periods

50:11and some of the larger empires,

50:13they had a lot more flexibility and they had a larger market

50:16and they had a lot more resources to be able to create

50:19divine images of all different shapes and sizes.

50:21So some of them were anthropomorphic statues,

50:25some of them were crowns, some of them were thrones.

50:28You had a lot of different ways to create divine images.

50:31Bronze bulls that we found in Israel from the Bronze Age

50:35are examples as well.

50:37And so an Ashra would have been a kind of stylized tree.

50:42And we have some, the handful of drawings of these,

50:45the Tanakh cult stand is an example of a cult stand

50:49that stands about three feet high.

50:51That is, there's an argument to make

50:54that this is a species of shrine model.

50:59And on it, it shows stylized date palm.

51:02So a trunk and then some kind of branches

51:05that curl off of it.

51:07And on the either side are feeding ibixes.

51:10And this is also drawn on a large pot of pithos

51:16from Kuntil and Ajru that is largely understood by scholars

51:20to be a symbol that represents Ashra.

51:24So one of the interesting things,

51:27there's a scholar named Rainan Eichler.

51:31I think he's an Israeli scholar,

51:32but he published a paper a little bit ago that said,

51:35isn't it interesting that in the Ark of the Covenant,

51:40we have perhaps too many standing stones,

51:44two divine images.

51:45Do you recall, Dan, maybe you don't,

51:48this is kind of a trivia question.

51:50What else was put into the Ark of the Covenant

51:52at different periods?

51:54- I'm trying to remember my Raiders of the Lost Ark.

51:56- So there were two other things that were said to go

52:00in the Ark of the Covenant.

52:01Some of the mana, the mana, which is not important here,

52:06but the other thing was Eren's budding staff.

52:10- Oh, that's right, yes, I do remember that.

52:12- The staff that had flowers growing out of the top of it,

52:17which Eichler argues sounds suspiciously like an ash or a pole

52:22and was put in the shrine model

52:27with the other mini divine images.

52:29And his argument is that the whole story of,

52:32oh, look, the staff magically butted

52:34and that's how we could tell who was in charge,

52:37was a secondary creation as kind of a,

52:40what is that doing in there?

52:42(laughing)

52:44Like an etiology for the presence of an ash or a pole

52:49in the Ark of the Covenant.

52:51And so yeah, it is very much a related concept

52:55that this pole could have been a piece of material media

53:01that helped facilitate access to the presence of the goddess.

53:06- And there's something very interesting

53:07about the idea of laying an ash or a pole

53:10next to these tablets that end up being an image of Adonai.

53:15I mean, yeah, that's a very interesting idea.

53:21(laughing)

53:22- Well, that's why, so I mentioned the pithos

53:27that has the drawing of the stylized date palm

53:30and the Ibex is very similar to Ashera.

53:34The other side of the pithos has the two anthropomorphic

53:38figures with the inscription above it

53:41that refers to Adonai and Ashera.

53:45And so the association of Adonai and Ashera,

53:47there is pretty clear.

53:49One other thing that I find interesting

53:53is we've got another very early iconographic depiction

53:58of two Ibexes feeding on either side of a tree.

54:02However, rather than that stylized date palm,

54:06that tree is the menorah.

54:09- Oh.

54:10- It is a trunk and then three branches

54:15that kind of swoop down and then up on the other side.

54:20- Okay.

54:21- Seven branched menorah.

54:23And so that's called the lakish yur, that piece of art.

54:28It has an inscription.

54:30It's dedication to the goddess, it says.

54:34But I haven't seen much.

54:38I haven't seen an argument before

54:39that this looks suspiciously like a menorah.

54:42I'm sure that somebody has to have made

54:45that association before.

54:46I'd like to track that down.

54:47I think that's worth some more looking at

54:50because that would be another thing

54:52that would be interesting to find.

54:54If maybe the menorah is actually a conflation

54:58of the source of light that was used in the temple with,

55:02another way to kind of get rid of the ashropole

55:05would be to conflate it with whatever is offering

55:09the lampstand, whatever is offering light in the temple.

55:12But that's not, I haven't formalized that argument.

55:17That's just a curiosity that I've noted.

55:19So don't- - Don't go spreading that around.

55:23- Yeah, those are saying I made that claim.

55:25I'm just thinking I think that would be interesting

55:28to look at.

55:30- Yeah, it makes sense.

55:33I mean, it's tree-like certainly in its visual nature.

55:38- Yeah.

55:40And so to return to the origin of the segment, the steely,

55:45we think of divine images as something

55:48that has been rejected by the Bible

55:50and that is aberrant and that is,

55:52that's for those weirdos, but we do it today

55:57with cemeteries that have steely in them.

56:01And if there's a deceased loved one there,

56:05it feels natural to us to go talk to it

56:08as kind of a medium or a representation of their agency,

56:11their presence or their person.

56:14And so we're not so far removed

56:17from what was going on anciently.

56:19And I would argue that in the Bible,

56:22they did not so much reject the use of idols,

56:25of divine images, so much as they just renegotiated them

56:29and decided instead of doing it this way,

56:32we're gonna do it this other way,

56:33a way that many people still do without knowing

56:37that that's exactly what they're doing.

56:39So there's an argument to make

56:42that treating your Bible like something

56:45that brings God's presence is a derivation

56:49of ancient steely, ancient standing stones

56:52used as divine images.

56:54- I love it, that is fascinating.

56:56Well, I will leave it at that.

56:58I love this conversation.

57:00You and I are going to go and have a little bit more

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58:00(upbeat music)