Ep 21: Did the Exodus Really Happen?

00:00"The firstborn of thy sons, shalt thou give unto me."

00:07Yikes.

00:08Yikes indeed.

00:09I mean, if I'm reading that correctly, that cannot mean what it seems to mean, can it?

00:15You're supposed to redeem your child so that it does not get sacrificed.

00:19It's like, why not just not have the commandment to sacrifice them in the first place?

00:25If anyone is under the misapprehension that we are claiming this is something we should

00:29be reinstituting.

00:30I don't think they understand our podcast very well.

00:34Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:39And I'm Dan Beacher.

00:40And you are listening to the Data Overdogma podcast where we try to increase the public's

00:45access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation

00:51about the same.

00:53How are things, Dan?

00:55Things are great.

00:56When I just got back from a trip to Denver where we learned about how to podcast, we'll

01:00maybe do it right one of these days.

01:03We're getting there.

01:04We're getting there, slowly but surely.

01:07So that's great.

01:08I had a good time.

01:09I hope you did as well.

01:10I did.

01:11It was a good time.

01:12I'm glad you talked me into it.

01:14Productive for us, and we'll have some updates in the future about new directions.

01:21Yeah, not changing the contents at all, but we're going to hopefully be able to improve

01:29the quality and the reach of our podcast.

01:33I, unfortunately, will be fired from the program.

01:37Other than that, everything should stay the same.

01:39Yeah.

01:40And yeah, other than that, things will be awesome.

01:46Yes, indeed.

01:47But hey, we got a great show coming up.

01:51We're going to stick to Exodus.

01:52We're going to have some fun in one of the Bible's weirdest books, I think.

01:59So let's dive into that.

02:04Okay.

02:06So our first segment is entitled That's History.

02:11And really, the question is going to be, is that history?

02:14Yeah, it's a big question.

02:16The Exodus narrative, Moses, the enslaved Hebrew peoples taking off from Egypt and all

02:26of the details that surround it.

02:29Yeah.

02:30It's something that I've wondered about a lot.

02:32I'm very glad that we're getting into this because as you read Exodus and I have done,

02:41this story, and it's a story we're all familiar with, right?

02:44This will be DeMille, gave us all a wonderful, if fanciful primer on this story of the Hebrew

02:54slaves in Egypt going through a whole bunch of stuff.

03:00Yep.

03:01God saves them.

03:02And I don't know, saves is a pretty strong word when you see what happens to these people

03:09who then are wandering in the desert for 40 years.

03:12Yeah.

03:13And they don't feel very saved a lot of the time.

03:15Yeah.

03:16Cecil B. DeMille gave us a great representation of that.

03:18And then Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey gave us a great soundtrack to that.

03:24That was the area era in which I grew up and I have, and I am not even joking when I have

03:29heard people in like Sunday school classes talk about how Moses became brothers with the

03:38pharaoh and he gave him his ring because he loved him so much and I had to be like, "Um,

03:44you're thinking of the Prince of Egypt?

03:47That's actually not in the Book of Exodus?"

03:51That's not one of the things.

03:54That's not an actual Bible thing.

03:55So wait, that's an interesting point right there.

03:59Cecil B. DeMille just made that part up.

04:01Is that right?

04:02I don't know what role Cecil B. DeMille had to play in the production of the Prince

04:08of Egypt.

04:09No, no, no.

04:10I'm saying the being raised as a Prince in Egypt part.

04:14No, no.

04:15There's in the Book of Exodus it talks about him being raised as one of the pharaoh's own

04:23wives of children.

04:25Right.

04:26Okay.

04:27That part's real.

04:28Yeah, they're expanding on that.

04:29The ring was just a cartoon.

04:31Yeah.

04:32It was a lot of details and things like that to the story because they got to flesh it

04:37out because it is a pretty bare-bones narrative at the beginning.

04:41You don't really get much in terms of detail.

04:43Well, and the other part is that the details that you do get, you can't show to children.

04:49There's a heck of a lot of stuff that's there.

04:55Here's one of the big questions and I think this is the question that we're looking to

04:58answer on this segment today.

05:02In the book of Exodus, we get through, you know, Moses goes back to pharaoh after having

05:13sort of talked with God, game planning with God about how they're going to get the Hebrews

05:20unenslaved from Egypt.

05:25And when you go back, there are, we've all heard of the plagues.

05:30There are all the plagues, the livestock is all dead, the crops are all gone, the water

05:34is turned to blood.

05:36Eventually, the first born child of every household in Egypt dies.

05:44Then they end up losing, you know, I'm talking Egypt ends up losing, you know, well over

05:50a million people, you know, and they're of their enslaved workforce.

05:57And after, you know, the crossing through the Red Sea, Egypt loses basically their entire

06:08armed forces in one big splash.

06:12Yeah.

06:13Did Egypt, now I know Egypt as a country, you know, as a society was not that big on record

06:20keeping, but you'd think that those events, all happening within like a one month period

06:27or whatever, would show up in their records somehow.

06:33Like that seems like you don't ignore that month.

06:37That was a bad May.

06:39Yeah.

06:40And there are a couple of points to make here.

06:43One is that Egypt tended to keep fairly, not necessarily accurate, but fairly comprehensive

06:54records.

06:55However, counterpoint to that is the fact that we only have a tiny, tiny fraction of

07:02all the records that were ever kept, of course.

07:06And there is a, there is a, what's called a bias towards particularly funerary and mortuary

07:13remains because those are the ones that tend to get sealed up and buried in dry parts of

07:19the nation where they're more likely to be preserved.

07:23And many of the records that survive only survive because maybe they are carved into

07:29rock or they are carved into little stones or survive in clay tablets or something like

07:36that.

07:37Right.

07:38It's the survival of papyrus for that long is very, very unlikely.

07:43And particularly if we're talking about the Delta, when we get further south in Egypt,

07:48where the flood plains and the, and the Nile are more narrow and you have more stuff going

07:55on beyond the boundaries of that floodplain where the flood waters would rise to, it's

08:00more likely that stuff is going to be preserved, but the Delta where much of this is supposed

08:04to have been going on, it's, it's rare that we find records and even we have found lots

08:11of records that have yet to be transcribed, that have yet to be translated, that have

08:17yet to be studied.

08:19And so I do want to make the point that there's a lot we don't know about Egypt based on,

08:25on record keeping.

08:26However, back to your point, we should have noticed something about this because we have

08:31a pretty good idea of who was raining.

08:34We have a pretty good idea of population size.

08:36We have a pretty good idea of what was going on in, in what cities based on the material

08:40remains that we do have.

08:43And this would have entirely devastated the entire society, the economy, the, their food

08:51supplies.

08:52We have absolutely devastated everything.

08:55There would be a very large gash in the historical record in the material record.

09:01If this happened the way it is described in the biblical text.

09:05And the simple fact is that we see absolutely no such data whatsoever.

09:10Things just seem to be carrying on as usual.

09:14Now another issue here is when we place this chronologically, if you say you were talking

09:21about the where in the when of this, I don't actually know the where in the when of when

09:26this is meant to take place.

09:27Do you have a sense of that?

09:30There's a, there's a rough window with kind of fuzzy boundaries where there are folks who

09:35will argue for an early date that like the earliest I think I've ever heard is somewhere

09:40around 1450 BCE, all the way down to a late date, which would put it 1250 into close to

09:471200 BCE.

09:49So we've got a period of about 200 to 250 years worse, where folks want to try to date

09:58the exodus and, and they're usually, they're usually moving things around within this window

10:06because they're looking for the most likely period where these things could have happened.

10:13The biblical text is not incredibly clear and you have to make some judgment calls in trying

10:19to do the math to find out when we're talking about which itself assumes that the numbers

10:24and the ages and the chronologies and everything like that in the Bible are historical, which

10:28is problematic in and of itself.

10:32But I think the, the folks who come the closest or come the closest to thinking critically

10:39about this would say if this happened at all, it would have had to have happened probably

10:451250-ish around there. So I think the later date is the most likely, that's not to say

10:52probable, but the closest we get to plausibility, I think would be a later date.

10:59Okay.

11:00Yeah. And, but that is also not without problems because we still don't see these societal

11:09upheavals. We still don't see this sudden, the death of every firstborn child in Egypt.

11:16We still don't see the army, the armed forces being decimated. We, we see none of this in

11:23the material remains. So not just the text, not just people writing down, dear diary,

11:28this is what happened in Egypt today. But just looking at the houses that we have, looking

11:33at the remains that have been dug out of the earth, we don't see any indication of any

11:41of this having happened.

11:42Yeah. One of the things that I, that interests me is that like, I mean, you know, I do have

11:50Cecil DeMille's 10 Commandments sort of those images are seared in my brain. I mean, forget

11:58Nefertiri and her gauzy dress. I'm also thinking of like the giant structures that these, you

12:05know, Hebrew slaves were in the process of building. I don't know, you know, we don't

12:10know what they were actually doing at that time, supposedly, but it does seem like a

12:15whole lot of work was halted in that moment. Like, like when you lose a million strong

12:24work force, you'd think that even even just in, you know, whatever they were making, whatever

12:30they were doing would stop, even just that would be somehow present in the record.

12:36Yeah. And that's, we don't see, we see indication that there were a variety of different types

12:47of workers coming from outside Egypt, whether they are enslaved or Corvay workers. A lot

12:54of scholars think that, that the workers who were doing this were not so much enslaved

13:01as just locals who just had an annual responsibility to go dedicate so much time to the work.

13:11We do see indications of that, that doesn't, however, support the notion that there was

13:18this discrete kind of compartmentalized community of people who are identified as Hebrews who

13:25had grown to, to this massive size. And, and we have some, some records from before this

13:34time period that have lists of names and some of these are Semitic names. And we have, we

13:40even have some drawings of some Semitic peoples in the, in a tomb for Beni Hassan, where the

13:48color is still preserved. So they had a pretty colorful pieces of clothing that they were

13:55wearing, but they're identified as Semitic peoples. And so some people

13:58Semitic in this, in this case, is a reference to a language group is that so yeah, so people

14:05who are speaking Semitic languages, which are going to be people from ancient Southwest

14:10Asia. So up the coast of, of Syria, Palestine, and probably not too much further to the east.

14:18So but into the desert, a bit we see in, in some of the different Egyptian discussions,

14:26they had a few different names for these people. They called them Asiatics. They call, they

14:32have a name for the Habiru, which, or Habiru, which some people think sounds an awful lot

14:40like what could have turned into Ivarit, the Hebrews. There's still debate about the degree

14:48to which that is the case. But we have references to a bunch of different societies that come

14:55from that area that is now Syria, Palestine, Israel area. And so there were many people

15:03that spoke Semitic languages at this time. And it's even within, it's even workers in

15:10mines and in other places on the Sinai Peninsula, who are probably Semitic in origin, who develop,

15:19in to develop what we now know as the Phoenician alphabet, by taking Egyptian hieroglyphs in

15:27different forms of these hieroglyphs and basically turning them into an alphabet. So Egypt has

15:32a long history of relations, usually tense relations, but sometimes cooperative relations

15:39with the peoples of ancient Southwest Asia. And so it's no surprise to see Semitic names.

15:45It's no surprise to see this kind of stuff. And some people try to leverage that as evidence.

15:51These are, we see Semitic names and it's like, ah, that must be the Hebrews. No, it could

15:56be Moabites. It could be Ammonites. It could be Amorites. It could be people from Ugarit.

16:02It could be Midianites. It could be a number of different societies that are doing that.

16:09So yeah, we don't see, we don't see evidence that points in the direction of Israelites

16:16being enslaved in Egypt. We see evidence that does not absolutely preclude the presence

16:26of enslaved Israelites in Egypt, but that doesn't necessarily say this is how it had

16:30to be. It's kind of, this is something that, um, that kind of frustrates me about some

16:35apologetics. We have, we have data that indicates something happened or points in the direction

16:42of something. If we follow the data where it is leading, if we follow the data, uh, if

16:48we allow it to operate on its own terms, sometimes it points us in a specific direction. It points

16:52us to a conclusion. Other times it's ambiguous, but among the variety of different conclusions

16:58that are plausible, we could, we could say the conclusion we want falls within that range.

17:05And this is what a lot of apologetics is. It's not showing that the data lead to our conclusion,

17:10but showing that the data don't preclude our conclusion saying it's possible that it happened.

17:16Yeah, it's possible. And, and there are some data that we could say it's even plausible

17:21that it happened. And so I would say it's plausible that there were, um, people who

17:28would later be identified or would later be incorporated into the, uh, the people group

17:33that we now known know as Israel who were enslaved in Egypt and who escaped enslavement

17:39to make their way into the Northern Hill country to become a part of the people known as Israel.

17:45If that happened, however, this was a very small group and the events of their escape

17:53do not resemble in any way, shape or form whatsoever the events described in the book

17:58of Exodus. So it's certainly plausible that there is a historical core to what's going

18:03on here, but what we see described in the book of Exodus is centuries of elaboration and

18:12innovation and, um, flourishes and all these things added to the text in order to make

18:19the text more useful, uh, for the time period. And you know, the, the story of a people who

18:26are trapped in a foreign land who are coming out and are going to return home sounds an

18:32awful lot like people who are, um, part of the Babylonian exile who are trapped in a

18:39foreign land who are going to be allowed to leave and return home. And so it's not to

18:45say that it's entirely mythological, but it is to say that the way the story is told

18:51is likely, um, intended to resonate with the audience for which it is being told, which

18:59is the post-exilic audience or yeah, I think the tradition of the Exodus predates that,

19:06but I think the form in which we have it now is largely attributable to the way the story

19:13would be told for, um, people either trapped in exile or, um, returning from exile. And,

19:21and we have similar, uh, scholarship has similar ideas about what's going on with, um, with

19:27Abraham and others who are moving into a land that they have not occupied either ever

19:34or for a while. And so our have to kind of adjust. And it's a way to kind of forge a

19:42relationship with this earlier group in our own social memory. So we're just like them.

19:49We're doing the same thing that they were doing. Here's a story that helps us think

19:53about our relationship with the God who is making this possible and what is expected

19:58of us and how we can maintain our, our social cohesiveness and integrity. And this also

20:05is the, uh, is the context for the development of all this legislation, some of which predates

20:11the Babylonian exile, but some of which also was probably, uh, written in response to the

20:17Babylonian exile and the return from exile. And so even from a literary point of view,

20:23the most likely context for the composition of the story as it has come down to us as

20:29we find it in the Masoretic text, uh, the most likely context is the middle of the first

20:37millennium BCE during or just after, uh, the Babylonian exile. And so what we see in the

20:45data on the ground in Egypt don't really support the overwhelming majority of the details of

20:51the story, but it is certainly plausible that there is a historical core where a much, much,

20:58much, much on a much, much smaller level. Uh, there was a group that escaped, uh, the

21:04details of the story as they have come down to us fit a much later time period rhetorically,

21:12uh, there are folks who argue, well, you've got a high concentration of Egyptian words

21:19in the Hebrew loan words from Egyptian into Hebrew. So like tortilla and taco and quesadilla,

21:26those are loan words from Spanish into, uh, English and I thought you were going to say

21:31they were Egyptian and I was blown. I'm given an example of, of what's called a loan word

21:37or a borrowing, something that originates into another language, uh, in another language. We bring

21:41it into our own and it becomes a part of our vocabulary. Well, there are a number of words

21:45in Hebrew that are loan words from Akkadian, from Egyptian and from other languages. And

21:52so scholars have noted there is a high concentration of these loan words in the story of the Exodus.

22:00And so some folks will argue, oh, that means that it was most likely written when they were

22:05in Egypt. No, because we can give rough kind of, um, uh, not necessarily dating, but, um,

22:15chronological relationships, um, to the, uh, when these words came into the Hebrew language,

22:23some of them come in early, some of them come in much later. Uh, and so I think the most

22:28likely explanation for what's going on there is that the authors are aware of what things

22:34are coming from Egypt or sound Egyptian. And so our infusing the story with this sense

22:41of authenticity and archaism and things like that. And, and another thing to, to note is

22:46that Egypt frequently had close relationships with this area. In fact, King Hezekiah, we

22:55have, uh, was under, uh, vassalage to Egypt in the, uh, late eighth century BCE. So around

23:02700 BCE, King Hezekiah had, um, we have these, they call them lamellic jar handles. They're,

23:09um, state produced jars and dishes and, and things like that. And they have a little stamp

23:14seal on them. Um, for the king is what it means. And they include many of them and have a little

23:20Egyptian scarab on them because there were a lot of resources that were coming from Egypt

23:26based on this, uh, vassalage relationship. And so there are frequent and very comprehensive

23:34points of contact between Israel and Egypt, not just when they would have been, uh, enslaved

23:42in Egypt. So we can account for a lot of these details that apologists will say are indications

23:48of the historicity of the Exodus in ways that don't require. We just accept the historicity

23:54of the Exodus. Yeah. And, and again, like those, those things that could account for it, uh,

24:00for those apologetics, um, don't disprove the apologetic, but it's an, it's an interesting

24:06note. Yeah. Yeah. In part of the data. Yeah. In history, we're, we're weighing probabilities

24:14and frequently what we have to consider is a whole series of concerns or questions. And

24:21we're looking at what we want to try to do is maximize the probability across the board

24:28to try to come up. The best theory is going to maximize probability across the board.

24:35Cause if we have something that's some, some things are plausible. A lot of things are

24:40implausible. And then a handful of things are impossible. That theory is not very strong.

24:46If we have some things that are probable, loads of things that are plausible and nothing

24:53is impossible or, or, uh, nothing is too implausible, that theory is going to be on the whole on,

25:01um, on balance is going to be stronger. Right. And so if we consider all of the different

25:08arguments that we have to make and all the different theories that have to come together

25:12for the exodus to be historical, there's just not, it's not a strong argument. It is a very

25:19weak argument. And it includes a number of things that are literally impossible. Miracles

25:24are, are literally impossible. And so the fact that, oh, we can highlight some things

25:30that are plausible. That's not, that's not strong enough evidence to overcome the fact

25:37that we would have to accept a bunch of things that are totally implausible or totally impossible.

25:44And so on balance, I, uh, I and most scholars, the overwhelming majority of critical scholars

25:49would say the exodus as it is told in the book of Exodus is entirely implausible. There,

25:58it is plausible that there's a historical core, some kind of little kernel of history

26:03that just grew and grew and grew as these stories were being told over the centuries.

26:08That involved a small group of, uh, of people who were enslaved who escaped who made their

26:13way to the Northern Hill country and were incorporated into the people known as Israel.

26:18And we know there were people known as Israel around the end of the 13th century BCE. So

26:24around 1200 BCE, we have an inscription from an Egyptian pharaoh named Marnepta dating

26:31to around 1208 BCE, where he talks about, uh, beating the Libyans. Uh, and, you know,

26:38it doesn't say it, but I wish it said, uh, they found me. I don't know how they found

26:43me, Marty, but they found me. I was going to do a duck brown. I knew you were going

26:46to go there. I knew you were going to go there, but he talks about defeating the Libyans in

26:50the West, but then he talks about the, um, the East, the Asiatics and, um, and regions

26:55that he defeated. And he mentions Israel says their seed is not, and this is a reference

27:01to their grain. Um, and basically that they, they devastated this group known as Israel

27:06and the determinative that accompanies that name and the determinative is a little hieroglyph

27:12that categorizes what they're talking about is a people determinative. So it's not a state.

27:19It's not a nation. It's not a city state. It's a people. Um, and, and so this likely

27:23indicates that there was a, some kind of group, uh, that was not, uh, established as a kingdom,

27:30probably did not have a capital city or anything like that, but they were known as Israel. And

27:35some people will point to that as saying, Oh, look, that's, that's Moses wandering in

27:40the wilderness. They don't have a capital yet there and try to leverage that as evidence.

27:45But this is another thing where that's eh, it's possible, but the data make far more probable,

27:53a different explanation for this. Sure. Let's talk about those people because one of the,

28:00one of the things, one of the questions that I've had for a long time, um, you know, I've,

28:05I've, I've heard people saying that there's no, you know, that there was likely no exodus

28:09or whatever, but I don't, do we have any sense if Moses was a real person because Moses is

28:18an enormous figure in all three of the Abrahamic religions. Moses is just an insanely, uh,

28:25he looms over over, you know, everything. Yeah. Yeah. One of those, one of the tent poles

28:31of, of, uh, ancient Judaism. I would say that we don't have evidence for the existence of

28:38a figure named Moses that is anything remotely associated with the story we have in Exodus.

28:45However, there, there is a piece of evidence that suggests there could be, um, another

28:50historical core somewhere in there. And that's the name Moses, which, um, in the text, it

28:58tries to associate it etymologically with this idea of drawing out. Uh, however, Moses

29:04is also an element in ancient Egyptian names. In fact, Tutt Moses and Ramses and a bunch

29:13of other, um, famous Egyptian pharaohs have this element in them, uh, where Moses means

29:20born of or son of or something like that. And when you have that name, you have a deity

29:26associated with it. Tutt Moses born of or son of Thoth, Ramses born of son of Ra. Um,

29:34and so Moses is the connection. Sorry. Is the connection that we're making there, the,

29:37the S E S on the end? Is that, uh, no, the, the M O, uh, the M and the S, uh, and the,

29:45the vowels are kind of squishy because we're not exactly sure how they vocalized, uh, the

29:52syllables in ancient Egyptian. We have some pretty good guesses, uh, but they can, they

29:58can vary as well, depending on where, where these consonants are appearing in the word

30:02and how they're being used. Um, and so Moses would, if it is a name, it could be a legitimate

30:10Egyptian name, but it would be incomplete because it would mean son of. And so there's

30:17an argument that this was originally an Egyptian name and there was an Egyptian deities name

30:23associated with it. That was taken away because of embarrassment, because we don't want this

30:31figure who looms so large, who plays such a significant role to have a pagan name, a

30:38pagan deity associated with them. So there's an argument to make that, that Moses could

30:43be an actual name of a person who came out of Egypt, uh, whose name was altered to give

30:49us this incomplete Egyptian name, uh, precisely because they didn't like that it would have

30:55been associated with an Egyptian deity. So that is plausible. I don't, I wouldn't go so

31:01far as to say it's probable, but that is certainly plausible. And that, and that's one of the

31:06pieces of evidence that I think contributes to having to take seriously the notion that

31:11there could have been something there, but certainly not as we see, uh, in the text as

31:18it has come down to us and all the traditions and all the miracles and all the, um, fabulous

31:22events associated with it. Yeah, it's a pretty, uh, it's a miracle heavy story. It is a magic

31:31laden story. Um, and we may have to get back to it and like dive into the, uh, the actual

31:38bits and bobs of what occurs in it, cause it's, uh, it's a lot. Yeah, I think, I think

31:46covering the, the plagues would be interesting. I think talking about, uh, yeah, there, there

31:51are lots of things we cover in the, and also, you know, we talked about it a little bit

31:56when we were talking about, you know, the, uh, the pantheon of gods, you know, the, the

32:02fact that in, in that story, uh, the Hebrew God does battle essentially, or at least does

32:10like who, who's got the best tricks with the, uh, Egyptian gods and the Egyptian gods show

32:16up. They actually, they actually are, are part of the story. So that's fascinating. We

32:21may have to get to that. Um, but that's a, that's a story for another time. Yes, sir.

32:26Uh, in the meantime though, chapter and verse, chapter and verse. All right. Let's do it.

32:32Hey, everybody. If you enjoy what you're hearing on the data over dogma podcast and

32:38you want to help us ensure that we're able to continue to create this content that hopefully

32:45you think is great and that we think is great, you can help us by, uh, subscribing to our

32:51patreon. That's right. Uh, if you go to patreon.com/data over dogma, you can choose what level

32:59you want to join up at. Uh, you'll get usually early access to every, to, to the show every

33:05week. Um, you, you'll get access to our patrons only content, which is, uh, you know, we talk

33:13about that, you know, each week's show, but we take, we, you know, we go off into different

33:17directions. We sometimes just have fun conversations. Uh, it's just behind the scenes look. Go to

33:23patreon.com/dataover dogma. Thanks. Thanks everybody. We're going to pull one from the

33:31Exodus, uh, because, uh, we, we like to keep things topical here and we're going to go

33:37to Exodus chapter 22, uh, which is part of what's known as the covenant code. Yeah. I

33:43wanted this. I wanted to start by saying that like this is, I was sort of like looking over

33:48this and reading through it and I went back a couple chapters and realized that two chapters

33:53before it starts with what we call the 10 commandments. Yeah. But like the book itself

34:00doesn't say 10 commandments. It just starts listing rules and then you go to the next

34:05chapter and there's way, way, way more rules and then go to the next chapter and it's all

34:09laws. It should be like the 97 commandments or something like that because it just keeps

34:13going and going and going and it gets minutely specific in some cases. Yeah. Yeah. And,

34:20and there's a lot of repetition as well. There are over 600 commandments according to the

34:24traditional, uh, enumeration of, of the commandments within Judaism, but just within the book of

34:30Exodus, we actually have several different layers of collections of commandments and that's,

34:37and that's ignoring that. We also have another set of commandments in Deuteronomy and we have

34:41other sets of commandments in Leviticus. Yeah. We're going to do a, just a 10 commandments

34:46question mark. Yeah. Oh yeah. Cause we've got, we've got at least three different iterations

34:52of the 10 commandments and they are not all the same. And the only, like they're, they're not

34:59broken out easily in the text as like, yeah, there are different ways to count them.

35:04Yeah. Yeah. There are different ways to count the 10 commandments, uh, just in Exodus 20,

35:08uh, Exodus 36 is actually the only place where it says it calls them the 10 words, um, in Exodus

35:1536. And that's the closest we get to the label 10 commandments, which is then transferred to

35:21Exodus 20 because Exodus 36 is primarily about festivals and rituals and things like that. It's

35:27not your, your set of, uh, moral laws, but we digress. Um, so back to, back to Exodus 22,

35:35Exodus is that, that's what we're on, right? Yes. Exodus 22. So this is part of the covenant

35:41code, which scholars identify as probably the earliest layer of legislation that is found in

35:48the book of Exodus. So this is something that's coming from, um, maybe 10th, probably more likely

35:54ninth or eighth century BCE. And it's being incorporated into this growing narrative.

36:00And so these are the earliest, um, layers of legislation. And in verse 29, and in, if you're

36:08looking in the Hebrew, um, it is, uh, actually verse 28, but in virtually all English translations,

36:16it's verse 29, uh, we have this statement and I'll read it in the K J V just for those who, um,

36:24who are nasty. Uh, thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits and of thy

36:32liquors. So we're talking about offerings, sacrifices, uh, colon, the firstborn of thy sons,

36:40shalt thou give unto me. And then I'm, I'm going to briefly go into verse 30. Likewise,

36:48shalt thou do with thine oxen and with thy sheep seven days, it shall be with his dam.

36:53On the eighth day thou shalt give it to me.

36:58Yikes. Yikes. Indeed. I'm that that is, I mean, if I'm reading that correctly,

37:06they just chucked something in there in the middle because like this whole chapter has been about

37:12like what you do if someone steals an ox and what you, you know, how, how all of this happens,

37:17it's about like livestock and stuff. And then this starts with, with, uh, with sacrifices.

37:23And then just in the middle there, they're like, and your sons, your firstborn sons that cannot mean

37:28what it seems to mean, can it? Well, that's, uh, that's the argument that a lot of folks make.

37:36Uh, to begin with, we don't have the, the traditional word for sacrifice here.

37:42Uh, we have this verb Natan, which means to give, uh, you will give it to me. And so some people are

37:50arguing that that has a different, that's got to have a different nuance here, like give to me in

37:55the sense of turn them over to priesthood service. So like what we see, uh, at the beginning of Samuel,

38:02with Samuel's mother promising to give Samuel to the priesthood, um, if she is able to conceive a son.

38:09I think I can see where that argument might fall down though, because, uh, generally speaking,

38:15this is just a guess. I don't think that the God of Israel wants people to give the firstborn

38:21of their sheep and oxen into priesthood ding ding. So the very next verse complicates that because,

38:28uh, and in the Hebrew, it says, um, kentase, uh, which means thus you will do. In other words,

38:36do the same thing with your oxen and with your sheep. And then it repeats the verb Natan at the

38:43very end on the eighth day, you will give it to me. Uh, so yeah, that's Natan, uh, Tithnoli. So you

38:51will give it to me. So, um, that is very clearly a reference to sacrifice. And so given that's verse

39:0030 is referencing is referring back to, it's resuming the verb at the end of verse 29. We should

39:08understand them to be, um, employed, uh, with the same sense with the same nuance, which would

39:15indicate sacrifice. Um, and there is another passage in the Hebrew Bible that I and many others, um,

39:24argue is another biblical author interpreting this passage and precisely that way. Um, so

39:32that is, uh, in the book of Ezekiel and it is, uh, Ezekiel chapter 20 and it's verses, uh, 25 and 26.

39:44And here we have Ezekiel is, uh, going off about how you're not, um, the, the Israelites were not

39:52living up to, they were given laws. They were not living up to them. And then, um, and then we have

40:00in verse 25 and, uh, I'll go from the KJV again, just, just for fun. Wherefore I gave them also

40:06statutes that were not good and judgments whereby they should not live. And this is actually

40:12contrasting. Um, the statutes and judgments that God is talking about having given at Sinai

40:19says you will live by them. And so here he's saying, I gave them also statutes and judgments

40:24whereby they should not live. And I polluted them in their own gifts in that they caused to pass

40:31through the fire all that openeth the womb that I might make them desolate to the end that they

40:37might know that I am the Lord. And this phrase passed through the fire is a, uh, a colloquialism

40:44that refers to child sacrifice offering children as burnt offerings. Uh, and so Ezekiel here is,

40:52it looks like Ezekiel is looking back at Exodus 22 29 and trying to explain why we seem to have

41:00this commandment to sacrifice children in the covenant code. And Ezekiel's explanation seems to be,

41:06I gave you laws, uh, but you were too busy worrying trying to live by the laws of, of your forefathers,

41:13your ancestors. Uh, and so I said, great, let's do that. And the point was to desolate you and

41:20to show you who was boss. Okay. And, and so Ezekiel's kind of saying, I gave you some good laws. You

41:25decided you didn't like them. I gave you some bad laws. Um, just to, uh, show you who's boss.

41:31And, and there are scholars who have gone to great lengths to try to reinterpret this as referring to

41:40something else. Like, uh, one popular argument is that the laws that were not good as a reference

41:45to the Deuteronomistic laws. We talked about how we got the ones in Exodus and we got the ones in

41:50Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic ones are from later. And so it's talking about how those were

41:55the ones that these authors didn't like and, and we're interested, but the, but it's not a strong

42:00case. It rests on, uh, a very thin argument that when they refer to statutes and judgments here,

42:07they must be referring some to something other than actual thou shalt and thou shalt not

42:13commandments. But, uh, we see earlier in this chapter in verse 18, um, I said under their children

42:22in the wilderness, walk ye not in the statutes of your fathers, neither observe their judgments,

42:27nor defile yourselves with their idols. So the reference to statutes and, and judgments is,

42:33looking back at the way they, um, like Joshua says, uh, are you going to follow the gods

42:40of your fathers on the other side of the river or the flood or whatever, or are you going to follow

42:44after Adonai? They kept returning to their ancestors, gods, which resulted in all this stuff. So,

42:51so Ezekiel is understanding Exodus 22, 29 to refer to child sacrifice. But we have other

43:00approaches to this as well. In Exodus 13, for instance, we have, uh, a reference to

43:07this idea of, uh, giving the firstborn, but it supersedes that with a commandment to redeem

43:16the firstborn. So it's, it's an odd way to think about this. Uh, like you're supposed to redeem

43:23your child so that it does not get sacrificed. It's like, why not just not have the commandment

43:30to sacrifice them in the first place? Uh, I mean, if, if the point is, you know, we need a little,

43:37we need some, some walking around money. If you have a baby, just say, Hey, you have a kid,

43:43pay a little bit of money as an offering to God as a thank you for allowing us to have a healthy,

43:49healthy child. No need to say, well, what if we require they sacrifice the baby and then

43:55at the last second, we pull it back and we say, no, we just want some money from you. Um,

44:00I mean, there is one example of that, uh, that, that yanking it back in, yeah, that jumps

44:07immediately to mind, but yes, it does seem like a bad system, especially if you're going to apply

44:12it sort of across the board. Yeah. And yet it is so firmly embedded in, in the kind of ideological

44:18historical foundations of both ancient Judaism and Christianity, the idea that a child, uh,

44:24that child sacrifice is somehow baked into these traditions with, um, uh, we have Isaac

44:33and Abraham, uh, Abraham didn't seem like this was too much of a shock. Uh, yeah, he kind of just

44:40goes, shrugs and goes along with it to something. Yeah, he, uh, really took it in stride. Um, and

44:47but then says, you know, God will provide. And then we have, uh, the, uh, the substitution

44:53for, uh, Isaac is, is offered. And then there is Jesus who is, uh, offered in sacrifice in, in one,

45:03interpretation of the significance of that story. And that's one where, uh, God does not

45:10provide so to speak. Uh, there's one interpretation is that Jesus is the, the, the lamb that is provided

45:18so that, uh, the rest of humanity doesn't have to, uh, not be sacrificed, but at least, uh,

45:25suffer and sin and die and be punished for eternity. Yeah. And there's a back, but back in Exodus 22,

45:31that's, that's still centuries away. We're, yeah. So yeah, there, and there's a, there's a great

45:37book called the death and resurrection of the beloved son by a great scholar named John D.

45:43Levinson subtitle is the transformation of child sacrifice and Judaism and Christianity,

45:48which talks about the role of child sacrifice in these traditions. So that's, uh, that's an older

45:54book. I think it's, uh, 30 years old by now from 1993, but if anyone's interested in, in a wonderful

46:00discussion of the fact that child sacrifice seems baked into these traditions, I would highly recommend

46:06that one. I'm just, I, sorry, I am still reeling about just the, just that initial, uh, Exodus

46:15commandment to, uh, to sacrifice your firstborn son. Right. God. Because there's no indication that

46:26it doesn't, that it applies only to one small class of the people, right? There's, it, I'm looking

46:34at it. I looked for a while trying to figure out if this was just like only the, the priests would

46:41have to sacrifice their firstborn or only the, this group or the elite of some sort, but

46:46it seems like it's a blanket statement that's supposed to be about everybody. Am I wrong on that? What

46:54am I? No, no, it's, uh, it's pretty straightforward. This is, uh, commandments to the Israelite

47:00people. And it's embedded right within these other commandments about, you know, bringing your,

47:05excuse me, bringing your oxen and your sheep and, and everything like that. So yeah, there's no

47:09indication that this is kind of an isolated only for, uh, for these people over here,

47:15commandment. However, it, it seems very likely two things. One, we have, we have no material

47:23remains that attest directly to any child sacrifice in ancient Israel. Okay. Um, and two, it seems like

47:31based on the literature around it, that this was very quickly reinterpreted, renegotiated

47:37in another direction. Um, but it doesn't, it doesn't seem like it would be good for a society

47:44if every firstborn son of that society had to be, you know, chucked. And, and, but this, this

47:51raises another interesting observation. There is a related society where we do have

47:58a lot of direct physical evidence of child sacrifice. So, um, in Northern Africa and Carthage,

48:07we have a Punic Phoenician settlement. And there is a, an area that's, uh, it's being, is

48:16frequently referred to as a Tofit, which is the name of an area in Jerusalem where child

48:21sacrifice were child sacrifices were rumored to have happened. And so this, uh, area in Carthage

48:29is being referred to as a Tofit. They have found over a thousand burials of infant remains. And

48:38scholars have argued for a while, well, this, this must be, uh, funerary. They're just, these are

48:44infants that died in childbirth or shortly thereafter, which is something that was, was even more common

48:49anciently than it is now, far more common anciently. Um, but, uh, many of these burials, one, show

48:57indication of having been burnt. And two, come with inscriptions that talk, that refer to these

49:05things as offerings and as things that are being given to a deity. Sometimes as deities,

49:13ball, sometimes it is other deities. And there's an interesting word that is included that seems

49:19to identify the specific type of offering that it is. And, um, uh, in this language, this Phoenician

49:25Punic language very closely related to Hebrew, they did not use vowels. So the consonants are MLK,

49:31which many scholars think is the Phoenician Punic version of what we would pronounce

49:41Molek or Moloch from the Hebrew Bible. Now, traditionally that's been understood as the name

49:47of a deity in the Hebrew Bible. And we've talked about this, uh, to some degree in the past that

49:53this was, this was some God of child sacrifice. Sometimes it's identified with ball. Uh,

49:58everybody who's upset about Hollywood right now, uh, refers to them, uh, you know, uh,

50:06worshiping ball and Molek. Um, but based on these inscriptions at Carthage, it talks about how this,

50:14this infant is a, is a MLK for ball where the usage indicates that word is a noun, that word is a,

50:24is a category of offering or sacrifice. Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. So there was a scholar

50:30named Otto Eisfeld who back in 1935 argued that based on, on these inscriptions, if they are relevant

50:38to the, the Hebrew Bible's discussions of, of child sacrifice and this Molek figure, we probably

50:46need to reinterpret that word Molek as a reference, not to a deity, but to a type of sacrifice. Uh,

50:54and so I, the tide has over the last almost hundred years, the consensus has been shifting in the

51:02direction of understanding this as a reference to a type of sacrifice. And I would say the balance

51:07is probably beginning to favor that, that it's not yet an overwhelming consensus, but in the

51:15publications that I've seen over the last 10 years or so, scholars increasingly are favoring

51:20that understanding and a wonderful book. If, if anyone is interested in looking into this,

51:25and I think we've recommended it before on the podcast is Heath Durel child sacrifice in ancient

51:32Israel where he goes into great detail about these things. So what this would mean is that

51:38there was no deity named Molek, but there are references in the Hebrew Bible to children being

51:43offered as this specific type of Molek offering, uh, which is, which is pretty horrifying.

51:51But one thing that scholars who are looking into the child sacrifice that went on in Carthage

51:58are commenting on is that if they believed that these sacrifices would bless them in the future,

52:05uh, in a world where, um, polygamy was common and where pregnancy women were spent most of their,

52:13their time pregnant. If you gave up the first in the, uh, expecting that, that that would mean

52:21you would have more successful and more, um, pregnancies and, and births in the future,

52:26that would not seem to be such an enormous sacrifice. And, and they also talk about how

52:32in the literature and in the way children are, are conceptualized in this time period,

52:39because infant mortality was so high, uh, there was not as strong a connection between the parent

52:47and the child until it had survived for a couple of months and seemed like it had a chance of, of

52:52making it into childhood, if not into adulthood. And so this is not, say they didn't care about

52:58their kids back then, but it's to say when they're weighing their, their family's survival and the

53:05odds of children surviving, the notion that sacrificing a child as a way to try to increase the odds

53:13that will have, uh, more healthy children in the future is, was not as horrifying to them as it

53:21would be to us. That makes sense to me. I, I, you know, I've often thought that even up until

53:27fairly recently in our own history, uh, infant mortality was just a fact of life. And it was just

53:33something that, that people had to deal with very regularly. And they must have had psychologically

53:39a very different approach to it than we have. Yeah. Yeah. If it was, it was probably over 50%

53:46back then. So if you were hoping, you know, if we are hoping to have four or six pregnancies,

53:51maybe we're lucky if two or three of them actually survive and into adulthood. And so taking one of

53:58those and saying, we're going to do this ourselves so that maybe the deity, whoever it is, will allow

54:05more to survive in the future. That was a, that was a calculation that, um, very clearly was made,

54:12and at least by people in Carthage. Isn't there, uh, somewhere in, I think the Exodus laws,

54:19there, or maybe, oh, maybe it's, maybe it's in numbers that I'm thinking of, but are,

54:26there is some discussion somewhere of sort of a baby not really becoming, uh, a person almost

54:36until X amount of time in, after its, after its birth. I'm not, I'm not getting to this correctly.

54:43And I'm not, but this, this is something I've talked about in the past, and particularly in,

54:49within discussions about the morality of abortion and things like that, the, the child was not

54:55considered to, to be, uh, a person until they, they drew first breath. That's when life begins

55:02within the, um, the ideologies of the societies that produce the Hebrew Bible. But yeah, there,

55:09there is indication, and I don't think it's in the Bible. I think it's, uh, it's in some of the

55:14extra biblical early Jewish literature where like full personhood was, it was, um, you know, it was

55:23a spectrum, but full personhood was really something that was achieved a couple months after. Right.

55:29Um, just when you are through that window of greatest threat to the life, uh, of the infant,

55:35that was when they were probably not considered as, uh, fully a person as, uh, as they were a little

55:42later down the road. And, and I know it sounds kind of callous to talk about children in this way,

55:48and to talk about the way parents are thinking about their children. But these are just as, as

55:55I think you called them, just kind of, um, psychological ways to deal with the stresses of

56:01the reality of survival in this time period. This is just a way to minimize the, the trauma of the

56:09inevitability of losing children, uh, in this time period. And so it's, it's, uh, it's not

56:16fun to talk about, but, um, it is something that I, I think people need to understand as they look

56:22at, uh, text like Exodus 22, 29, that it's, it's not justifying it. It's explaining it. It's

56:30saying this, this is not something that would, that, you know, it just could not be possible in this

56:35time period. It absolutely was possible in this time period. We have evidence that societies did

56:40precisely this on a large scale. And so there's no reason to say we can't, and that this is not

56:47possible for the societies that produce the Hebrew Bible. And at the same time, we have no

56:54indication that despite, even though that law is there, we have no indication it was ever enforced,

56:59or that anyone in Israel ever engaged in that. In fact, there's a good argument to make that this

57:05legislation was not widely known, was not widely enforced until we get down to around the second

57:10century BCE. Although it seems unlikely to me that it would make it this far to us, like that this

57:17law, that this, that this, uh, commandment would have been recorded enough that it got all the way

57:23to us without some of the people actually doing it. It seems almost impossible that it would never

57:30have happened. It's, it, well, it depends on how quickly it was reinterpreted. And this is something

57:35that I talk about in my, in my, um, 2022 book, Adonai's Divine Images, is that if there is ambiguity

57:43in, um, a term or in legislation or something like that, a lot of times it sticks around

57:52precisely because it is easily reread. And so things that we look at today, we're like, how on

57:58earth could Psalm 82 or some of these other passages, how on earth could they have been preserved

58:06for thousands of years and people have considered them inspired and, and a part of their authoritative

58:11literature. And as I, if you have a way to kind of influence a reinterpretation of that verse to go

58:18from theologically problematic to theologically not problematic, that's all it needs. And then

58:23every other generation after it is like, oh yeah, that's not a problem. And so I, I don't know if,

58:30if anyone ever did it, I, I think it's plausible that this happened for a time,

58:36anciently, but we don't have any direct evidence of it. And another example of something that is a,

58:42that is a piece of legislation, and we don't know if it ever happened is, um, uh, the so-tah,

58:47numbers five, the, the ordeal of the woman suspected of adultery. That's, that's something where we

58:53see like rabbis debating about whether or not it's appropriate to involve a pregnant woman and all

58:58this kind of stuff. But we have no indication anyone ever did this, that anyone was ever put

59:03through this ordeal. Um, but it served a rhetorical function in its place in the literature, uh,

59:10in which it was embedded. And, and maybe that's why it's there to serve a rhetorical function,

59:15not necessarily something that was expected to be carried out. Well, one thing I can say with

59:21absolute certainty, I feel positive that, uh, that I am in the clear to say this even biblically.

59:27Um, uh, don't follow this particular command, uh, ever for any reason. Don't, you do not need to

59:36sacrifice even even your livestock. Don't, you don't even have to do that, but definitely don't, uh,

59:41sacrifice your own firstborn sons. Uh, leave them alone. They're fine. Yeah, there, there's a

59:47theory of ritual that, that, um, categorizes ritual as things that are what they call causally

59:53opaque. What that means is that there is no clear connection between the action and whatever the

59:59desired outcome is and ritual and sacrifice is an example of this. We don't really have a way to

60:06show there's any connection between sacrificing animals and anything good happening. Um, but you

60:12know, and, and this extends beyond the religious sphere into what we would consider the secular

60:16world. There are all kinds of different rituals that we engage in socially on a day-to-day basis

60:22because there are ways to show others that you know the rules. You're, uh, an upstanding member

60:27of society. You can be trusted. You're a good person. There are a bunch of different ways we

60:31engage in rituals to do that. Uh, but according to, to ritual's theory, there, these are things that

60:38are causally opaque. And so I would say that this is one that is not only causally opaque, but

60:45objectively harmful and, um, yeah. And I think you're in the clear on that. I don't think many

60:52people will argue with you over that. So if, if anyone is under the misapprehension that we are

60:58claiming this is something we should be reinstituting. I don't think they understand our podcast very

61:03well. And I think it's okay to, yeah, even if it is in the Bible, I think, uh, I mean, this is just

61:09another example of like one of the things that you're not like nobody thinks that you should

61:16do this. And so anyone who says I obey all of the laws of the Bible is a pretty good one to just

61:22point out and say, yeah, you don't. And as I've said many times on, um, on different social media

61:29channels, nothing is non-negotiable in the Bible. Everything is negotiable and everyone has

61:35negotiated things. And this is just an example. Everybody renegotiates this because nobody thinks

61:41this is something that is one is of God. Two has any value to us today. Uh, and so, yeah, so if

61:50someone gets legalistic with you about like, ah, no, you're, you're view on X, Y, or Z is non-biblical

61:58and therefore blah, blah, blah. You just asked them when how they, how they did sacrificing their

62:03first part. That it's, it's pretty low hanging fruit. But yes, anytime someone like, this is the

62:08word of God, you got to do it. It's like, what do you think about this? Right. Um, that's always

62:13something that, that will have been renegotiated away. But I think the case is strong. It, I would

62:19call it the academic consensus. Uh, even though it's probably pretty close, that's, uh, this was

62:26originally a commandment for Israelites to sacrifice their firstborn children and specifically their

62:31firstborn sons. Yes. That's, yeah, that's rough. Uh, but there you go. It's, it's, it's there in

62:37black and white on the papyrus. There's nothing we can do about it. Well, uh, thanks, thanks for that,

62:43Dan. Uh, what a horrifying, uh, little thing, little jaunt into, into the laws. Uh, if you,

62:51friends at home listening, viewing us, uh, on the YouTubes or in your, in your various pod blasters,

62:56if you would like to become a part of making this show go, please feel free to become one of

63:01our patrons over on patreon.com, uh, slash data over dogma. If you'd like to write into us about

63:08anything, uh, you can reach us at contact@dataoverdogmapod.com and, uh, we'll talk to you again next week.

63:17Bye everybody. Hope you have a good week.