Ep 19: I'll make you a STAR! With David A. Burnett

00:00If we want to understand the Bible and early Judaism and early Christianity on its own terms,

00:09rather than on the terms we are imposing, we need to rethink this category and talk more

00:15about something like One God rhetoric, where we see people talking about the One God, the

00:21way that I talk about the Denver Broncos in the late 90s, there's no other team.

00:27The Oakland Raiders, they are not even a football team, it's the same kind of rhetoric, it's

00:33not an actual philosophical assertion that the Raiders do not exist as a football team,

00:39I wish that were the case, but it's not.

00:43And so I think we need to shift to talking about One God rhetoric.

00:50Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan and I'm Dan Beacher and you are listening to the Data

00:56Over Dogma podcast where we try to increase the public's access to the academic study

01:01of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

01:07How's it going today, Dan?

01:08Doing great.

01:09Doing great.

01:10Looking forward to today's show.

01:11All right.

01:12Excellent.

01:13Me too.

01:14We've got a good friend of mine, David A. Burnett.

01:15How are you doing, David?

01:16Hey, guys.

01:17I'm doing well.

01:18How are you?

01:19Doing very well.

01:20Thank you.

01:21We are going to briefly introduce David and then we'll get into things.

01:25David is a PhD candidate in New Testament and Christian origins at the University of Edinburgh

01:31working with Matthew Novinson.

01:32Is that correct?

01:33That's correct.

01:34All right.

01:35He has completed other doctoral work toward a PhD in religious studies in Judaism and Christianity

01:41in antiquity at Marquette University and served there as a graduate teaching assistant and

01:46research assistant and now teaches full time at St. Anthony School in Milwaukee.

01:52And how's the weather treating you there these days?

01:54Oh, man.

01:55Summers in Milwaukee are a pair of physical men.

01:58It is fantastic.

01:59All right.

02:00It is.

02:01It's 85 today, which is actually nicer than it's been for the last few weeks around here.

02:07But David and I go way back.

02:09I think 2010 was that that was an and it was in Atlanta, right?

02:14Man, I can't believe it's been that long, but yeah, we met each other at a big geek festival

02:23called the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, which happens the weekend

02:27before Thanksgiving every year and it switches cities every year.

02:32And you can find north of 10,000 biblical scholars who descend on the hotels in the conference

02:40center of this city during this conference.

02:43And in Atlanta in 2010, I was presenting a paper on, I think, monotheism or the gods

02:49or something like that, and I was presenting in the same session as a well-established

02:54scholar named Larry Hurtado, who was actually teaching at the University of Edinburgh for

02:59a long time.

03:01And he and I were kind of going at it a little bit in the session, disagreeing with each other

03:07a bit.

03:08But Larry and I and David began talking after the session and maybe you can tell what you

03:15were doing there and how we got to know each other.

03:19Yeah, it was a blast, actually.

03:21I saw your paper in the program and me and my old friend, Mike Heiser, may he rest in

03:28peace, were coming to hear your paper and to hear Larry's.

03:33And I had always wanted to meet Larry Hurtado and I had loved his work like in college when

03:37I had read it and got really into the early high-crystalogy stuff or not.

03:43And yeah, so Heiser, Hurtado loved Heiser's dissertation and kept trying to give him to

03:50publish it on the Divine Council.

03:52Which was weird that he never published it.

03:54I got on to Heiser all the people of the dissertation online and stuff.

03:58Well, it may be published posthumously.

04:02Okay.

04:03All right.

04:04All right.

04:05We are currently working on that.

04:06Okay.

04:07That's for another time.

04:08Yeah.

04:09So we went to Y'all's session, loved your paper and it was on Septuagint, God, Deuteronomy

04:15and the concept.

04:16Yeah, conceptualization of God in the Septuagint or something like that.

04:19Yeah.

04:20I remember because it was good.

04:21I was like, this is a great paper and I was, I was tracking, you know, and I was writing

04:25my master's dissertation at the time and doing stuff with the gods and stuff we'll talk

04:30about today.

04:31But yeah, so Mike introduced me to Larry and then talk to you and then we got to talking

04:39and then the other session was starting.

04:41So me, you and Larry had moved out in the hallway and we kept talking and then Larry

04:44had told, I was like, y'all want to go for a drink and I'm like, yes, absolutely.

04:48And so yeah, he, he takes us all for a drink.

04:51You know, Dan had his like a ginger ale or whatever and then I had my, yeah, it's right.

04:57There you go.

04:58And he bought me a Guinness and we just went at it and kept debating and talking and it

05:03was a really great memory.

05:06It was just, we had a, we had such a fun time with Larry and that I just, I love having

05:11that memory and that's how our friendship started and we've just kept talking ever since and

05:16would hang out at SBL and, you know, just had a great friendship after that.

05:22And, and, and Larry tragically passed away a handful of years ago, but you mentioned the

05:26early high Christology club, which many of the people listening will probably not know

05:32about, but what in your words, what was the early high Christology club, of which Larry,

05:39I think was one of a founding member.

05:41Oh, yeah.

05:42He was definitely a founding member.

05:44So I mean, I first learned about it when I was reading Lord Jesus Christ is ridiculously

05:50epic tome on this.

05:52He had dedicated it to EHCC and I was like, what is this?

05:56And I had asked him about that and he was like, oh, that's the early high Christology

05:59club and it was a group of scholars that take the view that from the first generation,

06:09the authors of the New Testament, for example, are already, already believe that Jesus is

06:15divine.

06:16He is, he is God or is a God or divine being of some sort already from the get go.

06:22It's not a late development like later in Christianity that already they're attributing

06:28divinity to Jesus from generation one.

06:32And this is, yeah, this is his, his mutation idea that this is something that as soon as

06:40as we have news of the resurrection spreading, this pops up really quick.

06:45And he calls it radical evolution of early Jewish monotheism and he qualifies early Jewish

06:51monotheism to not really mean monotheism, but it's like, yeah.

06:57And he's the, he published a few years ago, Baylor University Press published a collection

07:05of essays called the ancient Jewish monotheism and early Christian Jesus devotion.

07:11So he's been one of the most prolific writers on the question of monotheism and early Judaism

07:17and the relationship of Jesus is conceptualization and the relationship of Jesus to God.

07:23But that's pushing back against the idea that was very common and is still common among

07:28scholarship that the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, at least don't seem to present

07:32Jesus as divine in the same sense as the much later gospel of John seems to.

07:37So arguing that there's kind of a development towards the divine Jesus and Larry and others

07:44were saying no, as soon as we have the resurrection and the story of the resurrection, we have

07:50where this is that that treats Jesus as in some way, divine, a part of God's identity

07:57to pull from Richard Baucom's theory of divine identity.

08:01I think that's all very fascinating, but I would like to push us to talk about David's

08:08scholarship because we could go you two, I wonder if we wind you up, we could, you guys

08:14could go and talk about other people's scholarship for forever for eternity.

08:19So let's dive in a little bit to you, David, and talk about a bit what you've been working

08:25on.

08:26Yeah, I appreciate that.

08:29So basically this dissertation has been long time in the making.

08:34It's tentatively called, and I had done an episode back on the Naked Bible podcast years

08:39ago about this, but it's tentatively called resurrection and the death of the gods.

08:45And it's about rival reception of the patriarchal promises of star-like seed that are given

08:51to Abraham and the argument of 1 Corinthians 15, which is the most famous chapter in all

08:57of the New Testament on resurrection for your listeners that don't know that.

09:02If you want to go anywhere in the New Testament to learn about what the resurrection is all

09:07about for these early Jesus people, that is where you would start because not after that

09:14and let's hear, what does it say?

09:17Yeah, so that chapter is fascinating for a million reasons.

09:23It starts out with the gospel is the first most important thing that I taught you, you

09:29know, and this chapter is written in 1 Corinthians to combat supposedly a sort of loss of belief

09:38in or misunderstanding of the resurrection of Jesus, because for Paul, he's trying to

09:47get the Corinthians to understand that not only is this the most important thing that

09:53I taught you guys, but if he didn't raise from the dead Jesus, then the whole the resurrection,

09:59which he puts capital T on it, it is an event for him.

10:02It is an apocalyptic in time, eschatological world turnover type of event that he says,

10:10this is what it's all about.

10:12He's like, if that didn't happen, if Jesus wasn't literally raised from the dead bodily

10:16and we'll talk about what that means for Paul in a little bit, but then the resurrection

10:22isn't going to happen either.

10:24And all of our faith is pointless.

10:26So when you say the resurrection, you're talking about like us, like everybody is.

10:32And yes, this is a huge end of days, righteous resurrected to life, you know, what happens

10:43to the unrighteous, the wicked that's still up for grabs at this point.

10:47A lot of folks think destruction of the wicked annihilation.

10:51Some folks think, you know, something like what we call hell, but I don't I personally

10:58don't think Paul was a universalist.

11:00I think that was a later development.

11:02There are texts in Paul that lend themselves to be read in that kind of way.

11:08Some people take what's a universalist.

11:10I'm not sure I know what that is.

11:11A universalist is the idea that everyone eventually in the end will be saved.

11:18And some people take some passages in Paul to say that I definitely don't think historically

11:23Paul thought that Paul was in one sense was a run of the mill Jewish apocalyptist of the

11:32first century that as a Pharisee really believed in this thing we call the resurrection.

11:39And that event that he calls he calls it that four times in the in first Corinthians 14,

11:45the resurrection, and it's always an event.

11:48It's always a title for an event.

11:50And this gets misunderstood sometimes.

11:53It might help to to mess up the language so we don't take all the Christian baggage with

11:59us later that happens in the reception of Paul, but maybe call it something like the

12:03arising or something like that.

12:06That might be a good way to talk about it because there's all kinds of things associated

12:12with this big event for him that he talks about in this chapter.

12:17And sometimes in especially in Christian theological conversations, especially in apologetic ones,

12:23it gets so overrun by this proof that he physically bodily got up.

12:30And that's it.

12:31Like the end of conversation and it's like there's so there's so many other things going

12:36on in this chapter besides that that he attaches to this event.

12:41And so when he describes what's taking place in the event, there's a host of stuff that

12:45he talks about.

12:47Like one of those things that he talks about is this judgment and suppose a destruction

12:53of what he calls the principalities and powers and rulers.

12:59This is in first Corinthians 20 through 28, this section there 15, 20 through 28.

13:04And this is his little section kind of like Paul's little apocalypse.

13:09If you want to look for a section in Paul's letters, where what does he actually think

13:16is happening in this whole resurrection event?

13:19What is taking place?

13:21Because he talks about resurrection all the time, but he never sort of lays out here is

13:25the event.

13:26Step one, two, three, four.

13:28Well if you want to know what that is, that's the best place to go.

13:31I mean, that's the sort of best outline he gives us and there you have this weird destruction

13:38of the power thing going on.

13:40Yeah.

13:41And verse 24, then comes the end, he hands over the kingdom of to God the Father when

13:47he is brought to an end all rule and all authority and power.

13:51And that would be the principalities in every authority and power.

13:55These would be divine forces that are affecting the world that have power within the world.

14:01And this is where you're going to talk or in your dissertation, you're going to talk

14:06at some length about what the this is a reference to, aren't you?

14:10Exactly.

14:11Yeah.

14:12This is a huge part of my dissertation is where is this coming from?

14:14First of all, where is this and who are these powers and principality stuff?

14:19There is a great scholar named Emma Wasserman, who's written a book called Apocalypse is

14:24Holy War, and she's has previous articles on this subject as well.

14:29And I think she's a dead right on this point is that traditionally the way in specifically

14:35Christian scholarship that has read apocalyptic stuff in Paul as this really staunch bifurcated

14:44cosmos like you got the good guys up there, bad guys over here.

14:47And it's just black and white, you know, this big battle, good verse evil.

14:52And that's it.

14:53That's what it's all about.

14:54But this language of principalities and powers is used all the time in Greek Jewish literature

15:02for the gods of the other nations.

15:05So it's used to talk about them all the time.

15:08So it's not, we're not talking about principal earthly principalities.

15:12We're not talking about the like human lords and leaders and kings and whatever.

15:17We're talking about their gods.

15:19Yeah.

15:20So yes, they are talking about the gods of the Gentiles, I think, the gods of the nation

15:24specifically, I think is a category coming from Deuteronomy, but, but to answer your

15:30question.

15:31Sorry.

15:32To answer your question.

15:33No, it's good.

15:34So I personally think both are included.

15:37And there's a passage in Isaiah that I would refer to to this that maybe we can talk about.

15:42But go ahead, Dan.

15:44I was going to say this is a vestige of the earlier divine council, which Dan and I talked

15:49about in a previous episode.

15:51So we see this in Deuteronomy 32, we have references in Psalm 82 and elsewhere.

15:56This idea that each nation is ruled by its own patron deity or by this time period, some

16:01kind of angel or some kind of divine being of some kind.

16:06And so this is how they account for the different forces and the different powers that are in

16:12play geopolitically around the world.

16:15I think a lot of our listeners and I would be a little surprised to hear that these ideas

16:23of other gods still persist in the New Testament.

16:26It feels like an Old Testament sort of idea, but to hear that it's still sort of pervading

16:35through the New Testament is actually a little surprising to me.

16:38As it should be, I mean, this is great because for a couple of years I had been dreaming up

16:47this conference on this topic on monotheism.

16:51And it's hopefully it's demise in the study of antiquity.

16:56And finally it's happening.

16:59And so one of my best friends, Josiah Bisbee, who is disertating at Brown right now with

17:05his PhD at Brown University under Saul Olyon there, a wonderful scholar in this regard

17:11as well of the Hebrew Bible.

17:14He pitched the idea to Saul.

17:17We met and Saul loved the idea and we are making this happen.

17:23And me and Josiah both said, you know, if Josiah takes the late antiquity because we're

17:28going all the way into late antiquity after Judaism, Christianity are already a thing,

17:33he's going to cover that section.

17:34I'm going to cover second temple Judaism and Christian origins.

17:37But we're like, we need to get Dan to get, do the ancient Israel side and A&E side.

17:42So we brought Dan on board and so all three of us are sort of spearheading this conference

17:49at Brown that we are calling the meanings and ends of monotheism.

17:55And ends is in, the S is in parentheses.

17:57So the meaning is an end of monotheism.

18:01And this is a play off of a title of a famous Wilfred Cantwell Smith book called The Meaning

18:07and End of Religion, which was big in the 60s as a paradigmatic shift in religious studies,

18:14sort of a wider paradigmatic shift to saying, can we even talk about religion existing in

18:19the ancient world?

18:20Was that even a thing?

18:22Because not in the modern sense, the way we talk about religion is like, well, you have

18:26your spiritual metaphysical stuff over here and then you have like politics and economics

18:31and all that stuff over here.

18:32And so that's religion over there, you know, and then you have everything else over here.

18:38Smith and others are saying, no way, this distinction did not exist in the ancient world.

18:42And the way scholars talk about we're scholars of religion, you'll find out real quick if

18:49you've read any primary literature at all from the ancient world that all of these things

18:54are integrated.

18:55They have no concept, barring some philosophical traditions like Epicureanism and others.

19:02But there's no sense, there's no general sense in which politics, what we call religion

19:10or oligio practices, cultic practices to divinities and all that, economics, social sphere, family

19:17sphere, individual thoughts about individuals, all of that is tied to the divine realm.

19:22It's all a holistic thing.

19:24And so just like that book did to say, hey, we need to think about not using this term

19:29religion to describe that in the ancient world, we're saying that with monotheism.

19:33We're saying monotheism was not surprise trigger warning, it was not a thing in ancient Israel.

19:42It was not a thing in early Judaism and surprise.

19:45It was not a thing in early Christianity either.

19:48They believe that these other gods were real.

19:51They believe that they were active in the world.

19:53They believed that they were active in all sorts of ways in the world.

19:58And I did a paper at SBL on this last year, and I'm going to develop this further for

20:04the conference.

20:05But there are conflicting views on what to do with these gods or what these gods are

20:10like in early Judaism.

20:12There wasn't just one view.

20:15It's not like all Jews agreed on this.

20:18And a problem of taking our modern concept of monotheism, which is something that has

20:22developed since the 1700s, like that's when the term was coined in 1760 by a Cambridge

20:28Platonist named Henry Moore.

20:30We take that framework and we retroject it and impose it upon the Bible.

20:36And then the way we try to find ways to make it fit the framework, and then that then becomes

20:43a foundation for all kinds of different arguments, even though the categories upon which we're

20:50basing these arguments are arbitrarily imposed on the text.

20:55And so we're trying to say, if we want to understand the Bible and early Judaism and

21:01early Christianity on its own terms, rather than on the terms we are imposing, we need

21:07to rethink this category and talk more about something like one God rhetoric, where we

21:13see people talking about the one God, the way that I talk about the Denver Broncos in

21:18the late 90s, there's no other team.

21:21The Oakland Raiders, they're not even a football team, like it's the same kind of rhetoric.

21:28It's not an actual philosophical assertion that the Raiders do not exist as a football

21:33team.

21:34I wish that were the case, but it's not.

21:37And so I think we need to shift to talking about one God rhetoric.

21:42And because it's serving a specific rhetorical function within the discourse that's going

21:47on, it's not coming downstream from this conviction that no other gods exist.

21:54It is something that is being used to structure power and values in that world.

21:59And so this is going to take place in May at Brown University.

22:03We're going to start advertising for it at the end of the year, but I'm really looking

22:08forward to this conference too.

22:09And I'm really looking forward to it some point writing the paper that I'm going to

22:13be presenting, which I have not started yet.

22:15I'm very excited about the conference.

22:17I'm hoping somebody, I think I know somebody who might be able to get me in, but we'll

22:22see.

22:23We'll see if we can write that down.

22:24Well, I mean, I think it's going to be open to the.

22:27So I mean, as soon as the place is full, it's full, you know, we're going to stream it

22:31too.

22:32And we're going to stream it as well.

22:33That's right.

22:34It's going to be live stream.

22:35So there's already, I mean, I didn't even know Dan was going to talk about it on his

22:39TikTok yet, but it's like, there's already a lot of buzz generating about it.

22:45Already, which is really cool.

22:48And that's what we want.

22:49I mean, we want this to be a big rock in the pond in the study of antiquity.

22:54And the thing is, for us, for people, weird people like me and Dan, who are way deep into

23:01this stuff, this is not new.

23:05This is stuff we've been talking about for a very long time.

23:09But the problem is, is whenever the trickle down of scholarship actually reaches the public,

23:16it's still filtered through all of these monotheistic categories.

23:19And we let the modern developed religions determine what we can and can't say about antiquity.

23:27And that is a huge problem.

23:30And a lot of people don't understand why it's a huge problem, but it has a ton of ramifications.

23:36Talk a little bit about why it is a huge problem.

23:39Yeah, so for starters, it's just bad history.

23:43I mean, if we care about the discipline of history at all, I mean, if we really want

23:48to preserve doing good, critical, historical work, then, and one of this ties into one

23:56of the reasons why it's so bad, is it misrepresents entire people groups, entire movements, entire

24:04religious movements, if you want to call them that whole people groups that come from these

24:09traditions, that millions and millions of people come out of, we want, if you want to

24:15understand your history, or if someone's telling your story and your history, you don't want

24:19to be misrepresented.

24:21You don't want people to tell the wrong story, because when you get start looking at Christian

24:28origins in particular, which is my wheelhouse is early Judaism and Christian origins, when

24:33you start looking really carefully and critically at this, you can't help but bump into and

24:39run into all the gods.

24:41You can't help it, because what do you do in that God-saturated world?

24:47And this weird thing with Jesus rising from the dead, and he's supposed to, what?

24:52Is he supposed to just go have party with these guys or, or is he friends with them?

24:56You know, what's going on?

24:57Well, according to Paul, no way.

24:59It's bad.

25:00They are bad, they are not good, and they need to be dealt with.

25:05Whereas there are other Jews, sort of maybe in their own day that would have appeared

25:10more urbane and sophisticated part of the Greek Roman polis, that we're going to festivals

25:16and other temples and places all the time, and it was commonplace for them.

25:21And if you want a great scholar to read about this, read Paula Friedrichson.

25:27Her work is fantastic on this.

25:29I was going to mention her paper, her recent one, "Filo Herod Paul and the Many Gods of

25:34Ancient Jewish Monotheism."

25:36Yes.

25:37I love it.

25:38It's a great paper.

25:39It's a fantastic paper.

25:40Yes.

25:41So, sorry, I wanted to just go back, because you were talking about, and I wanted to make

25:44sure that I understood, the problem that you're discussing is that if we look at the ancient

25:51times through the lens of modern religion, or if we have to make it comport with, if we

25:58have to make our view of ancient times comport with our own theology and with our own modern

26:07sort of Christianity or religion or whatever it is that we're looking at, we're going

26:13to miss what was actually going on there.

26:16Is that the crux of what you're saying?

26:18100%.

26:19And I think building on that.

26:20That is exactly what I'm saying.

26:21And that can harm things today, because the same kinds of people who were silencing by

26:27looking at the Bible and saying it's all monotheistic, we're silencing a ton of people.

26:33Those people like that are still around.

26:36And so, in a sense, it's also giving priority to groups today over and against the groups

26:44who might be more closely tied to what was probably a more prevalent view, anciently.

26:51And so, even today, even in matters of legal issues, what is or is not a religion or what

26:56is or is not Christian?

26:59Maybe not in the United States, but around the world, those debates can have significant

27:04impact on the quality of people's lives.

27:07And so, when we try to conceptualize religion as one thing or Christianity as one thing

27:13or monotheism as one thing, that can frequently impact who has access to what power and resources.

27:20And when we're allowing one group to exercise unilateral control of that discussion and

27:26defining things the way they want, and you know how much I hate definitions, Dan, that

27:32can cause problems.

27:35Yeah, I mean, he said it great.

27:39I mean, I shouldn't, bears no repeating.

27:42But the point there, I think, that's important as we look at Paul here, is that Paul is one

27:49voice among many, but especially as a Pharisee that sees that the gods of the other nations

27:55are a problem.

27:57They're something that needs to be dealt with.

28:00But he's not the only voice in the first century in Judaism on this.

28:04And just to show you how stark of a difference it is, is in a couple of my publications I

28:11talk about the deuteronomic sort of cosmology, the deuteronomic background to a lot of Paul's

28:18thinking.

28:19And I have a stupidly long title for this book chapter I did called a neglected deuteronomic

28:25scriptural matrix for the nature of the resurrection body in 1 Corinthians 15, 39 through 42.

28:32And what all that means is just where when we go and look at what when Paul talks about

28:38the nature of the resurrection body and what's it like, he compares it to the celestial bodies,

28:45the sun, moon and star, and the stars differ from each other in glory.

28:49And so too is the resurrection.

28:51He talks about them being glorified beings.

28:54And he relates them, the celestial bodies to the terrestrial bodies under there, which

28:59is what you are now, your human beings, the birds of the heavens, fish of the sea, you

29:05know, blah, blah, blah, those creatures are terrestrial beings.

29:08They're called flesh, he calls them.

29:10They're perishable, whereas he says these glory beings are imperishable.

29:17He says, you once bore the image of the terrestrial, but now you're going to bear the image of

29:23the celestial.

29:24So he actually calls Jesus in that text, a pnefma, a numa, a spirit.

29:31He's a life-giving spirit, whatever that means, and he's not a flesh being.

29:35And he says, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, period full stop.

29:42So whatever he means in this nature of the resurrection body, what is it going to be

29:48like?

29:49Because clearly he's had pushback against what do you mean bodily resurrection?

29:54And here's a huge problem here is in some Christian theological hot takes on this chapter,

30:03they've sort of framed the conversation in this like staunch dichotomy where you can

30:09only have one or the other.

30:11You can only have one.

30:13These people that believe in just raw platonism, that the body's gross.

30:17It's a prison house.

30:18You need to get out of it.

30:19And the soul needs to escape and go to spirit land where the souls are and where the gods

30:24are unbodied.

30:25They don't have bodies.

30:26All that body stuff is nasty, gross, earthly stuff.

30:29It's a prison.

30:30The really virtuous soul can ascend to the heights and join the gods.

30:34And then the other version is Paul's version where he thinks, no, you have a body and it's

30:41not like that astral stuff.

30:43You have a body, you're going to be on a new earth, you're going to be on the ground,

30:46you're going to be eating chicken or whatever, it's like, and that's the only options.

30:52And that's why a lot of popular New Testament scholars who are also theologians like to

30:59frame the conversation.

31:01And I'm sorry to say this, but they're dead wrong.

31:04Those are not the only options.

31:07There are lots and lots of other options, especially within Greek speaking and Greek

31:13writing Jews.

31:15They have lots of other options to go by.

31:18And so you need to really get down into the weeds of what ancient Mediterranean people

31:24actually thought about the nature of the gods.

31:27What are they like?

31:30And it's not as simple.

31:31You're saying as the contemporary dichotomy between immaterial and material.

31:36It's not a binary where you're either 100% immaterial or 100% material.

31:41It's more of a spectrum between those two poles.

31:44That's right.

31:45Can you explore that a little bit?

31:47Give us a couple of examples of some other contemporaneous ideas.

31:50Yeah, I have a great example for you.

31:52And this came up in a recent Catholic Biblical Association meeting, whereas debating a popular

31:59scholar on this very topic.

32:02So yeah, so an example of not making these false dichotomies.

32:07So to frame the example I'm going to give you and connect it to Paul is it's very popular

32:13and Dan knows this really well.

32:15It's very popular in these debates about in Paul, who are the stoicaya to Cosmou that

32:21he mentions in his letters.

32:22This in Greek is like the elements of the world or the cosmos or the powers of the world.

32:29Is he just talking about like the four natural elements that in Greek literature they talk

32:34about a lot?

32:36Or is he talking about actual beings and powers?

32:40And there's this again, the whole conversation a lot of the time in past scholarship is defined

32:47by those dichotomies by those binaries and Greek celestial science of the day and philosophy

32:56that's all mixed up in ancient Greco-Roman world was you could be all of those at once

33:01or neither.

33:02So I'll give you a great example of this.

33:05So this is from the famous text, one of my favorite texts that people who know me say

33:09I talk too much about this text, but Cicero's has a text called De Natura de Orem and it's

33:15on the nature of the gods.

33:18And we are really lucky to have this text survive from antiquity because he talks about

33:24lots of other books by other Greco-Roman authors before him on the nature of the gods, sometimes

33:30like six volume works or 12 volume works or whatever that we don't have anymore.

33:34And so we have Cicero's and it's an amazing conversation of an Epicurean, a stoic in an

33:43academic, they're the inheritors of Plato's school, and they're all like debating with

33:47each other on the nature of the gods.

33:49And we have the whole conversation as he construes it and it's brilliant.

33:54And so Valleus is the Epicurean and he says of Chrysippus, the stoic, this is what he

34:01says about him.

34:02So he's trashing the Stoics.

34:04So he wants to go in on Chrysippus and this is what he says in book one.

34:07He says, Chrysippus who is deemed the most skillful interpreter of the Stoic dreams,

34:13musters an enormous mob of unknown gods.

34:18So he's just going to call, he's just got all these gods that we don't, you know, I

34:23don't buy, you know.

34:25So who does he, what does he say are gods?

34:28Well he lists them, Valleus lists them for us.

34:31He says, this is what Chrysippus all thinks is gods are divine.

34:34He says some of the things he calls gods are diviner, quote, fire or ether, all fluid and

34:41soluble substances such as water, earth, air.

34:46So you have the elements there, right?

34:48And he said, and he keeps going.

34:49He says, sun, moon, stars, and the all embracing unity of everything or all things.

34:58And even those human beings who have attained immortality.

35:03So right there, you have an example of Cicero portraying, Cicero portraying the Epicurean

35:13as getting on to Chrysippus for, he thinks all these guys are divine, all these guys

35:18are gods.

35:19So, it's very common in that context.

35:24And going along with this, he goes on to talk about the debate between Platonists and Stoics,

35:30for example, where Platonists think when they think of the gods, it's like, no, they are

35:34awesome with tone, they are unbodied, they do not have bodies.

35:38And writing in Latin, he even quotes them in Greek to be precise.

35:42He's like, they say this, well, the Stoic says they are wrong, you know, and I'm paraphrasing

35:48here, but it's like, for any being that has motion, that has will and determination and

35:55all that, we know they have bodies, the gods have bodies.

35:59So, a Stoic in Platonists can argue about that long before Paul and long after.

36:05And so when you're a Greek speaking Jew in that world, an educated one, especially one

36:11that thinks of Pharisee, who thinks that, oh, the resurrection, we're going to become

36:16as the stars, and we're going to talk about this.

36:19They thought the stars were gods, just like this, the Greeks and Romans thought this, many

36:26of them, ancient Israel thought this.

36:29And so when you go and look at, and most Jews thought this as well.

36:33So of the period, all the literature we have seems to suggest this.

36:38But if you go and look at the source of this, this is where some of my work comes in, is

36:43then you go look at Deuteronomy, and Dan's written about this too.

36:47When you go look at Deuteronomy, it's very clear that the celestial bodies are conceived

36:54when they look up and they see literally transcendent, like literally above them.

37:01The beings that rule the sub-lunar sphere, and this is stock ancient Mediterranean cosmology

37:06right here, is they're all gods up there, little G, you know, they're all divine beings

37:12up there, and they're sort of tasked with running everything down here.

37:18Interesting.

37:19But that's the common belief, and Jews did not depart from that common belief.

37:24That is a common shared belief.

37:26Now everyone had their own narratives as to how that happened.

37:32And they had their own interpretations.

37:34Are they good?

37:35Are they bad?

37:36How do we relate to them as our own people with our own deity?

37:39You know, that was the conversation.

37:41So if you really want to get into the conversation in the first century, that's the level at

37:47which the conversation is being had.

37:48Does that make sense?

37:49Yeah.

37:50There's a, and if I can, if I can butt in a little bit, there was a great book published

37:54a bit ago by Beyata Pongratz-Leist, and she was the editor who was called "Reconsidering

37:59the Concept of Revolutionary Monotheism."

38:01Great.

38:02One of those dichotomies that we use a lot is this notion that everybody was just going

38:06along okay with the gods, and then suddenly something just stopped it immediately, and

38:12everything just did a 180, and we're just going the other way.

38:15This idea that monotheism was just a nuclear bomb that just totally revolutionized the

38:20world.

38:21And there's absolutely no indication of any such thing whatsoever happened.

38:24No evidence.

38:25It is incremental elaborations, and as we have all this authoritative literature that we

38:31still have down to this day, still considered authoritative literature, where we have precisely

38:36these ideas, Deuteronomy 4 and 19, when you look up to the heavens and you see the sun,

38:41the moon, the stars, all the hosts of heaven do not bow down to them.

38:46It says that the Adonai gave these to the nations of the earth.

38:50In other words, these are the gods of the nations, and this is reflecting on Deuteronomy

38:5432, 8 and 9, where it says they divided up the nations according to the menalohim, the

38:59children of God.

39:00And even in judges, when you've got Deborah fighting against Cicero, what does it say

39:06in Judges 5, it says, "Even the stars in their courses fought against Cicero."

39:11This is another reference to the gods.

39:14And so these authoritative texts are still there when first century Jewish people are

39:20interpreting this, and they have not just said, "Oh, well, there's a line here, and

39:25from here on out, we are understanding this completely differently."

39:28They're still looking at this and considering these stars, these divine beings, the host

39:34of heaven as the gods of the nations, and that's a dichotomy that frustrates me, that

39:39we think there was one day where everybody just decided they were just going to suddenly

39:44believe something entirely differently, and everything that our parents and our grandparents

39:48and everybody before us believed we're just going to reject.

39:52That's not how ideologies work.

39:54It is really...

39:55It's funny to the people, we have these vestiges even in our modern lives.

40:03We still call a bunch of the heavenly bodies after Roman gods.

40:08Yes.

40:09They still bear those same names, so it makes sense that at one point, it wasn't just named

40:16after gods, those were the gods, that's who that was.

40:21And they didn't have the benefit of the scientific experimentation and exploration that we have

40:25today, so it was a lot more widespread to accept those traditions that Pumba couldn't

40:32accept in the Lion King, because he thought they were giant balls of gas burning millions

40:38of miles away, but he was corrected on that.

40:42We got to remember the social aspect of this too.

40:45When you think about, if you're traveling in the ancient world, which only the rich people

40:49could do anyways, unless you're just a slave in a trail here, but the point is, when you're

40:56traveling in the ancient world, you go to some other city or just some neighboring city and

40:59they have a god of that polis, that god is over that, we call this cosmic geography.

41:06The idea is that god is over that little region and they have their own language.

41:11They have their own traditions that are maybe hundreds of years old and it's totally different

41:16than ours over here.

41:18We have our deity over here, we have our temple, we have our stories and our traditions.

41:22People didn't go around for the most part.

41:25People did not go around the ancient world saying, well, our god is the only one and

41:29all of y'all's are fake and all of y'all's are wrong.

41:32That's not how they saw the world.

41:34When they go into some neighboring territory and the Bible is full of this and Dan's talked

41:39about it on the podcast, I've heard him talk about this.

41:41When you go into some neighboring territory, that's some other deities purview.

41:48You know that foreign soil was cosmic in their mind.

41:53We're going into a place that's watched over and cared for or not by other deities and

42:01you might be afraid.

42:03You know, it's like, wow, are the people going to do horrible things to me because they're

42:08under the purview of that deity, are they going to hate me or are they going to like

42:11me?

42:12And so hospitality is wrapped up into this too.

42:15It's like, oh, that god has a good reputation because his people are hospitable when we go

42:20in their territory.

42:21You see?

42:22They're social aspects of this too and people want to tell stories.

42:25They want to know like, well, where did their god come from?

42:28Where did their god come from?

42:30So people tell these stories.

42:32So when we talk about in religious studies and critical history a lot of the time, when

42:37students get introduced in grad school or undergrad to syncretism, religious syncretism

42:43where this religion has pieces glommed on from that religion over there and that religion

42:49over here, that philosophy over here.

42:51It's such a wooden way of talking about very fluid things in everyday social reality.

42:59You know, when you're living next to people that have other deities and other temples

43:05in your cosmopolitan Greco-Roman city, where you like Corinth, where you got people from

43:11all over the map quite literally in the same city.

43:15You got a temple on every stinking corner almost, you know?

43:19And you're a Jewish people who may have your synagogue and some of them might be like real

43:24hard line conservative fundamentalists who are like, no, the Torah says, we don't go

43:29after those gods.

43:30We don't worship those gods.

43:31That's evil idolatry filth.

43:33But then you might have other sort of perceived as urbane, sophisticated folks who are like,

43:38no.

43:39And Paula Frigixen brings this up is when you're reading the Greek of Exodus in the synagogue

43:44and it says, don't blaspheme God in Hebrew when Elohim is translated into the Greek.

43:51It's the gods that they owe a plural, like don't blaspheme the gods.

43:55And you might be in a synagogue.

43:57You might be in a synagogue that was built through contributions from somebody who worshiped

44:02another God.

44:03Exactly.

44:04And there might be a dedication on the wall to one of those other gods because they facilitated

44:09the building of God.

44:10In a synagogue.

44:11Yeah.

44:12Wow.

44:13You see how this can destroy people's categories, you know, it's like, well, no, no, no, no,

44:20they're Jews, you know, when you go in there, they only worship that one God.

44:24It's like, well, sure, but it's way more complicated than that.

44:28And there's so many variegated positions on that.

44:32It's just like with any, it doesn't really take a lot of imagination to understand this.

44:37I mean, you just look at the religious landscape today, right?

44:41And we think there's these radical revolutions like we're talking about, like, oh, we're

44:45so different in, in so many social regards than those weird, dirty, ancient people, you

44:51know, it's like, no, sociologically speaking, we divide and over the craziest silly little

44:59things all the time in these religious traditions.

45:02And you have these plethora of different positions.

45:05And the argument over which one is dogma and which one isn't, it has everything to do

45:11with power.

45:12It has to do with who's in power, who wants to have power in that place, in that space.

45:17You know, so you can never divorce these questions of like, what's Paul's eschatology or whatever,

45:26from all of the social and political aspects that are touching that.

45:30Okay, before we get too far adrift, I want to ask the relationship of this to the patriarchal

45:38promise to star like seed, because that's, I think, one of the next steps in your dissertation.

45:43So we've got, we've got this understanding that the stars are considered divine, the

45:47celestial bodies are considered divine.

45:49This is still operative during the periods of the New Testament.

45:52So what is, what is the patriarchal promise here?

45:54That's right.

45:55So, so if you're familiar with the stories to Abraham, the father of Israel, when he's

46:02given a promise in Genesis 15, he's taken outside, it says by the word of Yahweh, which

46:09is very interesting.

46:10He's a character in this scene.

46:13He's taken out of wherever, we'll talk about that in a second, and he says he's taken out

46:19and he's told to behold the heavens, he says, number the stars, if you can number them,

46:25and it says, so shall your seed be.

46:29And so this great promise, you can envision it, you know, Father Abraham, looking at all

46:34the heavens.

46:35And traditionally, when we read this text, we think he's looking up, right?

46:39He's looking up at the heavens, he's seeing all the stars, oh man, there's so many.

46:42I can't even count them.

46:44And what people will just innately, instinctively do, and it's totally fine.

46:47I mean, it's a pretty plain reading of the text, will say, oh, he's talking about how

46:52many seed he's going to have, how big of a family he's going to have.

46:56He's going to be, he's going to have tons and tons of offspring, and he can't even have

47:00children, right?

47:01And Sarah couldn't even have kids.

47:02So that's like the miracle, right?

47:04That's the whole miracle.

47:05Well, yes, that is a big part of it, but lots of early Jews that I would argue and others

47:14have argued.

47:15Matt Thiesen is another scholar who's argued along similar lines in his book, Paul and

47:19the Gentile problem, but he cites my article a couple of times in that book, so that's

47:26good.

47:27And he's got a new book coming out called the Jewish Paul.

47:28Yeah, a Jewish Paul.

47:29Yeah, we want to plug that as if he's not plugging in enough already.

47:35Just kidding, buddy, if you're watching.

47:38So yeah, so this idea, when they read this promise, and it said, so shall your seed be,

47:44there are Jewish interpreters, ancient Jewish interpreters, and I would say it goes way

47:48back into ancient Israel as well, that did not interpret this just quantitatively as

47:55in just how many there are.

47:57They also interpreted it qualitatively, what they would be like.

48:01So when their promise, so shall your seed be a major Jewish interpreter, same time as

48:07Paul in the first century, a relative contemporary of Paul, writing from Alexandria, the famous

48:12Philo of Alexandria, when he comments on this text, he'll be very clear and says the text

48:19does not say so many.

48:22It says, so shall they be, which denotes all kinds of other things like glory and immortality

48:29and all of these things, the life of to take on the life of the stars, the astral beings.

48:35Because again, for them, for people like Philo and other authors in Judaism at the time of

48:40Paul and after, both Christians and Jews, even after in receiving these texts, they all think

48:46when that these beings up there are just that, they are gods, they are divine beings.

48:53Sometimes they're called angels, Josiah Bismy's doing great work on questioning what angels

48:59really meant in a lot of these texts, because that can be a term for lower tier servant

49:05deities, so angels are not like these little floating cupids with wings floating around,

49:12these are like divine beings that when they show up to some human being, they fall like

49:16dead men, that when they encounter God, they're afraid they're going to die when God appears

49:22on the mountain.

49:23Well, humans act like they're going to die when they see these malaqeen, these angels

49:27as well, so divine beings are divine beings to humans.

49:31They're little peons, they're like the immortal, powerful beings up there.

49:35So when they see stars up there, they're thinking, okay, well, if the promise to the patriarchs,

49:43to our fathers, that our identity as Israel as a people is going to be as the stars, that

49:50becomes generative of all kinds of interpretation in later Judaism.

49:57And in particular, the idea that those stars, they rule over all of the heaven, all of the

50:06earth below.

50:07And this comes from the idea from Deuteronomy that Dan has already brought up and we've

50:10brought up, and this is what my book chapter was about, is that on 1 Corinthians 15, is

50:16that that assumption that you will become like the stars in the heavens is an interpretation

50:22of the promises to the patriarchs, because we know from lots of Jewish literature at

50:28the time, especially all over Paul, he never shuts up about it.

50:32He's always talking about the promise to Abraham and the inheritance to come.

50:37What is this big clarinomia, the inheritance of the cosmos he talks about Romans 4.

50:42And this is what my first article was about is like, how in the world, this, I'm going

50:46to introduce a problem here, how in the world in Romans 4 can Paul squeeze so much out of

50:54so little?

50:55He quotes Genesis 15, five, so shall your seed be from that star promise.

51:00And he squeezes into it the resurrection from the dead, becoming the father of many nations,

51:06inheriting the cosmos.

51:09It's like, okay, bro, hold up, pause, how do you get all of that out of that?

51:17And there are scholars over the years who have pointed out like, oh, well, maybe there

51:23is an expansion of the land promise in second temple period, and that's what he's talking

51:28about.

51:29Or they'll say, only a few of them that I've found, one in particular that was really helpful

51:34was Philip Estler, has admitted like, okay, we cannot squeeze all of that content into

51:41all that theological content into Genesis 15 here, this little astral promise.

51:47There's, if the promise means so numerous shall your seed be, if that's what it means, you're

51:55not going to get all that content into it.

51:57And this is what people do translators, including scholarly commentators.

52:03You can look at all the commentaries for the past, like 100 years, which I've done slogging

52:07through, and you'll find that every one of them, almost every single one will insert

52:16the word numerous into their translations.

52:20And the text doesn't say that.

52:22And what's fascinating about it is that first century interpreters like Philo catch this

52:28and make a huge deal out of it and say, yeah, it means way more than that.

52:33The author could have easily said so numerous, shall they be, but he doesn't.

52:39He says, so shall they be.

52:40So then what are those stars?

52:42What does it mean to become like a star?

52:44Well, for lots of Jews, go to a book like Deuteronomy, go to Deuteronomy four and see

52:50that the sun, moon, the star, it's the famous, don't make any graven images passage, right?

52:55This is like Dan's bread and butter right here, I wrote a whole book on it.

52:58So I will default to him on all divine image stuff, you know, but I've said a couple things

53:04in print about this, but the point is in that passage in particular, the one that talks about

53:10not to make any graven images, when it says not to make any graven images, it has a terrestrial

53:16creature list and then a celestial one.

53:19When he talks about the terrestrial one, he says, don't make any graven images because

53:22you didn't see my form in the cloud of the fire, not of, you know, man or woman, beast

53:27of the field, fish of the sea, birds of the heavens, blah, blah, blah.

53:30But then when he addresses the celestial, he says, now look up to the heavens and it's

53:34sort of like a similar image that you have with Abraham, right?

53:37It's like look up to the heavens and behold, the sun, the moon, the stars, all the salva

53:43oat, all the hosts of heaven.

53:45This is the word for God's armies, his divine council, his celestial hosts that is around

53:51him.

53:52That's what he calls the sun, moon stars.

53:54He says, look at them and he does not say there, don't make graven images of them.

53:59He doesn't say anything about that.

54:00He says, don't worship them.

54:03And he says those that were allotted to all the other peoples or nations under the whole

54:09heavens.

54:10You see, so their idea of the gods of the nations that are allotted to them way back

54:15in that tower of Babel story, when they separated all the peoples by their languages and God's

54:20talking to us, let us separate their languages.

54:25That's what we would call the divine council that y'all have discussed before.

54:29And so Deuteronomy imagines those when the sun, moon stars, that's the host up there.

54:34They're allotted to the other peoples, but Yahweh, my people's Jacob, I'm the one that

54:39delivered them out of the fire of Egypt, out of the furnace, I did that.

54:44And also, by the way, he mentions in Deuteronomy four after that, he's like, nothing greater

54:49has been done in this whole creation of Israel out of Egypt thing, since the creation of man.

54:57This is significant because in my chapter, I try to argue that the list that Paul draws

55:03on when he wants to talk about what's the resurrection body like, because we have lots

55:08of texts in Judaism from Daniel to first Enoch to for Ezra to to Baruch, all kinds of texts

55:15that talk about the resurrection is all about becoming like the stars, right, lots of them.

55:20And so it's not surprising that we find that in Paul.

55:23But when when he wants to describe what is that body actually like, what does that celestial

55:28body like, he has a creature list.

55:31And most people say, oh, that's right out of Genesis, you know, it's creation, blah, blah,

55:36but I argue that no, no, no, this is coming from Deuteronomy.

55:40And it's the exact same creature list you find in Deuteronomy.

55:43It's closer than the Genesis one, but in particular, because Paul's one of those guys that thinks

55:50that the gods, those celestial bodies, they're bad.

55:53Back in 20, verse 20 through 28, they need to die.

55:57So who's going to take over the show?

55:59Well, remember what he said back in Romans four, that seed of Abraham is going to inherit

56:04the whole cosmos.

56:06And so now they're going to become like the stars.

56:11They're going to become like the gods and they're going to rule the whole thing.

56:15And if you think that reading is crazy, what does he say right after his whole nature,

56:19the resurrection body section, he tells you flesh and blood cannot inherit what the kingdom

56:25of God, the whole rulership thing of the whole cosmos, you can't have flesh and blood for

56:32that.

56:33You need to become these pneumatic beings that are celestial.

56:36He literally calls the resurrected one celestial bodies.

56:41And it's the same term he uses for sun, moon stars.

56:44Did you just say, I just want to make sure that I caught this, somehow the stars that

56:48are above us now, these gods, these celestial bodies above us now, they'll be deposed and

56:55then replaced by the sort of the followers of Jesus.

57:00Is that the idea here?

57:01It's wild.

57:02It is wild.

57:03Yes.

57:04And that's how Psalm 82 comes into the play as well, because we have the deposition of

57:09the gods in Psalm 82 where they will be made mortal and they will fall like any prince.

57:16So I guess we're going to move right into that then.

57:19So this is at the crux of my argument.

57:23And I have published this already on this already, but I'll develop it much further in

57:27the dissertation.

57:29You can find it in my first Corinthians 15 chapter, we'll put it on my academia page

57:34in the description or whatever, we can do that.

57:36And you can have it for free.

57:38But the reason why Psalm 82 comes into play here is because a lot of scholars who are

57:48trying to figure out what is the relationship of all these Old Testament quotations that

57:52Paul quotes in his little apocalypse section that we were talking about, about the destruction

57:58of the powers and the rulers and all that, and this resurrection and inheritance of the

58:04kingdom of God.

58:05You know, where is this all coming from?

58:07What's the narrative?

58:08What is he drawing on?

58:10Well, first part of this argument is say, well, that promise to Abraham of star like

58:13seed.

58:14So it puts it in conversations with other Jewish authors who are looking forward to and imagining

58:18what that's going to be like.

58:20But Psalm 82 provides us with a narrative of that day, that final moment.

58:25So when we talked about the resurrection in Paul, we said that was an event, right?

58:30He only describes the resurrection four times as that event.

58:34And when he talks about what God does in it, he uses the term, a giro, like to raise up

58:39to rise up.

58:41So when you go to Psalm 82 in Greek, it is fascinating.

58:47You see this sort of narrative bubble up where you have the judgment of the gods being discussed

58:54in Psalm 82 for not ruling in justice, not doing justice.

58:59They need to be judged.

59:00And whoever this God figure is of Psalm 82 that passes judgment on the other gods in

59:08the divine council, that's up for grabs in the second temple period.

59:14People speculated, okay, so is that, I'll say Adonai, because we're on data over dogma,

59:20is that Adonai, you know, is that the God of Israel?

59:24Is that his like chief angel?

59:26Is that Melchizedek?

59:28Yeah, Melchizedek, the guy from Psalm 110 in Genesis 14.

59:32So that there's a famous text from the Dead Sea Scrolls called 11q13, it's because it's

59:39in cave 11, we call it 11q Melchizedek, about this famous Melchizedek figure.

59:45And guess what it says about this guy?

59:47Now this is dated, generally speaking, give or take about 200 years before Jesus, okay?

59:53Even around there, whatever.

59:55So that they take the Psalm 110 Melchizedek guy, and they say, and they quote Psalm 82

60:02and say, he's the God that is doing all the judging of the gods.

60:08And yeah, it's crazy.

60:11And there's some lacunae in this text, so we don't have the complete thing.

60:14We hit the lacunae or the spaces that we have fragments, you know, and we got to try to use

60:19our scholarly imaginations to try to fill them in, you know, but in the context of describing

60:25this psalmity to God as the Psalm 110 Melchizedek, who comes and judges the other gods, this

60:32is where, remember, this is long before Jesus, this is where he saves the sons of light from

60:37Belial, sort of the chief adversary guy, right?

60:42He destroys the sons of darkness in this great eschatological in time war and destroys

60:47Belial and saves Israel, redeems Israel, you know, saves them from their sins, oh, wow,

60:55and destroys the gods and quotes the God of Psalm 82 as the one who does this being Melchizedek.

61:01So and in some of those lacunae, what we find right afterwards is the quote from Isaiah 52,

61:08which is the passage about the good news, the gospel being proclaimed, this is good news,

61:14you know, this is all going down, yeah, this is the great news, you know, our Melchizedek

61:19is going to come and destroy all the bad gods and save the sons of light and save us from

61:23our sins, da da da da da.

61:25Well, what does Paul start this whole chapter with in 1 Corinthians 15?

61:29He's like, hey, remember that most important thing about the good news that I told you

61:33about that good news is all about this arising.

61:38And what we find in Psalm 82, when you look at it, you have this whole plea from this

61:43God figure after the little introduction of Psalm 82 that he's like, oh, these gods are

61:48ruling in just they need the whole earth is turning and teetering about and all that,

61:52you know, they need to be judged.

61:53They need to die like men.

61:56They will fall like any of the princes.

61:59When that gets translated in Greek, it's arkontai, it's the common term for the rulers that Paul

62:05uses all the time for those deuteronomic gods of the other nations.

62:10This is the common term, this is the term that's used right there in 1 Corinthians 15

62:14for those arkons that need to be judged, you know, so that's the term that he uses too.

62:21And the psalmist ends the psalm in Greek and it's fascinating.

62:26The psalmist ends it after this God figure, you know, is just lay wasting these gods in

62:32the in the in the council, right?

62:33He says, arise, oh God, and judge the whole earth for for the nations or your inheritance,

62:41right?

62:42So this whole arising in Greek is the same word as that's used for the resurrection,

62:48the Anastasis.

62:50So anasta hothaeon, hothaeos.

62:54So it's it's arise, oh God figure, whoever this is and do this, you know, judge the whole,

63:01the whole earth, judge it all.

63:03That's what a ruler does, right?

63:04That's what you're going to you're going to step up.

63:07You're going to take over and the Clarota Mia, the inheritance, there's that language

63:11from the Abrahamic promise member, Abraham's promise that he would be the inheritor of

63:17the whole cosmos, according to Paul.

63:20So now you have this story in Paul in miniature of this one named Jesus who arises to judge

63:29the other gods.

63:31And how does the chapter end in the inheritance of the kingdom of God?

63:37Becoming like the celestial bodies themselves.

63:39You see, so the narrative I argue is a common apocalyptic Jewish narrative of how they imagined

63:49the ideal eschatological scenario.

63:53And in large part, it comes from this narrative of Psalm 82.

63:57So this is why it's entitled resurrection and the death of the gods, because not all

64:02Jews agreed with this, you know, this would be a very radical position to take.

64:07You know, if you're going if you're if you're a Jew of the polis and Corinth, especially

64:11if you're rich and you can and you're going to the temples and you're celebrating with

64:15all these other gods and you got Paul going around saying, don't you dare do that.

64:19That's idolatry.

64:20You know, you're going to perish if you do that.

64:22You know, we are going to become the rulers and they're all going to die.

64:26It's like, whoa, you know, he's the extreme guy, you know, he's the extreme one.

64:33He's he's one that would have been like, whoa, hold up.

64:35When I tell when I sort of introduced Paul to students a lot of the time, I like to think

64:40of him this way.

64:41I'll say, imagine like the Yale Harvard trained scholar, right?

64:47And he's the one standing out in the corner saying the end is nigh, you know, with the

64:52big sign.

64:54You know, it's like, then you've got somewhat of an idea of how crazy this guy is, you know,

64:59so that's that's the image here.

65:01Well, I, you know, I don't know if Paul ever looked up at the stars.

65:07It just seems boring to me.

65:09Why would you want to even become one of those things?

65:11They just sit there.

65:12Most of the, I mean, other than a few of them that, you know, the travelers, the planets

65:16or whatever, they're just sitting there.

65:19I'm not sure why you'd want to be that, but kind of an amazing, an amazing theology to

65:24think about that, that that is the inheritance that was promised to Abraham was, was to be

65:32the stars.

65:34I think it's actually really great you brought that up because what is the appeal here?

65:40You have like, okay, do I just like sit up there as a star and keep going?

65:44What's the deal?

65:46But this is, that's a really great point to bring up because ancients, the way a lot of

65:51ancients thought about these star gods or whatever, as you see this a lot in ethical

65:57Greek literature is this becomes the basis of a lot of mimetic thinking about ethics,

66:03virtue ethics comes from ideas similar to this is like you copy the thing that's most

66:07virtuous or whatever.

66:09So if you're reading a stoic or something and they're talking about the motion of the

66:12stars, how they always keep their courses, they never deviate, they're always true and

66:19you got those pesky wandering stars, those little suckers.

66:24But the ones, if you never deviate your courses, you want to be like that.

66:28You want to have that soul that is virtuous, that maintains your place in the world to keep

66:38this perfect harmony and order, because what we're talking about is imagining, how do

66:43we imagine cosmic order?

66:45What does that look like?

66:46You know, what is the ideal world?

66:48What is that like?

66:49And so in a lot of construals, of answers to those types of questions in the ancient

66:56Mediterranean, the stars are all very frequently involved in this because they imagine one,

67:02not only the regularity of their courses being someone who's accepted their role and holding

67:08all of this in order.

67:10It's also ruling in a sense of keeping the order of the whole world that all of our seasons

67:17when we plan our crops, when we don't, when we're supposed to go to the temple, when

67:21we're not.

67:22It's all determined by looking up the heavens tell us when to do all of these things, you

67:28know, if you plant your crops in the wrong month and they don't grow and everybody goes

67:33hungry and they all die, that's not good.

67:37So you know, you might want to order things properly, right?

67:41And the heavens tell you how to do that.

67:44And so that's great.

67:45That's a major part in the imaginary of eschatology.

67:49And that's also, you also have their ruling and for a group like Pauline Christians who

67:56are really among the, they're under the boot of a large empire at the time.

68:03The idea of overturning that world, that's power structure and being the ones who are

68:09in charge, the one ruling, that's got to be very attractive as well.

68:14Incredibly attractive.

68:15That's a magnificent point is another presupposition to this study that you need to really feel

68:22the oomph of it is you need to know that there's all kinds of narratives of Caesar and great

68:31rulers and great heroes who have had apotheosis.

68:34They go and become a star God and, and this goes all the way back to ancient Near East,

68:39you know, pharaohs are going up to heaven and joining the stars and becoming a star God

68:44amongst their brethren and blah, blah, blah.

68:46It's just a common narrative of the powerful, the ones who have rule over the whole thing

68:52because why would Caesar need to go up and become a star when he dies?

68:56Because there's stories about that too.

68:59Because they rule everything down here.

69:00And if he's the father of the whole world, the paterpontone, which is a term used for

69:06him too, the father of all, that's a term that Jews use for God, right?

69:11That's the term Paul uses for God as well.

69:13Father of all.

69:14That's the term he uses for Abraham as well, by the way, have a article coming out about

69:18that.

69:19Yeah, there's, there's a, this, this idea of apotheosis was, it was something reserved

69:28for those who are powerful, for those who were the most virtuous, the best.

69:32And of course, the ones in powerful were always the most virtuous, right?

69:36You know, so they were always the best.

69:39They deserve a place up in the heavens, not you little guys down there.

69:43So you can imagine the appeal, if you're just saturated with all this propaganda, all the

69:48stinking time everywhere, that you can imagine the appeal of the synagogue, of the God of

69:53those Jews, you know, the God of the Jews has made promises that not only will his people

69:58be blessed, but all the nations will be blessed too.

70:03And, and especially when you have a gospel like Paul is like the rising up of the poor,

70:07you know, and you're reading the prophets and this God cares about the destitute and

70:12those who are ruled over by the empires and he will raise them up, you know.

70:17And so this whole idea of being the arising was not just about weird celestial bodies,

70:25you know, it was also about who gets to take over and rule this whole thing and set it

70:31right.

70:32And they thought it would be them.

70:36So I think that is, that it, I love that this is an unfamiliar couching of a familiar

70:43concept.

70:44Yeah, the idea of sort of the powerless gaining power, the, you know, the, the righteous powerless

70:52becoming the ruling class or becoming the rulers over over the, the unrighteous, you

70:59know, powerful people.

71:01I think it's great.

71:02We see this, this overturning is part of the Beatitudes.

71:06It's part of the Sermon on the Mount that in the Kingdom of God, it's the other people

71:10who are in charge as part of a apocalyptic literature, which is all about God peeling

71:15back the fabric of, of creation and overturning everything.

71:19I think that's one of the themes that underlies so much of what we see in Greco-Roman period

71:24Jewish literature, the apocrypha, the pseudopocrypha as well as in the New Testament.

71:29It's so formative for the ideologies of early Christianity.

71:33And then early Christianity went ahead and became an empire itself.

71:37And so for some people, for some people, that was a fulfillment of some of that stuff.

71:43For instance, Augustine, this is a fulfillment.

71:46We are now in charge.

71:48Unfortunately, I think for many, it seems they became precisely what they had always

71:54been preaching against.

71:55Yeah.

71:56Right.

71:57Well, just one last point about the social stuff is you're never getting out of here,

72:01Dan.

72:02Oh, it's good.

72:03Look, I love it.

72:04I love it.

72:05David, we're going to have to have you back on just because these conversations can go

72:10on forever.

72:11But yeah, hit us with that nice closing idea.

72:15Well, I was just going to say, you can imagine why this stuff catches on with these great

72:21apocalyptic tales where there's this radical democratization of deification that you can

72:28become like the gods too, not just those guys over there.

72:31And we have the secret.

72:34So yeah, we may be poor, we may be downtrodden, but we're really the sons of God and we're

72:38waiting on the unveiling, the apocalypse where we're revealed as who we really are.

72:44That's Romans eight right there.

72:45So the whole idea, you can imagine how that's appealing to those who have been not just

72:51downtrodden, but been under the boot of empire, who've been a lower social class.

72:56The God of the Jews is appealing to you, one law for the king and the peasant, you know,

73:05you can understand how that catches on.

73:07So it shouldn't be surprising that you have rich folks going to temples saying, and like

73:12Philo saying, oh, the gods are virtuous.

73:14They're fine.

73:15He literally says that.

73:16You know, they're good.

73:17You know, they're not the problem.

73:19It's us.

73:20Oh, the powers are the passions you need to overcome.

73:23That's the real issue, you know, where others are like, no.

73:26Get those powers, get rid of all of them.

73:29So that's the appeal of this.

73:31You know, you got two different worlds that are coming into coming into loggerheads in

73:36this early Jesus movement.

73:37And I think that's largely what's going on here.

73:41I love it.

73:42I think that's fascinating.

73:43David, where can people find your work?

73:44Where can they find you if they want to learn more about your work?

73:50Yeah.

73:51Absolutely.

73:52Thanks.

73:53I'll just try to tell them we'll put down in the description.

73:58And my academia page has my article and book chapter along these lines that are sort of

74:03previews to where the dissertation is going.

74:06And I'm on all the social medias.

74:08If you just look for David A. Burnett with the big baldhead guy, you'll find me.

74:15So I'm on all the social stuff.

74:16So I'm on the, what formerly known as Twitter, what X.

74:20I'm not.

74:21As long as it still exists, yeah, whatever.

74:25But Facebook, Instagram, all that stuff.

74:27So you'll find me at those places.

74:29Yeah.

74:30Wonderful.

74:31Well, David, thank you so much for coming on the show.

74:33We really appreciate having you on and it's fascinating stuff.

74:37I love it.

74:40Thanks.

74:41Duo of Dan's.

74:42Appreciate it.

74:43Well, if you have anything you'd like to write to us about, you can write to us, contact

74:50us at dataoverdogmapod.com.

74:55And if you would like to support our work here, you can always become a patron.

75:00Go to patreon.com/dataoverdogma and sign up at whatever level pleases you.

75:08Thanks so much for joining us on the show today.

75:11And we'll talk to you again next week.

75:13Bye, everybody.

75:20(upbeat music)