Ep 20: I Knew a Guy Who Was SO OLD...

00:00(upbeat music)

00:02- The first point to make is that these ages

00:04are just fictional.

00:06People were not living this long,

00:07anciently, and--

00:09- Wait a minute, you are saying

00:11that Methuselah did not live 969 years.

00:14- Absolutely not.

00:16- Having fathered lomac at 187.

00:19- Right, that's just--

00:20- It's solid, man, you know, if they did pull that off,

00:24that's impressive.

00:26(upbeat music)

00:30- Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:32- And I'm Dan Beacher.

00:33- And you are listening to the "Data Overdove"

00:35in the podcast where we seek to increase the public's access

00:39to the academic study of the Bible and religion

00:41and combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

00:45How are things today, Dan?

00:48- Things are great, we're gonna have a fun show.

00:50I think I'm looking forward to this one.

00:53You're gonna explain something, some stuff to me

00:55that I've been wanting to understand,

00:58so I'm excited, I'm giddy, positively giddy.

01:03- Excellent, the two segments today are questions

01:06that I get all the time on my social media channel,

01:09so hopefully this will be a great resource for folks.

01:12- Exactly, that's great.

01:14So should we just jump right in?

01:16- Let's just dive right in with--

01:17- Let's go buy the numbers.

01:19- Buy the numbers.

01:20(upbeat music)

01:23Let's talk about some of the ages of the patriarchs

01:26from the primeval history, Genesis 1 through 11.

01:31- Yeah, I did some digging on this

01:36just because I didn't want to come into this

01:37like completely a neophyte.

01:41And I don't know, if you know this, Dan,

01:44these fellows lived a kind of a long time.

01:48Like, you know, I read an article recently

01:52that was about, you know, a woman down in the south,

01:55I think, who was 114 years old.

01:59And she has like, the thing that stood out to me

02:02is that she has a granddaughter who's like 75

02:04or something crazy like that.

02:06Which feels funny to know that there's a woman out there

02:09who's in her 70s and can go visit her grandma.

02:14But that's nothing.

02:17- Nothing.

02:18- Compared to what we're about to get into.

02:20- Does it hold the candle?

02:21- We are about to delve into some crazy stuff.

02:24And it starts, we're launching basically

02:27from Genesis 5, is that right?

02:29- Genesis 5, although in the process,

02:31we're going to talk a little bit about Genesis 4 as well.

02:35- Okay, and I know, yeah, and I was digging into other stuff.

02:39I, you know, you have to jump around a little bit

02:42to get all of the people.

02:43'Cause the patriarchal age kind of gets,

02:47like Abraham's considered one of the patriarchs, right?

02:50- Yeah. - Or not.

02:53So like we're going from Noah or rather from Adam

02:57to Noah to Abraham and it does not take that many steps

03:02to get to these guys, though it takes many years.

03:06- Yes.

03:08- So I wanted to, so let's,

03:11how do we start this conversation?

03:13- Let's do this.

03:15I want to talk about the differences

03:17between Genesis 4 and Genesis 5.

03:19And then we'll hop into what's going on in Genesis 5

03:23because in Genesis 4 and Genesis 5,

03:26we have two different genealogies.

03:29And this is one of the things that tipped scholars off

03:32to the fact that we may be dealing with separate traditions

03:35that were brought together at some point in the past.

03:38- Okay.

03:39- Because in Genesis 4, you have genealogies

03:41for Cain and Seth, two separate lines.

03:46And did I say Genesis 5?

03:48- You said 4.

03:49- Okay.

03:50- You said 4.

03:51- In Genesis 4, we have a line for Seth

03:53and a line for Cain and they are different.

03:55- And both of these are sons of Adam.

03:58- Right.

03:59So you have the wicked son of Adam, the first murderer.

04:02And then Seth is the righteous son of Adam.

04:07And Seth's line goes down all the way to Noah.

04:11And Cain had a son named Enoch and he built a city

04:15and named it Enoch after his son Enoch.

04:19And then Enoch had a son named Erod.

04:22- Okay.

04:23- And then Erod had a son named Mujael,

04:27who had a son named Methu Shael,

04:31who had a son named Lomic.

04:34- Oh.

04:35I'm starting to see some parallels happening.

04:38- Yeah.

04:39And let's see, Lomic had,

04:43oh yeah, and in Genesis 4, 23,

04:46Lomic says Ada and Zilha, or Zilla, his wives.

04:51Here are my voice, you wives of Lomic.

04:52Listen to what I say, 'cause he's into equality.

04:56I have killed a man for wounding me,

04:58a young man for striking me.

05:00If Cain is avenge sevenfold, truly Lomic, 77 fold.

05:05So the conclusion of Cain's line is basically,

05:08Lomic is following in the footsteps of,

05:12and in my household, you can't say footsteps

05:15without going foot steps, foot steps, foot steps,

05:18from young Frankenstein.

05:19- You lost me on that one.

05:20- That's young Frankenstein.

05:22So anyway, this is basically the wicked line.

05:25You start with Cain, the first murderer.

05:27You end with Lomic, who's also a murderer,

05:29and the idea is everybody in between

05:32is probably not falling very far from the tree.

05:34And then--

05:36- You got, that's a lot of murder.

05:38- Yeah, it's the wicked line.

05:40And then it says Adam knew his wife again,

05:42and had Seth, and so Seth gave birth to Enosch.

05:47And you don't really get much after that.

05:53Where does Seth go?

05:56And that was the time that people began

05:57to invoke the name of the Lord.

06:00So when we get into Genesis five,

06:03we do not have the lineage of Cain.

06:06We just have the lineage of Seth.

06:08But as you noticed, some of these names

06:11sounds familiar.

06:13So Seth has Enosch, and then Enosch has Canaan,

06:18or Kennan, it's spelled K-E-N-A-N, or C-A-I-N-A-N.

06:24It seems to be riffing on Cain somehow.

06:28- Okay.

06:29- And then Cainan had Mahalalel.

06:34- Yes.

06:36- Which sounds like a Hawaiian greeting, but that's fine.

06:39And then Mahalalel had Jared.

06:42Now the interesting thing about Jared

06:43is this name is spelled.

06:46It should just be Yodresh Dalit.

06:49Let me just make sure that that is how that is spelled.

06:53Yes, Yodresh Dalit.

06:54And that's based on the root to go down.

06:57Now Erod, the name we had in Genesis four,

07:01that's Ein Yodresh Dalit.

07:03It's just one letter different.

07:05And so Jared has Enoch,

07:10who's the son of Cain in Genesis four,

07:13and then Enoch has Methuselah.

07:16It was very similar to Methu Shael

07:20that we had previously.

07:21And then from Methuselah, we have Lamek,

07:26who's the very end of the wicked line of Cain.

07:29- Another Lamek.

07:30- Another Lamek.

07:32And then after Lamek, we have Noah.

07:34- Right.

07:35- There are a handful of people that seem to be parallel here.

07:39And so when we get into Genesis five,

07:42however, we have all these ages that are listed.

07:46- Yeah.

07:47- And this is where things get even stickier.

07:50- It gets spicy.

07:51- Yeah.

07:52- With the ages.

07:53- And some people think, well, you know,

07:56they use a base 60 counting system,

08:00and so it's different from a base 10.

08:02It's like, that doesn't really change the number of years

08:06that we have here.

08:07Some people say, well, they're referring to months

08:09and not years, but if you do that,

08:11the ages it gives for when they get children

08:15kind of has them being children themselves.

08:18So it causes problems.

08:20And some people are like, oh, you just divide by tone

08:22across the board, and then you have it,

08:23and it still doesn't work.

08:24The first point to make is that these ages

08:28are just fictional.

08:31People were not living this long,

08:32anciently and--

08:34- Wait a minute.

08:35You are saying that Methuselah did not live 969 years.

08:40- Absolutely not.

08:42- Having fathered lomac at 187.

08:45- Right.

08:46- That's-- - That's--

08:48- It's solid, man.

08:50If they did pull that off, that's impressive.

08:54It does seem possibly a little bit of a stretch.

08:58- And this is not the only time

09:01in all of ancient history where we have stretches like this.

09:04This is actually following in a much older tradition

09:07that goes back to around 2000 BCE

09:10where we have the Sumerian king lists.

09:12And this is where we actually have the tradition

09:14of the flood developing in ancient Sumerian

09:17and Acadian literature.

09:19But they have these king lists

09:21where kings are raining from like 38,000 to 43,000 years

09:26each before the flood.

09:30And then you have the great flood.

09:31And afterwards, it's like,

09:34puny little 300 to 1500 year rains.

09:38So that's something that goes back to around 2000 BCE.

09:43Around the middle to the end of the first millennium BCE.

09:48So when these versions of Genesis

09:51are kind of getting situated

09:54where we now find them in the Pentateuch,

09:56where they're getting formalized and finalized,

09:59there are versions of the Sumerian king lists

10:02that do things that are very close

10:05to what's going on in Genesis five.

10:07For instance, they have five kings ruling

10:12up to the great flood or 10, excuse me, 10 kings

10:15'cause I have two hands with five each,

10:1710 kings ruling up till the flood.

10:21Genesis five lists 10 patriarchs up to the flood.

10:25The person in the seventh position is significant

10:28and they ascend to the divine realm

10:32and they have an audience with the sun God.

10:36Cain is in the seventh, I'm having a great day.

10:40Enoch is in the seventh position in Genesis five

10:44and Enoch walked with God and was taken.

10:47So he did not die.

10:49And Enoch lived to be 365 years,

10:52which is the number of days in a solar year back then.

10:56And so a lot of scholars would say,

10:57what's going on in Genesis five

11:00is probably kind of reflecting traditions

11:03about that are being borrowed from these Akkadian,

11:08probably Babylonian traditions

11:09about the ages of ancient kings.

11:12So the patriarchs are kind of reflecting this idea

11:16about the reigns of kings.

11:18But the traditional Masoretic text,

11:22and we've talked before about this,

11:23but in short, the Masoretic text

11:25is the version of the Hebrew Bible

11:27that is considered the traditional authoritative version

11:30that was formalized in the medieval period.

11:34The Masorets were the scribes

11:36who lived in and around Tiberius in Galilee.

11:39They were the ones who came up with the vocalization tradition

11:42added the notes that are in there

11:44and basically solidified the text as we know it.

11:48- So that's our translations

11:50would be based on the Masoretic text.

11:52- Most translations, traditionally translations

11:54are based on the Masoretic text.

11:56However, we do have some earlier traditions.

11:58For instance, in the Dead Sea Scrolls,

12:01we have texts that are 1,000 years older and more.

12:06We have the Samaritan Pentateuch,

12:08which is a version of the Pentateuch

12:11that kind of diverges from the tradition

12:15that would become the Masoretic text.

12:17We have the Septuagint,

12:18which is the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible

12:21that was probably executed somewhere between

12:24the third and the first century BCE.

12:26So we have some manuscripts that go back

12:28to the time of Jesus of the Septuagint.

12:32And oddly enough, the three main ones that we're talking about here,

12:36the Masoretic text, the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint,

12:39many of these ages are different

12:42in those other manuscript traditions.

12:44And so scholars have been debating for a while

12:48which of these likely came first

12:50and what were the rationales

12:52for the changes that they introduced.

12:54If we look in the Masoretic text,

12:59Methuselah dies the same year as the flood.

13:03Now, most people say, well, Methuselah is not

13:06and it's not suggesting Methuselah died in the flood

13:10'cause that would suggest that Methuselah were wicked,

13:13that this was part of the violence and the evil

13:17that God wanted to wipe from the earth.

13:19- That Noah just didn't want to invite grandpa on the boat.

13:22- Yeah, he was probably a Trump supporter

13:26that they just not totally comfortable having around you.

13:31- But Noah's like, okay, boomer, you're not on the boat.

13:34- But there's an interpretation of the name Methuselah.

13:39It's interpreted to mean something like he dies, he sends out.

13:43The idea being as soon as Methuselah dies,

13:46that's kind of the trigger for destroying the earth.

13:49So that's how a lot of people interpret

13:51what's going on there with the name Methuselah

13:53and the fact that he dies the same year as the flood.

13:56However, Methuselah doesn't mean that.

13:59It probably means something more like man of the spear

14:03or something like that.

14:05Which suggests there could be some violence going on

14:10in Methuselah's life.

14:11And in Genesis 4, Methuselah's counterpart is Methu Shael,

14:17along with Enoch, a variant spelling of Jared and Lamek.

14:22And remember, they're part of the evil line.

14:25And so some scholars look at the Samaritan Pentateuch

14:29and notice that Jared, Methuselah and Enoch

14:33all die the same year as the flood

14:36according to the Samaritan Pentateuch.

14:38- Oh, wow.

14:40- And they die prematurely.

14:43Everybody else is living to be at least 895 years

14:48or longer, but the three of them are 847,

14:51720 and 653.

14:54So to die prematurely, the year of the flood suggested

14:57they were killed by the flood,

15:00which would mean these are part of a wicked generation

15:04which would align a little more closely with Genesis 4,

15:07which has these folks in the wicked generation.

15:09So there is a scholar named David Carr

15:12who argues that the Samaritan Pentateuch

15:14is probably the earliest version of this story.

15:17And what happened is as they're kind of negotiating

15:22this tradition in Genesis 5,

15:27they don't wanna have these three be killed in the flood.

15:31Enoch is spared 'cause he's taken by God.

15:34He's the righteous one.

15:35But the other three which are taken from the line of Cain,

15:38they're like, "Ah, maybe we don't wanna do this

15:40'cause Seth to Noah, we want this to be all righteous."

15:44And so they change the ages

15:46so that those three patriarchs die earlier than the flood

15:51at a ripe old age.

15:53So in the Masoretic text, Jared dies at 962.

15:58Methuselah dies at 969, lomac at 777.

16:02And then Enoch again, 365.

16:06So according to one theory,

16:08we have three of these patriarchs who are evil.

16:11And then we have editors coming along saying,

16:14we don't want anybody in Genesis 5's lineage

16:17or genealogy to be evil.

16:18So we're gonna tweak the years,

16:19but we're also gonna tweak the years they were born

16:22when they had their kids.

16:23And so everything is different.

16:25- Right.

16:27- And then we have in the Septuagint's version,

16:31these three don't die the year of the flood.

16:35Two of them die much earlier than the flood.

16:38The problem with the Septuagint's lineage

16:42is that Methuselah actually lives

16:45for 14 years past the flood.

16:48- Yeah, I did notice that.

16:49I thought that that, you know, maybe he had a raft.

16:52(laughing)

16:54- 'Cause he's not among the eight.

16:55He's not listed like you would think

16:58Noah's grandfather is gonna be named,

17:00but it's just Noah, his sons, their wives, Noah's own wife.

17:05And so we've got kind of a continuity error here.

17:09- We've got him in the dinghy back behind the art.

17:11(laughing)

17:13- Yeah, this is another situation

17:15where maybe this is like the racist grandfather

17:18on Facebook that they're like.

17:19We're just gonna, we got a mother-in-law apartment

17:22in the back, we don't wanna think about him.

17:26So the Septuagint has an issue as well.

17:31And so there's another theory that the original version

17:36had all three of these patriarchs, Jared, Methuselah,

17:40and Lomack all living through the flood.

17:43So one theory is that the most problematic version

17:48of this story is probably the earliest version.

17:51And so the Masoretic text editor,

17:55their solution is to have only Methuselah die the year

17:59of the flood.

18:00They just die earlier.

18:01And so they have to fiddle with everybody's ages

18:05and when they had kids and everything.

18:07And this contributes to the Methuselah dies.

18:09That's the year the flood's gonna come.

18:12And then according to this logic,

18:15the Samaritan Pentateuch editor is like,

18:18man, let's have the three of them die the same year

18:23as the flood.

18:24And this theory doesn't necessarily say

18:27they're dying in the flood,

18:28but they're dying the same year of the flood.

18:30But I actually think it makes more sense

18:33if they're dying prematurely,

18:34the year of the flood that it was probably intended

18:38to suggest they died in the flood.

18:41And then the logic of the Septuagint editor is 100 years

18:46are getting added to the age of beginning of each patriarch,

18:50which moves the flood back by 1,000 years,

18:54which kind of helps them get around the problem.

18:58Except for Methuselah who survives

19:01for several years after the flood.

19:02So anyway, you dice it.

19:05It's not clear exactly what's going on,

19:08but we definitely have folks fiddling with these ages

19:13in order to make sense of the relationship

19:15of the deaths of these patriarchs to the flood.

19:17- Yeah, and these ages are no matter

19:24which version you look at, the ages are astonishing.

19:26- Yeah, Adam lives to 930, Seth lives to 912,

19:31Enosch lives to 905.

19:34And they're having, and they're fathering these kids,

19:37Adam fathers Seth at 130, Seth fathers Enosch at 105.

19:42This is a heck of a tradition.

19:46This is, it almost, I'll tell you one thing,

19:49when I was looking it up and I was,

19:51pushing all the way through to Abraham,

19:53and then I started, I sort of checked back in

19:56with the Abraham story, and he's 100,

19:59and he's like, how am I gonna have a kid now?

20:01And I'm like, just look at your ancestors

20:03for crying out loud.

20:05- Yeah.

20:05- You don't have to go back too far to see that,

20:07you know, to see people 182 years old having kids.

20:11- Yeah, and the people are like, well, divide by 10.

20:13It's like, okay, well, that works.

20:15Well, it doesn't really work.

20:17Adam is 130 when he has his first son.

20:19So what, he's 13.

20:21- Right, right.

20:22Mahalo-L and Enoch are 65 when they get,

20:26so what, they're six and a half.

20:28- So six and a half, you know.

20:29So there are problems with any attempt to historicize this

20:34and make this actually fit a plausible history,

20:40runs into all kinds of problems.

20:43I think the data as we have them indicate two things.

20:47One, these ages are fictional,

20:51most likely riffing on what's going on

20:54with the Sumerian King lists in their Akkadian versions.

20:59And two, they're being fiddled with

21:01in order to try to come up with an acceptable relationship

21:05between the deaths of these patriarchs and the flood, so.

21:10- I do like that in the,

21:13what is the Syrian Pentateuch?

21:16'Cause I would have, what?

21:16- Samaritan.

21:17- The Samaritan Pentateuch.

21:18I think I'm looking at the numbers right.

21:21And if I'm reading it right,

21:23I think in that version,

21:25Adam actually gets to meet Noah.

21:28Like theoretically, his life was long enough

21:31that he gets all the, like Noah is born in Adam's lifetime.

21:35I think that's kind of interesting.

21:37- Well, a date of death, the Samaritan Pentateuch,

21:40I think it has Noah being born 20 years after Adam's death.

21:46- 'Cause that, I know, when I did the numbers

21:49on the Masoretic text, Adam did live long enough

21:54to meet Noah's dad, Lamek, but not to meet Noah.

21:58- Yeah.

21:59- But it's still an impressive to meet nine generations deep.

22:04That's pretty impressive.

22:06- Yeah, I think across all of them,

22:11Adam had more than a century

22:14up to almost 300 years alongside Lamek.

22:19- That's crazy.

22:20- Who, depending on which story you're going with,

22:22may or may not have been a murderer.

22:24- Right, sure.

22:26- Depending on which, me, you know,

22:26- So.

22:28it could just be a coincidence that, you know,

22:30that Cain's line came up.

22:33There's not that many names by that point.

22:36They could have just named each other.

22:38The names could have just lined up.

22:41- There are eight people on the earth.

22:42We got to stick with these names where our hands are tied.

22:46So we got to name you after the murderer, Lamek.

22:50So I think this is more strong evidence

22:56that the genealogies in Genesis 4 and 5

23:00are from different traditions as well.

23:02And that they've been brought together

23:04incidentally one after the other.

23:06And it's been every later generation's job, you know,

23:11if they choose to accept it,

23:13to try to make sense of it in a way that preserves

23:16the traditional understanding of these texts.

23:19And when you look at the flood story that's going to come up,

23:23you find what source critics refer to as couplets,

23:28which are the same part of the story

23:31being told in two different ways.

23:33Like the every animal two by two,

23:36versus some animals two by two, some animals in sevens.

23:41And then you have two beginnings, you have two middles,

23:44you have two ends.

23:46We see this in the creation account.

23:48We see this in the genealogies.

23:49We see this in the flood.

23:51We see this in Joseph being sold into Egypt.

23:54We see this in Abimelech.

23:56And that's not my wife, that's my sister.

23:59We see it in a bunch of different ways.

24:01And there are attempts to make it seem like,

24:03well, it's possible that this is harmonious

24:08that this can be reconciled.

24:10But for anyone who's not prioritizing the unity of the texts,

24:15and is at least even willing to just accept the fact

24:18that maybe these things come from different traditions,

24:22the overwhelming preponderance of evidence points

24:25in that direction.

24:26- There you go.

24:29You gotta love when you tell the same story twice.

24:33For people repeating themselves,

24:36it's just bad storytelling.

24:37- Yeah, unless you're trying to do something else

24:42other than just tell the story.

24:44- Yeah, and for instance, I saw someone

24:47who's not even a biblical scholar.

24:48They're an Egyptologist trying to argue

24:51that Joseph being sold into Egypt,

24:53it's like the Ishmaelites, but now it's the Midianites,

24:56and now it's the Ishmaelites and the argument was,

24:59well, they're the same people.

25:00So ignore it all.

25:04- Ignore it, just, it's fine.

25:06- Yeah, don't pay any attention to that information

25:09behind the curtain is an oft-repeated refrain.

25:13- Right, indeed.

25:15All right, well, you know, maybe we should take 150 years

25:20or so and have a break, and then we'll come back with--

25:25- Do some begetting.

25:26- Yeah, we'll beget a few thousand generations,

25:30and then we'll come back with a, what does that mean?

25:33(upbeat music)

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26:27Thanks.

26:28- Thanks everybody.

26:29(upbeat music)

26:32- All right, so Dan, I, you know,

26:37we've mentioned what we're about to talk about

26:41on several episodes.

26:42- Mm-hmm.

26:44- I like that we're getting into it now.

26:46Let's talk Apocrypha.

26:49- That sounds good.

26:50Apocrypha, that's a, isn't that a light chicken gravy

26:54that you,

26:55- It's delicious.

26:57I don't know if you've had it with rice,

26:58but that's how I prefer it.

27:01So Apocrypha, a lot of people understand the Apocrypha

27:03to be a mysterious collection of books

27:06that are part of the Bible, but not part of the Bible.

27:11- The rejects.

27:12- The rejects.

27:13And a lot of people don't know exactly where they come from,

27:17how they became part of the Bible,

27:20at what point were they removed

27:21if they were removed from the Bible?

27:24A lot of mystery surrounding this,

27:25but there's actually a wonderful book

27:28that just came out a couple of years ago

27:30that I just wanna plug real quick.

27:32If you want to learn more about the Apocrypha,

27:35introduction to the Apocrypha,

27:37Jewish books in Christian Bibles by Lawrence Wills

27:41is a great discussion.

27:43And that is within Yale University Presses.

27:47They have great series on biblical studies.

27:52But let's start with the name Apocrypha.

27:56I responded to a TikTok video the other day

27:58that said, "Apocrypha means wrong."

28:01(laughing)

28:03- I like it.

28:04- And if that were accurate,

28:06then that would be very apocryphal.

28:09In that, it is entirely wrong.

28:11Apocrypha means things hidden.

28:15And the idea here is that we're,

28:19there are a couple of different ways to understand that,

28:21but we're not exactly sure who wrote these things.

28:24So the authorship is hidden.

28:25And then another sense could be that

28:28these are texts that were treated as

28:31kind of of unsure legitimacy.

28:33And so people who use them kind of

28:36hid them away a little bit.

28:37There are a few different ways to understand that name,

28:40but Apocrypha is a name that goes back into antiquity.

28:45But, anciently, it was used to refer to a handful

28:50of different types of things.

28:51And it wasn't a technical term that referred to the books

28:54that we now understand as the Apocrypha, but...

28:59- It sounds like a Greek word, is that correct?

29:02- It is a Greek word, yes.

29:04And to understand what's going on here,

29:08we gotta go all the way back to

29:10the canonization of the Bible.

29:13And understand the difference between the Jewish canon

29:16and the Christian canon.

29:17Both of these developing well after the texts

29:20of the Bible had been completed

29:22and their authors were long dead.

29:25The Jewish canon kind of firms up

29:28between the second and third centuries CE.

29:32Now the Christian canon is firming up

29:35in the third to fifth century CE, so afterwards.

29:40And they're having a lot more heated debates

29:43about exactly what gets to go into the canon.

29:46And the first we can really talk about a Bible

29:51is when we've transitioned from using scrolls

29:54into using codices.

29:57As for the Jewish scriptures,

29:58everything was written on scrolls.

30:00And it was usually one book to a scroll,

30:03or if you had really short books

30:04that belonged to a larger collection,

30:06you could get the whole collection on a single scroll.

30:09But all of the books of the Hebrew Bible

30:11would have been stored as a collection of scrolls

30:16within the Jewish world.

30:18Around the end of the first century CE,

30:20you have the codex taking over,

30:24particularly within Christian circles.

30:26And this is where everything is written on the front

30:28and the back of individual leaves, individual pages.

30:32And this is what Christianity begins to use

30:36for its sacred texts.

30:38And this facilitates the bringing together

30:41of all these different texts into one artifact.

30:45- Right.

30:46- And so the oldest actual Bibles

30:48of which we know are texts like the Codex Sinaiticus

30:53and Vaticanus and texts like that.

30:56- So codex basically just means book.

31:00- More or less, yeah.

31:01- Are they bound papers or are they just sort of loose?

31:06- They're bound in some way.

31:09And yeah, usually when we see the word book in the Bible,

31:14that's a translation of a word for scroll.

31:18And so it's not until Christianity

31:21that this kind of shifts toward the preference for the codex.

31:26And this actually marks a pretty important distinction

31:29between the way early Christians understood Jewish scriptures

31:33and the way they would understand Christian scriptures.

31:36'Cause these were not exactly the same thing.

31:39In 2 Timothy 3, 16, where it says all scripture

31:42is the open of stoves, that's a reference to Jewish scripture.

31:47That's not a reference to Christian scriptures.

31:50In the earliest periods of Christianity,

31:53the gospel was the words of Jesus and a text

31:58was a particular kind of materialization of the message,

32:02but the authority resided in the message itself,

32:04not in its textualization.

32:07And so this is what made Jesus's words more authoritative

32:12than the Jewish scriptures.

32:13'Cause the Jewish scriptures were dead letters

32:16that were materialized on text.

32:18But the words of Jesus are words

32:22that are carried on the sound waves through the air.

32:26And it's not until we get a couple of generations

32:29down the road and we've talked about this before,

32:32we're starting to not really have plausible cases

32:36to make, to have actually heard Jesus speak

32:39or hear his disciples speak.

32:41So now we have to begin to write stuff down.

32:44And by this time, Christians have codices.

32:46So Christian scriptures are written on codices

32:49and the whole concept of Christian scripture

32:53isn't even really salient until like into the second

32:57and third century CE.

32:59Now, one of the interesting things about scripture

33:03in this time period is there was a much larger corpus

33:07of scriptures.

33:09Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, we've found a lot more text

33:12than just what we now consider biblical.

33:15Even in early Christianity, there were a lot of texts

33:18that were considered authoritative for a long time

33:21that are no longer considered authoritative

33:23that didn't make it into the Bible.

33:25- What are some of those texts?

33:27- Some examples for Jewish texts, for instance,

33:30the wisdom of Solomon, First Enoch.

33:34There are both apocryphal and pseudopographical texts

33:38that were in circulation.

33:40Apocryphal means things hidden.

33:42So the texts that we're talking about,

33:43pseudopographical means false writings.

33:46So that would be those texts that are attributed

33:48to famous figures, like the Testament of Abraham

33:52and other texts like that,

33:53that are very clearly not written by those ancient figures.

33:56Within early Christianity, we have the shepherd of Hermes

34:01and Barnabas, and we have the Dittake,

34:05and we have first Clement and texts like these

34:08that are considered authoritative for many groups,

34:12but for whatever reason or another,

34:14fell out of favor by the time of the late fourth century CE

34:17and into the fifth century, where we're starting to say,

34:21this is our text, these are the boundaries of this text.

34:24Only these texts get to be part of the Bible.

34:28Now, the Jewish scriptures that were being adopted

34:32for this Christian Bible that was beginning to take shape

34:36had some expansions on them

34:39and had some other texts that were included in them.

34:42The book of Daniel is a little bit different

34:46in the Greek versions of these scriptures

34:48that are being adopted by Christians.

34:50And so our apocrypha actually originates

34:54in many Christian versions of texts

34:58that were preserved in different forms

35:01within the Jewish canon, as it would become known.

35:05But we also have some of these other texts

35:07like First and Second Maccabees,

35:09which are historical texts

35:11that tell the story of the Maccabean revolt,

35:15the origins of the celebration of Hanukkah.

35:18We have the prayer of Manasseh,

35:20the idol bell and the dragon,

35:22which are part of the book of Daniel

35:25in the Latin Vulget, the story of Susanna.

35:30Song of the three children,

35:31these are all expansions on Daniel.

35:34We have a epistle of Jeremy.

35:36We have Baruch.

35:37Baruch was the scribe of Jeremiah.

35:39Ben Sirach, the wisdom of Solomon, Judith, Tobit,

35:44and then First and Second Esdrus.

35:46These are texts that were considered authoritative

35:48within early Judaism

35:49and are adopted into the Christian concept of scripture.

35:54But then the Jewish canon omits them

35:59when it becomes solidified.

36:01And some of that has to do

36:02with where they think they came from,

36:04what languages they were written in.

36:06There's not a really clear case

36:09for a single set of criteria

36:11that's determined what was left in and left out.

36:14But when the Christians began compiling texts together

36:19for their Bible, their Hebrew Bible,

36:23the Jewish scriptures that they use

36:24differed from the Jewish canon.

36:27And it's these differences that will later

36:31become known as deuterocannon

36:33and then become separated out as the apocrypha.

36:37But it gets kind of messy when you get into the details

36:40of each of these individual books.

36:43But basically Christianity is gathering its texts together.

36:48And when it's beginning to form its Bible,

36:51the versions of the texts that they have

36:53are not the exact same versions

36:55that the Jewish communities end up deciding

37:01are going to be their Bible.

37:02Now, as you get past the Vulgate,

37:08so you have Jerome translates all the texts

37:12of the Christian Bible into Latin

37:14for kind of a more authoritative Latin version.

37:18And he was one of the first advocates

37:20for what he called the Hebraica Veritas,

37:23which was basically,

37:24"Hey, we should be returning to the Hebrew versions

37:27"of these texts 'cause that's more faithful.

37:30"For early Christianity, the Greek was considered

37:32"the authoritative version,"

37:33which is why Jesus is always quoting

37:35from the Septuagint in the New Testament,

37:38which oopsie is the authors of the Gospels

37:41not thinking too hard about the fact

37:45that they're having their Aramaic speaker quote

37:47from Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible.

37:50- Right, that's interesting.

37:52- It's fascinating in a lot of ways,

37:54and there's a new book that just came out

37:56and I'm gonna blank on the name,

37:58but it has something to do with, I think it's Israel's scriptures

38:02in the New Testament or something like that,

38:04and it's basically an edited volume

38:06filled with discussions of the Old Testament

38:10and the New Testament basically.

38:12How Christians, Israel's scriptures

38:17in early Christian writings,

38:18the use of the Old Testament in the New,

38:20brand new just came out,

38:22I would highly recommend that text.

38:25So by the time of Jerome, we do have a realization

38:29that, hey, the Jewish folks over there

38:32and the Hebrew, the oldest Hebrew versions of these texts

38:34differ from what we have in our texts.

38:37And so starting around 400 CE,

38:40we know there are differences.

38:43And by the time of Wycliffe's version of the Bible

38:48into English at the end of the 14th century CE,

38:52that has turned into these texts are not authoritative,

38:56these texts are not inspired.

38:58So as we get into the Reformation,

39:01there is a prioritization of the Hebrew canon,

39:06which means whatever differs from that Hebrew canon

39:08that is currently a part of our Old Testament

39:12is probably not original

39:13and probably not authoritative or inspired.

39:17And so we have the Reformers

39:19and particularly Martin Luther, who take the differences out

39:24and put them in their own section.

39:26And Martin Luther was the one to say,

39:28this is the Apocrypha.

39:30And so it's a result of relying on different versions

39:35of the texts of the Old Testament.

39:37And by the time of the Reformation,

39:39there's a decision made, particularly by Martin Luther

39:43to say, all the differences I'm taking out

39:45and I'm putting in their own little section.

39:47So we had Old Testament, Apocrypha, New Testament.

39:51- Man, that Luther guy, he had some opinions

39:54about how stuff was supposed to go.

39:56- Yeah, he had a lot of opinions

39:58and that was one of the ones that stuck.

40:00But interestingly enough, Martin Luther also took out

40:02some New Testament texts like James, like Revelation,

40:06like Hebrews and some others and stuck them in the back

40:10and said, these also don't belong.

40:12And the rest of the Protestants went,

40:14now we're not doing that.

40:16So he got away with moving the Apocrypha out

40:20and naming it the Apocrypha, but he didn't get away

40:23with getting rid of things like the Book of Revelation

40:26or the Epistle of James.

40:28So yeah, it's a mixed bag, basically.

40:32And this is when you also have the Catholic Church

40:34pushing back against the Reformation's claims

40:39about what texts are inspired and which are not.

40:43And so this is when we have the Council of Trent,

40:46which is the first council that is an ecumenical council

40:51is all of the Catholic Church getting together

40:54and saying, this is the canon.

40:56Because previously you had smaller councils

41:00that were not the whole church that said,

41:03(speaking in foreign language)

41:05but that was not considered infallible

41:07because they did not represent the entire church.

41:10And so the Council of Trent in the middle of the 16th century

41:14is the first time we actually have the whole church

41:17formally and officially saying, this is the canon.

41:21So a lot of people don't know that.

41:22We do have kind of a de facto canon going all the way back

41:27to between 400 and 500 CE, but we don't get the churches

41:31infallible stamp of approval until after Luther

41:36has already muddied the waters.

41:39- And until people are already breaking away

41:42and saying, no, we're doing it this way.

41:44- Yeah, yeah, so they, and this was an attempt

41:47to kind of shore up the boundaries of the church

41:49in light of everything falling apart.

41:52- I was shockingly old when I realized

41:55that Catholics were using a different Bible

41:57than I had been using my Bible.

41:59Like I had no idea, I was much older

42:03than I would think I would have been.

42:04- Yeah, and this is when you have the idea of Deutero canon.

42:09So this, the Protestant Reformation did influence

42:14how Catholics think about the canon.

42:16So they, everything's still there.

42:18And to this day, if you go by a Catholic edition

42:21of the Bible, it will include the Apocrypha.

42:23They won't call it the Apocrypha.

42:25It will be called the Deutero canon,

42:27but they did recognize, okay,

42:30there's a difference between these books.

42:33And so you have the canon and the second canon,

42:35the Deutero canon, which Protestants call the Apocrypha.

42:39And-

42:40- Is there an easy way to sort of differentiate the,

42:42like why these books?

42:45What was it about them that made the difference

42:49for Luther and for others?

42:51- There's not an easy way.

42:53And when you look at the debates going on

42:55in early Christianity, and even within early Judaism,

42:59you have some fuzzy edges.

43:02So the text of Ben-Sira or Ecclesiasticus,

43:07that was considered authoritative by some Jewish people

43:09and not by others.

43:13The text of wisdom of Solomon was considered scripture

43:16by some early Jewish folks and not by others.

43:19When you get into like Athanasius of Alexandria,

43:22who's the first one to hammer out

43:25the biblical canon for Christianity more or less

43:30as we understand it today,

43:32included Baruch, but omitted Esther.

43:37So that's not, and later that would be swapped out.

43:40And within Christianity, you had different debates as well.

43:44And so some people have said,

43:45well, there was a stronger tradition

43:48of the authority of these texts,

43:49but that doesn't hold across the board.

43:51Others say, well, these were written in Greek.

43:53And so the Jewish folks only wanted to preserve the text

43:56that were written in Hebrew.

43:57Again, doesn't hold across the board.

44:00Some of these texts were originally written in Hebrew.

44:02So it's really just an accident of history,

44:05which ones ultimately were included

44:07and which ones were left out.

44:09They're, it's convenient for us.

44:12And we'd like to think of these things

44:14as taking place around a big table

44:17where a bunch of dudes sat down

44:19and kind of made the decision once and for all.

44:22But the reality is it's all kinds

44:25of little different contingent historical events

44:30and relationships and circumstances

44:32that just over time kind of resulted

44:35in things shaking out the way they shook out.

44:38But you'll get more details.

44:40If you look at that book by Will's introduction

44:43to the Apocrypha,

44:44you'll get a lot more details

44:46about each of these texts

44:50and what specific events may have contributed

44:53to their inclusion or their exclusion.

44:56And also you'll hear me frequently recommend

44:59the New Oxford Annotated Bible as the translation

45:02that I, if somebody wants a Hebrew Bible

45:04and a New Testament together,

45:05that's gonna be one of the best.

45:07There's also an Oxford Annotated Apocrypha.

45:10The Apocrypha is included in the other one,

45:12but if you just want the Apocrypha

45:14and notes about the Apocrypha

45:16and thematic essays about the Apocrypha,

45:18I would also recommend that.

45:19That's also a wonderful book to have

45:21'cause it just isolates the Apocrypha

45:24and lets you kind of read it on its own terms

45:27and standing alone.

45:28And then we know what happened after Luther.

45:33After everything gets translated into English,

45:35the 1611 King James Version included the Apocrypha.

45:40So did the 1769 Blaney edition,

45:43which is the edition that has been the source text

45:46for almost all publications

45:50of the King James Version since then.

45:52In the 19th century, we had the American Bible Society

45:57and we had the British and Foreign Bible Society

45:59begin to publish editions that omitted the Apocrypha

46:03in order to save space, to save costs,

46:06to make distribution easier.

46:08And by the end of that century,

46:10preferences, the market, costs, whatever,

46:14all contributed to everybody on the Protestant ends

46:18of things just saying, you know what?

46:20Our Bible doesn't include an Apocrypha.

46:23And so today it's fairly rare

46:26for a devotional edition of the Bible

46:29for a Protestant audience to include the Apocrypha.

46:33- Well, and now the word apocryphal

46:36is used sort of in common parlance

46:40to just mean something that was once thought to be true

46:44or once thought to be correct or whatever.

46:47And now we know it's not.

46:49So that's an interesting thing.

46:50- Yeah, and people also use the word to mean

46:54kind of obscure hidden.

46:56We're not exactly sure where it comes from,

46:58but usually when people say apocryphal,

47:00they mean that's not true.

47:02And so the sense of the word is evolving as well.

47:08- That particular Yogi Berra story is apocryphal.

47:12It didn't actually happen.

47:14- Yeah, we don't know where it comes from

47:15as in my experience what folks are,

47:20should be intending to say when they say apocryphal,

47:22but usually what they mean is it's a myth, it's fake,

47:25it's not real.

47:29And so yeah, the apocrypha was an authoritative,

47:33formative part of the development of the Bible

47:37for early Judaism and for early Christianity.

47:40And over time, it kind of things settle

47:45so that the apocrypha is considered less than

47:50the rest of the texts.

47:51And then Christians decide we're gonna separate it out,

47:54we're gonna keep it in its own little category.

47:56And then later ago, we don't even need that category

47:58anymore, and now people speak rather negatively

48:01of the apocrypha.

48:03But in addition to the fact,

48:04and we haven't even really talked about first Enae,

48:07which was very influential on early Judaism

48:12and early Christianity and isn't really included

48:15in most editions of the apocrypha,

48:18except for the Ethiopian Orthodox Tawahato Church,

48:22which still includes it in their canon, a version of it,

48:26and which is why our most complete copies,

48:30our most complete manuscripts of the book of Enoch

48:33are preserved in an theopic language.

48:37But that was omitted from the canon

48:42by the time of Athanasius in the late fourth century.

48:46- A while back, you talked about how one of the reasons

48:49that these books were singled out

48:54was questionable authorship.

48:57But isn't that something that could be said

49:00about like a lot of the books of the Bible,

49:04like the non-apocryphal books?

49:06- Yeah.

49:07- We have no idea who wrote most of these things, right?

49:10- Yeah, and the reason that some books escaped scrutiny

49:14while others did not is because

49:16there were longstanding traditions of authorship

49:20that were largely not questioned.

49:23Whereas some of these texts,

49:25because they were, had not been around as long,

49:29they did not have embedded traditions regarding authorship.

49:33Some of these texts had only been written

49:35a few decades up to maybe one or two centuries

49:39before these discussions began to happen.

49:42So like the book of Enoch escaped scrutiny for a while,

49:47but then people began to think, you know what?

49:50In order for this book to be authentic,

49:53means it would have had to have been preserved

49:56through the flood.

49:57Would have had to have come from before the flood

50:00and been preserved and come all the way down to us.

50:03And then it is not, it has some pretty significant

50:07internal contradictions because it's actually a collection

50:10of five different sets of stories

50:14that are independent for the most part.

50:15And when they're brought together,

50:17we see some big time contradictions.

50:20And so the tradition regarding the Pentateuch

50:23is that this had all been revealed to Moses.

50:26And so we had an authorship that was firmly established

50:31that dates to after the flood.

50:33And so we don't have a lot of the same problems

50:36that a text like first Enoch does.

50:38So in the third century or fourth century,

50:42so after Syrian missionaries had probably taken versions

50:47of the Septuagint that included Enoch down to Ethiopia

50:52after that, but before Athanasius in 367,

50:57you probably had Christian authorities saying,

51:00maybe not so much first Enoch.

51:02Maybe let's leave that behind.

51:05And so that becomes marginalized

51:08and that is omitted as one of the texts

51:12that was considered authoritative.

51:15- And in so doing, they eliminated

51:18all of the contradictions in the Bible.

51:20- Most of them, yeah, we'll give them some of that.

51:25But then you have issues like Ecclesiasticus, Ben-Siro,

51:30which most scholars think the authorship is seem secure.

51:35Like the way the text describes itself

51:38is probably historically accurate.

51:40It was probably written by a dude

51:42who is collecting information from his father,

51:46writing all this, and then that dude's grandson

51:48translates it into Greek.

51:50And so that would have been something

51:52that was probably originally composed in Hebrew or Aramak

51:55and then translated into Greek.

51:56That was something where the authorship

51:58was probably authoritative.

51:59And so the closest we can get to a good reason

52:02for why it would have been omitted

52:04is that maybe this person just wasn't an authority figure

52:08within ancient Jewish tradition.

52:11But you still have it quoted in a number of places

52:15and you still have early Jewish people considering it

52:17and early Christian people considering it authoritative.

52:20So, and it also contains one of the earliest references

52:24to the idea of a canon.

52:27And so a lot of scholars consider it to be invaluable data

52:30regarding the development of the concept of a canon.

52:34And so how Ecclesiasticus got omitted

52:37is a mystery to a lot of people.

52:40And things like First and Second Maccabees,

52:42I think those are some of the most important historical texts.

52:46And they obviously have what could be called legend

52:50within them, but like you said, so does Genesis,

52:54but it has not been around for nearly as long.

52:56- Well, you know, all it takes is one,

53:01one guy who other people respect who's grumpy

53:05and your texts could be out, you never know.

53:09- Yeah, it's, we don't even know how much of the Bible

53:12is different from how it could have been

53:14just because somebody was grumpy one day.

53:17- I don't like that one.

53:18- Yeah, that one bugs me, I'm not including it.

53:22- Or, and then there's Athanasius

53:24who just didn't like the monks out in the monasteries

53:26and didn't like the texts they were reading

53:28and was like, I'm gonna get you guys.

53:30Ooh, I'm gonna get you so bad.

53:32And now we have the book of Revelation.

53:34- Ta-da!

53:36(laughing)

53:39- And what a book it is.

53:40- Yeah, and what a book or what a collection of books

53:44the Apocrypha is.

53:46But if you wanna better understand ancient Jewish history,

53:49if you wanna better understand what things were like

53:52at that period of transition between Judaism and Christianity,

53:57the Apocrypha is such a fascinating book.

54:01First Enoch is quoted in the book of Jude,

54:04the book of Hebrews, when it talks about all these examples

54:07of faith in chapter 11, talks about people not giving up

54:12because of the hope of a better resurrection.

54:14That's almost certainly from 2nd Maccabees, chapter seven.

54:19When it talks about Isaiah being sauna-sunder,

54:23that is from a pseudopographical text.

54:26I think the ascension of Isaiah.

54:28Like these texts influence the way

54:32that the New Testament authors thought

54:35and talked about their tradition.

54:37And the idea that they are not authoritative,

54:42not inspired, not legitimate is something

54:45that was developed after all the texts

54:49of the Bible had been written.

54:51It is a post-Biblical ideology.

54:54And so if you think of the Bible as what we now understand

54:57in the Bible or what we now understand as the Bible

55:00and everything else as not Bible, that's non-biblical.

55:05That's a post-Biblical ideology.

55:07And I don't know if I'm making myself clear about that.

55:10- I know, I mean, I get it.

55:11- And this is the biggest problem for Protestantism

55:14because of solo scriptura,

55:15the idea that the Bible is sufficient.

55:17Everything we need is mentioned or contained in the Bible.

55:21But even the Bible itself and whether or not

55:25certain texts should be in the Bible

55:27is something that they assert

55:29based on post-Biblical ideologies, not on biblical ideologies.

55:33- And as you say, the Bible that they're saying

55:35is so authoritative is quoting from parts of the Bible

55:38that they don't think is authoritative.

55:40So that's fascinating right there.

55:42- It's turtles all the way down.

55:45Only instead of turtles, it's we're negotiating

55:49based on the authority of our tradition all the way down.

55:52And so even the concept of solo scriptura

55:55is really internally inconsistent and self-contradictory.

56:00- Well, there you go.

56:03The canon is ruined.

56:05- My work here is done then.

56:08Let's go.

56:10Let's go.

56:11Well, I mean, yeah, let's do go.

56:16I think we've done a good job.

56:17I appreciate that information.

56:20It's a lot to chew on.

56:22Kind of can't wait.

56:22I think we should do a chapter in verse

56:24with some, with some apocryphal texts.

56:29Just get to know some of those stories as well.

56:32So we'll look to hear that in the future.

56:35But for now, thank you so much, Dan.

56:37If you would like to write into us,

56:42you can do so, the email address is contact

56:46at dataover.mapod.com.

56:48Please, if you'd like to support what we do,

56:51go to our patreon, patreon.com/dataoverdogma

56:56and give us a little bit of your money.

56:58And we'll see you again next week.

57:00- Bye, everybody.

57:01(upbeat music)