Ep 15: The Dans Go to Hell

00:00So he just has a field and a stand in there beholding the field in which he grows all

00:08his you know what and then he just starts swelling up like Violet in Charlie and the

00:16Chakra factory and then bursts and then you know you find traditions somewhat like this

00:23in the ancient world where somebody some divine punishment was that somebody swelled up and

00:28popped so wouldn't that be totally unheard of but very gross and then the other option

00:35is that he yeah I was just walking and was like doop doo doo and then splat fell on his

00:41head sometimes when you hit your head just right your entire bowels burst out of your

00:47body it's a that's a known thing hey everybody I'm Dan McClellan and I'm Dan Beacher and

00:56you are listening to the Data Overdog in the podcast where we bring you greater access

01:01to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about

01:06the same and before we get into anything Dan I wanted to share a brief note about an episode

01:14from a couple weeks ago where we talked about God regretting slash repenting because a helpful

01:21listener pointed out that's I had two different words confused when I was talking about the

01:26roots nacham I mentioned that it was related to the word for the womb and that is actually

01:32a different noun rechem and I had those two confused in my head little slip of the brain

01:37there it doesn't affect my commentary it doesn't affect the argument against the claim that

01:42God God does not regret or repent but I do want to keep it 100 and make sure I'm acknowledging

01:49when when I made mistakes and and a helpful listener pointed that out so I like that I

01:55think you know it is the official position of this podcast that admitting when you make

02:01a mistake makes you more credible not less everybody so if that's not your position then

02:08Dan you've just lost all credibility well you know there are a lot of people for whom

02:13I never had any credibility so I think the balances are not thrown too far off I'm lucky

02:20I'm in the position where I don't have to be credible you're the only one that I'm incredible

02:26and you're credible yeah well there's there's that great line from I think it was the first

02:32mission impossible movie with Tom Cruise I'm gonna miss being disreputable I wish I could

02:39be disreputable sometimes yeah no you're not allowed to you you have to be the reputable

02:43one I get to be as disreputable as I want to be well so this this week on the show we've

02:51got a fun show coming up we're gonna try something different you're gonna you're gonna

02:56take us straight to hell yeah to start us out with for for a a a alright let's see it and

03:04then we're gonna go chapter and verse and I we're gonna you're gonna explain to me why

03:10something in the Bible feels like it contradicts itself yeah I'm sure that what you're going

03:15to do is just completely harmonize everything and it'll all work out great and everyone will

03:21feel at peace we're gonna make these texts get together sing kumbaya and it's gonna be

03:26a great time all right but first all right let's see it you mentioned a a pastor or author

03:36from a handful of years ago I think we're at an age now where a few years ago means fifteen

03:42years ago yeah so it felt like only a few years ago but yeah there was a guy named Carlton

03:48Pearson who who made waves he was he was the the pastor of one of the largest Pentecostal

03:56congregations in the country okay and he he was out of Tulsa Oklahoma and he came out as

04:05being no longer believing in hell he said it just it just didn't line up with either his

04:14theology or his reading of the Bible and and that just blew minds across the country and

04:22since then I have seen plenty of debate about what is hell does the Bible talk about hell

04:31is I mean what was it just made up with what's going on so Dan help us was I mean there was

04:40a movie with with Chiwatel a geophore I have no idea if that's how to pronounce Chiwatel

04:46I know you're a listener write in help me understand how to how to say your name but send a recording

04:51preferably rather than just write it yeah or just call me well I'll give you my number

04:56you can call me anyway help us out here what you know if this was a as big a bombshell

05:04as as it was we should know what we're talking about here what it seems like it would be

05:09obvious but it doesn't feel that way yeah and it it there are a lot of arguments on social

05:17media I see it a lot on Instagram on tiktok on other places where people insist that the

05:21concept of hell as a place of eternal conscious torment is something that's not anywhere in

05:28the Bible but was developed post biblically perhaps even as late as some of the early

05:35English literature or even pre-English literature Italian literature Dante and others maybe that's

05:43where the concept of hell as burning forever in a lake of fire comes from but there's actually

05:49a lot to say about concepts of the afterlife in ancient Israel and early Judaism and an

05:55early Christianity and it's a little more complex than this black and white oh it wasn't

06:02in the Bible and then after the Bible it just popped up there's actually a long history

06:08of innovation on concepts of the afterlife that go from nothing remotely approximating

06:15our concept of hell to how we understand the concept of hell today generally so I want

06:23to start all the way in ancient Israel however there is a popular idea that there was no

06:29concept of the afterlife in ancient Israel that you died that was annihilation that was

06:35everything you just cease to exist consciously physically metaphorically grammatically ecumenically

06:42just in every possible sense oh man your grammar dies that's that is rough that is rough but

06:50that doesn't really fit with the archaeological data one of the interesting things about ancient

06:57Israel and the material remains is we have a lot of material remains that come from tombs

07:03and from graves and partly because everybody just shoved a bunch of stuff underground sealed

07:09it up and that happens to preserve things quite nicely in the drier climates like in

07:15Egypt like in parts of Israel and so we've got a lot of grave goods and this is actually

07:21responsible for a bias towards grave goods like when we reconstruct what we have about

07:29the ancient world it seems they were really focused on the grave and the tomb and really

07:36it's because that's where we find most of the stuff that we happen to find so there's

07:40awareness to the people who have who take that approach pretty much everybody from the

07:46ancient times did die yeah so so they so it makes sense to be to to recognize that you

07:53know they there were a lot of graves yeah there were a lot of graves we we don't find

07:58nearly all of them but the majority I don't know I don't know exactly what percentage

08:03but there is definitely a disproportionate amount of our material remains from the ancient

08:08world that are grave goods and and two books I just want to highlight if you want to go

08:13learn more about the grave in the afterlife in ancient Israel one was one that recently

08:18came out by a scholar named Kerry Sonia and it's called caring for the dead in ancient

08:24Israel that's a wonderful book and then another one by a friend of mine Chris Hayes called

08:29a covenant with death and this is the subtitle is death in the iron age two and its rhetorical

08:36uses in proto Isaiah but there's wonderful information in there about the fact that the

08:42things that were provided to the dead seem to indicate that ancient Israelites believe

08:47the dead can kept on living in one sense or another and that whatever this this agency

08:55that kept on existing whether you want to call it a spirit or a soul or a ghost or or

09:00whatever whatever this agency that kept on existing was it in some sense was kind of tethered

09:06to the corporeal body to the remains of the dead and to the location of them and so we

09:15would see people providing food providing light providing protection for the deceased

09:22in the afterlife and we also see them communing with the deceased in different ways visiting

09:29them at prescribed intervals to have feasts or to petition them for aid or to seek information

09:37from them so necromancy was phenomenally common in ancient Israel necromancy it helped me out

09:45with with that word because it sounds magical or whatever but in this case we're just it's

09:53basically seeking information from the dead communing with them to engage in some kind

09:58of exchange of information yeah and you know it's interesting to say that I mean you you

10:05started this part of your segment by saying that the people are saying that ancient the

10:11ancient Hebrews had no no concept of an afterlife but now I'm realizing that I remember there

10:17being stories you know the the witch of Endor jumps to mind where someone is called back

10:25from the dead or someone is communicated with after they've died so that's the the necromancer

10:31of Endor she her profession has been outlawed by Saul but then Saul is in a bind and he

10:39needs to get information from Adonai and the prophets aren't doing it for him so in disguise

10:44he visits the necromancer of Endor and once call up Samuel and it works and the necromancer

10:54says I see Elohim I see deity rising up from the underworld and Saul asks you know what

11:04is its form and basically Samuel's come in there to say you should have let me sleep and

11:12then says Saul is going to die in in battle and that's what ends up happening but yeah

11:19we see some interesting things there one so Samuel is still extant still exists in the

11:27sense that they are some kind of I don't want to say incorporeal or immaterial but some kind

11:35of non core fleshly sense and they're referred to as an Elohim as a deity which kind of attests

11:45to the overlap in the concept of ancestors and deities interesting but you have care

11:53and feeding for the dead because they kept on existing in some sense and there's a way

11:58this is kind of like the movie Coco where they were thought to exist as long as they

12:04were remembered and so some of the ways that people would try to ensure that they were

12:10remembered for longer periods is they would pay to have their name pronounced over their

12:16mortuary chapel or something like that or they would the families were expected to

12:21go make offerings to commune with them to pronounce their name because the pronunciation of their

12:27name in a sense was a materialization of their name in a sense extended their post-mortem

12:34existence and the nature of this post-mortem existence is not incredibly clear from what

12:39we can tell from the biblical text it was just kind of a dreary murky ambiguous just

12:47existence of some kind that was we get the sense that it was fraught with all kinds of

12:53dangers associated with malevolent or benevolent forces that might exist in this in this world

13:00of the deceased but also somehow the deceased also had access to strategic information and

13:06so could be petitioned for aid you people would go and in this type of worship we refer

13:14to as ancestor worship they could go petition their ancestors for aid or say hey can you

13:19get so-and-so to stop stealing my stuff or to give back my stuff or you know you had

13:27imprecatory petitions and things like that too so they were you just used a word I do

13:32not know imprecatory which has to do with cursing so imprecatory is means I'm I'm putting some

13:40kind of curse on you I'm saying go go spook my neighbor he's a jerk or make somebody fall

13:46in love with me or make somebody not be in love with me like there were all kinds of different

13:51ways that the deceased could could help out but this this realm of the dead was the same

13:58for everybody there was no distinction between the good and the evil it was the same place

14:05for everyone and in the Hebrew the the word most commonly associated with this realm was

14:09shell which just it could mean the grave literally or it could mean the grave figuratively the

14:15realm of the dead and so everybody was destined for shell in one sense or another and in many

14:22English translations of the Bible shell is translated hell or grave or pit or something like that so

14:29this is in and of itself that word doesn't have a negative or a positive connotation it's negative

14:34in the sense that it's mysterious it's murky and it sucks to be dead yeah it's going to suck to be

14:42there but there's not a distinction of do good and you'll get on you know you'll be in the the

14:50better part of shoal it was just everybody's going to shoal and so you did good or bad or how you

14:58acted in life really only affected your lot in life because once you were dead everybody's

15:05lot was the same interesting so when we get into the Hellenistic period when we have a lot more

15:10interactions with first the Zoroastrian societies and then the Greco-Roman societies we

15:20start to see some bleeding into Judaism these concepts of Hades on the the Greco-Roman side of

15:32things and a kind of dualism on the Zoroastrian side of things and you start to see people

15:38distinguishing a different kind of abode in the afterlife for those who do bad and for those who

15:47do good and and I get the sense there's there's still an argument to make it still debated but I

15:53would argue that the concept of punishment in the afterlife probably derived from early Jewish

16:01experiences with larger empires that were oppressing them and the observation that there did not seem

16:09to be punishment for the wicked in this life because the people who seem to be the most successful

16:15and the most powerful and the most wealthy frequently were also the most wicked and the most evil and

16:21they didn't ever really seem to get their comeuppance right and so I think there's an argument to make

16:27that the concept of divine punishment in the afterlife is rooted in some sense in fantasizing

16:34about the incredibly wicked and evil and powerful people of the world getting their just desserts

16:41if not in this life then in the life to come well it makes sense how how can one believe in a just

16:48deity and a just god and yet justice doesn't come to the worst people that they can think of the

16:54people who have most hurt their people there's got you know it all it just makes a lot of sense to

17:02imagine a justice that comes after this life yeah and and we see these debates about

17:10in wisdom literature in Job and Ecclesiastes and elsewhere this idea of why do bad things happen

17:16to good people and good things happen to bad people there doesn't seem to be any justice well

17:22once you can tack on what Latter-day Saints are used to calling the eternal perspective

17:26or the fact that there is an afterlife and so everything can be resolved in the afterlife

17:31that is a convenience that's a convenient way to outsource that problem that we'll take care of that

17:38in in the afterlife so I'm gonna pause it and I am working on research on this and and we'll publish

17:45something hopefully at some point in the future and I know some other people are working on similar

17:49projects as well that that is one of the main foundations of the concept of divine punishment

17:55but we begin to see the concept of divine punishment popping up in the Hebrew Bible

18:03in some of the most recent layers of the Hebrew Bible and some of those recent passages so one is

18:09in Daniel 12 which was written in the middle of the second century BCE again this is under heavy

18:15persecution from the Seleucid Empire these Greco-Roman folks that are oppressing them and the other is

18:23the very last verse of the book of Isaiah Isaiah 66 24 where we have this statement I'm reading

18:29from the NRSV here and they shall go out and look at the dead bodies of the people who have rebelled

18:35against me for their worm shall not die their fire shall not be quenched and they shall be an

18:41abhorrence to all flesh so this idea is that these people are going to see the place where

18:49these bodies are are amassed and the worm shall not die the fire shall not be quenched now this

18:55doesn't have to be interpreted to mean they will experience this pain and this torment

19:02for eternity this can just mean the worms in the fire that the people are seeing

19:08doesn't go away it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be feeling that but

19:14here we see this concept of divine punishment that gets picked up in later authors and particularly

19:22this idea of the worm that does not die and the fire shall not be quenched is going to pop up in

19:27the New Testament but there are and the idea is that sorry I'm this concept of an undying worm

19:35is baffling me a little bit yeah the idea is not anything to do with the worm other than

19:40you these bodies do not stop being eaten yeah somehow somehow they I mean one would think that

19:49after a while of being worm digested you are uh you're just goo but apparently worms like goo

19:57well it's and burnt goo with that because the fire is still going yeah and so this is this is

20:02pretty horrific imagery it's hyperbolic imagery where you're just imagining these uh these bodies

20:10just rotting and being consumed for eternity by worms and being burned for eternity without

20:16necessarily saying they're going to feel all that for eternity right but we have some other

20:22literature that is not part of what we understand is the canonical bible that is reflecting on this

20:28as well uh the uh book of first enic for instance seems to be one of the innovators of the concepts

20:36that are going to be picked up later on and particularly as it relates to uh the word gahana

20:43which is in the new testament in the greek transliteration frequently translated hell

20:48in english translations now gahana is um in the Hebrew bible if you go look it up in your bible

20:55it's referred to as the valley of the son of henam so um gay ben henam is is the word in Hebrew

21:04but it becomes gahana uh in the uh or gay henam uh in the Greco-Roman period and this is an actual

21:12valley that runs kind of swoops down and runs uh to the south and then to the southeast around

21:19mountain zion it meets up with the central valley uh and the kydron valley coming down around both

21:26sides of the city of david and this valley is where uh tophit was located and tophit is a name that's

21:34used in the Hebrew bible to refer to the place where the pre-exilic kings of israel made their

21:40children to pass through the fire in other words engaged in child sacrifice so this place is

21:46associated with unspeakable evil in the eyes of the folks who are um curating these traditions in

21:54the exilic and in the post-exilic period now i want to stop and make a quick qualification here

22:01there is a an idea that this place around the time of jesus was a landfill where there were

22:08perpetually burning fires or where the bodies of criminals uh were tossed uh and so there's this

22:16idea that this is just this perpetually burning place of filth and dead bodies and stench and

22:22all this and there are no archaeological or textual data that actually support that uh

22:30interesting i have heard those theories yeah that's something that has popped up in my just

22:34looking around and that and that's something that we don't see anybody making those claims

22:39until many centuries after the time of jesus uh and i was just in that valley a couple weeks ago

22:46it's a lovely park down there so no no garbage no no garbage at all grass green grass uh there's

22:54there's a little um like uh uh rope bridge that goes across part of the valley that you can go um

23:02run across if uh if you're brave enough uh and they have a little concert venue on one end of it

23:09it's a lovely area so i tell people uh or you know i i told the the uh tour group i was with you

23:16can tell people now you've been to hell and there's a lovely park yeah there you go absolutely so

23:22very few child sacrifices yeah that's uh that's all in the past that's gone way down yeah since

23:30since the uh the axelic period but when we get into the Hellenistic period because this valley is

23:36associated with unspeakable evil and with child sacrifice and with burning it becomes kind of a

23:43symbolic location for wickedness and punishment so we have in the book of enoch a reference to this

23:51valley right by Jerusalem where certain entities uh we've got some angels who are being buried under

23:58mountains and we've got some other who who are being reserved in this deep dark valley where they're

24:05going to be punished and we first have a reference to or suggestion that this is a place for eternal

24:13post-mortem punishment so first enoch is is kind of the the seed bed for this idea and this is

24:22talk to me about enoch i don't know so first enoch well yeah it's uh a lot of people don't and

24:29even the people who spend all of their time on on tiktok making videos about first enoch frequently

24:34don't understand what it is but it's it's uh in a sense it's a retelling of some of the main stories

24:41from genesis that's and particularly focused on genesis six the uh kind of setting the stage for

24:49the flood where it talks about the banalohim the children of god uh seeing the uh the daughters

24:56of humanity seeing that they're beautiful going down marrying them having children with them

25:01uh and then it says in the text of genesis the nephilim were on in the land in those days and

25:07after as well and then it goes straight into and so the lord saw that everything was corrupt and

25:11wanted to destroy the earth and so it's it's probably an older disconnected tradition that was inserted

25:19in this spot to kind of buttress the idea that god was was perfectly validated in wanting to

25:26destroy everything that breathed on the earth um but what first enoch does is pick up that story

25:34and kind of expand on it fill in a lot of the the gaps and use that as kind of a conceptual

25:41template for the story about angels uh rebelling against god coming down um and inappropriately

25:50engaging in sexual intercourse with human women and siring these giants and then the giants have

25:56children who are the nephilim and they die and then the ghosts or the spirits that that rise up

26:02from their deceased bodies become demons and um the angels teach humanity uh everything all the

26:10wickedness from warfare to makeup um and so it's it's really one of them to do a whole a whole

26:20episode oh yeah yeah definitely first enoch needs needs to have a whole discussion but and this is

26:25one of the most influential non-biblical texts in this period this sets the stage for so much that

26:30goes on regarding angels regarding the source of evil uh and in part this was a way to account

26:37for where evil came from we had the problem of evil of the odyssey how does we get evil from

26:43every creation that was all good and it's well these angels rebelled and they came down and they

26:48basically uh physically reproduced evil and then spread knowledge of evil and when was this book

26:55written um so this is uh Greco Roman period Hellenistic period it's probably the earliest phases of it

27:02are probably somewhere um around 300 BCE or after and it kind of cumulatively picks up a bunch of

27:10stories so there are several that I think there are five distinct books within the book of Enoch and

27:17they are generally dated to different periods by scholars starting around 300 BCE down to probably

27:24close to the turn of the air well actually some of the later layers of some of these books probably

27:29comes uh in the common era rather than before the common era but there's an issue with identifying

27:38this as the origins of Hell is that um eternal conscious torment is not the only concept that

27:45is reflected in there we also have two other concepts of divine punishment in the afterlife

27:50one of them is annihilationism the idea that the wicked when they die they just stop existing

27:57um and the other is uh temporary torment followed by annihilationism the idea that the wicked

28:03are punished for a time and then there comes a point when they stop existing entirely so I think

28:11the best scholarship on the development of these concepts would identify three different general

28:18categories of post-mortem divine punishment annihilationism temporary torment followed by

28:25annihilationism and then eternal conscious torment and we have this reflected in first enoch we have

28:31this reflected in places like the book of Judith from uh the apocrypha which is um quoting or at

28:40least alluding to Isaiah 66 and the fire and the worms and we have it uh in a handful of other

28:46texts uh we have even Josephus discussing things like this we have some rabbinic literature this

28:51discussing things like this the apocalypse of Abraham uh second baruch a number of texts that are

28:58considered apocrypha or pseudepigrapha or other early jewish writings are kind of um we see one

29:07or more of these three different categories bubbling to the surface and so what we can say is that the

29:12concept of hell or divine punishment in the afterlife is not yet systematized it's kind of

29:22ambiguous it's inconsistent people are making use of different ways of thinking about it to the

29:29degree it serves their rhetorical goals but it has not um sifted out into one kind of universal

29:37idea that's something that would not come until after the bible so in the new testament we see all

29:45three of these categories as well um we have really yeah we have this idea of the the worm and the

29:53fire reflected in places like mark um and Matthew and we have Jesus talking about divine punishment

30:01as eternal conscious torment but we also have Jesus talking about it as if it's just annihilation

30:07ism or as if it's temporary torment followed by annihilationism we have all of that in the gospels so it is not

30:16a systematized concept yet in the gospels some of the uh other literature in the he or in the new

30:24testament similarly reflects one or more of these concepts paul doesn't talk about it at all we don't

30:31have any of them in paul and probably the place where we get the most imagery that is going to be

30:39picked up later in the systematization of hell in the programatization program i don't even know

30:48what that word should be but in the i think you nailed it when they finally decide hell is going

30:54to be this uh they pull a lot of the imagery from the book of revelation where we have this idea of

31:01a lake of fire and we have this dragon and we have satan and there's throwing down of stuff uh but

31:09even death and hell in the book of revelation come to an end and so um we're fans or uh we're fans on

31:18this channel of rejecting univocality so even the concept of hell is not presented univocally

31:25in any single gospel much less than all the gospels much less across the entire new testament

31:31it is entirely inconsistent and it is not until early christianity becomes institutionalized and

31:38gains political support and resources once uh it takes over the roman empire in the fourth and

31:45fifth centuries se that we get the means of systematizing everything and then enforcing

31:53a single concept of hell which does reduce down to this concept of eternal conscious torment but

32:03for the authors of the new testament there's no one concept of hell some of them don't refer to

32:08any of these concepts of hell some of them refer to multiple different ones and these are

32:13influenced by Greco-Roman ideas of Hades they're influenced by what's going on in the book of Enoch

32:21they're influenced perhaps by Zoroastrianism although we don't have a lot of great data

32:27to show us exactly how it was influenced and so hell comes together from a number of different

32:33streams of traditions that begin inconsistently and don't really arrive at what we understand

32:40today about hell until well after the bible has been completed and then we also have obviously

32:47that other literature Dante and others that are giving us additional imagery that contribute to

32:55the the accumulated kind of conceptual package that we generally evoke today when we talk about hell

33:02right so it's sort of circling back to pastor Pearson that I mentioned at the beginning of this

33:10of the segment yes would you say that there is a a valid argument to be made that that there is

33:20no hell could could you do you think that that is a because there are so many different concepts

33:28presented biblically is that is is is that a a tenable position or do you think that

33:35that that somehow we have to if if we're following the bible there is some

33:43hell-like concept that that is likely to be uh to be to be more likely than not I think if

33:51you're talking about the bible as a single text and if you are going to impose a univocal lens

33:58upon it and say we have to reduce it down to one concept then that concept is going to be

34:03negotiated and I think all of those possibilities are there you have everything from absolutely no

34:10reference whatsoever to post-mortem divine punishment all the way to eternal conscious

34:15torment across the different authors of the bible so I would suggest that any one of those positions

34:22is arguable if you're trying to uh accommodate a univocal take if you're trying to say we have

34:29the text we must arrive at a single conclusion with the text then that is a negotiated conclusion

34:36and any one of those is is tenable if we're saying what did the authors of these texts believe about

34:44divine punishment you have to say there are authors that say absolutely nothing about it that it's

34:50not relevant certainly not salient they may have not believed in it at all then there are other

34:56authors who treat it um one way other authors who treated another and we have authors that

35:01treated a variety of different ways so I I think it's it's murky and it's a little more complex

35:08than just saying yes it's there or no it's not there it depends on what you're doing with the text

35:13it depends on how you understand the text and its function uh and it depends on um yeah I suppose

35:22it depends upon the group that you're doing it for what are your goals for this all right well

35:29thankfully our next segment isn't going to be anywhere near as confusing it's uh it's uh well

35:37don't worry we'll find a way to make the bible all say one thing just stick with us yeah

35:43this is this is the problem of putting data over dogma is it it frequently does not kind of

35:49sift out into one easy answer it it the answer is usually uh yes with a but or no with an end or

35:56something that um just entirely confusing so or just pick one yeah it's up to you if I if I can

36:04show up and muddy up the waters and then scamper away I've done my job good good well uh let's

36:10well let's do some more muddying with some chapter and verse sounds good let's do it

36:14all right so for this week's chapter and verse uh we're gonna talk about that uh that the villain

36:27the the final villain of the jesus story uh Judas Iscariot the the man the myth the legend the guy the

36:37betrayer of jesus uh because there's a confusing uh discrepancy uh between the story of Judas in

36:51Matthew and the story of Judas in Acts yes so I thought we would dive in and just uh just sort

36:59of talk about uh about this discrepancy and so uh where should we start should we start with

37:06acts or should we start with Matthew um why don't we start with acts actually okay well that's the

37:14fun one we will definitely uh start with the fun one where in acts and this is uh this is chapter

37:22one verse uh what 15 no sorry I had it pulled up uh it starts in 18 we have this parenthetical

37:32aside about what happened to Judas okay so yeah chapter one verse 18 uh Judas having received

37:42his uh his pieces of silver for for his betrayal of jesus uh has apparently purchased himself

37:50a field uh in verse 18 it says now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness

37:58and this is so great falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out

38:07this became known to all the residents of Jerusalem so that the field was called in their language

38:14uh hock hockaldama I'm gonna assume I pronounced that perfectly uh that is field of blood yes

38:28so yeah we uh that's a gruesome end to to a person's life just just tripping apparently and

38:37just explosion yeah well we have uh a couple of things first this sounds to some degree like

38:46kind of an etiology for why there's this field called the field of blood and so it may be that

38:52the author is saying oh this would be a great opportunity to tie in and tie off the story of Judas

38:59because we got this place over here that's called the field of blood and it's a it's a greek uh

39:05transliteration hockaldama um is um how uh what it is in uh in the greek but yeah it is it is pretty

39:15brief and uh yeah he has a reward he buys a field now the greek here uh where it talks about him

39:22falling says headlong in the kjv this could mean headfirst or it could mean towards his head or on

39:30his head uh there's an argument that some people have made that the greek there could instead of

39:37falling could mean to um to burst and so that would kind of fit a little better the um earth to swell

39:47up i would kind of fit a little better this idea that he burst a sundur so he just has a field and

39:53is standing there um beholding the field in which he grows all his you know what and then he just

39:59starts swelling up uh like uh a violet in uh uh charlie in the chakra at the factory and then bursts

40:08and then and you know you find traditions somewhat like this in the ancient world where somebody

40:14some divine punishment was that somebody swelled up and and popped um so wouldn't that be totally

40:20unheard of uh but very gross and then the other option is that he yeah i was just walking and was

40:27like doop doop and then splat fell on his head sometimes when you hit your head just right

40:33your entire bowels burst out of your body it's uh it's a that's a known thing yeah

40:41it's a it's an alarming story it's an alarming uh a tale and what i don't i don't think it could

40:48happen i don't think you can just burst open but there you go there there's one story of uh judas

40:56the other comes to us from matthew 27 and i want to make a point here before we move to the one

41:00of matthew 27 this is two verses long the first verse tells what happened and then the second verse

41:06just ties it in to this etiology for for this place that was called the field of blood yeah it

41:12definitely like the one thing that seems clear from uh from comparing these two stories is that

41:19there is in fact a field of blood but at the end of both of these stories we know that there's a

41:24place called the field of blood yeah uh so here we go uh this is i'm going to start with uh with

41:31this is twenty chapter 27 verse three when judas his betrayer saw that jesus was condemned he

41:38repented and brought brought back the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders he said

41:45i have sinned by betraying innocent blood but they said what is that to us see it see to it yourself

41:52throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple he departed and he went and hanged himself

42:01uh but the chief priests taking the pieces of silver said it is not lawful to put them in the

42:06into the treasury since they are blood money after conferring together they used them to buy the

42:12potter's field and placed uh as a place to bury foreigners for this reason that field has been

42:18called the field of blood to this day and then um the next two verses i think are relevant but

42:25we'll get to them in a second let's talk about this story a little bit so right the passage in

42:29acts was two verses this one is so far six verses six of of a total of eight so the first thing to

42:38note is that this story is significantly expanded yeah and when you're when you're comparing two

42:43versions of a story one principle that is not a hard and fast law but is a tendency is something

42:51called lekteo uh oh sure i think i think that the lekteo breviar i think i think is what it is but

42:59the uh the shorter reading is what that means and the idea is the shorter reading is usually not

43:05always but usually the earlier one because the tendency is for stories to accrete more details

43:13rather than for people who shave details off and so just from looking at the length of these two

43:19stories it seems like the one in matthew is probably the one that's a little later and is adding more

43:25details to it but the details are also interesting let's take a look at the beginning uh and this

43:34there's an earlier part where judas goes to these people and negotiates the price for turning

43:40jesus over and they negotiate 30 pieces of silver and so that's delivered to judas and here it says

43:46he repented brought back the 30 pieces through it into the temple um and they tell him you know

43:53this is your problem man um now that 30 pieces of silver is significant uh but i want to put a pin

44:02in that and keep going the chief priests take the silver and say this is blood money and here we

44:08have the tie in with the field of blood idea right but they buy a potter's field is a place to bury

44:14foreigners um and this potter's field is also interesting so i want to go on to verses nine and

44:20ten where the author of matthew says then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet

44:27jeremaia and this one is wrong it's not jeremaia it's actually zechariah um matthew get it straight

44:37william uh and this is um probably uh zechariah 11 versus 12 through 13 but we also have a reference

44:47to verse nine um but uh that was uh and they took the 30 pieces so this is this is zechariah

44:56and they took the 30 pieces of silver the price of the one on whom a price had been set on whom

45:02some of the people of israel had set a price and they gave them for the potter's field as the

45:07lord commanded me so this is this doesn't exactly match any text that we have from zechariah but

45:13it very closely matches zechariah 11 12 through 13 where it says i then said to them if it seems

45:21right to you give me my wages but if not keep them so they weighed out as my wages 30 shekels of silver

45:28then the lord said to me throw it into the treasury for this lordly price at which i was valued by

45:36them so i took the 30 shekels of silver and threw them into the treasury in the house of the lord

45:42and so the story in matthew seems very very close to this prophecy from zechariah and this fits

45:54matthew's mo one of the things matthew is doing is trying to show that jesus fulfills all these

46:00prophecies from the hebrew bible and matthew is willing to change the story to make it fit better

46:07these prophecies sometimes these are prophecies that are found in the other gospels sometimes

46:12they're prophecies that are not that matthew is coming up with and so if we look in axe we've

46:18got a very short story none of the details that are found in the prophecy from zechariah are found

46:26in the story of judas's death from axe yeah it's very interesting you know it's funny because

46:32one of the things that i looked at when i was looking into this was you know if you just google

46:38how did judas die you find a lot of apologetic websites things like answers and genesis

46:48saying don't worry these aren't conflicting stories because maybe judas hanged himself like matthew

46:56says and then he rotted and while he was hanging there he expanded and expanded because he was

47:03you know the bacteria and blah blah blah and then he burst open after the broke broke or the branch

47:11broke and they they they go through this very elaborate harmonizing of these two different stories

47:18none of them acknowledge that there's another problem and that is who bought the field right

47:25which is a directly conflicting idea like there you can't harmonize he bought the field and he was

47:32walking in his field with he threw like and he bought he bought the field with his money that he

47:39got with that the the 30 pieces of silver and and then the matthew version which is he threw the

47:48pieces of silver back at them and then they went and bought the field yeah there you can't plausibly

47:54harmonize it but there are a lot of folks who are willing to say well if you presuppose this

48:00scenario and if you assume this scenario and if this are going on in the background and oh well

48:05you could speak of someone buying something with the other person's money as the other person buying

48:10it but you can come up with all of these rationalizations for why it is not impossible and this is

48:19this is something that that i've uh repeatedly mentioned on on my own um social media channels is

48:27if you want to harmonize two passages as long as not impossible is the bar one that's the lowest

48:35bar you could possibly set but two you can always get over that bar if well it's not physically

48:41impossible is the bar you can harmonize anything but this i think raises one of the biggest problems

48:48with apologetics this is apologetics one does not follow the data where the data lead does not

48:55allow the data to operate on their own terms apologetics treats the data as an obstacle to be

49:02overcome because they have a predetermined end point and they just need to get around and get

49:09rid of and get over and get by the data to be able to arrive at that end point and it so commonly

49:16results in not impossible stacked on not impossible stacked on not impossible stacked on not impossible

49:22stacked on not impossible is it probable of course not is it plausible of course not is it impossible

49:30and as long as they can gin up the tiniest little sliver of it's not physically impossible

49:37even though we've got a dozen pie we've got a stack of 12 it's not physically impossibles

49:42sitting on top of each other it's still not impossible they're doing like a jenga tower that

49:49they're ready to tumble at any in any direction they've got the tiniest little sliver of not

49:54impossible and that's all they need because the goal is not to show that it's probable or even

50:00that it's plausible the goal is just to show it's not physically impossible therefore

50:05there is the tiniest little glimmer of validity to the belief in the univocality in the inerrancy

50:13of this text and that's all they need to grasp onto because it's ultimately not about coming

50:21up with what's most likely it's about defending my belief in this whatever in the inerrancy of this

50:29text in the univocality of this text to themselves not to anyone else to themselves so they can feel

50:37justified in having that belief even if that justification is built upon the foundation

50:43of that tiniest little sliver of not impossible and so any any two stories from outside the

50:51bible that were so incongruent as these two would immediately be dismissed as contradictory but

51:00because the guiding principle here is not what really happened or what do the texts actually say

51:05the guiding principle here is damn it make it work that's going to be the end result is as long as I

51:14have that tiny little sliver of not impossible but um yeah what's going on here is Matthew is telling

51:20this story in a way to make it sound like a fulfillment of this prophecy in zechariah and

51:25we've got all these details that are not found in the other account of judas' death that are there

51:31only to make Matthew's story fulfill the prophecy in zechariah and this is not the only place where

51:37Matthew is telling stories in weird ways uh the triumphal entry is another one that is also a

51:43prophecy from zechariah about the king riding into Jerusalem on a donkey even uh a cult the full

51:51of a donkey and this is um this is opposition this is repeating the same thing again using different

51:59or additional details to kind of flesh it out further. Matthew tells the story in a way that has

52:06Jesus riding on two animals simultaneously into Jerusalem which has been depicted yeah it's been

52:13depicted a variety of different ways some people have him sitting on the bigger one with the the

52:17smaller one like a foot rest like an ottoman yeah I I was a nice donkey ottoman that you can get

52:23yeah I'd love to see a depiction of like a trick riding Jesus where he's got a foot on each saddle

52:28and he's and he's kind of going through. It's always been how I've pictured it it's always been a circus

52:33act tonight but I that's my preferred version but that and there there are arguments for why this is

52:39the way it is but one that I think is is probably most likely in my opinion is that uh Matthew's

52:46reading this in the Greek translation and in the Greek translation the poetry of the Hebrew the

52:51opposition doesn't come through as well and so I think Matthew saw a donkey and a cult the full

52:59of a donkey and thought two of them okay and wrote the story that way because his priority

53:07is making sure Jesus is fulfilling the prophecies from the Hebrew Bible as the author of Matthew

53:13understand him even if that means Jesus has stacked a cult on top of a donkey and then is

53:20balanced on top of a cult which is probably the most likely way you're going to get Jesus into

53:25Jerusalem on two animals but we've got a similar situation with Judas where Matthew is telling the

53:31story in a completely different way in a way that is incongruent is not plausibly harmonized

53:37with acts and so there are going to be folks who are going to say yeah it's totally the same story

53:46you know I don't have a problem harmonizing of course not nobody has a problem doing with what

53:51doing what is necessary for their worldview to be safe so it's uh it's it's two different stories

53:59and yeah we were talking earlier about a third version of this story oh yeah a story as big as a

54:05house it comes from around 120 to 130 CE there was this uh this Christian leader named papius of

54:13Hierapolis who is wrote some accounts of Jesus's life that are no longer extant but they are quoted

54:22in pieces in Eusebius's ecclesiastical history and to begin Eusebius thought that papius was kind

54:29of a moron did not think he was incredibly intelligent it doesn't seem to have respected papius I don't

54:35know you've told me the story uh that that papius came up with for Judas and I think he sounds like a

54:42real smart guy but papius tells the story of of Judas uh being on his property and basically

54:50swelling up again like violet bow regard from Charlie and the chocolate factory but he grows to

54:58a size bigger than a house and this is all like maggots and festering whatnot is just making him

55:06swell up and for some reason there's a mention of his genitals swelling up and becoming disgusting

55:12and he's exuding maggots and and who knows what and burst forth his intestines and uh whatever covers

55:21this property and uh as the story goes the stench was unbearable for over a century uh on the field

55:29of blood where where Judas died which is an odd thing for papius to to say since ostensibly

55:37according to a lot of people and this is a discussion for another day but papius a lot of people claim

55:44is one of the earliest witnesses to the gospel of Matthew as written by Matthew a lot of people

55:49think he's the first one to attribute uh methane authorship to the gospel of Matthew but doesn't

55:55seem to take it seriously if his story of Judas totally ignores Matthew's story and instead is this

56:01kind of outlandish uh Charlie and the chocolate factory story of uh of Judas uh swelling up and

56:09then bursting uh a sunder in the field well uh there you go i i don't know what to believe now

56:18now i'm just i'm confused uh all i know for sure now is that i don't want to go to tumble headlong

56:27in a field because that sounds terrifying well as long as you don't betray the lord

56:32i think you should be okay yeah yeah that's uh that's as long as you stay away from that cliff

56:38i know it is tempting uh to go dance along the edge of that cliff but stay away i don't know how

56:43how much silver you got well i'll consider it anyway oh another thing to note the the 30 pieces

56:50of silver that according to uh chapter and exodus that was the value of a slave so oh wow a lot of

56:57people find that noteworthy that Christ was betrayed for the prat value of a slave um so now

57:05we're now we're connecting Matthew to zechariah to exodus so there's some trigonometry involved but

57:11i love it i love it eventually we'll figure this thing out yeah eventually one day we'll get there

57:18okay well uh i guess that's how we're gonna have to leave this one because there's no real conclusion

57:25to come to uh but thanks to all of you for tuning in we sure do appreciate that if you would like to

57:32become a part of helping to make this show go you can go to our patreon page which is patreon.com/dataoverdogma

57:41you can write into us uh contact at dataoverdogmapod.com is the way to do that and uh until next week

57:50have a good one bye everybody