Latest / The Joe Rogan Experience / #2562 - Dan McClellan

Transcript

#2562 - Dan McClellan · The Joe Rogan Experience

0:04
Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience.
0:06
Speaker 2: Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
0:09
Speaker 2: All right, we're up. What's up, man? Good to meet you, man.
0:15
Speaker 1: Good to meet you, too. Thank you so much for
0:16
Speaker 1: having me on.
0:17
Speaker 2: It's always weird when you watch a bunch of a
0:19
Speaker 2: guy's content and.
0:19
Speaker 1: Then you meet him.
0:21
Speaker 2: It's very odd.
0:23
Speaker 1: There's a parasocial relationship thing there that's a little off-putting
0:26
Speaker 1: at first. I remember I had a long time ago,
0:31
Speaker 1: I got a notification I was being followed on Instagram
0:33
Speaker 1: by Joel McHale. And I was like, sweet. I texted
0:37
Speaker 1: my family. And then a couple weeks later, I got
0:39
Speaker 1: a message from him. He was like, hey, man, big fan,
0:43
Speaker 1: loves your stuff. We got to hang out sometime.
0:44
Speaker 2: And I was like, all right, cool. He's a really
0:46
Speaker 2: nice guy.
0:47
Speaker 1: He's incredible. He's a wonderful guy. He's got a lovely family.
0:50
Speaker 1: And he was coming out to Salt Lake City to
0:52
Speaker 1: do FanX a couple years ago, which is our version
0:55
Speaker 1: of Comic-Con. And I was like, hey, let's do dinner.
0:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're a giant comic freak.
1:00
Speaker 1: I am, yeah. And I was like, let's do dinner.
1:03
Speaker 1: He's like, it's a date, but I'm a, what did
1:06
Speaker 1: he call himself? An arrogant foodie. So he was like,
1:09
Speaker 1: so I got to pick the restaurant. But he's like,
1:12
Speaker 1: let's get on the phone and chat for a minute.
1:15
Speaker 1: And I called him. He picked up the phone. He's like,
1:17
Speaker 1: Dan McClellan, Joel McHale. He's like, this is so weird
1:20
Speaker 1: talking to you. I was like, Joel, I promise you
1:22
Speaker 1: it's a lot weirder for me. So I know exactly
1:25
Speaker 1: what that's like.
1:25
Speaker 2: But it's very odd. I try to give people as
1:28
Speaker 2: much grace as possible when they meet me because I've
1:30
Speaker 2: probably been in their head more than, you know, headphones
1:33
Speaker 2: and shit for thousands of. It's odd. It's odd for me.
1:37
Speaker 2: So I'm sure it's odd for other people.
1:38
Speaker 1: And I'm kind of like I don't even recall if
1:40
Speaker 1: I'm proud of everything I've ever said. But so I
1:43
Speaker 1: don't know what kind of impression somebody has of me.
1:46
Speaker 2: Oh, I have a great impression of you.
1:47
Speaker 1: Well, I appreciate that.
1:48
Speaker 2: And I'm certainly not proud of everything I've said. We're
1:51
Speaker 2: all good. We're all good.
1:52
Speaker 1: Because I don't really watch my stuff back. I don't
1:55
Speaker 1: even remember a lot of the stuff I've said.
1:57
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a real problem with me. There's people that
1:59
Speaker 2: I forget I talk to. Okay. And then we bring
2:02
Speaker 2: them up in the podcast. I'm like, oh, I should
2:03
Speaker 2: have that guy on. And Jamie's like, we actually had
2:06
Speaker 2: him on three years ago.
2:06
Speaker 1: It happens.
2:08
Speaker 2: It happens once every six months.
2:10
Speaker 1: We deal with that when we're like, what should we
2:13
Speaker 1: talk about today?
2:14
Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't know.
2:14
Speaker 1: We talk about this. And then like two weeks ago,
2:17
Speaker 1: we talked about that.
2:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is an issue with you, I would imagine,
2:20
Speaker 2: more because you're dealing with very specific structure and texts.
2:25
Speaker 2: And it's also something that you have this incredible deep
2:29
Speaker 2: knowledge of. So there's probably no way you can remember
2:32
Speaker 2: the specific instances in which you talked about it.
2:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. It's an issue. But it's also, I think,
2:39
Speaker 1: something that's kind of baked into the reason my channel
2:43
Speaker 1: is so beneficial to a lot of people because... I
2:45
Speaker 1: can repeat stuff over and over again because as my
2:48
Speaker 1: audience grows, there are always new people who haven't been
2:50
Speaker 1: exposed to a lot of things. So there are actually
2:53
Speaker 1: a handful of things I kind of, not programmatically, but
2:56
Speaker 1: every six months or so, I'll be like, yeah, it's
2:58
Speaker 1: probably time to talk about this again. And then I
3:01
Speaker 1: already have the foundation there. I can recall most of
3:03
Speaker 1: what I said. But yeah, I do have to go
3:05
Speaker 1: refresh my memory. What was that manuscript called? I got
3:08
Speaker 1: to figure out, you know, translate that again, something like that.
3:11
Speaker 1: So it is both a blessing and a curse because
3:14
Speaker 1: it means I can If I'm having a slow day,
3:17
Speaker 1: can't think of something to talk about, maybe I just
3:19
Speaker 1: recycle something I did six months ago. And there are
3:21
Speaker 1: going to be thousands of people who hadn't seen it before.
3:24
Speaker 2: At least. Yeah, you have an enormous library. How many
3:26
Speaker 2: videos have you put out, all told?
3:29
Speaker 1: Around 4,000. Which is, I see people who put out
3:34
Speaker 1: that many podcast episodes.
3:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're at.
3:37
Speaker 1: That's rarefied air.
3:38
Speaker 2: I think we're at 2,600. Almost 2,900. Almost 2,900 plus.
3:44
Speaker 1: Oh, it's including all the other ones.
3:45
Speaker 2: Oh, is that including all of them? Yeah. So almost 3,000,
3:48
Speaker 2: including Fight Companions, MMA podcasts, things of those like.
3:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's two to three hours or more each, too.
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Speaker 2: Cooks the brain, Dan. I don't know if it's good.
4:01
Speaker 2: My memory is so weird. It's very good sometimes and
4:06
Speaker 2: also terrible other times. And I think my hard drive
4:09
Speaker 2: is overwhelmed. Yeah.
4:11
Speaker 1: I'm the same way, particularly when I'm on the spot.
4:14
Speaker 1: I lose names like crazy. My kids were like, you
4:18
Speaker 1: should try it for Jeopardy. And I got through the
4:21
Speaker 1: first phase, and then they were like this, not like
4:23
Speaker 1: an in-person thing, but a live online thing, and I
4:26
Speaker 1: just froze up. Everything, I was like, I can see
4:28
Speaker 1: his face. I know the dude inside out. I can't
4:31
Speaker 1: remember the name. I freeze up a lot.
4:32
Speaker 2: Do you do anything to enhance your memory? In terms
4:35
Speaker 2: of vitamins or nootropics? Or nootropics? I don't know how
4:40
Speaker 2: to pronounce it.
4:41
Speaker 1: There is some research that is suggesting creatine might be
4:44
Speaker 1: a little more helpful for brain function. So I actually
4:46
Speaker 1: do 10 grams of creatine every day.
4:49
Speaker 2: Excellent.
4:49
Speaker 1: So definitely that's a choice that I've made. Yeah. Try
4:59
Speaker 1: to minimize all the different stuff I'm putting in my body,
5:02
Speaker 1: but I have a slew of vitamins and things like
5:05
Speaker 1: that that I'm taking in addition. I've got to get
5:07
Speaker 1: the fiber because I'm of a certain age.
5:10
Speaker 2: That's debatable. Yeah. Oddly enough. Yeah. I mean, I don't
5:14
Speaker 2: know where I stand, honestly, because I take in fiber,
5:18
Speaker 2: mostly in the form of fermented vegetables. I'm a big
5:20
Speaker 2: kimchi fan.
5:21
Speaker 1: Okay.
5:22
Speaker 2: But there's quite a few people that have zero fiber
5:26
Speaker 2: and that exist on a carnivore diet. And I think
5:28
Speaker 2: a lot of these people are people with autoimmune issues
5:32
Speaker 2: that tend to have problems with plant-based chemicals, like chemicals
5:37
Speaker 2: that are in plants. And And then there's a real
5:41
Speaker 2: problem with the American diet, which is glyphosate and herbicides.
5:45
Speaker 2: There's a lot of different herbicides and chemicals used in
5:48
Speaker 2: industrial fertilizer that get into your food. And a lot
5:52
Speaker 2: of people have extreme sensitivities to those things. Yeah. Perhaps
5:57
Speaker 2: due to prolonged exposure. It's very difficult to parse out.
5:59
Speaker 2: You have to talk to a bunch of different people.
6:02
Speaker 2: And a bunch of different people have like different takes
6:03
Speaker 2: on it. But I know quite a few very healthy
6:06
Speaker 2: people that don't eat any fiber. Yeah. They just eat
6:08
Speaker 2: like eggs and chicken and meat and fish and that's it.
6:13
Speaker 1: Well, for me, it was definitely, I noticed when I
6:15
Speaker 1: took it, things were easier for me in the morning.
6:17
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, for sure.
6:18
Speaker 1: And that was where I was like, okay, then done.
6:20
Speaker 1: That's what I'm going to do from here on out.
6:21
Speaker 2: There's a transitionary period. I did the carnivore diet strictly
6:24
Speaker 2: once for 60 days. I've never done it for more
6:26
Speaker 2: than that. But for 30 days when I did it,
6:30
Speaker 2: the first four or five, the diarrhea, my friend Tom
6:33
Speaker 2: Segura described it as remarkable.
6:37
Speaker 1: Breathtaking.
6:38
Speaker 2: It's just derping. It's like, what is happening to me?
6:41
Speaker 2: But that settles down after a while. And then your
6:44
Speaker 2: bowel movements are not as frequent, but very easy. It's
6:49
Speaker 2: just like, bloop, it's like not much. And that's it
6:52
Speaker 2: because there's no fiber. So it's like what is left
6:54
Speaker 2: after you chew all the meat and swallow it. It's
6:56
Speaker 2: like that stuff comes out in the wash and that's
6:59
Speaker 2: a wrap. I'm not an expert in health and nutrition.
7:02
Speaker 1: I'm not. Not either.
7:03
Speaker 2: I've absorbed a lot of information, but some of it contradicts.
7:10
Speaker 2: It's very hard to know who's right and who's wrong.
7:12
Speaker 2: And I think it's also, it varies biologically. It varies genetically.
7:17
Speaker 2: It varies depending upon where your ancestors are from. There's
7:21
Speaker 2: a lot of people that I know that have real
7:23
Speaker 2: problems with red meat and real problems with, you know, certain... Like,
7:27
Speaker 2: I have friends that are vegan that exist healthy. They
7:30
Speaker 2: have no problem with that diet. And then I know
7:33
Speaker 2: friends who've tried it for ethical reasons and their health
7:36
Speaker 2: fell apart. And they're like, well, fuck it, I can't
7:37
Speaker 2: do this.
7:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, the thing I try to pay attention to is
7:40
Speaker 1: something called FODMAPs. Have you heard of.
7:43
Speaker 2: No.
7:43
Speaker 1: And now I don't even remember what it stands for,
7:46
Speaker 1: the acronym. But basically, it's... There are certain kinds of.
7:53
Speaker 1: Substances and foods, the acronym is FODMAP, but they occur
7:56
Speaker 1: a lot in breads and a lot of things with
7:58
Speaker 1: a lot of carbohydrates in them. Here we go. Oh,
8:01
Speaker 1: there we go.
8:03
Speaker 2: Short-term three-step eating plan to temporarily restrict specific poorly absorbed
8:07
Speaker 2: sugars to help manage digestive distress like bloating, gas, and
8:10
Speaker 2: abdominal pain.
8:12
Speaker 1: So I started noticing if I was eating certain things
8:15
Speaker 1: throughout the day, I was a lot more bloated and
8:17
Speaker 1: uncomfortable by the time night came around. And I did
8:21
Speaker 1: all kinds of investigating and I figured out when I
8:24
Speaker 1: was avoiding things that are high in FODMAPs, I was just,
8:27
Speaker 1: I felt better.
8:28
Speaker 2: And what was the word again, Jamie, when FOD's broken
8:31
Speaker 2: down again? It is a, the word is fermentable boy. oligosaccharides, disaccharides,
8:42
Speaker 2: and monosaccharides, and polys. Polyols. Polyols? Polyols? Short-chain carbohydrates and
8:50
Speaker 2: sugar alcohols that small intestines absorb poorly. Huh. What's in
8:54
Speaker 2: that category of those things?
8:56
Speaker 1: That's what I was trying to get to a picture of.
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Speaker 2: Does it say?
8:58
Speaker 1: I guess there's low and high. Yeah.
9:02
Speaker 2: Uh-huh.
9:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, the more some things are higher in those things
9:05
Speaker 1: than some things are lower.
9:06
Speaker 2: Yeah. suitable on a low FODMAP diet. Fruit, obviously, vegetables, cereals, milk, tofu,
9:18
Speaker 2: and then the bad ones, excessive fructose, lactose, fructans, galactans? Hmm, legumes. Oh, wow,
9:27
Speaker 2: you can't eat beans? How weird.
9:29
Speaker 1: Well, I think they're... that's the category. And then there
9:32
Speaker 1: are certain members of that category that are high in
9:34
Speaker 1: certain members of that category.
9:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has your baked beans, chickpeas, kidney beans, lentils, soybeans.
9:39
Speaker 1: And what I really noticed, there was one day I had,
9:42
Speaker 1: we got a watermelon and I had like half of it.
9:45
Speaker 1: My wife's like, chill out, man. And I like, within
9:49
Speaker 1: a couple hours, I was really, really gassy and bloated. Really?
9:52
Speaker 1: From the watermelon?
9:53
Speaker 2: Yeah.
9:53
Speaker 1: And I was like, that has to be the watermelon
9:55
Speaker 1: doing it because I haven't had anything else out of
9:57
Speaker 1: the ordinary. And so I started looking at that. And
10:00
Speaker 1: so I'm sensitive to that kind of stuff, but that's
10:02
Speaker 1: just my own biological makeup. Some people are genetically gifted
10:06
Speaker 1: in other ways.
10:07
Speaker 2: Well, it also depends on what you've done that day.
10:10
Speaker 2: Like if you've gone a long hike through the mountains
10:12
Speaker 2: and you're exhausted, like high carbohydrates and high sugar diet,
10:18
Speaker 2: Or a meal is actually good for you.
10:21
Speaker 1: There are times when I'm definitely craving it and I'm like,
10:23
Speaker 1: got to listen to my body.
10:24
Speaker 2: I think there's a reason. Yeah. Especially when you're worn out,
10:28
Speaker 2: like hiking in particular. Like, you know, you think about
10:31
Speaker 2: if you're at altitude and you do like a three
10:33
Speaker 2: or four mile hike and you're climbing. At the end
10:37
Speaker 2: of it, you're fucking spent. You have no sugar in
10:39
Speaker 2: your body. You have a real issue. And your body
10:43
Speaker 2: needs something to replenish your muscles.
10:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got plenty of fat stores so that when
10:47
Speaker 1: I go out for my run, I can last a
10:49
Speaker 1: little longer. But I run at altitude by Salt Lake.
10:54
Speaker 1: So whenever I travel elsewhere, like I go to San
10:57
Speaker 1: Diego a couple times a year or I'm on the
10:59
Speaker 1: East Coast or here, the altitude here is.
11:01
Speaker 2: Not very high. No. I don't even think it's 1,000 feet.
11:04
Speaker 1: And I can run 10 times as far.
11:07
Speaker 2: Yeah.
11:07
Speaker 1: It's so nice. I enjoy running a lot more because
11:11
Speaker 1: the lack of oxygen, it doesn't take it out of
11:12
Speaker 1: me nearly as quickly.
11:13
Speaker 2: We have a hypoxia chamber in the studio. Oh, really? Yeah,
11:17
Speaker 2: we have a gym that's connected to the studio. And
11:19
Speaker 2: in the gym is this thing called a hypoxia. It's
11:22
Speaker 2: called a... I forgot the name of it. Exalt. Exalt
11:27
Speaker 2: XP is the company. I forget the name of this.
11:29
Speaker 2: But this thing brings you to, you could vary the altitude.
11:33
Speaker 2: And I put it at 14,000 feet.
11:35
Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
11:35
Speaker 2: So I do these cardio workouts at 14,000 feet. They're
11:39
Speaker 2: very specific depending upon what you're trying to do. Like
11:42
Speaker 2: there's a VO. I killed myself yesterday because I do
11:44
Speaker 2: this VO2 max one where you're doing four minutes of
11:49
Speaker 2: hard cardio at 14,000 feet above sea level and then
11:54
Speaker 2: You have like a two-minute recovery period, and then you
11:58
Speaker 2: get back on it again. You do it again, and
12:00
Speaker 2: you do a cycle of four of those, and it's
12:02
Speaker 2: fucking hell.
12:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's pretty intense. I do the HIIT high-end intensity
12:07
Speaker 1: interval training from time to time, but I don't have
12:09
Speaker 1: the discipline to do it at 14,000 feet.
12:12
Speaker 2: It's not fun, but it has a giant impact though.
12:15
Speaker 2: So if you do go somewhere, like if I had
12:18
Speaker 2: to go to Utah and I'm in the mountains, it's
12:20
Speaker 2: a giant benefit. Okay. Yeah.
12:23
Speaker 1: Yeah. Because I know I've seen people, they'll wear the
12:26
Speaker 1: masks that are supposed to kind of reduce the oxygen.
12:29
Speaker 1: So it's a similar training. It's probably not as effective.
12:32
Speaker 2: Yeah. The mask thing is controversial. I don't know about that. Yeah.
12:36
Speaker 2: There's some devices that you can use that actually strengthen
12:38
Speaker 2: the diaphragm muscles and you breathe through them and you
12:42
Speaker 2: do breathing exercises. But those restrictive masks, I don't know
12:46
Speaker 2: about those. Hmm. I would imagine they would have the
12:49
Speaker 2: same similar function. It reduces the amount of oxygen you get.
12:52
Speaker 2: But they were a thing, the training mask. It was
12:54
Speaker 2: a thing among MMA fighters for a while. They've all
12:57
Speaker 2: abandoned it. At least most of them that I know.
13:00
Speaker 1: I don't know.
13:02
Speaker 2: Maybe they got tired of it. Maybe it was too
13:03
Speaker 2: hard already. What was that thing you brought in, that
13:06
Speaker 2: big piece of pottery?
13:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I brought in a couple of things. Show
13:10
Speaker 1: and tell.
13:11
Speaker 2: Bust it out.
13:13
Speaker 1: So this is a gift for....
13:17
Speaker 2: Thank you.
13:18
Speaker 1: This is a replica of my favorite artifact from the
13:21
Speaker 1: ancient world. A friend of mine named Robert Algott runs
13:26
Speaker 1: this website called relics3d. com, and he makes these. And this
13:29
Speaker 1: is what's called the Cantillidage Rude.
13:31
Speaker 2: Can I take a guess as to where it came from?
13:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, go ahead.
13:35
Speaker 2: Turkey.
13:36
Speaker 1: No.
13:37
Speaker 2: No.
13:37
Speaker 1: Damn.
13:38
Speaker 2: It came.
13:39
Speaker 1: Came from Kuntilladajrud, oddly enough, which is a... It's down
13:43
Speaker 1: near the Sinai Peninsula. Oh, okay. And so this was
13:46
Speaker 1: a part of a large jar called a pithos. And
13:49
Speaker 1: this is just one fragment of it. Well, it's a
13:51
Speaker 1: bunch of fragments that were brought together that were discovered
13:54
Speaker 1: that dates to about 800 BCE. And it's one of
13:58
Speaker 1: my favorite artifacts because we have an inscription over top
14:02
Speaker 1: and then a drawing of a male and a female deity.
14:05
Speaker 1: And the inscription talks about somebody... asking for or thanking
14:10
Speaker 1: somebody for blessings by Adonai of Shomron, or Jehovah of Samaria,
14:17
Speaker 1: the Lord of Samaria, and his Asherah. And so I
14:21
Speaker 1: think the majority of scholars agree this is probably intended
14:25
Speaker 1: to reflect the interpretation of these two deities as the
14:29
Speaker 1: God of Israel and God's wife, Asherah.
14:32
Speaker 2: Very weird looking.
14:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, they kind of look almost bovine-ish. And this
14:39
Speaker 1: is probably because they're appealing to some iconographic motifs associated
14:44
Speaker 1: with deities Bess and Besset, which are Egyptian deities.
14:48
Speaker 2: That appears bovine, do you?
14:51
Speaker 1: Just the face a little bit. Like the body's more anthropomorphic.
14:56
Speaker 2: Can you put an image of that on the screen, Jamie?
14:58
Speaker 2: So we could maybe perhaps see.
15:00
Speaker 1: A little bit.
15:00
Speaker 2: I've been trying to figure out how to spell that.
15:02
Speaker 1: I was trying to find the website. I can spell
15:05
Speaker 1: it for you. K-U-N-T.
15:07
Speaker 2: Damn it, hold on.
15:08
Speaker 1: That's K-U-N-T.
15:10
Speaker 2: Pause. Go ahead.
15:11
Speaker 1: I-L-L-E-T.
15:13
Speaker 2: I-L-L-E-T.
15:14
Speaker 1: And then the next word.
15:15
Speaker 2: I think I got it now.
15:16
Speaker 1: Okay. A-R-A-J-J-R-E-D.
15:19
Speaker 2: And then like relic.
15:21
Speaker 1: Uh, inscription, yeah. There are actually a bunch of inscriptions.
15:26
Speaker 2: Okay, now I see the bovine now. I'm looking at it.
15:29
Speaker 1: And there's the actual.
15:30
Speaker 2: Yeah.
15:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is.
15:34
Speaker 2: Now I see it. It's hard to look at that thing.
15:37
Speaker 2: It looked almost like the... Go back to the other image. Yeah.
15:41
Speaker 2: Get me that. Yeah. I thought the lines... I thought
15:45
Speaker 2: the head was where the mouth or the nose is. Hmm.
15:49
Speaker 2: I thought that's what the eyes and the other thing
15:50
Speaker 2: was like a crown he was wearing. Yeah.
15:52
Speaker 1: Well, you've got the headdresses on top that are supposed
15:56
Speaker 1: to indicate their deities.
15:59
Speaker 2: How fucking weird. It's all the old ancient depictions of deities.
16:05
Speaker 2: You're like, what were they doing? This to me is
16:09
Speaker 2: the most fascinating thing about pretty much all religious texts
16:12
Speaker 2: is What was the original thing that they were trying
16:17
Speaker 2: to document, whether it was through oral tradition, then eventually
16:21
Speaker 2: written down? What was the original event? That fascinates me
16:24
Speaker 2: the most about the Bible. It fascinates me the most
16:28
Speaker 2: about the ancient Sumerian writings. I don't think all of
16:34
Speaker 2: it is fiction, but I don't think all of it
16:37
Speaker 2: is literal. I think you're also dealing with an enormous
16:42
Speaker 2: amount of time. between these events and then the writing down.
16:46
Speaker 2: And then you've highlighted this very much in some of
16:48
Speaker 2: your videos. There's a lot of weirdness when you compare
16:52
Speaker 2: some of these stories, like the story of Moses and
16:55
Speaker 2: Sargon of Akkad. They seem incredibly similar, like almost too similar.
17:01
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17:03
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18:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's definitely some kind of genetic relationship
18:07
Speaker 1: between the two. And specifically, it's the story of him
18:10
Speaker 1: as a baby being placed into a container and set
18:13
Speaker 1: adrift in a river. That is Sargon the Great, who
18:16
Speaker 1: dates to long before historical Moses. But that tradition, I
18:21
Speaker 1: think the earliest version of it we've found in the
18:24
Speaker 1: Akkadian literature, dates to maybe 9th or 8th century BCE,
18:28
Speaker 1: which is around the time that people think that or
18:31
Speaker 1: the scholars think that's the tradition of Moses and the
18:35
Speaker 1: narrative of the Exodus was beginning to come together. So
18:37
Speaker 1: it makes sense that they would draw from that tradition.
18:42
Speaker 1: And I think there are a couple of different reasons
18:43
Speaker 1: for it. One of the reasons is to, because that
18:47
Speaker 1: already has some purchase in the zeitgeist. And so if
18:52
Speaker 1: you kind of reflect something that people already are aware of,
18:55
Speaker 1: it kind of makes it a little easier to incorporate
18:58
Speaker 1: into their worldview. And then also it, can also be
19:02
Speaker 1: kind of a challenge to the other tradition. It's like, well,
19:05
Speaker 1: you got your guy, we got ours. Our guy did
19:08
Speaker 1: it better. And this is a lot of what's going
19:11
Speaker 1: on with the representation of Jesus in the New Testament
19:14
Speaker 1: because there are certain turns of phrase, there are certain
19:18
Speaker 1: things that Jesus does in the New Testament that reflect
19:22
Speaker 1: what the Greco-Roman world expected from their emperors and their godmen.
19:27
Speaker 1: And so in the New Testament, it's kind of a
19:29
Speaker 1: way to do both of those things, to say we
19:31
Speaker 1: got one of those two, only ours did it better.
19:34
Speaker 2: Oh, interesting.
19:34
Speaker 1: So I think one of the key things to keep
19:36
Speaker 1: in mind is every text, whether it's a text that's
19:38
Speaker 1: inscribed on a piece of pottery or something that wound
19:41
Speaker 1: up in the Bible, every author wrote it down because
19:44
Speaker 1: they wanted to achieve something. We tend to think of
19:46
Speaker 1: language as just about communicating information, but nothing... happens in
19:50
Speaker 1: a vacuum. It's all happening in circumstances, in context where
19:55
Speaker 1: they're trying to achieve something. And so scholars go to
19:58
Speaker 1: great lengths to try to figure out, well, what precisely
20:01
Speaker 1: would have been achieved by writing this down or by
20:04
Speaker 1: writing any of the texts in the Hebrew Bible or
20:07
Speaker 1: in the New Testament? And The best way to figure
20:10
Speaker 1: that out is to try to situate the composition within
20:14
Speaker 1: whatever historical period makes the most sense, whatever we can
20:17
Speaker 1: make the best case for and figure out how it
20:19
Speaker 1: would have worked in that period, which is why there
20:21
Speaker 1: are some texts that we think were intended as propaganda.
20:26
Speaker 1: There are texts that we think were intended to kind
20:29
Speaker 1: of place one person struggling for power over another person
20:33
Speaker 1: struggling for power. There's a lot of political... propaganda going on.
20:37
Speaker 1: And then there are other texts that are intended to
20:39
Speaker 1: try to make people feel better about why things aren't
20:42
Speaker 1: going well for them, why bad things are happening to
20:46
Speaker 1: good people and good things aren't happening to bad people.
20:48
Speaker 1: So there are tons of different reasons that people are
20:51
Speaker 1: writing texts. But a good illustration of this is genre.
20:57
Speaker 1: So all texts have a genre of some kind. And
21:00
Speaker 1: that's basically just a conventionalized set of things that are
21:05
Speaker 1: in the text that help cue people to what kind
21:07
Speaker 1: of text they're looking at. So if I start a
21:10
Speaker 1: story once upon a time, you already know it's going
21:13
Speaker 1: to be a specific type of text. So without even
21:15
Speaker 1: knowing that you're aware of genre, you're aware of the
21:19
Speaker 1: genre of a text. And if you found a piece
21:21
Speaker 1: of paper in a parking lot and it said, dozen eggs,
21:25
Speaker 1: pound of ground beef, you know, prophylaxis, stuff like that,
21:32
Speaker 1: prophylactics actually would be the plural. you know you found
21:35
Speaker 1: a grocery list, a shopping list. And so that's a
21:38
Speaker 1: genre of text as well. So just by being aware
21:40
Speaker 1: of these conventions, we can say, oh, well, I know
21:42
Speaker 1: exactly what this text was trying to do because it
21:45
Speaker 1: has all these markers of a given genre. And that's
21:48
Speaker 1: a big cue to helping us figure out what texts
21:51
Speaker 1: are trying to do. And when people wrote on pottery,
21:55
Speaker 1: generally this was a little more ritual. This was something
21:58
Speaker 1: that was intended to be like a votive offering, which
22:01
Speaker 1: might be an offering to a deity so that the
22:04
Speaker 1: deity will then bless you or it might be something
22:08
Speaker 1: that people are intended to come in and read out
22:10
Speaker 1: loud so that they invoke the presence of the deity
22:13
Speaker 1: in the space. And then the drawing the deity would
22:16
Speaker 1: also be a way of doing that. So there are
22:18
Speaker 1: a lot of different reasons for what's going on. And
22:20
Speaker 1: that's the big mystery is what were they trying to accomplish.
22:23
Speaker 2: And cattle worship was very common. It was Choctaw Hiuk.
22:29
Speaker 2: There was like the Hindus. There's a lot of cattle worship. Yeah.
22:32
Speaker 1: There are a lot of, there's worship of a lot
22:34
Speaker 1: of different animals or, or the sacralization of a lot
22:38
Speaker 1: of different animals in a lot of different places. And,
22:40
Speaker 1: and this is probably drawing from, uh, Egyptian iconography. So yeah, this,
22:46
Speaker 1: this is the Sinai peninsula is right in between, um, Syria,
22:49
Speaker 1: Palestine and Egypt. And there was an awful lot of
22:53
Speaker 1: Egyptian influence on things. So even, even if you look at, uh,
22:57
Speaker 1: for instance, Hezekiah, there's a, there's a, a bull that
23:01
Speaker 1: was discovered, which is, something that was left from an impression,
23:08
Speaker 1: a signet ring or something like that, that has the
23:10
Speaker 1: name Hezekiah on it. And there's an Egyptian drawing of
23:15
Speaker 1: a winged, I think it's a winged scarab or something
23:17
Speaker 1: like that, which is directly from Egypt because Israel was
23:22
Speaker 1: under Egyptian hegemony for a long, long time. That's right
23:25
Speaker 1: next to her. Yeah.
23:28
Speaker 2: You were talking about Jesus and the New Testament and
23:32
Speaker 2: that some of it seems to have been like the
23:37
Speaker 2: way it was done to appease the people that lived
23:40
Speaker 2: in the same era?
23:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, some of it was a way to, I think,
23:45
Speaker 1: make people feel better about themselves. For instance, so the
23:49
Speaker 1: texts were written long after Jesus was dead. The Gospels,
23:52
Speaker 1: Mark was probably written 69, 70, 71-ish CE. Matthew's probably five,
23:59
Speaker 1: 10 years after that. Luke's probably five, ten years or
24:03
Speaker 1: more after that. John's a little after that. And at
24:06
Speaker 1: this time period, there's already a following that is developing.
24:09
Speaker 1: And so the people who are writing these texts are
24:12
Speaker 1: writing them for a literary audience, but they also want
24:15
Speaker 1: them to speak to the experiences of the people who
24:17
Speaker 1: are followers of Jesus. So, for instance, there's a part
24:21
Speaker 1: where Jesus says, you know, I did not come to
24:24
Speaker 1: bring peace, but a sword. And, you know, I will
24:27
Speaker 1: set father against son and mother against daughter and all
24:31
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. And people have wondered, well, what
24:33
Speaker 1: on earth is going on here? And there are scholars
24:36
Speaker 1: who suggest that the point of that would have been
24:38
Speaker 1: to make it sound like to people who are struggling
24:42
Speaker 1: with inner family relationships. You know, I'm a follower of
24:45
Speaker 1: Jesus now and I got kicked out of my house.
24:47
Speaker 1: Or I'm a follower of Jesus now and I constantly
24:49
Speaker 1: fight with my wife or with my brother or something
24:51
Speaker 1: like that. Am I doing something wrong? And this text
24:54
Speaker 1: has Jesus saying, no, no. I came to cause that.
24:57
Speaker 1: So that means things are working. And that's a way
25:00
Speaker 1: to make people feel, okay, well, then I'm okay because
25:04
Speaker 1: I got kicked out of my parents' house or something
25:07
Speaker 1: like that.
25:07
Speaker 2: But isn't that crazy, someone putting words into Jesus' mouth
25:10
Speaker 2: just so that people of the time feel okay?
25:13
Speaker 1: I think that's probably an awful lot of what's going on.
25:17
Speaker 1: It's either to make them feel okay or to try
25:19
Speaker 1: to push them to.
25:22
Speaker 1: Agree with living a certain way or something like that,
25:26
Speaker 1: or try to make them feel like this is what's
25:29
Speaker 1: coming up for us.
25:30
Speaker 2: Which is a problem with taking everything literally and like
25:32
Speaker 2: people deciding that all of it is the word of
25:34
Speaker 2: God when some of it is just like, okay. would
25:37
Speaker 2: God really tell you to do that? Like, why? Why
25:40
Speaker 2: is God telling you to rape? Why is God telling
25:43
Speaker 2: you to kill women and children? Yeah.
25:45
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's something that.
25:47
Speaker 2: Commanding you to. Yeah.
25:48
Speaker 1: And people have been struggling with that for the entire
25:51
Speaker 1: history of the circulation of those texts. And I think
25:54
Speaker 1: there are... Yeah. The word of God thing is interesting
25:58
Speaker 1: because that phrase is never used anywhere in the Bible
26:02
Speaker 1: to refer to texts specifically as the texts that are
26:06
Speaker 1: in circulation. So word of God is always a reference
26:09
Speaker 1: to just the message, however it's circulating, whether it's oral
26:12
Speaker 1: or whatever, or to Jesus in the new Testament, Jesus
26:16
Speaker 1: is the word, but it's never used to refer to
26:19
Speaker 1: a specific textual manifestation of the message. And so there's a,
26:25
Speaker 1: there's not really a case to make that any author
26:27
Speaker 1: of any Texas in the Bible use that phrase to
26:30
Speaker 1: refer to the scriptures or the Bible. And so even
26:34
Speaker 1: in 1 Corinthians, in a couple of places in Paul,
26:37
Speaker 1: he says, this is not coming from the Lord. This
26:39
Speaker 1: is just coming from me. And then we take it
26:42
Speaker 1: and say, okay, wink, wink, we know what you mean.
26:45
Speaker 1: This is coming from the Lord.
26:46
Speaker 2: Paul's a weird one. The more I get into Paul,
26:49
Speaker 2: the more I'm like, this guy, first of all, killed
26:52
Speaker 2: a bunch of Christians, right? Lit churches on fire, at
26:55
Speaker 2: least ordered the death of Christians.
26:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, according to what he said.
27:00
Speaker 2: And then says.
27:02
Speaker 2: He met Jesus in a vision. And then all this
27:07
Speaker 2: stuff written down, he also says that a lot of
27:10
Speaker 2: it is coming from him, but we attribute it to Jesus.
27:16
Speaker 2: It gets super squirrely when you start reading Paul. You're like, who?
27:20
Speaker 1: What?
27:21
Speaker 2: He never even met him? 20 years later, he's writing
27:25
Speaker 2: all this?
27:25
Speaker 1: And there are a couple of different stories about how
27:27
Speaker 1: exactly he did meet him. What are the different ones?
27:31
Speaker 2: There's the road to Damascus.
27:33
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's the vision, but it's told in a
27:37
Speaker 1: couple of different ways. You've got a couple of tellings
27:39
Speaker 1: of the story in Acts and in the Pauline literature.
27:42
Speaker 1: And it really has to do with who heard a
27:45
Speaker 1: voice or saw something or anything like that. There are
27:49
Speaker 1: minor differences, but there are still some differences. But I
27:52
Speaker 1: think it's really interesting. A lot of people treat all
27:55
Speaker 1: the Pauline texts as... as equally one inspired and two
27:59
Speaker 1: from Paul, but scholars are in pretty widespread agreement that
28:02
Speaker 1: there are several of those texts that weren't written by Paul.
28:04
Speaker 1: They were written decades after he was dead. Really? Yeah,
28:08
Speaker 1: so 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus are called the
28:10
Speaker 1: pastoral epistles, and they are widely agreed to have been
28:15
Speaker 1: written toward the end of the 1st century or beginning
28:16
Speaker 1: of the 2nd century, maybe 30 years after Paul was
28:20
Speaker 1: dead or more.
28:20
Speaker 2: Oh, how complicated.
28:21
Speaker 1: And then you've got Colossians... Second Thessalonians and Ephesians are
28:29
Speaker 1: a little more debated, but there is a good solid
28:33
Speaker 1: core of scholars who would argue that they were not
28:35
Speaker 1: written by Paul. And one of the things, one of
28:38
Speaker 1: the interesting things that happens when you divide up the
28:41
Speaker 1: letters between the genuine Pauline epistles and then what are
28:43
Speaker 1: called the disputed and then the spurious Pauline epistles is
28:48
Speaker 1: Paul's message in the genuine Pauline epistles is different from
28:53
Speaker 1: the message in the others. And for instance, in the
28:56
Speaker 1: genuine Pauline epistles, Paul was like, you know, Jesus is
28:59
Speaker 1: coming back any day now. So don't change your situation
29:03
Speaker 1: in life. Don't get married if you're not married. If
29:07
Speaker 1: you're married, don't get divorced. And he suggests that everybody
29:11
Speaker 1: should be celibate. And unless you just can't hack celibacy,
29:14
Speaker 1: in which case.
29:15
Speaker 2: Even while married? Because you're waiting for Jesus to return.
29:19
Speaker 1: Because in this time period, I think Paul fancied himself
29:23
Speaker 1: a philosopher. but he's kind of cobbling together a bunch
29:26
Speaker 1: of different philosophical movements.
29:28
Speaker 2: Where have we heard that before?
29:30
Speaker 1: Where have we heard that before? Somebody fancied themselves a philosopher?
29:33
Speaker 2: Well, cobbling together things from different... Oh, yeah.
29:35
Speaker 1: That's how everybody does it.
29:36
Speaker 2: Every guru of today.
29:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And... But it's... the time, sexual desire was
29:41
Speaker 1: thought of as something that was part of the baser
29:45
Speaker 1: urges of the flesh. And if you could overcome that,
29:48
Speaker 1: then you obviously were.
29:50
Speaker 2: A real one. Which is why Roman statues had little penises. Yeah.
29:54
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's the main reason.
29:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's supposedly what it was. Really? Yeah. I had
29:58
Speaker 2: a wonderful guide when I did a tour of the Vatican.
30:03
Speaker 2: This guy who was a university professor who he moonlights,
30:09
Speaker 2: you know, makes extra money in the summertime. as a guide,
30:12
Speaker 2: and he took us on this tour, and this guy
30:14
Speaker 2: was fantastic, and he loved that I was so into it,
30:16
Speaker 2: so we had this great conversation. And eventually I had
30:19
Speaker 2: to get to Little Dicks. I'm like, why these guys?
30:22
Speaker 2: They have these incredible bodies, but they have these tiny penises.
30:25
Speaker 2: He explained that it was like, it was gauche. Like,
30:28
Speaker 2: you didn't want to have a big, giant dick. A big,
30:31
Speaker 2: giant dick was like a symbol of a brutish, barbarian-type person,
30:37
Speaker 2: that it was better to depict these gods with tiny penises.
30:41
Speaker 2: And then eventually they start covering them with leaves. Yeah, yeah.
30:44
Speaker 1: Well, and the early Greek and Roman gods, you know,
30:49
Speaker 1: they kind of went to town with the sexual stuff.
30:52
Speaker 2: Well, it seems like they were getting their freak on
30:54
Speaker 2: quite a bit, those people.
30:56
Speaker 1: In a lot of different ways and with a lot
30:57
Speaker 1: of different species. But anyway, Paul was– he suggests that, yeah,
31:03
Speaker 1: even married folks should– just avoided. And we see this
31:07
Speaker 1: in Matthew as well. There's a part in Matthew in
31:09
Speaker 1: 19 when he's talking about divorce. And then his followers
31:13
Speaker 1: are like, it would be better for somebody not to
31:15
Speaker 1: get married. And then he goes, hey, man, there are
31:17
Speaker 1: those who are born eunuchs. There are those who are
31:20
Speaker 1: made eunuchs by men. And then there are those who
31:22
Speaker 1: make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. And he says,
31:26
Speaker 1: that's a difficult saying, but for those who can accept it,
31:29
Speaker 1: they should. should accept it. Basically saying, you know, the
31:33
Speaker 1: higher law is to be celibate because they thought Jesus
31:36
Speaker 1: was coming back so soon that having a kid would
31:39
Speaker 1: be a waste of time. And so there was no
31:42
Speaker 1: other reason for intercourse really. And so the idea was, okay,
31:46
Speaker 1: be celibate. And Paul says, you know, if you can't
31:48
Speaker 1: hack it, then go ahead and have occasional sex with
31:52
Speaker 1: your spouse. But it should be basically for keeping down
31:55
Speaker 1: the urges. Because if trying to remain celibate is just
31:59
Speaker 1: driving you nuts the risk that you might engage in
32:02
Speaker 1: some kind of sexual immorality is so great that you
32:06
Speaker 1: need to have that that little uh... you need to
32:09
Speaker 1: have that little Keep down the urges.
32:13
Speaker 2: Imagine if you're on death's door and you listen to
32:16
Speaker 2: him and you decide to stay celibate. And you're like,
32:18
Speaker 2: Jesus didn't even come back. What all the sex I missed.
32:22
Speaker 1: Well, and you kind of see, yeah, that would certainly
32:25
Speaker 1: be on the list of regrets.
32:27
Speaker 2: This is the problem with not just, you know, biblical,
32:31
Speaker 2: but contemporary people that claim to know what's happening. We're
32:37
Speaker 2: all lost in this weird world that we're living in.
32:40
Speaker 2: Where there's so much uncertainty and there's so many different
32:43
Speaker 2: versions of truth in terms of like the origin of
32:47
Speaker 2: mankind in the universe. And we want someone to come
32:50
Speaker 2: along and say, I know, I know. And it's so
32:54
Speaker 2: compelling when someone does, when they say it with authority,
32:56
Speaker 2: when they say it with confidence, it's like, oh, finally,
32:59
Speaker 2: a guy who knows. And this is how all cults
33:02
Speaker 2: get started. This is how everything, you know, I mean,
33:06
Speaker 2: this is how a lot of political leaders wind up
33:09
Speaker 2: taking control. It's like someone who pretends to know and
33:14
Speaker 2: has this like deep understanding that's far beyond anything you're
33:18
Speaker 2: ever going to have. Trust me. You got to stay celibate.
33:20
Speaker 2: Jesus is on the way. Yeah.
33:23
Speaker 1: And that didn't really work out too well.
33:24
Speaker 2: It never works out. They're never right, which is so
33:28
Speaker 2: crazy that people keep listening to them.
33:30
Speaker 1: And this is one of the things that scholars see
33:32
Speaker 1: when they separate out the genuine Pauline epistles from the
33:34
Speaker 1: later ones, because in the later ones, you have Paul
33:38
Speaker 1: saying stuff like, oh, there's going to be a delay.
33:43
Speaker 2: Jesus is stuck in traffic.
33:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And this is because it's written by folks
33:48
Speaker 1: who are, you know, they're decades down the road. Now
33:50
Speaker 1: it's like, if we don't have kids... Our movement is
33:53
Speaker 1: dying out. Right. So we kind of got to have kids.
33:56
Speaker 1: And so you've got one of these spurious Pauline epistles
33:59
Speaker 1: that say women will be saved in childbearing. So now
34:03
Speaker 1: it's like your salvation is dependent on you having kids,
34:07
Speaker 1: even though the real Paul was like, put it away.
34:10
Speaker 1: Now we're living celibate lives now. And so you have,
34:16
Speaker 1: and this pops up in Matthew as well, and elsewhere,
34:20
Speaker 1: where we've got this what they call delay of the
34:23
Speaker 1: parousia or the second coming. We expected it any day now.
34:26
Speaker 1: Turns out it might be a little longer. Traffic's bad. And,
34:30
Speaker 1: you know, you have this man of sin that's supposed
34:33
Speaker 1: to show up or there's supposed to be this falling
34:35
Speaker 1: away or there's supposed to be something that gets in
34:38
Speaker 1: the way and that causes a delay in Jesus's return.
34:41
Speaker 1: And 2000 years down the road, we're still wondering when
34:43
Speaker 1: that delay is going to.
34:45
Speaker 2: So we get to the oldest stuff. We get to like, like,
34:49
Speaker 2: the Old Testament, like if we get to Genesis, what
34:53
Speaker 2: are the, what are the oldest versions of that story?
34:57
Speaker 2: Is it the Enuma Elish?
34:59
Speaker 1: So, uh, there are a bunch of different versions of
35:02
Speaker 1: Enuma Elish, but we probably go back to Sumerian stuff, uh,
35:07
Speaker 1: because you actually have a, we have these king lists
35:11
Speaker 1: from long, long ago and, uh, written in Sumerian. There's
35:14
Speaker 1: no flood story yet. In these king lists. But they
35:18
Speaker 1: talk about these kings that reigned for 10,000 years at
35:20
Speaker 1: a time.
35:21
Speaker 2: What's your take on all that?
35:23
Speaker 1: My take on all that? These are traditions. You see
35:26
Speaker 1: a lot of different traditions that develop in the ancient
35:29
Speaker 1: world to account for how creation happened. The weirdest one
35:35
Speaker 1: has got to be there's an Egyptian one where the
35:39
Speaker 1: head god masturbated all of existence. So that's a great
35:44
Speaker 1: one for some bedtime reading. It's pretty short, but these
35:51
Speaker 1: texts are intended to serve purposes for these authors long,
35:54
Speaker 1: long ago. And this is when writing is just starting
35:56
Speaker 1: to come to be. And so it hadn't been around
36:00
Speaker 1: for a very long time. You don't have a lot
36:01
Speaker 1: of mythical narratives and things like that, but you have
36:04
Speaker 1: these poems that tell stories and that talk about the
36:07
Speaker 1: reign of kings. And that's political propaganda.
36:10
Speaker 2: But the king's list, the weird thing about the king's
36:12
Speaker 2: list is the older ones are the ones that live forever. Yeah.
36:15
Speaker 2: They live enormous lifespans. And then when it gets to not,
36:19
Speaker 2: you know, closer to contemporary times.
36:22
Speaker 1: They're, yeah, their rules become less and less until they're
36:26
Speaker 1: more human. And the same thing is in Genesis. And
36:29
Speaker 1: it happens in the later versions of the story. They
36:32
Speaker 1: go from 10,000 years to just a few thousand years. So,
36:35
Speaker 1: but in one of the secondary versions of the king list, suddenly,
36:39
Speaker 1: There's a flood that happens.
36:41
Speaker 2: Secondary version. Yeah.
36:43
Speaker 1: So it's something that's added to the king list. It's
36:45
Speaker 1: not in our oldest king list.
36:46
Speaker 2: Do we know when that was added? Roughly?
36:49
Speaker 1: We probably have a rough estimate of the date. I
36:52
Speaker 1: don't remember off the top of my head. It's probably
36:55
Speaker 1: somewhere in the early third millennium BCE. So maybe somewhere
37:00
Speaker 1: mid-2000s BCE.
37:02
Speaker 2: I don't remember exactly. So it's probably contemporary to the
37:04
Speaker 2: oral traditions of Genesis?
37:06
Speaker 1: Yes. So I think the oral traditions of Genesis actually
37:10
Speaker 1: are much later than that.
37:11
Speaker 2: Really?
37:11
Speaker 1: Yeah. Because Genesis was probably written between around the 8th
37:15
Speaker 1: century BCE down to the 5th century BCE. And a
37:19
Speaker 1: lot of it is riffing on the literature that's circulating
37:24
Speaker 1: within Babylon during the exile. Or it's literature that's circulating
37:29
Speaker 1: within Assyria when Assyria is beaten up on Israel. And so,
37:36
Speaker 1: for instance, the Tower of Babel, that's a famous story
37:40
Speaker 1: from Genesis. There's a tower called the Tower of Etemenanki
37:46
Speaker 1: that is just outside of Babylon that was famous because
37:49
Speaker 1: it was built by, I want to say, I want
37:53
Speaker 1: to say old Babylonian. Don't quote me on that, though.
37:56
Speaker 1: But it was later destroyed when the Assyrians came in
37:59
Speaker 1: to take over. They kind of decommissioned it and destroyed
38:04
Speaker 1: it partly. And then for like 80 years, another Assyrian
38:08
Speaker 1: emperor had a restoration project, was trying to rebuild the tower,
38:13
Speaker 1: but it took forever. It took like 80 years. And
38:17
Speaker 1: that was right in the 8th century. And so there
38:19
Speaker 1: are a lot of scholars who suggest that the story
38:21
Speaker 1: of this tower that was supposed to be built to
38:23
Speaker 1: heaven that was left unfinished is a reflection of the
38:29
Speaker 1: unfinished tower of Etemenanki. And so that would put it
38:32
Speaker 1: in the right date. And there's also this problem when
38:35
Speaker 1: we look at historical narratives in the Hebrew Bible. They're
38:39
Speaker 1: written in ancient Hebrew and a somewhat developed form of
38:43
Speaker 1: ancient Hebrew. And we can chart the developments of the
38:46
Speaker 1: Semitic languages fairly well. And there's no historical narrative prose
38:53
Speaker 1: in any alphabetic script, any language that was written in
38:56
Speaker 1: an alphabetic script until the middle of the 9th century BCE.
38:59
Speaker 1: And that first happens in like Moabites and Aramaic and
39:05
Speaker 1: some other languages like that. And so most likely our
39:09
Speaker 1: ancient narrative prose in biblical Hebrew was written around that
39:13
Speaker 1: time or shortly after. And the stuff that's older than
39:16
Speaker 1: that is written in poetry. And so the oldest parts
39:20
Speaker 1: of the creation account in Genesis, there are some poems
39:25
Speaker 1: that we find in like Judges 5. So this is
39:28
Speaker 1: a fascinating story about Deborah, the general who goes and
39:33
Speaker 1: defeats Sisera. And we have stories in Exodus 15, the
39:37
Speaker 1: Song of the Sea. Some scholars think that's a very,
39:39
Speaker 1: very old poem. which is basically a shortened version of
39:43
Speaker 1: the Exodus story. And then Genesis 49 has some blessings
39:47
Speaker 1: that Jacob gives to his children that might be really,
39:49
Speaker 1: really old. And Psalm 68, there are a handful of
39:52
Speaker 1: poems that may go back to around 1000 BC. So
39:57
Speaker 1: when Genesis is talking about the things that we think
40:01
Speaker 1: are related to Enuma Elish, the closest connections are actually
40:05
Speaker 1: two versions of that story that were in circulation in
40:09
Speaker 1: Babylon around 600 BCE. So that's probably where Genesis is
40:16
Speaker 1: getting that from, not directly from Sumerian tablets, not directly
40:20
Speaker 1: from oral traditions that are a thousand years older. The
40:25
Speaker 1: scholars who are looking at that, I think have made
40:27
Speaker 1: a good case that the closest connections are eighth to
40:31
Speaker 1: sixth century BCE. That's probably where the traditions that were
40:35
Speaker 1: recorded in Genesis were mainly borrowed or mainly adopted and
40:40
Speaker 1: adapted to serve the interests of the Judeans who were
40:44
Speaker 1: around in that time period.
40:46
Speaker 2: So what is the oldest creation story that we're aware of?
40:51
Speaker 1: I think it's probably got to be an Egyptian one,
40:54
Speaker 1: or it's either Sumerian or Egyptian. That's the two places
40:58
Speaker 1: where writing was invented. And I would have to go
41:04
Speaker 1: back and look. There's a wonderful set of texts called
41:07
Speaker 1: The Context of Scripture, a three-volume set published by this
41:12
Speaker 1: very expensive publisher called Brill, that they have translations of
41:17
Speaker 1: all of the texts that we have from ancient Egypt,
41:19
Speaker 1: from ancient Anatolia, from ancient Assyria, Babylon, from the cultures
41:24
Speaker 1: of ancient Canaan that are not in the Bible. And
41:27
Speaker 1: so they have one of the volumes, the first third
41:30
Speaker 1: of it is creation accounts. And so It may be
41:34
Speaker 1: the masturbation one. I can't say for sure. I don't
41:37
Speaker 1: remember off the top of my head. I hope that's
41:41
Speaker 1: not the OG.
41:44
Speaker 2: It could be.
41:45
Speaker 1: It could be.
41:46
Speaker 2: Well, the Egyptian language by itself is very bizarre. It
41:50
Speaker 2: kind of emerges out of nowhere. Like hieroglyphs emerge sort
41:53
Speaker 2: of fully formed.
41:57
Speaker 1: There's a development in the way hieroglyphs are used. But
42:02
Speaker 1: we first start seeing inscriptions popping up, like monumental inscriptions.
42:06
Speaker 1: Most of the early writing probably took place on materials
42:09
Speaker 1: that deteriorated really quickly. And so what we have is
42:14
Speaker 1: the stuff that was written in stone, which is where
42:16
Speaker 1: the language has got to be a little more developed
42:19
Speaker 1: for us to start taking all day to inscribe something
42:22
Speaker 1: in stone. So I think there's... I don't think there's
42:27
Speaker 1: a good case to make that it just popped out
42:29
Speaker 1: of nowhere. Like the ancient alien stuff is fun, but
42:34
Speaker 1: we don't have a lot of evidence that gets us
42:37
Speaker 1: to that being really even a plausible solution to the problem.
42:43
Speaker 1: There is definitely a mystery about why in similar time
42:49
Speaker 1: periods people in different parts of the world came up
42:52
Speaker 1: with very similar ideas all at the same time that
42:54
Speaker 1: might have something to do with the evolution of the
42:58
Speaker 1: brain or something like that.
42:59
Speaker 2: It's also, we're probably underestimating the amount of travel people
43:02
Speaker 2: were capable of doing back then.
43:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. I think so. But the writing
43:07
Speaker 1: tent seems to develop from receipts or from counting. You
43:12
Speaker 1: counted up stuff and this is your receipt for how
43:15
Speaker 1: many goats you bought or whatever. And so as, As
43:19
Speaker 1: your needs develop and your economy is growing, I think
43:23
Speaker 1: you begin to develop labels for things. You begin to
43:27
Speaker 1: develop characters for things. And then it goes from there.
43:30
Speaker 1: There are a bunch of really good academic discussions about
43:34
Speaker 1: the origins of language and the origins of the alphabet.
43:38
Speaker 1: And even the stuff that we see, ancient Hebrew ultimately
43:42
Speaker 1: derives from Egyptian.
43:44
Speaker 2: Really?
43:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the Sinai. That is where you have— we have
43:48
Speaker 1: some inscriptions from around 1700 to 1900 BCE where they
43:57
Speaker 1: look like Egyptian hieroglyphs, but they're not doing what Egyptian
44:01
Speaker 1: hieroglyphs do because they are either syllabic or ideographic or
44:05
Speaker 1: logographic where one sign represents a syllable, so a consonant
44:09
Speaker 1: and a vowel, or one sign represents a word or
44:12
Speaker 1: one sign represents an idea. And they change them. so
44:16
Speaker 1: that each sign represents just a single sound. And the
44:20
Speaker 1: sound is whatever sound is at the start of the
44:23
Speaker 1: word that the symbol represents. So, for instance, the word
44:27
Speaker 1: for house, bait, and that starts with a buh. And
44:30
Speaker 1: so if you drew a house, that meant the buh sound.
44:33
Speaker 1: And this is the development of the alphabets, because to
44:37
Speaker 1: learn ancient Egyptian, you had to memorize hundreds and hundreds
44:40
Speaker 1: of signs. And to learn Sumerian or... Akkadian or something
44:46
Speaker 1: like that, hundreds of signs. But an alphabet is 22
44:50
Speaker 1: to 30 letters. So it's a lot easier to memorize.
44:54
Speaker 1: And then that becomes, that gets taken to Phoenicia. And
44:58
Speaker 1: from Phoenicia, it gets spread all over the place. And
45:00
Speaker 1: so apart from Hangul, which is the Korean script, I
45:05
Speaker 1: think virtually every other alphabet on earth is descended from
45:09
Speaker 1: the Phoenician.
45:10
Speaker 2: Well, the Korean script is fairly recent, right?
45:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, fairly recent. And they take a few different
45:16
Speaker 1: symbols and they group them together to create syllables. But
45:21
Speaker 1: each symbol on its own represents a sound very similar
45:24
Speaker 1: to the way our alphabet works.
45:27
Speaker 2: I don't know much about Korean, but I've heard it
45:29
Speaker 2: described as the most complete language. Like it's the most
45:33
Speaker 2: structurally logic, logical language.
45:36
Speaker 1: There are ways that I think it is. There are
45:39
Speaker 1: other ways that a language like Russian might be more systematic,
45:43
Speaker 1: or even ways like ancient Latin might be more systematic.
45:47
Speaker 2: So when you started learning religion, when you started studying religion,
45:52
Speaker 2: did you start studying languages concurrently? How did you do it?
46:01
Speaker 1: So I joined the LDS Church when I was 20
46:02
Speaker 1: years old. And a year later, I went to serve
46:05
Speaker 1: a two-year proselytizing mission in Uruguay. And I fell in
46:09
Speaker 1: love with studying the Bible. when I was doing that.
46:12
Speaker 1: I love the stories. I love learning about the history,
46:15
Speaker 1: the culture, and I wanted to better understand the languages
46:19
Speaker 1: so I could try to engage the texts as they
46:23
Speaker 1: were originally written. So I tried to start teaching myself
46:25
Speaker 1: Hebrew when I was down there. I didn't have a
46:27
Speaker 1: ton of time, and I wasn't very good at it.
46:28
Speaker 1: It's a task. Yeah, it's a tall order. And when
46:32
Speaker 1: I came home, I found out that you could get
46:36
Speaker 1: a degree in biblical studies and be a Bible scholar,
46:39
Speaker 1: and I was like, that would be about the coolest thing.
46:41
Speaker 1: career in the world for me. And so I went
46:44
Speaker 1: to school to do that. I wanted to learn ancient Hebrew.
46:46
Speaker 1: I wanted to learn ancient Greek. I wanted to learn
46:48
Speaker 1: about the literature. I wanted to learn about the history.
46:50
Speaker 1: I wanted to learn about the archaeology. And so I
46:52
Speaker 1: started off not really having a narrow focus, but just
46:56
Speaker 1: I want to try and get as much of it
46:57
Speaker 1: in as I could. And over the course of getting
46:59
Speaker 1: these degrees, you kind of have to narrow your focus
47:03
Speaker 1: on stuff. And so as I progressed, I decided I
47:08
Speaker 1: wanted to learn not only what was going on with
47:11
Speaker 1: the languages, but I wanted to focus on how people
47:13
Speaker 1: thought about God and gods. And so my PhD is
47:17
Speaker 1: actually using biblical studies and then something called the cognitive
47:21
Speaker 1: science of religion to put those two together to try
47:25
Speaker 1: to figure out what we can know about how the
47:29
Speaker 1: authors of the Hebrew Bible would have thought about and
47:32
Speaker 1: interacted with gods as they understood them. And that's using
47:37
Speaker 1: a lot of experimental research on living informants, so interviews
47:43
Speaker 1: and experiments and things like that to figure out how
47:45
Speaker 1: the brain works and how we come up with ideas
47:49
Speaker 1: about deities, ideas about rituals, ideas about religious identity and
47:52
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So I find that fascinating. So I
47:55
Speaker 1: would say my main focus is now on conceptualizations of deity,
48:01
Speaker 1: of scripture, and religious identity. And cognitive science of religion
48:06
Speaker 1: is one of the main tools that I use. But
48:08
Speaker 1: But yeah, it all started with having to learn the languages.
48:11
Speaker 2: Well, it's such an enormous field of study.
48:13
Speaker 1: Yeah.
48:14
Speaker 2: There is so much to learn, especially when you're talking
48:17
Speaker 2: about these different translations and different languages, which is what
48:21
Speaker 2: I've always felt like is the weirdest part about all this,
48:24
Speaker 2: is it's very difficult to translate languages to something that
48:29
Speaker 2: makes sense in whatever language you're currently using. Like there's
48:33
Speaker 2: certain concepts that we use that if you tried to
48:36
Speaker 2: use them You know, and if you try to, like,
48:40
Speaker 2: I'm sure you've seen Russian translated to English and you're like,
48:44
Speaker 2: what are they even, what are they saying? It gets weird.
48:48
Speaker 1: Yeah.
48:49
Speaker 2: Because it's not, language is not, it's not direct. It's
48:54
Speaker 2: not like, oh, this is their word for cow. This
48:56
Speaker 2: is their word for drive. This is their word for truck. Oh,
48:59
Speaker 2: the cow drove a truck. It's not that simple. It's dependent.
49:03
Speaker 2: Like the way they talk about things is very different.
49:06
Speaker 2: The way to describe time is very different.
49:09
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And that when you get into more minority languages,
49:13
Speaker 1: languages that are spoken in tiny little islands like Yap
49:17
Speaker 1: or Kiribati or something like that, it can get very,
49:23
Speaker 1: very alien to someone who has only spoken English their
49:27
Speaker 1: entire life. Because learning Spanish, there are ways it's difficult.
49:32
Speaker 1: Learning any language is difficult. And there are But there
49:34
Speaker 1: are a lot of ways that is very, very close
49:36
Speaker 1: to English, including even some of the words sound very,
49:38
Speaker 1: very similar. But there are other languages that you learn
49:41
Speaker 1: that are just, yeah, you have to restructure how you
49:47
Speaker 1: are thinking about things and how you communicate things. And
49:49
Speaker 1: it's not just like in German, oh, you got to
49:51
Speaker 1: put all the verbs at the end. There are very,
49:54
Speaker 1: very different ways to go about.
49:56
Speaker 2: So how complicated is that when you're reading an English
50:00
Speaker 2: translation of the Bible? Like that's when things must get
50:04
Speaker 2: very strange if you're, especially Old Testament, right? Yeah. Or
50:09
Speaker 2: even crazier, Dead Sea Scrolls, right? So you're going Aramaic
50:13
Speaker 2: to English.
50:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a lot of people think that it's a
50:19
Speaker 1: simple matter translating from ancient Hebrew, ancient Greek into English.
50:24
Speaker 1: And they imagine that because they have an English translation, they,
50:28
Speaker 1: you know, have all the insights they need. And this
50:31
Speaker 1: is why a lot of people will go out and
50:32
Speaker 1: they'll get an interlinear or they'll go on a website
50:35
Speaker 1: that provides, you know, the Hebrew to English or something
50:38
Speaker 1: like that. And imagine that they now understand when the
50:41
Speaker 1: reality is that there is a lot more under the
50:43
Speaker 1: hood of that relationship between the Hebrew and the English
50:46
Speaker 1: translation that they don't have any idea about. And so
50:50
Speaker 1: there's a saying that somebody who, you know, goes online
50:54
Speaker 1: and uses an interlinear or something like that, they know
50:57
Speaker 1: just enough Greek to be dangerous. Meaning they imagine that
51:01
Speaker 1: they know a lot more than they do. And when
51:04
Speaker 1: they go out and try to use that knowledge to
51:06
Speaker 1: try to go make videos on social media or something
51:09
Speaker 1: like that, they end up stepping in it because they
51:11
Speaker 1: really don't know what they're talking about. Or the main
51:14
Speaker 1: reason I'm on social media and the main thing I'm
51:16
Speaker 1: trying to combat, they will spread misinformation. Right. Falsehoods that
51:20
Speaker 1: other people are going to eat up because they might
51:22
Speaker 1: have a platform with millions of followers.
51:24
Speaker 2: That sounds like me.
51:24
Speaker 1: Yeah. I won't say too much about the misinformation, but yeah, no,
51:32
Speaker 1: there's a lot of it out there. I try not
51:34
Speaker 1: to be someone who does that because I can't be a.
51:37
Speaker 2: No, you're really good at it. You're very good at
51:40
Speaker 2: breaking down where things go wrong with translations as well.
51:43
Speaker 1: Well, I appreciate that. And I can't be a specialist
51:45
Speaker 1: in all things, which is why I rely on the
51:47
Speaker 1: consensus of... the academic world so much.
51:50
Speaker 2: Do you speak ancient Hebrew?
51:52
Speaker 1: Can you read it? Nobody speaks ancient Hebrew. Oh, really?
51:55
Speaker 1: It's not a spoken language. Obviously, modern Hebrew is spoken.
51:59
Speaker 1: But it's not a language that anyone would ever grow
52:02
Speaker 1: up learning by speaking with their mother.
52:05
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52:48
Speaker 2: Is there a way to learn how to speak? Or
52:50
Speaker 2: is it open interpretation?
52:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have to reconstruct some stuff. And so there
52:55
Speaker 1: are absolutely, like, speakers of modern Hebrew... can look at
52:59
Speaker 1: a text and read it perfectly fluently. To understand it,
53:03
Speaker 1: they have to have a knowledge of the difference between
53:06
Speaker 1: modern Hebrew and ancient Hebrew.
53:08
Speaker 2: But they're saying it the correct way?
53:11
Speaker 1: Mostly. There are some differences in the way they pronounce
53:14
Speaker 1: things anciently from the way they pronounce things today. But
53:18
Speaker 1: most scholars who are looking at the biblical Hebrew, ancient Hebrew,
53:22
Speaker 1: are going to adopt a modern pronunciation system. So there
53:26
Speaker 1: are absolutely scholars out there who advocate for or have
53:31
Speaker 1: a reconstructed way of pronouncing ancient Hebrew. But for the
53:35
Speaker 1: most part, if I go to a conference and I
53:36
Speaker 1: read a text in Hebrew, I'm going to use something
53:39
Speaker 1: approximating a modern Hebrew pronunciation. And I'm not awesome at it,
53:43
Speaker 1: but someone who speaks modern Hebrew should understand what I'm saying.
53:49
Speaker 1: But I read it fairly well. It's been a I've
53:54
Speaker 1: got a translation of the Hebrew Bible I'm working on.
53:57
Speaker 1: I haven't been able to touch it for almost two
54:00
Speaker 1: years now. So my Hebrew ebbs and flows depending on
54:04
Speaker 1: how frequently I'm in the text working on translation and
54:08
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But yeah, I'm better at Hebrew than
54:11
Speaker 1: I am at Greek. But there are a handful of
54:14
Speaker 1: languages we have to get some competency in to do this.
54:18
Speaker 1: Aramaic is one of them. Another fun one is called Ugaritic,
54:21
Speaker 1: which is.
54:23
Speaker 1: Considered somewhat of a precursor to Hebrew. It was spoken
54:26
Speaker 1: a little further north on the Syrian coast. You've never
54:29
Speaker 1: heard of Ugaritic?
54:30
Speaker 2: No.
54:30
Speaker 1: This is a fascinating story. 1929, a guy is plowing
54:35
Speaker 1: a field along the coast of Syria, and he hits
54:39
Speaker 1: a big rock that he can't move. And he digs
54:42
Speaker 1: it up and basically discovers an entire ancient city. Calls
54:47
Speaker 1: out the archaeologists. They all come descend on this field.
54:51
Speaker 1: And they discover the ancient city of Ugarit, which we
54:54
Speaker 1: knew from some texts that referred to this city called Ugarit.
54:58
Speaker 1: And they found around a thousand or so texts, but
55:02
Speaker 1: nobody recognized the language because it was written in cuneiform,
55:05
Speaker 1: but there were only 30 cuneiform signs. So that means
55:09
Speaker 1: it's got to be alphabetic and not the other way
55:13
Speaker 1: they use cuneiform signs. And they decided, okay, the most
55:18
Speaker 1: common Semitic consonant is mem. the equivalent of our M.
55:22
Speaker 1: And they said, so let's take the most common sign
55:25
Speaker 1: that we see and let's designate that mem. And then
55:28
Speaker 1: let's look at all the two-letter words. And there are
55:30
Speaker 1: only a handful of words that can be two letters
55:32
Speaker 1: and have the mem in one position or another. And
55:35
Speaker 1: let's try to decode from there this language. And now
55:39
Speaker 1: we have, we've decoded Ugaritic. And now we, a lot
55:43
Speaker 1: of people who go and learn biblical Hebrew and Aramaic
55:46
Speaker 1: will also learn Ugaritic because some of these mythical texts,
55:50
Speaker 1: mention things that are in the Bible. And so they
55:54
Speaker 1: talk about deities like El and Baal and Asherah. So Asherah,
56:00
Speaker 1: the one right there. So, and there are some things
56:03
Speaker 1: that are in there that help us better understand biblical Hebrew.
56:05
Speaker 1: There are some things that are in there that help
56:06
Speaker 1: us understand some of the cultic rituals that would go
56:10
Speaker 1: on in relation to El and Baal and Asherah. And
56:14
Speaker 1: there's even, there's one text that's almost directly quoted in
56:18
Speaker 1: the Bible. And the thing is, Ugarit was destroyed around
56:23
Speaker 1: 1200 BCE. So with the, uh, what's called the late
56:27
Speaker 1: bronze age collapse. Um, and there's a, um, there's a
56:31
Speaker 1: wonderful book by Eric Klein, 1177 BC. Have you ever
56:35
Speaker 1: heard that book title? Phenomenal, uh, book on how the
56:39
Speaker 1: late bronze age collapse happened. But so the, the destruction
56:42
Speaker 1: of Ugarit happens before the invention of Hebrew. So Hebrew
56:46
Speaker 1: didn't even exist in this time period. And, uh, But
56:49
Speaker 1: this helps us recover what the languages that were being
56:52
Speaker 1: spoken in that region were like as Hebrew began to develop.
56:55
Speaker 1: But there's a passage. There's a reference to Baal is
56:59
Speaker 1: fighting a deity named Mot. And Mot means death. So
57:02
Speaker 1: this is the god of death that's fighting Baal, who
57:04
Speaker 1: is the storm god. And Mot is like, I know
57:08
Speaker 1: you won some battles in the past. You're going to
57:11
Speaker 1: lose this one. But he says, I know you slew Lotan,
57:16
Speaker 1: which is the Ugaritic version of Leviathan. the wriggling serpent,
57:20
Speaker 1: the twisting serpent, the dragon with seven heads. And what's
57:24
Speaker 1: funny is in Isaiah 27.1, we have Isaiah talking about Adonai,
57:29
Speaker 1: the God of Israel, and says, on that day, so
57:32
Speaker 1: now it's off in the future, on that day, you
57:35
Speaker 1: will strike Leviathan, the wriggling serpent, Leviathan, the twisting serpent,
57:42
Speaker 1: the dragon that lives in the sea. And the words
57:45
Speaker 1: for wriggling And twisting serpent are identical to the Ugaritic.
57:49
Speaker 1: And Lotan and Leviathan are both the same word, just
57:53
Speaker 1: in two different languages.
57:54
Speaker 2: Wow.
57:55
Speaker 1: And so this passage in Isaiah was probably written somewhere
57:59
Speaker 1: before 700 BCE, but that's coming 500 years after the
58:04
Speaker 1: Ugaritic text that says almost the exact same thing. Wow.
58:10
Speaker 1: So it's not that... Isaiah had access to this text
58:14
Speaker 1: and was quoting it, but it was probably kind of
58:16
Speaker 1: a poetic saying that was just transmitted all around the area.
58:22
Speaker 1: And at some point, Isaiah decided to write it down.
58:26
Speaker 1: And while the Ugaritic one makes reference to seven heads,
58:28
Speaker 1: Isaiah doesn't say anything about seven heads. But we do
58:30
Speaker 1: have in Psalm 74 a reference to Leviathan's multiple heads,
58:34
Speaker 1: that God crushed the heads of Leviathan and the seven-headed
58:38
Speaker 1: serpent dragon Leviathan. is kind of a pretty common motif
58:42
Speaker 1: in that time period. Just recently in Tel Hatzor in
58:47
Speaker 1: a little north in Israel, they discovered a little inscription
58:51
Speaker 1: with a drawing that shows a warrior fighting a seven-headed
58:55
Speaker 1: serpent dragon beast. So the Ugaritic literature helps us an
59:02
Speaker 1: awful lot with understanding what was going on before the
59:04
Speaker 1: Bible happened, but also helps us better understand the Hebrew
59:08
Speaker 1: of the Bible and all the relationship of these gods
59:12
Speaker 1: to one another. And yeah, the tradition that was inherited
59:17
Speaker 1: by the Israelites and then how they engaged with it
59:21
Speaker 1: as they passed it on down the line historically.
59:24
Speaker 2: Why so many references to dragons? So they didn't have
59:28
Speaker 2: a word for lizard, right? And they didn't have a
59:30
Speaker 2: word for reptile. And dinosaurs. That was very contemporary. Just
59:36
Speaker 2: even the description of it in that way. But the
59:40
Speaker 2: term dragon referred to all of these scaly beasts, right?
59:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was all of them.
59:48
Speaker 2: Crocodiles.
59:48
Speaker 1: A crocodile, yeah. It was a sea monster. The thing
59:52
Speaker 1: is they were very conscious of the ever-present threat of chaos,
59:58
Speaker 1: and particularly on the waters. So the land was safe,
1:00:01
Speaker 1: the waters were dangerous. Right. And the chaos of the
1:00:04
Speaker 1: waters became kind of personified as a deity who could
1:00:10
Speaker 1: be represented as a dragon, just because that's where the
1:00:15
Speaker 1: sea monsters live. That's where the giant fish and the
1:00:18
Speaker 1: alligators and stuff like that. And so you get traditions
1:00:22
Speaker 1: that develop about the monster that lives in the sea.
1:00:26
Speaker 1: And then our God tames that monster as a way
1:00:30
Speaker 1: to show that our God has power over chaos. Our
1:00:33
Speaker 1: God can bring order to chaos. And you talked about
1:00:37
Speaker 1: creation stories earlier. A lot of the original creation stories
1:00:40
Speaker 1: were mainly about overcoming the chaos to create order. Order
1:00:43
Speaker 1: is what allows us to live in harmony. Order is
1:00:46
Speaker 1: what allows civilization to develop. order is what we're going for.
1:00:50
Speaker 1: So God is the one that brings that order. And
1:00:52
Speaker 1: so the battle between chaos and order becomes a battle
1:00:56
Speaker 1: between a dragon and our deity, who is a warrior,
1:01:00
Speaker 1: who is going to protect us.
1:01:02
Speaker 2: How much of these stories do you think the way
1:01:04
Speaker 2: they're compiled is to give structure to civilization and to
1:01:09
Speaker 2: establish rules in order for people to live together harmoniously?
1:01:12
Speaker 2: Like older, wiser people realize like these These folks have
1:01:16
Speaker 2: to have something to believe in. And one of the
1:01:18
Speaker 2: best ways to get a hold of this is say
1:01:21
Speaker 2: someone's watching all the time. So in the sky.
1:01:24
Speaker 1: Yeah. You touched on a couple of different things because
1:01:26
Speaker 1: the something someone's watching all the time is definitely a
1:01:30
Speaker 1: central feature of how scholars think that religion dominated the
1:01:36
Speaker 1: development of civilization. Because and there's a wonderful book by
1:01:41
Speaker 1: a scholar named Ara Norin Sion called Big God's. which
1:01:45
Speaker 1: is all about this. But the idea there is that
1:01:50
Speaker 1: gods develop in a variety of different ways, but it's
1:01:53
Speaker 1: rooted in the fact that our minds, because evolution has
1:01:57
Speaker 1: conditioned us to be very sensitive to the presence of
1:01:59
Speaker 1: agents and agency in the world around us. Anciently, the
1:02:05
Speaker 1: primate that interpreted the rustling in the bushes as something
1:02:08
Speaker 1: that might have teeth rather than as just the wind
1:02:11
Speaker 1: survived longer. than the one who didn't. And so our
1:02:14
Speaker 1: minds became very, very sensitive to the presence of agency
1:02:17
Speaker 1: in the world around us. And so anyone who's ever
1:02:18
Speaker 1: watched a horror movie and then has gone up the bed,
1:02:22
Speaker 1: the basement stairs and a little quicker than normal, or,
1:02:26
Speaker 1: you know, you don't close your eyes at night because
1:02:28
Speaker 1: you feel like there's something there that is a product
1:02:31
Speaker 1: of this evolutionarily installed sensitivity to agency. As this kind
1:02:38
Speaker 1: of plays out through human sociality, we curate relationships with
1:02:44
Speaker 1: deceased relatives. We interpret certain events as the work of
1:02:50
Speaker 1: some kind of entity that we can't see, whether an
1:02:54
Speaker 1: animal or something more human like that. And one of
1:02:57
Speaker 1: the things that interactions with these entities then allows us
1:03:00
Speaker 1: to do is it allows us to suggests there is
1:03:06
Speaker 1: an eye in the sky. There is someone out there
1:03:08
Speaker 1: who is, the phrase is covertly monitoring us. And once
1:03:14
Speaker 1: you become in charge of the relationship between the people
1:03:17
Speaker 1: and the covert monitor, you then have an awful lot
1:03:20
Speaker 1: of power to say, well, it turns out we're all
1:03:23
Speaker 1: supposed to do this. And the deity is watching us.
1:03:27
Speaker 1: And anybody who is not doing this is going to
1:03:30
Speaker 1: be punished by the deity. And that exerts a lot
1:03:33
Speaker 1: of influence over people, but it also allows societies to
1:03:38
Speaker 1: grow and get larger and more complex without descending into
1:03:41
Speaker 1: chaos because we have kind of this social superstructure that
1:03:46
Speaker 1: allows us to trust other people that we may not know.
1:03:50
Speaker 1: This is one of the weird things about human evolution
1:03:53
Speaker 1: is if you're in a family, you know your family,
1:03:56
Speaker 1: your kin, important to you. And so you can cooperate
1:03:59
Speaker 1: with your kin, but if you happen to run into
1:04:01
Speaker 1: somebody that you don't know, you have no idea if
1:04:04
Speaker 1: they're going to kill you or what. And as societies
1:04:09
Speaker 1: grow beyond kinship units, you need signs and signals to
1:04:14
Speaker 1: be able to let other people know that you, you're okay.
1:04:17
Speaker 1: We're a part of the same social group. We can
1:04:19
Speaker 1: trust each other. And so, These days, you know, it's
1:04:23
Speaker 1: things like shaking somebody's hand might be a way to
1:04:26
Speaker 1: do that. Wearing a cross. Wearing a cross is a
1:04:28
Speaker 1: way to— it' s called costly signaling. It's a way to incur
1:04:32
Speaker 1: some kind of cost in order to signal to others
1:04:35
Speaker 1: that you are part of the in-group. But these rituals
1:04:40
Speaker 1: go far beyond religious things, just even secularly. There are
1:04:44
Speaker 1: a lot of things that we expect— In a normal
1:04:46
Speaker 1: interaction with a stranger, you.
1:04:47
Speaker 2: Expect certain things.
1:04:48
Speaker 1: Good morning.
1:04:48
Speaker 2: Good morning.
1:04:49
Speaker 1: How are you doing? Shaking of the hand. I'm looking
1:04:51
Speaker 1: you in the eye. I'm doing all the things to
1:04:53
Speaker 1: let you know that I can be trusted. And so
1:04:56
Speaker 1: that's kind of an outcome of just being a part
1:05:01
Speaker 1: of a human society. And gods, these covert monitors, are
1:05:05
Speaker 1: very effective rule setters. only they're not there to directly
1:05:10
Speaker 1: set the rules. Somebody has to mediate between the deity
1:05:14
Speaker 1: and the people. And that's where we get religious experts
1:05:18
Speaker 1: and we get priests and we get things like that.
1:05:21
Speaker 1: And so it would be the elders in very, very
1:05:25
Speaker 1: archaic human societies who would be the ones to say,
1:05:28
Speaker 1: these are the stories that we're going to tell, that
1:05:30
Speaker 1: we're going to share so that our kids grow up
1:05:35
Speaker 1: adopting these expectations about how they live their life and
1:05:39
Speaker 1: who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.
1:05:41
Speaker 1: And that's one of the big problems in this is
1:05:44
Speaker 1: that empathy is something that we develop in human evolution,
1:05:48
Speaker 1: but empathy frequently only goes so far. There's frequently a
1:05:51
Speaker 1: boundary to empathy and that's called parochial empathy. I'm very
1:05:55
Speaker 1: empathetic for anyone in my in-group. Their pain is my pain.
1:05:59
Speaker 1: I see that pain. I feel that pain. And then
1:06:02
Speaker 1: somebody who I perceive to be the other frequently I'm
1:06:05
Speaker 1: not going to have any empathy for. In fact, it
1:06:07
Speaker 1: may make me feel good.
1:06:08
Speaker 2: Which is very convenient during war.
1:06:10
Speaker 1: Exactly.
1:06:11
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:06:11
Speaker 1: And that's one of the reasons that empathy, you know,
1:06:16
Speaker 1: we hear a lot about toxic empathy these days, or
1:06:19
Speaker 1: at least I do because the algorithm hates me. But
1:06:23
Speaker 1: the idea that we shouldn't extend our empathy beyond a
1:06:28
Speaker 1: particular in-group boundary is the most toxic kind of empathy.
1:06:33
Speaker 1: Because that is the empathy that someone else and says, no,
1:06:38
Speaker 1: I care about my people and I dislike or am
1:06:43
Speaker 1: apathetic to someone who's not part of the in-group.
1:06:46
Speaker 2: But it's so weird because that extends to, well, in
1:06:50
Speaker 2: this country particularly, extends to ideologies and politics. Yeah. And
1:06:53
Speaker 2: to the point where left versus right, one is the enemy,
1:06:57
Speaker 2: depending on which side you're on. Yeah. And they need
1:06:59
Speaker 2: to be eliminated. Yeah.
1:07:01
Speaker 1: And the more you can dehumanize them and other them and,
1:07:04
Speaker 1: Make it seem like they are just so alien and
1:07:08
Speaker 1: so corrupt. Right. The more you can do that, the
1:07:10
Speaker 1: easier it is to justify. Yeah. Not just treating them bad,
1:07:14
Speaker 1: not just voting for the other guy, but even imprisoning them.
1:07:17
Speaker 2: Or celebrating their death.
1:07:18
Speaker 1: Celebrating their death. Like Charlie Kirk. Yeah. That's a wonderful example.
1:07:22
Speaker 1: Something just atrocious that happens. Nobody deserves that kind of treatment.
1:07:27
Speaker 2: Your town. But.
1:07:29
Speaker 1: A little south of my town. Not your fault. I
1:07:32
Speaker 1: was actually on the golf course and I got a
1:07:33
Speaker 1: text from somebody when that happened. And I just, I
1:07:37
Speaker 1: got a chill. But yeah, this is one of the
1:07:42
Speaker 1: outcomes of just being human is that we tend to
1:07:45
Speaker 1: draw a line around those who congregate around the social
1:07:50
Speaker 1: interaction or the social identities that are most important to us.
1:07:54
Speaker 1: And that's what politics is frequently trying to exploit.
1:07:57
Speaker 2: Yes.
1:07:57
Speaker 1: And that's why the more we can paint somebody on
1:08:01
Speaker 1: the other side of the aisle as so other as
1:08:04
Speaker 1: to be evil.
1:08:05
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:08:06
Speaker 1: And even not human, the easier it is to justify
1:08:09
Speaker 1: torturing them, killing them, uh, a genocide, uh, the, the
1:08:14
Speaker 1: easier that becomes. And so that's, so I, I think
1:08:17
Speaker 1: of toxic empathy as parochial empathy rather than the global
1:08:21
Speaker 1: empathy that I think we should all be striving for,
1:08:23
Speaker 1: which is, which is a phenomenally difficult thing to do.
1:08:25
Speaker 1: And it's phenomenally complex, but, uh, But yeah, the more
1:08:29
Speaker 1: we can humanize people, I think the more we can
1:08:32
Speaker 1: learn to get along. That's what allowed human civilization to flourish.
1:08:37
Speaker 1: In fact, I'll share one more detail about this. Have
1:08:40
Speaker 1: you ever heard of Shanidar I?
1:08:42
Speaker 2: I think so.
1:08:45
Speaker 1: So it's an ancient Neanderthal remains. It's a skull and
1:08:51
Speaker 1: a few other scattered bones.
1:08:52
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:08:54
Speaker 1: And the skull shows some deformities that indicate that this
1:08:58
Speaker 1: was a person who was profound. deaf, probably mostly blind
1:09:02
Speaker 1: as well, and had other disabilities that would have made
1:09:06
Speaker 1: it so they could not have survived very long. But
1:09:10
Speaker 1: the skull aged to pretty old age for a Neanderthal,
1:09:16
Speaker 1: which indicates that. That was only possible if they had
1:09:20
Speaker 1: a social support group around them that did things for
1:09:24
Speaker 1: them that they couldn't do for themselves. And it almost
1:09:27
Speaker 1: certainly would have been kind of a social in-group. So
1:09:30
Speaker 1: it's not a lesson about global empathy. But if we
1:09:34
Speaker 1: understand humanity to be defined by, and I don't like definitions,
1:09:39
Speaker 1: but to be defined by the way we're most different
1:09:42
Speaker 1: from the animals that are closest to us, I think
1:09:47
Speaker 1: sacrificing our own efforts, time, resources, things like that to
1:09:52
Speaker 1: care for someone who can't care for themselves. I think
1:09:55
Speaker 1: if that's about the closest, I think we can get
1:09:59
Speaker 1: to a necessary and sufficient feature of what it means
1:10:02
Speaker 1: to be human.
1:10:03
Speaker 2: And one of the most universally admired qualities amongst, I think,
1:10:08
Speaker 2: all cultures.
1:10:08
Speaker 1: Yeah. And this is something that we believe these ancient
1:10:13
Speaker 1: Neanderthal remains preserve in the injuries and the disabilities that
1:10:20
Speaker 1: are very clearly present in that individual. So you could
1:10:25
Speaker 1: say Chanadar I is the oldest human, if you wanted to,
1:10:29
Speaker 1: because I think it shows that this was someone who
1:10:32
Speaker 1: grew up in a society that was like, we'll take
1:10:35
Speaker 1: care of you. You can't do these things for you.
1:10:38
Speaker 1: We'll take that burden on ourselves.
1:10:40
Speaker 2: Well, we have some very weird ideas of what Neanderthals
1:10:44
Speaker 2: were and how intelligent they are. Their brains were larger
1:10:47
Speaker 2: than ours, which is really weird. And they keep finding
1:10:52
Speaker 2: older hominins that have larger brains than us. The latest
1:10:56
Speaker 2: one is this one from China, Homo, I think they're
1:11:00
Speaker 2: calling it Juluensis. Larger brain capacity by, I think, 20-plus percent.
1:11:06
Speaker 2: Than ours.
1:11:07
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:11:07
Speaker 2: And like, okay, what was their society? Did they have empathy?
1:11:10
Speaker 2: Did they have culture? Did they have language? Did they
1:11:14
Speaker 2: have oral tradition? What did they have?
1:11:16
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:11:16
Speaker 2: We don't know.
1:11:17
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:11:18
Speaker 2: We only have bones.
1:11:19
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:11:20
Speaker 2: We have bones and we have this prejudice distinct. We
1:11:24
Speaker 2: have this idea in our head that anything old must
1:11:27
Speaker 2: have been dumber than us.
1:11:28
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:11:29
Speaker 2: And we might not make it. Okay. We might not
1:11:32
Speaker 2: make it.
1:11:33
Speaker 1: Right.
1:11:33
Speaker 2: Human beings could go extinct. Right. Like we were just
1:11:36
Speaker 2: having this conversation yesterday with my friend Sam Murrell. We
1:11:39
Speaker 2: were talking about this AI threat that a lot of
1:11:43
Speaker 2: these CEOs have said there's a 10% chance it could
1:11:46
Speaker 2: wipe out humanity. Like that's crazy. So if we got
1:11:50
Speaker 2: wiped out and then millions and millions of years from now,
1:11:54
Speaker 2: you know, whatever, natural catastrophe happens, AI gets wiped out,
1:11:58
Speaker 2: and then primates evolve. Slowly over time. I mean, and
1:12:02
Speaker 2: then they find human brains. Or a human skull. Like,
1:12:05
Speaker 2: what the fuck was this thing?
1:12:06
Speaker 1: Isn't there like a whole series of movies about this?
1:12:10
Speaker 2: Planet of the Apes. Planet of the Apes. Yeah, well,
1:12:12
Speaker 2: it's probably, you know, I mean, I think the Earth
1:12:16
Speaker 2: has had numerous, enormous natural disasters. And there's a lot
1:12:21
Speaker 2: of evidence of that. The Toba volcano knocked us down
1:12:24
Speaker 2: to a few thousand people 70 plus thousand years ago.
1:12:28
Speaker 2: I think that's happened a ton of times. And I
1:12:31
Speaker 2: think it's super possible that it could happen where there's
1:12:34
Speaker 2: zero and you got to start from scratch. Yeah. It's scary.
1:12:40
Speaker 1: I think I just saw something on my phone earlier today.
1:12:43
Speaker 1: I saw a headline. It was like some AI group
1:12:47
Speaker 1: said that their AI has ignored their commands or something
1:12:50
Speaker 1: like that. Oh, yeah. And I'm like, this is how
1:12:52
Speaker 1: Terminator starts.
1:12:54
Speaker 2: Exactly. It's exactly how it starts. It's so weird. But
1:12:58
Speaker 2: yet we trudge on. Yeah. Full steam ahead. Yeah. Because
1:13:02
Speaker 2: we have to.
1:13:02
Speaker 1: Allegedly.
1:13:05
Speaker 2: I wonder if that's in the Bible. I've always wondered
1:13:09
Speaker 2: what the original stories were based on. I keep going
1:13:15
Speaker 2: to the origin story because like Adam and Eve being
1:13:17
Speaker 2: the one that the Christians share. Is there a similar
1:13:21
Speaker 2: Adam and Eve story in other older stories? Yeah.
1:13:26
Speaker 1: You, a lot of them have, uh, the early humans.
1:13:29
Speaker 1: They're usually not individuals. They're usually groups.
1:13:32
Speaker 2: Well, that makes a little more sense. Yeah.
1:13:35
Speaker 1: Um, but we do have, um, there is an, an
1:13:39
Speaker 1: Adapa tale, uh, that's, uh, is somewhat related. And, and
1:13:44
Speaker 1: some people think that, that features of the Adam and
1:13:47
Speaker 1: Eve story were borrowed from, uh, Adapa, but, but it is, it, well, yeah,
1:13:53
Speaker 1: the name sounds, sounds similar. Um, And there are some
1:13:57
Speaker 1: folks who try to find inspiration for the Garden of
1:14:03
Speaker 1: Eden story in other later traditions, even going down to
1:14:08
Speaker 1: Nordic traditions and things like that, that weren't copied down
1:14:10
Speaker 1: until only a thousand years or more ago. I don't
1:14:15
Speaker 1: know that we can hunt down a single source for...
1:14:20
Speaker 1: the story because it's primarily, it's cobbling together a bunch
1:14:23
Speaker 1: of different things, but overwhelmingly it's an etiology and an
1:14:26
Speaker 1: etiology is an origin story for something that is going
1:14:29
Speaker 1: on today. It's similar to Aesop's fables. You've probably, I
1:14:33
Speaker 1: don't know how many you can remember, but I used
1:14:35
Speaker 1: to know all the, you know, this is how the
1:14:37
Speaker 1: elephant got its long nose. And this is how, uh,
1:14:40
Speaker 1: this is why the ants are industrious. And there are
1:14:42
Speaker 1: all kinds of these stories. But when you look at
1:14:44
Speaker 1: the Adam and Eve story, when you, and particularly the
1:14:47
Speaker 1: curses in Genesis 3, It's like, oh, this is why
1:14:52
Speaker 1: childbirth is painful. This is why men have to work
1:14:56
Speaker 1: hard to make plants grow. Oh, this is why we
1:15:00
Speaker 1: hate snakes. And this is why snakes oddly don't have legs.
1:15:04
Speaker 1: Like this little guy right here doesn't have any legs.
1:15:07
Speaker 1: In an odd way, it's kind of an ideology for
1:15:11
Speaker 1: how the world got to be the way it was.
1:15:12
Speaker 1: And you don't need a whole lot of inspiration from
1:15:16
Speaker 1: other traditions to do that. But certainly the idea... The
1:15:22
Speaker 1: gods created humanity because they wanted to do something with
1:15:25
Speaker 1: humanity comes from other tales. And the Epic of Gilgamesh
1:15:31
Speaker 1: is an interesting one. I don't know how much you've
1:15:34
Speaker 1: read of Gilgamesh.
1:15:36
Speaker 2: A little bit. Yeah. It's difficult. It's difficult to absorb.
1:15:40
Speaker 1: And part of the beginning, you've got Enkidu is his
1:15:47
Speaker 1: bud and– Maybe more. But there's a story about basically
1:15:55
Speaker 1: they have to kind of grow up and become civilized. Initially,
1:16:00
Speaker 1: they're running around naked. And then there's a sex worker
1:16:04
Speaker 1: who shows up. And that intercourse is what kind of
1:16:08
Speaker 1: catalyzes a maturation. And now they're going to wear clothes
1:16:13
Speaker 1: and they're going to not run around in the nude
1:16:16
Speaker 1: like an animal. And that's very similar to what I
1:16:19
Speaker 1: think we've got going on in Adam and Eve, because
1:16:21
Speaker 1: they're innocent, they are naked and they don't care. And
1:16:25
Speaker 1: then when they eat the fruit, their eyes are open.
1:16:29
Speaker 1: Suddenly they're like, oh, I'm ashamed of being naked in public.
1:16:33
Speaker 1: I'm going to, you know, we're going to have clothing now.
1:16:36
Speaker 1: And so the fact that we've got this maturation going
1:16:39
Speaker 1: on in the early history of humanity, where we go
1:16:41
Speaker 1: from more like an animal to more like a civilized human.
1:16:46
Speaker 2: What is your take on the origin for this concept
1:16:49
Speaker 2: that we were better off ignorant? Because that seems like
1:16:52
Speaker 2: you're eating from the tree of the knowledge of good
1:16:57
Speaker 2: and evil. Yeah. Well, that seems like a good thing
1:17:00
Speaker 2: to be able to know what's good and evil. But
1:17:03
Speaker 2: the idea is that all that is the original sin
1:17:05
Speaker 2: and all of our issues happen because we people ate
1:17:09
Speaker 2: from the knowledge of the tree of good and evil.
1:17:11
Speaker 2: And if they didn't, we would be in paradise still.
1:17:14
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's a Christian interpretation.
1:17:17
Speaker 2: Right.
1:17:18
Speaker 1: Because in the Hebrew Bible, one interesting thing about the
1:17:21
Speaker 1: story of Adam and Eve, specifically Adam and Eve, their
1:17:26
Speaker 1: story is never mentioned once again anywhere in the Hebrew Bible.
1:17:29
Speaker 1: You would think that would be kind of important. Yeah,
1:17:32
Speaker 1: you would think. Nobody talks about it until we get
1:17:35
Speaker 1: to the New Testament. There's a reference to Adam at
1:17:37
Speaker 1: the very beginning of a big genealogy in Chronicles. And
1:17:41
Speaker 1: in Ezekiel 28, there's a reference to the mountain of Eden,
1:17:44
Speaker 1: which you would imagine would be the same thing, but
1:17:47
Speaker 1: there's no mountain in the story in Genesis 2 and 3.
1:17:50
Speaker 1: So it's a different tradition. Whatever's going on in Ezekiel
1:17:53
Speaker 1: 28 is not just They're aware of much more than
1:17:57
Speaker 1: just what's in Genesis 2 and 3. But so throughout
1:18:01
Speaker 1: the Hebrew Bible and even in Greco-Roman period Judaism and
1:18:04
Speaker 1: down into some parts of the New Testament, it's not
1:18:07
Speaker 1: Adam's and Eve's fault that evil exists. That's not the
1:18:12
Speaker 1: main story that they use to understand why evil exists.
1:18:14
Speaker 1: The main story that they use is from Genesis 6,
1:18:18
Speaker 1: where the angels, well, they're angels in later interpretation, but
1:18:22
Speaker 1: they're second tier deities. They come down and they have
1:18:25
Speaker 1: children with the human women. And this is what causes
1:18:28
Speaker 1: God to send the flood. But you're familiar with the
1:18:31
Speaker 1: book of 1 Enoch. And so that is a version
1:18:36
Speaker 1: of that story where that is what caused evil to
1:18:39
Speaker 1: be on the earth. The angels came down and brought
1:18:41
Speaker 1: all of this knowledge and gave it to the humans,
1:18:44
Speaker 1: including how to make weapons of war. And makeup is
1:18:48
Speaker 1: listed as one of the evil things. that the angels
1:18:52
Speaker 1: taught humanity. And so I think that up until the
1:18:57
Speaker 1: New Testament was written, that was probably the dominant tradition
1:19:01
Speaker 1: about where evil came from. And then in the New Testament,
1:19:04
Speaker 1: we kind of see both of them. Paul talks about
1:19:07
Speaker 1: Adam and Eve.
1:19:08
Speaker 2: But in.
1:19:10
Speaker 1: other parts of the New Testament. In Jude, for instance,
1:19:14
Speaker 1: they quote directly from the book of 1 Enoch, calling
1:19:17
Speaker 1: it a prophecy. But they also talk about the angels
1:19:20
Speaker 1: who left their first estate and engaged in all this wickedness.
1:19:25
Speaker 1: And so it seems like these are competing traditions about
1:19:27
Speaker 1: where evil came from. And the 1 Enoch tradition was
1:19:31
Speaker 1: probably the dominant one. And then because of Paul and
1:19:34
Speaker 1: the New Testament, we can kind of see traces of
1:19:37
Speaker 1: both of them in there. But I think Christianity later
1:19:40
Speaker 1: decided to just go with the one that was in
1:19:42
Speaker 1: their canon. which was the Genesis one.
1:19:45
Speaker 2: And blame the woman for everything. And well, yeah, you
1:19:48
Speaker 2: do have... Which by the way, I want to let
1:19:51
Speaker 2: women off the hook. Adam talked to God. Eve did not.
1:19:56
Speaker 2: So maybe Adam forgot to tell Eve to not eat
1:19:59
Speaker 2: the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good
1:20:02
Speaker 2: and evil. It's never specified that he did.
1:20:05
Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's an interesting part of the story because
1:20:07
Speaker 1: what Eve says is the rule is not what God
1:20:11
Speaker 1: told Adam. It's different. Now, you know, ultimately, it's still
1:20:15
Speaker 1: don't eat the fruit. But she says we shouldn't even
1:20:19
Speaker 1: touch it or we'll die. And there are a couple
1:20:22
Speaker 1: of details that and so this has puzzled people for centuries.
1:20:27
Speaker 1: Where did Eve get her idea of why they weren't
1:20:31
Speaker 1: supposed to eat the fruit? So did Adam report it
1:20:34
Speaker 1: to her and get it wrong? Did God show up
1:20:37
Speaker 1: off camera?
1:20:39
Speaker 2: No.
1:20:39
Speaker 1: Offstage and tell Eve the same command, but in a
1:20:42
Speaker 1: slightly different way. Now, now this is probably, you know,
1:20:46
Speaker 1: this is a literary creation, but for the earliest audience
1:20:50
Speaker 1: who heard someone sharing this story, they would have probably
1:20:53
Speaker 1: thought the same. That's not the same thing that God
1:20:55
Speaker 1: said to Adam. So the author probably had something in
1:20:58
Speaker 1: mind about how to account for why Eve's story was different.
1:21:01
Speaker 1: And we don't have any access to that. So we
1:21:03
Speaker 1: have no idea. And, and this is actually something that
1:21:05
Speaker 1: scholars talk about. Did, Did the author want you to
1:21:08
Speaker 1: imagine that Adam is the one who passed it on
1:21:11
Speaker 1: to Eve and just amplified things?
1:21:13
Speaker 2: You would think that would be specified.
1:21:15
Speaker 1: You would think, but it's not. And is it the
1:21:17
Speaker 1: accident of preservation? Do we just have a much shorter
1:21:21
Speaker 1: version of a story that was originally much longer? Or
1:21:24
Speaker 1: is that how it was originally written? It seems to
1:21:26
Speaker 1: be at least based on our earliest manuscripts. It doesn't
1:21:30
Speaker 1: seem to have changed much since as far back as
1:21:33
Speaker 1: we can go. So These are the kinds of questions
1:21:36
Speaker 1: that keep us up at night.
1:21:38
Speaker 2: Well, it's so fascinating because if you just imagine our
1:21:41
Speaker 2: version of the Bible today, and if we continue to
1:21:45
Speaker 2: exist as a society a thousand years from now, most
1:21:48
Speaker 2: likely it would be the exact same version because we're
1:21:52
Speaker 2: really good at keeping records now, right?
1:21:54
Speaker 1: I think there would be versions that are very close,
1:21:57
Speaker 1: if not exact. But I think at the same time,
1:21:59
Speaker 1: there would be versions that are very different because the
1:22:04
Speaker 1: King James Version... is the, I think it's probably still
1:22:08
Speaker 1: the highest selling Bible translation. I don't think it's the
1:22:12
Speaker 1: most read. I think the NIV might be the most read,
1:22:14
Speaker 1: but NIV, New International Version, or Not Inspired Version is
1:22:20
Speaker 1: another reference that I think is kind of funny. Most
1:22:27
Speaker 1: modern translations of the New Testament have taken out more
1:22:30
Speaker 1: than a dozen verses that are in the King James Version. Why?
1:22:34
Speaker 1: because since the King James Version was translated, we have
1:22:38
Speaker 1: discovered hundreds more manuscripts and we have been able to
1:22:43
Speaker 1: do a lot more study and a lot better study
1:22:46
Speaker 1: on those manuscripts to figure out what most likely these
1:22:49
Speaker 1: manuscripts originally said. Originally is a complicated term in academics,
1:22:55
Speaker 1: but our ability to reconstruct the text as it was
1:23:01
Speaker 1: in its earliest stage... And we know that some of
1:23:04
Speaker 1: the passages that are in the King James Version were
1:23:07
Speaker 1: added later on, that were not written by the author.
1:23:10
Speaker 1: And so now when we publish these translations of the
1:23:14
Speaker 1: New Testament, we just omit the verse. And because versification
1:23:18
Speaker 1: is kind of complex to just redo, we just leave
1:23:21
Speaker 1: the verse out entirely. So if you look in Matthew 17,
1:23:24
Speaker 1: for instance, you'll see verse 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24.
1:23:26
Speaker 1: And there'll be a footnote at the end of verse 20.
1:23:32
Speaker 1: That'll say, some ancient manuscripts add, and then it'll quote
1:23:36
Speaker 1: a translation of verse 21. And this freaks people out
1:23:39
Speaker 1: when they discover this, if they don't know the history,
1:23:42
Speaker 1: the reason that these passages were taken out. There are
1:23:45
Speaker 1: about 16 passages in the New Testament that have been
1:23:49
Speaker 1: taken out.
1:23:50
Speaker 2: Is there any debate about whether or not they should
1:23:52
Speaker 2: have been taken out?
1:23:53
Speaker 1: Among scholars, not really. So, for instance, the passage in
1:23:56
Speaker 1: Matthew 17, 21, we have.
1:24:00
Speaker 1: Some very, very old manuscripts that don't have it at all.
1:24:04
Speaker 1: It's just not in there. And then we have like
1:24:06
Speaker 1: Codex Sinaiticus, which is mid fourth century CE. So this,
1:24:11
Speaker 1: this text, this Codex was probably transcribed a little after
1:24:16
Speaker 1: the Council of Nicaea. And it's not in the main
1:24:20
Speaker 1: body of text, but there's a little star in the margin.
1:24:24
Speaker 1: And then up at the top, somebody scribbled in this passage.
1:24:29
Speaker 1: And then in manuscripts after Sinaiticus, it's in the main
1:24:32
Speaker 1: body of text. And so we can see in action
1:24:37
Speaker 1: the verse being added to the manuscripts.
1:24:39
Speaker 2: What is the verse?
1:24:41
Speaker 1: It says, this is where the disciples are coming back
1:24:46
Speaker 1: to Jesus and saying, yeah, we've forgiven sins. We've cast
1:24:49
Speaker 1: out demons. And there's this one demon we can't cast out.
1:24:53
Speaker 1: And Jesus says, yeah, that kind doesn't come out except
1:24:56
Speaker 1: by prayer and fasting. Now, this is actually being borrowed
1:24:59
Speaker 1: from a similar story in Mark 9. And so what
1:25:02
Speaker 1: most scholars think happened was an early scribe was like, okay,
1:25:06
Speaker 1: this is the same story. This detail is in Mark,
1:25:10
Speaker 1: but it's omitted in Matthew. I'm going to scratch it
1:25:13
Speaker 1: into the manuscript there. And then later on gets worked
1:25:17
Speaker 1: right into the body of the text. So Most modern
1:25:21
Speaker 1: translations of the New Testament, there are about 16 verses
1:25:24
Speaker 1: that are commonly just omitted, and they're included in footnotes.
1:25:28
Speaker 1: But also the ending of Mark, the whole story of
1:25:32
Speaker 1: Jesus's post-resurrection appearance at the end of Mark, scholars agree
1:25:36
Speaker 1: that's not original. That was something that was added. So
1:25:39
Speaker 1: chapter 16, verses 9 through 20, a lot of translations
1:25:42
Speaker 1: will put them in brackets, and a footnote will say,
1:25:45
Speaker 1: you know, this comes from later manuscripts. It's not in
1:25:50
Speaker 1: the original version. And there are a handful of stories
1:25:53
Speaker 1: like that. And then with the Dead Sea Scrolls, we
1:25:57
Speaker 1: have a better idea of how some verses read. We
1:25:59
Speaker 1: have a better idea of what verses might've been added.
1:26:01
Speaker 1: We even have a whole paragraph that was omitted that
1:26:05
Speaker 1: we didn't really know. We knew something was supposed to
1:26:08
Speaker 1: be there, but we had no idea what, and we
1:26:10
Speaker 1: found out what was supposed to be there in the
1:26:11
Speaker 1: Dead Sea Scrolls. So maybe we discover another cache of
1:26:15
Speaker 1: ancient manuscripts of the Bible and And maybe they're earlier
1:26:19
Speaker 1: than the Dead Sea Scrolls.
1:26:20
Speaker 2: Boy, that would be exciting.
1:26:21
Speaker 1: Oh, it would be phenomenal. I would love that so much.
1:26:24
Speaker 1: But a thousand years down the road, who knows what
1:26:27
Speaker 1: the Bible will look like. Now, there are still people
1:26:30
Speaker 1: who are like, no, it's the KJV or nothing. And
1:26:34
Speaker 1: I think people like that will be around a thousand
1:26:36
Speaker 1: years as well. But I think we will just multiply
1:26:39
Speaker 1: the available versions of the Bible. And some of them
1:26:42
Speaker 1: will probably be closer to what was originally written. Originally.
1:26:47
Speaker 1: And some of them will be people trying to hold
1:26:50
Speaker 1: on to their favorite translation or their favorite version.
1:26:52
Speaker 2: It's just such an insane story that a sheep herder
1:26:56
Speaker 2: or a goat herder threw a rock into a cave
1:27:00
Speaker 2: and hit a clay vessel.
1:27:03
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:27:03
Speaker 2: And heard it shatter and then realized there was something
1:27:06
Speaker 2: in there and decided to go look. Yeah. If not
1:27:09
Speaker 2: for that, how long?
1:27:11
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
1:27:11
Speaker 2: Who knows?
1:27:12
Speaker 1: We still wouldn't know.
1:27:13
Speaker 2: I mean, it might be that. cave might not have
1:27:17
Speaker 2: ever been discovered. I mean, who knows?
1:27:20
Speaker 1: That was 1947.
1:27:20
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:27:21
Speaker 1: Yeah. Actually, I think it probably would have been discovered
1:27:25
Speaker 1: because that's right around the time that Israel became a state.
1:27:29
Speaker 1: When Israel became a state, it now had state funding
1:27:31
Speaker 1: for archaeological research. And so excavations- So they started going
1:27:34
Speaker 1: looking around. They started going looking all over the place.
1:27:37
Speaker 1: And so by the 60s or 70s, there would have
1:27:41
Speaker 1: been enough excavations ongoing at Qumran that they would, I've
1:27:44
Speaker 1: been to Qumran a couple of times. You can see
1:27:47
Speaker 1: the caves like not far away. It's like, that's going
1:27:49
Speaker 1: to be a trip to kind of get to it.
1:27:51
Speaker 2: How insane is it that that cave sat undisturbed for 2,000 years?
1:27:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, you had to.
1:27:57
Speaker 2: That is so nuts. Is that it?
1:27:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:27:59
Speaker 2: Right there where your cursor is?
1:28:00
Speaker 1: Well, there are a bunch of caves, but that's one
1:28:03
Speaker 1: of them.
1:28:04
Speaker 2: I mean, imagine if somebody decided not to store it
1:28:07
Speaker 2: there and just leave it out somewhere. Or they died.
1:28:11
Speaker 2: They were going to go store it there and they
1:28:12
Speaker 2: got killed in a raid.
1:28:14
Speaker 1: This is one of the kind of tragic things about
1:28:17
Speaker 1: archaeology is when a lot of people are getting killed
1:28:20
Speaker 1: at the same time. That's good for us.
1:28:24
Speaker 2: Because we find the bodies.
1:28:25
Speaker 1: Well, not just the bodies, but that's the circumstance that's
1:28:28
Speaker 1: most likely to preserve stuff. Because when they burn things
1:28:32
Speaker 1: to the ground, particularly if you have things on clay tablets,
1:28:35
Speaker 1: that bakes the clay tablets and they stay exactly as
1:28:40
Speaker 1: they are until we find them. So some of our
1:28:42
Speaker 1: best discoveries have been because somebody burnt a building down
1:28:46
Speaker 1: and it happened to be an archive or a library
1:28:50
Speaker 1: or the palace where the king stored all the animals
1:28:53
Speaker 1: or something like that. And then the reason that we
1:28:56
Speaker 1: have all of the– pointing at a blank screen– the
1:28:58
Speaker 1: reason that we have all of the Qumran stuff is
1:29:00
Speaker 1: because that whole community was destroyed by the Romans around
1:29:05
Speaker 1: 68-ish CE. And nobody was alive to come back and
1:29:10
Speaker 1: get all the stuff that they had stuffed in those
1:29:13
Speaker 1: caves for safekeeping.
1:29:14
Speaker 2: Who knows how long people were living there writing things
1:29:18
Speaker 2: down that we haven't found yet. The weirdest shit is–
1:29:22
Speaker 2: You know the megalithic architecture underneath the West Wall?
1:29:27
Speaker 1: The stones?
1:29:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, the enormous stones. Like, who the fuck put those there?
1:29:33
Speaker 2: You know what I mean? Like, what were those guys doing?
1:29:36
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:29:36
Speaker 2: And imagine if they find something, you know, with ground-penetrating radar,
1:29:41
Speaker 2: some new cache of texts and scrolls or tablets or something.
1:29:46
Speaker 1: Oh, we'd have a field day.
1:29:47
Speaker 2: Oh, my goodness. I mean, it's so interesting trying— or
1:29:52
Speaker 2: not me, archaeologists, trying to piece together this understanding of
1:29:57
Speaker 2: human civilization just based on what's left over and knowing
1:30:01
Speaker 2: that in a lot of places there's not going to
1:30:02
Speaker 2: be anything left over.
1:30:03
Speaker 1: You're just guessing. That's called the accident of preservation. And
1:30:06
Speaker 1: it results in a problem because we gather all the
1:30:10
Speaker 1: data that we might get and we think that this
1:30:13
Speaker 1: is everything. We have to constantly remind ourselves, no, this
1:30:17
Speaker 1: is only what we're finding in tombs. We try to reconstruct...
1:30:21
Speaker 1: so much stuff from just what we find in a tomb.
1:30:24
Speaker 1: And it's like a tomb is not a representation of
1:30:27
Speaker 1: an entire, even household, much less society. And a lot
1:30:30
Speaker 1: of our stuff has what we call a mortuary bias
1:30:35
Speaker 1: precisely because we tend to find stuff when it gets buried.
1:30:39
Speaker 1: And usually tombs are the things that tend to get buried.
1:30:42
Speaker 1: Or we find stuff when cities are destroyed in what
1:30:46
Speaker 1: we call a conflagration.
1:30:48
Speaker 2: What is this here, Jeremy?
1:30:50
Speaker 1: I went to Google Maps to the Qumran caves, and
1:30:52
Speaker 1: this is a video.
1:30:53
Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
1:30:53
Speaker 1: That's what it looks like when they're digging. And that's
1:30:57
Speaker 1: being taken from a little ridge. Yeah, they've got walkways
1:31:01
Speaker 1: there now. And those are the remains of the community
1:31:07
Speaker 1: that they built there at Qumran. Most likely.
1:31:11
Speaker 2: Imagine going in a time machine and just being able
1:31:14
Speaker 2: to gaze upon these people just for fucking 10 minutes. Yeah.
1:31:18
Speaker 2: What was life like?
1:31:19
Speaker 1: This is something that I've always found fascinating. The more
1:31:23
Speaker 1: I've done research in cognitive science of religion and learned
1:31:26
Speaker 1: more about why our brains work the way they do,
1:31:31
Speaker 1: it's helped me understand some of the things that I've
1:31:33
Speaker 1: experienced myself in relation to ancient stuff like that. I
1:31:39
Speaker 1: did one of my master's degrees at the University of Oxford,
1:31:41
Speaker 1: and the Bodleian libraries are just unreal. But I held
1:31:46
Speaker 1: a tablet that was thousands of years old and looked
1:31:49
Speaker 1: at the bottom and there was a thumbprint on the bottom.
1:31:53
Speaker 1: It was like, I'm looking at the fingerprint of whoever
1:31:57
Speaker 1: did this. They just happened to leave a fingerprint on
1:31:59
Speaker 1: that when they were creating this tablet and that is
1:32:01
Speaker 1: frozen in time. And it kind of, uh, and, and
1:32:04
Speaker 1: I have the like cognitive explanation for this, but it
1:32:07
Speaker 1: kind of gins up a sense of their, of their presence. It, it,
1:32:10
Speaker 1: there's a sense in which you kind of feel the,
1:32:13
Speaker 1: the presence of, uh, of those people when you have
1:32:15
Speaker 1: such a clear, uh, kind of cue to human involvement
1:32:19
Speaker 1: and that, and that kind of stuff. I live for,
1:32:21
Speaker 1: for that kind of stuff. And so I love archeology.
1:32:23
Speaker 1: I love going in and seeing, you know, the domestic
1:32:27
Speaker 1: stuff where it's like, Oh, this is, this is where
1:32:29
Speaker 1: a kid played with toys in the corner of this
1:32:32
Speaker 1: house or something like that.
1:32:33
Speaker 2: You get a weird feeling when you go to old places. Yeah.
1:32:37
Speaker 2: And it's, it's hard to understand what you're feeling. Is
1:32:39
Speaker 2: this your brain playing a trick is like, what is it?
1:32:43
Speaker 2: Is it because you've attached significance to this site? Or
1:32:47
Speaker 2: I would like to go to somewhere that's like really sacred, ignorant.
1:32:51
Speaker 2: Like someone take me. Hey, we're going to take you around.
1:32:54
Speaker 1: How are you feeling? Well, I think we see people
1:33:01
Speaker 1: doing that a lot when they go travel and visit
1:33:04
Speaker 1: places they don't know a whole lot. But they might
1:33:07
Speaker 1: visit one of their sacred sites and frequently not treat
1:33:11
Speaker 1: it very sacredly.
1:33:12
Speaker 2: That's true. Well, especially if it's an opposing ideology or religion.
1:33:15
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:33:16
Speaker 2: That's a real problem.
1:33:17
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:33:17
Speaker 2: When the Taliban blew up those statues, it's horrific. Yeah.
1:33:21
Speaker 2: But there's something about some certain sites. You know, I
1:33:26
Speaker 2: went to Eleusis. Is that how you say it? Eleusis?
1:33:30
Speaker 2: In Greece.
1:33:30
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:33:31
Speaker 2: And, you know, you get to be at the actual
1:33:35
Speaker 2: ground where they have those Eleusinian mystery ceremonies. It just
1:33:39
Speaker 2: feels weird. It feels really weird.
1:33:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. When you understand the import.
1:33:44
Speaker 2: Yes. But that's the problem is I understood it. And
1:33:47
Speaker 2: I was actually there with Brian Murorescu. which is really cool.
1:33:51
Speaker 1: So you were feeling it in more way than one.
1:33:53
Speaker 2: Oh, for sure. Because he was explaining to me, like,
1:33:56
Speaker 2: what I'm looking at. And it just feels super weird. But,
1:34:00
Speaker 2: you know, there's that thing where you're like, okay, am
1:34:02
Speaker 2: I adding meaning to this?
1:34:04
Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you about a place that I visited
1:34:06
Speaker 1: that I'm probably the only person on earth who thinks
1:34:09
Speaker 1: of this as a particularly sacred site. But there's, in
1:34:12
Speaker 1: the southern Negev, there's a site called Arad, which is.
1:34:18
Speaker 2: Where's the southern.
1:34:19
Speaker 1: Negev, the desert in the south of Judea. So Arad
1:34:23
Speaker 1: is a place where they've got a tell, a big hill.
1:34:26
Speaker 1: And there was a Bronze Age village there. But on
1:34:28
Speaker 1: the very top, there are the remains of a fortress
1:34:31
Speaker 1: that existed in the 8th century BCE. And in the
1:34:34
Speaker 1: corner of the fortress is an Israelite temple. And they've
1:34:41
Speaker 1: got the remains of the walls. They've got the three
1:34:45
Speaker 1: different rooms. the, uh, the courtyard, the broad room and, uh,
1:34:49
Speaker 1: the Debir or the, um, the Holy of Holies. And
1:34:52
Speaker 1: they found a standing stone, which would have represented the
1:34:55
Speaker 1: God of Israel. They found, they have the altar. They
1:34:58
Speaker 1: had discovered a bunch of inscriptions, talks about the house
1:35:01
Speaker 1: of Adonai, the God of Israel. And they also found
1:35:05
Speaker 1: a couple of incense altars that were on the steps
1:35:09
Speaker 1: of the Holy of Holies. And so I, I go
1:35:12
Speaker 1: there and that's where, uh, because I'm fascinated by the
1:35:16
Speaker 1: fact that, you know, the biblical story that there was
1:35:20
Speaker 1: just one temple in Jerusalem is just not accurate. There
1:35:23
Speaker 1: were temples scattered all around. We found a handful of them.
1:35:26
Speaker 1: In fact, just like 10 to 15 years ago, we
1:35:28
Speaker 1: found another one only a few miles outside of Jerusalem
1:35:32
Speaker 1: at a place called Tel Motsah. So they had temples
1:35:35
Speaker 1: operating all over the place. And because of propaganda, like
1:35:40
Speaker 1: the book of Deuteronomy, a lot of scholars believe that
1:35:43
Speaker 1: was written so that the king in Jerusalem could say,
1:35:48
Speaker 1: close down all the temples. Mine's the only one that
1:35:50
Speaker 1: gets to stay open now. And this might've been one
1:35:52
Speaker 1: of the ones that was closed down as a result
1:35:55
Speaker 1: of that. But interestingly enough, people ask me a lot
1:35:59
Speaker 1: about narcotics in the Bible and stuff like that. But
1:36:03
Speaker 1: this is one where they tested the burnt residue that
1:36:05
Speaker 1: was on top of the incense altars. And one of
1:36:07
Speaker 1: them had three different kinds of cannabis.
1:36:10
Speaker 2: On it.
1:36:10
Speaker 1: So we know for a fact they were using cannabis
1:36:13
Speaker 1: in their worship practices in ancient Israel.
1:36:17
Speaker 2: Which completely makes sense. Yeah. That that's what you would
1:36:19
Speaker 2: use as incense. Yeah. I mean, if you want to
1:36:21
Speaker 2: get a contact high going for the entire crowd and
1:36:24
Speaker 2: you sing those songs, they have so much more meaning
1:36:26
Speaker 2: to them.
1:36:26
Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's certainly going to make you feel like
1:36:29
Speaker 1: you're in the presence of something unworldly. If you're going
1:36:35
Speaker 1: in there, the room's filled with smoke, you're not seeing much,
1:36:37
Speaker 1: but you feel good.
1:36:39
Speaker 2: Did you ever get into any of John Marco Allegro's stuff?
1:36:43
Speaker 1: I'm aware of the sacred mushroom and the cross, but
1:36:48
Speaker 1: it's mainly etymological. That's the main argument, and it has
1:36:52
Speaker 1: been just torn to shreds.
1:36:54
Speaker 2: Has it been?
1:36:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Since it came out, like back when it
1:36:57
Speaker 1: came out, there were a handful of some of the
1:37:00
Speaker 1: leading linguists of ancient Hebrew, of Sumerian, Thorkell Jacobson is
1:37:07
Speaker 1: a Sumerologist and James Barr was one of the leading
1:37:12
Speaker 1: Hebrew Semiticists in the world. And the argument is basically
1:37:17
Speaker 1: that the Hebrew and the Greek all goes back to
1:37:21
Speaker 1: these Sumerian words that have to do with semen, with
1:37:26
Speaker 1: mushrooms and all this kind of stuff. The problem is
1:37:29
Speaker 1: Hebrew and Greek are not descended from Sumerian and there's
1:37:32
Speaker 1: not a lot of contact. Sumerian was overwhelmingly gone by
1:37:37
Speaker 1: the time that Hebrew started existing. There were just a
1:37:41
Speaker 1: handful of liturgical uses and words and things like that.
1:37:46
Speaker 1: But the connections that are made are just not considered
1:37:49
Speaker 1: plausible by linguists today. And so, yeah, it's not been
1:37:57
Speaker 1: well received by scholars ever since it originally came out.
1:38:00
Speaker 1: In fact, I think that some of those scholars who
1:38:02
Speaker 1: were friends of Allegro's, because he was a, phenomenal textual critic.
1:38:05
Speaker 1: When it came to the Dead Sea Scrolls, a lot
1:38:08
Speaker 1: of the scholars who were assigned fragments of the Dead
1:38:11
Speaker 1: Sea Scrolls just sat on them for years and years
1:38:13
Speaker 1: and years. And they were doing research, but it was
1:38:15
Speaker 1: so slow getting out. Allegro was the first one to
1:38:18
Speaker 1: get research out the door. So he was a phenomenal
1:38:22
Speaker 1: scroll scholar. But what I understand, some of his friends
1:38:26
Speaker 1: tried to urge him not to publish that book because
1:38:30
Speaker 1: they thought it would be pretty detrimental to his career.
1:38:33
Speaker 1: And my understanding is that it was, unfortunately.
1:38:35
Speaker 2: Well, it seems like the book was removed from circulation
1:38:38
Speaker 2: and then only within the last decade or so someone
1:38:42
Speaker 2: brought it back.
1:38:44
Speaker 1: I think it was a couple of decades ago. I'd
1:38:46
Speaker 1: have to verify that because I know I've seen scans
1:38:49
Speaker 1: of the book for a while now.
1:38:51
Speaker 2: I bought it online. You could buy old versions of it.
1:38:55
Speaker 2: But a guy named Jan Ervin, I think, was the
1:38:57
Speaker 2: guy who– I think he's responsible for republishing it. I
1:39:02
Speaker 2: think that was in the– I want to say the
1:39:04
Speaker 2: early 2000s, somewhere around then.
1:39:06
Speaker 1: Okay.
1:39:07
Speaker 2: But I think it might have been purchased by the
1:39:09
Speaker 2: Catholic Church or something like that.
1:39:11
Speaker 1: I have heard a lot of people say that the
1:39:13
Speaker 1: Catholic Church tried to shut it down.
1:39:15
Speaker 2: Because he wrote another book afterwards called The Dead Sea
1:39:17
Speaker 2: Scrolls and the Christian Myth.
1:39:19
Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
1:39:19
Speaker 2: That it was covered similar topics. Yeah.
1:39:22
Speaker 1: I think it was kind of a mythicist take that
1:39:25
Speaker 1: Jesus never existed or. Yeah.
1:39:27
Speaker 2: Yeah. He, he likened the word Christ to an ancient
1:39:30
Speaker 2: Sumerian word that made a mushroom covered in God's semen. Yeah.
1:39:33
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:39:34
Speaker 2: Which is yo.
1:39:34
Speaker 1: And, and the, and the, yeah. And, and the problem
1:39:37
Speaker 1: is that when you, I remember reading that part of
1:39:40
Speaker 1: the book a couple of years ago and it was like, okay, the,
1:39:45
Speaker 1: basically taking, recreating a Sumerian word that we have no
1:39:49
Speaker 1: evidence ever existed and saying that that recreated Sumerian word
1:39:54
Speaker 1: was the etymological origin of the word Christ. And the
1:39:58
Speaker 1: connection there is, as far as any scholars can tell,
1:40:03
Speaker 1: entirely imaginary. There's no real plausible link. There's no real
1:40:07
Speaker 1: chain of custody. There's no real way that knowledge of
1:40:11
Speaker 1: that etymology could have made it down A thousand years
1:40:17
Speaker 1: down the road without anybody finding out about it. So
1:40:20
Speaker 1: it's not that it's impossible.
1:40:21
Speaker 2: Implausible.
1:40:22
Speaker 1: But it's not plausible, right? It's implausible and it's certainly
1:40:25
Speaker 1: not most likely.
1:40:26
Speaker 2: It's just so fascinating that by the time this is written,
1:40:31
Speaker 2: the Sumerian language is gone, which is weird. Like the
1:40:37
Speaker 2: idea of these languages just come and go is so strange.
1:40:40
Speaker 1: And Sumerian is a language isolate too, which means it's
1:40:44
Speaker 1: not directly connected to any other languages that are still
1:40:47
Speaker 1: around or that were even around anciently.
1:40:51
Speaker 2: Which is really weird when you get into the ancient
1:40:54
Speaker 2: Sumerian stories and how they're similar to some of the
1:40:58
Speaker 2: stories that are in the Bible, like the Epic of Gilgamesh. Right.
1:41:02
Speaker 2: The Epic of Gilgamesh is so strange and interesting. So
1:41:07
Speaker 2: the flood versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh, are they
1:41:11
Speaker 2: inspired by other flood versions?
1:41:14
Speaker 1: So you've got a few different stories of the flood.
1:41:16
Speaker 1: And in the Epic of Gilgamesh, he's going to find Utnapishtim,
1:41:20
Speaker 1: who was the one who survived the flood. So the
1:41:23
Speaker 1: flood has already happened in the Gilgamesh epic. But like
1:41:26
Speaker 1: Atrahasis is another version of that story. But if you
1:41:30
Speaker 1: go all the way back to the Sumerian king lists,
1:41:33
Speaker 1: we have king lists that predate the introduction of a
1:41:37
Speaker 1: flood story. And in fact, a lot of scholars think
1:41:39
Speaker 1: that Genesis actually was circulating in a version that didn't
1:41:43
Speaker 1: have a flood story.
1:41:44
Speaker 2: Really?
1:41:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, until someone put it in there.
1:41:47
Speaker 2: And when do they think that happened?
1:41:49
Speaker 1: That's a great question. They probably date it to somewhere
1:41:53
Speaker 1: around the 6th to 5th century BCE, because Noah is
1:41:57
Speaker 1: a horticulturist in the oldest tales of what's going on here.
1:42:01
Speaker 1: And there's no indication of a flood. In fact, if
1:42:04
Speaker 1: you go in Genesis four, you have some patriarchs who
1:42:08
Speaker 1: are mentioned and it's like, and this was the progenitor
1:42:12
Speaker 1: of those who live in tents. And this was the
1:42:14
Speaker 1: progenitor of those who play the lyre and the harp.
1:42:17
Speaker 1: And this is the progenitor of those who work in
1:42:19
Speaker 1: all kinds of metals. And it's like the progenitor of
1:42:22
Speaker 1: nothing because they and all their lines would have died
1:42:26
Speaker 1: just a couple of chapters down the road. So whoever's
1:42:29
Speaker 1: writing this doesn't know that they're supposed to all die. Yeah.
1:42:33
Speaker 1: Because he's talking about, you know, look around, we got
1:42:35
Speaker 1: all these people living in tents and their ancestor is
1:42:38
Speaker 1: this guy. And it's like, what about the flood?
1:42:42
Speaker 2: So where do you think that story comes from? How
1:42:45
Speaker 2: does it get introduced?
1:42:47
Speaker 1: That's a big question a lot of scholars have been
1:42:49
Speaker 1: trying to solve for a long time. But some people
1:42:52
Speaker 1: think that Genesis 6, the story of the B'nai Elohim,
1:42:56
Speaker 1: the children of God, they come down and have children
1:42:58
Speaker 1: with human women. And that ticks God off. And... so
1:43:04
Speaker 1: that seems like an original catalyst for sending the flood.
1:43:07
Speaker 1: I'm sending the flood to kill all of these folks
1:43:10
Speaker 1: because that's, Ooh, that's gross. My, the, these gods had, uh,
1:43:15
Speaker 1: demigod children, but that's not the reason that's given in
1:43:19
Speaker 1: the text for why the flood came. The reason it's
1:43:21
Speaker 1: given in the text is there was violence everywhere. And
1:43:25
Speaker 1: so that's like, man, it's kind of a different story.
1:43:29
Speaker 1: And if you look in first Enoch, that, kind of
1:43:34
Speaker 1: fills in some of the gaps. Because in the story
1:43:36
Speaker 1: of 1 Enoch, there's violence everywhere because the children of
1:43:41
Speaker 1: this divine human mating are giants, and then the Nephilim
1:43:46
Speaker 1: are their children. And then when the Nephilim die, their
1:43:50
Speaker 1: souls become the demons that haunt the world. And so
1:43:54
Speaker 1: that kind of better fits what's going on in Genesis,
1:43:58
Speaker 1: but the story of first Enoch was probably written down
1:44:01
Speaker 1: somewhere around 300 BCE. It comes much later. And we
1:44:05
Speaker 1: don't know if that story is actually maybe earlier than
1:44:10
Speaker 1: the story of the flood that we have in Genesis. So, uh,
1:44:14
Speaker 1: it's how it came together is something that I don't
1:44:17
Speaker 1: think we're ever going to be really, really sure about.
1:44:19
Speaker 1: We just got a bunch of speculation. that is based
1:44:23
Speaker 1: on the observation that some things don't seem to fit
1:44:25
Speaker 1: together quite right. And then we have other versions of
1:44:28
Speaker 1: the story that would fit much better. And, you know,
1:44:32
Speaker 1: the same is true of the book of Daniel. There
1:44:33
Speaker 1: are some fragments in the Dead Sea Scrolls that talk
1:44:36
Speaker 1: about Nabonidus and talk about these stories related to Daniel,
1:44:40
Speaker 1: but they're not in the book of Daniel. And so
1:44:42
Speaker 1: some scholars wonder if the book of Daniel was being
1:44:45
Speaker 1: cobbled together around that time period. And we have some
1:44:49
Speaker 1: of what was left on the editing room floor in
1:44:52
Speaker 1: these references to Nabonidus and things like that. So how
1:44:57
Speaker 1: it all came together is phenomenally complex. And there's constantly
1:45:01
Speaker 1: a debate between how much we can say, how much
1:45:06
Speaker 1: we can speculate or hypothesize about versus how much we
1:45:09
Speaker 1: should be limiting ourselves to saying because we can speculate
1:45:15
Speaker 1: about all kinds of stuff. But until we have enough
1:45:17
Speaker 1: data to to be confident, it's not really much more
1:45:21
Speaker 1: than speculation.
1:45:22
Speaker 2: What is the earliest date of the Ethiopian Bible? What
1:45:27
Speaker 2: is the origin of that?
1:45:28
Speaker 1: So the Ethiopian Bible, we have a couple of manuscripts
1:45:32
Speaker 1: of gospels called the Garma Gospels that date to between
1:45:36
Speaker 1: the fourth and the sixth centuries CE. And the Ethiopian
1:45:42
Speaker 1: Bible descends probably from some people who probably brought a
1:45:48
Speaker 1: version of the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Bible,
1:45:52
Speaker 1: down to the kingdom of Aksum, probably late 3rd or
1:45:56
Speaker 1: early 4th century CE. And so this is right around
1:45:59
Speaker 1: the time of the Council of Nicaea. So this would
1:46:02
Speaker 1: have been something that looked similar to what we have
1:46:04
Speaker 1: in Codex Sinaiticus. And that collection of Septuagint texts, which
1:46:10
Speaker 1: included 1 Enoch, Jubilees, a bunch of other apocryphal and
1:46:14
Speaker 1: pseudepigraphical texts, It seems like down there in Ethiopia, they
1:46:19
Speaker 1: were just content to keep on keeping on with what
1:46:21
Speaker 1: they had, just ignoring all of the canon debates that
1:46:25
Speaker 1: were going on up north.
1:46:26
Speaker 2: Were they just not in contact?
1:46:28
Speaker 1: There was definitely contact, but I think they didn't feel
1:46:32
Speaker 1: any obligation to honor the authority of the folks who
1:46:36
Speaker 1: were arguing in Constantinople and Rome and stuff like that.
1:46:40
Speaker 1: So as they were figuring out their canon up north...
1:46:44
Speaker 1: down south, they were happy to continue to transmit their texts.
1:46:47
Speaker 1: So today, the earliest manuscript of any kind we have
1:46:51
Speaker 1: translated into Ge'ez, the ancient Ethiopic languages, or the Garima
1:46:55
Speaker 1: Gospels from 4th to 6th century CE. Most of our
1:46:59
Speaker 1: manuscripts come from the medieval period, around the 11th century
1:47:02
Speaker 1: or later. And so it's popular to say that the
1:47:07
Speaker 1: Ethiopian Bible is the earliest Bible, but It is based
1:47:10
Speaker 1: on the ancient Greek translation. And while the ancient Greek
1:47:14
Speaker 1: translation probably does preserve some earlier readings than our later
1:47:17
Speaker 1: Hebrew does, we have better ways of sussing that out.
1:47:20
Speaker 1: The Dead Sea Scrolls help us an awful lot. And
1:47:23
Speaker 1: so text critically, in trying to reconstruct the earliest possible Bible,
1:47:29
Speaker 1: the Ethiopian manuscripts are of very little value. They're of
1:47:34
Speaker 1: inestimable value in trying to understand how Christianity is evolved
1:47:39
Speaker 1: in Ethiopia and how the texts that they were using
1:47:42
Speaker 1: evolved in Ethiopia. And then since the world became aware
1:47:47
Speaker 1: of the Ethiopian Bible and texts like First Enoch and
1:47:51
Speaker 1: Jubilees and things like that, because we didn't have the
1:47:53
Speaker 1: whole of First Enoch until we had those Ethiopian manuscripts.
1:47:58
Speaker 2: That's crazy. So they were getting it from an early
1:48:03
Speaker 2: Greek translation. So First Enoch was in the earlier Greek translation. Yes.
1:48:08
Speaker 2: So when did 1 Enoch get removed from the canon?
1:48:12
Speaker 1: So 1 Enoch probably fell out of favor before the
1:48:15
Speaker 1: canon was formalized. Because if the people... bringing the Septuagint
1:48:21
Speaker 1: down to the kingdom of Aksum did so, end of
1:48:25
Speaker 1: 3rd century, beginning of 4th century CE, it seems quite
1:48:30
Speaker 1: likely that 1 Enoch was still considered, if not an
1:48:34
Speaker 1: inspired text, at least an important text. And particularly because
1:48:37
Speaker 1: we have in the letter of Jude in the New Testament,
1:48:40
Speaker 1: this direct quotation introduced by saying, Enoch, the seventh from
1:48:45
Speaker 1: Adam prophesied, saying. So this is something that the author
1:48:49
Speaker 1: of the epistle of Jude recognizes as inspired prophecy. So
1:48:54
Speaker 1: we have scholars arguing over the canonicity, the inspired nature
1:49:00
Speaker 1: of first Enoch. In early Christianity, there's one guy in
1:49:03
Speaker 1: particular named Tertullian, who's toward the end of the second
1:49:05
Speaker 1: century CE, who defends the authenticity and the canonicity of
1:49:11
Speaker 1: 1 Enoch. So this is like 175-ish CE. He writes
1:49:16
Speaker 1: a text called On the Apparel of Women, because, you know,
1:49:20
Speaker 1: he's gonna. And one of the chapters is entirely defending
1:49:25
Speaker 1: the authenticity of 1 Enoch. And because the criticisms were,
1:49:29
Speaker 1: It seems unlikely that this text survived the flood and
1:49:33
Speaker 1: has been faithfully transmitted ever since then. And it seems
1:49:37
Speaker 1: to contradict itself in a variety of places. The stories
1:49:42
Speaker 1: get told over and over in slightly different ways. And
1:49:45
Speaker 1: then also it contradicts a lot of the stuff that
1:49:49
Speaker 1: Christians are finding in the New Testament and in their
1:49:51
Speaker 1: Hebrew Bible. And so it was becoming unpopular in the
1:49:56
Speaker 1: second and into the third century. But by the time
1:49:59
Speaker 1: we get to our Codex Sinaiticus and our Codex Vaticanus
1:50:02
Speaker 1: in the fourth century, in the middle to the late
1:50:05
Speaker 1: fourth century, there's no sign of First Enoch.
1:50:08
Speaker 2: How does First Enoch contradict itself?
1:50:11
Speaker 1: The stories about the angels coming down gets repeated a
1:50:14
Speaker 1: couple different times because it's actually not a single narrative.
1:50:17
Speaker 1: It's a collection of five different books, traditions. You have
1:50:22
Speaker 1: the Book of the Watchers. You have the Parables of Enoch.
1:50:26
Speaker 1: You have The animal apocalypse, which is basically retelling the story,
1:50:31
Speaker 1: but everybody's an animal. So like the star falls from
1:50:35
Speaker 1: heaven and then these other stars come down and then
1:50:39
Speaker 1: they breed and they're cows. And then their offspring are
1:50:45
Speaker 1: a certain color. And these are like different social groups
1:50:48
Speaker 1: that they're supposed to represent. And it's kind of a
1:50:51
Speaker 1: compressed history of Israel being told As if everybody was
1:50:56
Speaker 1: an animal. So, yeah, the vibe is.
1:51:00
Speaker 2: Weird.
1:51:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of a willow vibe when everybody's turning
1:51:05
Speaker 1: into pigs. Like, I get that vibe when I read that.
1:51:10
Speaker 1: So it's a collection of five different stories. And the
1:51:15
Speaker 1: five different stories... And they're not all telling the exact
1:51:18
Speaker 1: same story. But where there is overlap, they don't align perfectly.
1:51:23
Speaker 2: So.
1:51:23
Speaker 1: It is internally inconsistent.
1:51:26
Speaker 2: The Book of the Watchers is one of the weirdest
1:51:28
Speaker 2: things I've ever read. It's like, what were these people
1:51:31
Speaker 2: trying to say? This is my frustration and fascination with
1:51:37
Speaker 2: all this stuff. It's like, what was the original story?
1:51:40
Speaker 2: What were they trying to convey? Are they trying to
1:51:43
Speaker 2: convey a historical moment or are they trying to explain
1:51:48
Speaker 2: something in a way that makes sense Why is the
1:51:51
Speaker 2: sky blue, Dad? You know what I mean? Are they
1:51:55
Speaker 2: coming up with an explanation just to stop questions?
1:51:58
Speaker 1: And I think there's a reason that it pops up
1:52:01
Speaker 1: in the time that it does, because this is where
1:52:04
Speaker 1: we're getting a lot of suffering on the part of
1:52:06
Speaker 1: the people of Israel and Judah, because they've gone through
1:52:09
Speaker 1: the Babylonian exile. They're basically going to be under the
1:52:12
Speaker 1: boot of some larger empire from then on, except for
1:52:15
Speaker 1: a little slice of time later. they're going to be
1:52:20
Speaker 1: subordinate to larger empires that are going to be beating
1:52:22
Speaker 1: up on them. And so this is the time when
1:52:24
Speaker 1: a lot of them are wondering, why is all of
1:52:26
Speaker 1: this going on? Where is our God who loves us
1:52:28
Speaker 1: so much? And this is where the idea of, okay,
1:52:33
Speaker 1: where are we going to see our justice? Where's the
1:52:36
Speaker 1: punishment for the bad people? Where's the reward for the
1:52:38
Speaker 1: good people? That's probably what gives rise to the idea that, oh,
1:52:43
Speaker 1: it's probably in the afterlife where this is going to happen.
1:52:46
Speaker 1: And so we first see concepts of heaven and hell
1:52:49
Speaker 1: in Enoch and in this time period, and they develop
1:52:52
Speaker 1: as we get into the New Testament. And so I
1:52:56
Speaker 1: think it's trying to accomplish a lot of those bigger questions.
1:52:59
Speaker 1: What is the meaning of all this? Why do good
1:53:01
Speaker 1: people suffer? Why are wicked people so successful? And one
1:53:05
Speaker 1: of the things that it's doing is trying to suggest
1:53:07
Speaker 1: that evil was introduced to the world by these wicked
1:53:11
Speaker 1: angels who came down to earth and taught women how
1:53:14
Speaker 1: to put on makeup and, you know, the There's a
1:53:17
Speaker 1: woman involved in whether you like the Adam and Eve
1:53:19
Speaker 1: story or you like the first Enoch story. For some reason,
1:53:24
Speaker 1: they like to blame women. Yeah, it was written by men.
1:53:26
Speaker 1: That's a big part of it.
1:53:27
Speaker 2: Probably the root of it. It's so complicated to try
1:53:37
Speaker 2: to figure out what they were trying to do. when
1:53:42
Speaker 2: they were explaining certain concepts. And there's certain things that
1:53:46
Speaker 2: get explained today that aren't necessarily really in the Bible.
1:53:51
Speaker 2: So the concept of hell, let's get into that. Because
1:53:55
Speaker 2: when is that? So it's first introduced in Enoch?
1:53:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's the first time we get something
1:54:01
Speaker 1: like that. I think you get inklings of it at
1:54:03
Speaker 1: the very end, like the very last verse of the
1:54:07
Speaker 1: book of Isaiah. And maybe in Daniel 12.
1:54:10
Speaker 2: Inklings.
1:54:12
Speaker 1: Inklings, yeah. So the passage ends by talking about a
1:54:18
Speaker 1: flame that doesn't go out and a worm that never dies.
1:54:23
Speaker 1: And this is what scholars would suggest is that the
1:54:27
Speaker 1: idea here is it's talking about some place where the
1:54:31
Speaker 1: wicked are going. And the idea is the fire is
1:54:36
Speaker 1: never going out because there's always more fuel to add
1:54:39
Speaker 1: to it because more People are going into it. And
1:54:42
Speaker 1: the worm never dies because it always has more food
1:54:45
Speaker 1: being thrown into it. And that gets reinterpreted later on
1:54:50
Speaker 1: as the fire is eternal and the punishment is eternal.
1:54:55
Speaker 1: It probably wasn't intended to say that. But these are,
1:54:59
Speaker 1: and then we have in Daniel 12, a notion of
1:55:02
Speaker 1: the wicked being punished.
1:55:03
Speaker 2: How is this described in ancient Hebrew versus the English translations?
1:55:09
Speaker 1: It's pretty straightforward. It's not incredibly different.
1:55:13
Speaker 2: Is there something potentially that could have been lost in
1:55:15
Speaker 2: the translation?
1:55:17
Speaker 1: Probably not. I think we've got a lot of different
1:55:20
Speaker 1: translations of Isaiah and a lot of different scholars have
1:55:22
Speaker 1: done a lot of good work. And there's not really
1:55:25
Speaker 1: much that's going to be much different. But also we
1:55:28
Speaker 1: have that idea that is repeated a few times in
1:55:31
Speaker 1: the New Testament where they're referring to Gehenna. as the
1:55:35
Speaker 1: place where the fire doesn't die and the worm doesn't,
1:55:37
Speaker 1: or the fire never goes out and the worm doesn't die.
1:55:40
Speaker 1: And so whoever wrote the New Testament passages in that
1:55:44
Speaker 1: time period, they understood it in pretty much the same
1:55:47
Speaker 1: way we understand it now.
1:55:49
Speaker 2: One of the most disturbing ideas that a lot of
1:55:52
Speaker 2: secular people have is this notion that Christians like to
1:55:55
Speaker 2: project that if you do not follow Jesus, you're going
1:55:57
Speaker 2: to burn in hell forever, no matter how good of
1:56:00
Speaker 2: a person you are.
1:56:00
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:56:01
Speaker 2: Where's that come from?
1:56:03
Speaker 1: Uh, not it's, that's not something that's ever stated anywhere
1:56:06
Speaker 1: in the Bible. That is an interpretation. Yeah. Because when we,
1:56:11
Speaker 1: just like, just like first Enoch, it's a collection of
1:56:13
Speaker 1: five different books. If you look back on it and
1:56:15
Speaker 1: you say, this all has to mean the same thing,
1:56:18
Speaker 1: you basically have to create a new sixth narrative that
1:56:22
Speaker 1: harmonizes it all, that makes it all fit. And that's
1:56:25
Speaker 1: what we did with the new Testament. Once we got
1:56:27
Speaker 1: it all together, we decided this is all inspired. It
1:56:31
Speaker 1: all has to mean the same thing. More or less.
1:56:33
Speaker 1: They weren't as strict about it as we are today
1:56:35
Speaker 1: about it. But that means you have to create ways
1:56:39
Speaker 1: to harmonize problematic passages. You have to come up with
1:56:42
Speaker 1: a way to interpret two passages that conflict in a
1:56:45
Speaker 1: way that allows them to not conflict anymore. And so
1:56:48
Speaker 1: you're generating a kind of second order story. And that
1:56:52
Speaker 1: is what is authoritative. It's not the text itself that's authoritative.
1:56:56
Speaker 1: It's the interpretation that is authoritative. The interpretation that allows
1:57:00
Speaker 1: the text to all be consistent. And the word I
1:57:03
Speaker 1: use is univocal. It speaks with one single consistent unified
1:57:07
Speaker 1: voice from one single unified and consistent perspective. So when
1:57:11
Speaker 1: we get to hell in the New Testament, scholars suggest
1:57:14
Speaker 1: there are three different ideas about post-mortem divine punishment that
1:57:19
Speaker 1: seem to be represented there. One is annihilation, that the
1:57:22
Speaker 1: wicked just cease to exist. One is temporary conscious torment
1:57:27
Speaker 1: followed by either salvation or annihilation. So you go somewhere
1:57:32
Speaker 1: you're punished for a little bit, and then you cease
1:57:34
Speaker 1: to exist, or you go somewhere, you're punished for a
1:57:36
Speaker 1: little bit, you've paid your price, you now go on
1:57:37
Speaker 1: to salvation. And then the third idea is eternal conscious torment,
1:57:41
Speaker 1: which is where you are tortured forever. Now, in my opinion,
1:57:46
Speaker 1: and there are scholars who have done a lot more
1:57:48
Speaker 1: work on the development of the concept of hell than
1:57:51
Speaker 1: I have. Candida Moss is a wonderful example. But in
1:57:54
Speaker 1: my opinion, hell originally developed as a way to feel
1:57:58
Speaker 1: good about the fact that these these huge empires and
1:58:02
Speaker 1: these wicked emperors, they're going to get theirs. So I
1:58:05
Speaker 1: think that hell probably initially developed as a way to
1:58:10
Speaker 1: feel like God's justice is going to have its day
1:58:14
Speaker 1: on the truly wicked people of the world. But the
1:58:18
Speaker 1: distance between your average Judean and hell probably got smaller
1:58:24
Speaker 1: and smaller over time because the threat of hell was
1:58:28
Speaker 1: became a useful stick in the hands of people who
1:58:32
Speaker 1: wanted to influence behavior. And so by the time we
1:58:36
Speaker 1: get to Augustine in the fourth, fifth century CE, and
1:58:40
Speaker 1: Christianity is trying to nail down its doctrines, I think
1:58:45
Speaker 1: we probably get to the point where everybody is under
1:58:49
Speaker 1: threat of going to hell, unless you do the thing.
1:58:51
Speaker 1: Because originally it probably wasn't, you have to do the
1:58:53
Speaker 1: thing or you go to hell. Originally it was, we're
1:58:56
Speaker 1: good over here, The wicked people over there who are
1:58:59
Speaker 1: beating up on us, they're going to go to hell.
1:59:02
Speaker 1: We're going to be saved. And then it became everybody's
1:59:07
Speaker 1: potentially going to hell unless you do the thing. So
1:59:10
Speaker 1: I think the gap closed over time. I think in
1:59:14
Speaker 1: the New Testament, you have inconsistent ideas about what postmortem
1:59:17
Speaker 1: divine punishment is going to be like. And I think
1:59:19
Speaker 1: it becomes formalized and systematized by the Christian church. excuse me,
1:59:25
Speaker 1: by the Christian church in the centuries after the completion
1:59:29
Speaker 1: of the New Testament.
1:59:30
Speaker 2: And that also tracks with human ideology and, you know,
1:59:34
Speaker 2: what we know about people today, moving goalposts.
1:59:36
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. Because something I'm fond
1:59:40
Speaker 1: of saying is that the, what is authoritative changes. It
1:59:45
Speaker 1: always changes based on our reception of the received tradition,
1:59:50
Speaker 1: which we then have to negotiate with in light of
1:59:54
Speaker 1: our social, historical, rhetorical circumstances and what we want for
1:59:59
Speaker 1: the future. And so there are, you know, hard-won and
2:00:06
Speaker 1: really deeply held beliefs that people will abandon in a
2:00:10
Speaker 1: moment if their circumstances change enough to incentivize them to
2:00:16
Speaker 1: abandon those beliefs. And as groups pass through time and
2:00:21
Speaker 1: their circumstances changes and their needs change, They're constantly renegotiating
2:00:26
Speaker 1: their tradition. And yeah, and that results in things like
2:00:30
Speaker 1: everybody's under threat of hell and, oh, Jesus is the
2:00:33
Speaker 1: only way. Therefore, you have to follow Jesus or you're
2:00:37
Speaker 1: going to hell. And I think that's a post-biblical thing.
2:00:42
Speaker 1: Certainly some folks who wrote the New Testament, I'm sure
2:00:46
Speaker 1: that if they were asked that, they would have been like, yeah,
2:00:49
Speaker 1: I would agree with that. But it's not something that's
2:00:51
Speaker 1: ever stated anywhere in the New Testament, at least not
2:00:55
Speaker 1: in those words. I think it's something that we have
2:00:57
Speaker 1: to read into the text afterwards.
2:01:00
Speaker 2: Well, it's very disturbing to people today. It doesn't even
2:01:02
Speaker 2: make sense. Because the idea that secular people can't be
2:01:05
Speaker 2: good people seems absurd.
2:01:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm kind of... The fact that there are an
2:01:10
Speaker 1: awful lot of folks within Christianity who are trying to
2:01:13
Speaker 1: draw a harder line between the believers and the non-believers.
2:01:17
Speaker 2: Including biblical scholars, which is really weird. It's really weird
2:01:21
Speaker 2: when you study it, but yet you find things to
2:01:26
Speaker 2: sort of reinforce your beliefs instead of being objective about
2:01:31
Speaker 2: the interpretations and how complex this all is.
2:01:34
Speaker 1: Well, and it's phenomenally difficult to be objective because we
2:01:39
Speaker 1: are experiencing the world. We're not experiencing it directly in
2:01:43
Speaker 1: an unmediated way. Our intuitive cognition is governing everything. And
2:01:49
Speaker 1: so— When we're reading a text that's supposed to be
2:01:51
Speaker 1: important to our in-group, the set of identities that are mine,
2:01:57
Speaker 1: it's phenomenally difficult to read it in a way that crosses,
2:02:01
Speaker 1: goes against the grain of what our groups tell us.
2:02:05
Speaker 1: In fact, I wonder if I can illustrate how our
2:02:08
Speaker 1: intuitive cognition is governing everything. Could you pull up an image?
2:02:14
Speaker 1: Could you Google corn sweet illusion? So it's one word,
2:02:18
Speaker 1: corn sweet.
2:02:20
Speaker 2: Sweet, like candy?
2:02:22
Speaker 1: S-W-E-E-T, yeah. And this is an illusion I use a
2:02:27
Speaker 1: lot because it's going to demonstrate that there's somebody at
2:02:32
Speaker 1: the controls that we don't know about and that we
2:02:34
Speaker 1: can't control. Okay, that one right there. So it looks
2:02:38
Speaker 1: like a dark object on top of a light object.
2:02:40
Speaker 2: Right.
2:02:41
Speaker 1: But if you use your hand, cover up the shadows
2:02:44
Speaker 1: and the highlight in the middle and... Keep it in
2:02:48
Speaker 1: the center? Oh, I was trying to... Yeah, like just...
2:02:50
Speaker 1: If you just hold up your hand and cover up
2:02:52
Speaker 1: the shadows and the highlight.
2:02:53
Speaker 2: Oh, that's crazy.
2:02:54
Speaker 1: They're the exact same shade of gray.
2:02:56
Speaker 2: That is fucking nuts.
2:02:59
Speaker 1: And so what's going on.
2:02:59
Speaker 2: That's the weirdest thing I've ever seen in my life. That's... Jamie,
2:03:03
Speaker 2: try it. I've seen.
2:03:04
Speaker 1: I know... Yeah, I've done this before.
2:03:06
Speaker 2: That's literally crazy, though.
2:03:08
Speaker 1: And we know why this happens.
2:03:10
Speaker 2: Why?
2:03:10
Speaker 1: It happens because your mind thinks it's looking at an
2:03:13
Speaker 1: object in space. And objects in space, as we know
2:03:16
Speaker 1: from a whole lifetime of experience, when they're in the sun,
2:03:20
Speaker 1: they're lighter. And when they're in the shade, they're darker.
2:03:23
Speaker 1: And so this is toying with us by making them
2:03:26
Speaker 1: the exact same shade of gray. So the part of
2:03:29
Speaker 1: our brain that is in charge of how we perceive
2:03:31
Speaker 1: things is saying this does not compute. Okay, I'm just
2:03:36
Speaker 1: going to make it look like.
2:03:37
Speaker 2: Just keep it big, please.
2:03:39
Speaker 1: Okay. Trying to.
2:03:40
Speaker 2: That is so insane. If you go halfway through, it
2:03:43
Speaker 2: starts to change. Like if you put your finger over it,
2:03:47
Speaker 2: just a little bit of it, it stays white and dark.
2:03:50
Speaker 2: And then as you move it across, you can see
2:03:53
Speaker 2: it change.
2:03:54
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of people for whom it's
2:03:56
Speaker 1: slightly different. It depends on your experiences. But basically, you
2:04:01
Speaker 1: have someone rifling through the mail of your senses.
2:04:05
Speaker 2: Someone?
2:04:06
Speaker 1: Well, our intuitive cognition, our mind. And this mind is saying,
2:04:11
Speaker 1: this does not match what I expect, so I'm changing
2:04:13
Speaker 1: what you're going to experience. So this is true of
2:04:17
Speaker 1: all of our senses. There's a fascinating story. There's a neuroscientist, V.S. Ramachandran.
2:04:26
Speaker 1: He's written some wonderful books. One of them is called
2:04:28
Speaker 1: The Phantoms in the Brain. The other is called The
2:04:30
Speaker 1: Telltale Brain. But he shares this story about when he
2:04:34
Speaker 1: was working with people who had phantom limb pain. And
2:04:38
Speaker 1: there's a particular type of phantom limb pain for folks
2:04:41
Speaker 1: who are missing the bottom part of their arm, where
2:04:45
Speaker 1: they would report feeling like their fist was clenched so
2:04:48
Speaker 1: tightly that their fingernails were digging through the flesh of
2:04:51
Speaker 1: their palm. And it was just excruciating pain, but there
2:04:54
Speaker 1: was nothing there. And he devised an instrument to try
2:04:59
Speaker 1: to treat this. He got a box and cut some
2:05:02
Speaker 1: holes in the box and put a mirror inside. So
2:05:05
Speaker 1: that when the person put their existing hand in one
2:05:08
Speaker 1: hole and then their absent hand in the other, they
2:05:11
Speaker 1: would look at the mirror and they would see two hands.
2:05:14
Speaker 1: And then he would say, clench your fist. And they
2:05:17
Speaker 1: would see two fists clench. And then he'd say, release
2:05:21
Speaker 1: your fist. And then the pain would go away for
2:05:24
Speaker 1: some people.
2:05:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've heard of this.
2:05:26
Speaker 1: And the idea there is that, yeah, your brain is
2:05:30
Speaker 1: creating that pain because of something not going right. And
2:05:34
Speaker 1: even though you know you're fooling your brain, you're tricking
2:05:38
Speaker 1: your senses into believing that your phantom limb that is
2:05:42
Speaker 1: in so much pain is actually now releasing that fist.
2:05:48
Speaker 1: And there's just so much about the way the brain
2:05:49
Speaker 1: works that shows we are not experiencing the world in
2:05:54
Speaker 1: an unmediated way. Evolution has given us lenses that... That
2:05:59
Speaker 1: help us experience it in a way that is going
2:06:02
Speaker 1: to make it more likely for us to live long
2:06:03
Speaker 1: enough to pass on our genes. But also a big
2:06:06
Speaker 1: part of that is survival within a society. And so
2:06:09
Speaker 1: our identity politics are also a big part of how
2:06:13
Speaker 1: we not only experience the world but think about things
2:06:16
Speaker 1: and particularly things like values and things like that. So
2:06:19
Speaker 1: there's a wonderful book by a guy named Jonathan Haidt. called,
2:06:23
Speaker 1: have you heard of, okay.
2:06:25
Speaker 2: Yeah.
2:06:25
Speaker 1: He, so you probably talked about his book, the righteous
2:06:28
Speaker 1: mind at some point. Yeah. And he talks quite a
2:06:30
Speaker 1: bit about that. He uses a metaphor of an elephant
2:06:33
Speaker 1: and a rider where you have this quick kind of intuitive, uh,
2:06:38
Speaker 1: mind that we're not in control of. And then you
2:06:41
Speaker 1: have the, or the quick intuitive one is, um, it's
2:06:45
Speaker 1: been a while since I've read his metaphor, but his
2:06:46
Speaker 1: particular metaphor, um, distinguishes our intuitive cognition, which we don't
2:06:52
Speaker 1: really have control over, and usually we're not even aware
2:06:54
Speaker 1: it's happening, and our conscious, what we call reflective cognition,
2:06:58
Speaker 1: which is where we're reasoning, and frequently our intuitive cognition
2:07:02
Speaker 1: kind of influences our reflective reasoning. So that if we
2:07:06
Speaker 1: like something, if we like a political candidate, if we
2:07:09
Speaker 1: like a particular interpretation of the Bible because that serves
2:07:12
Speaker 1: our interests within the communities that are important to us,
2:07:14
Speaker 1: we're going to be loathe to accept that a different
2:07:18
Speaker 1: interpretation that complicates things for us. And that's, that's our
2:07:22
Speaker 1: intuitive cognition trying to protect us socially. And it causes
2:07:26
Speaker 1: all kinds of problems and everybody has it. Nobody's immune.
2:07:30
Speaker 2: Well, I think a good example of that is this
2:07:33
Speaker 2: Lindsay Clancy thing. Yeah. This woman who killed her kids. Yeah.
2:07:38
Speaker 2: That there's people that sympathize with her and want to
2:07:43
Speaker 2: visit her at the courthouse and say she didn't get
2:07:45
Speaker 2: enough care and they were, They're wearing the pink t-shirts
2:07:49
Speaker 2: and then there's people that think she's a monster and
2:07:51
Speaker 2: she should be killed.
2:07:52
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:07:54
Speaker 2: And the people that believe that that one juror was
2:07:57
Speaker 2: wrong in not releasing her or not convicting her by
2:08:02
Speaker 2: reasons of insanity, that those people are so firmly entrenched
2:08:08
Speaker 2: in this ideology that they are incapable of seeing other
2:08:11
Speaker 2: people's positions.
2:08:12
Speaker 1: And this is one of the reasons that We try
2:08:14
Speaker 1: so hard to ensure that when we put people on
2:08:17
Speaker 1: a jury that they're not already deeply entrenched in one
2:08:20
Speaker 1: side or another because they then become so impossible to
2:08:25
Speaker 1: convince of whatever may or may not be the truth. So, yeah,
2:08:30
Speaker 1: it is problematic. But we all experience the world in
2:08:32
Speaker 1: different ways. And nobody is in charge of how we
2:08:35
Speaker 1: experience the world.
2:08:36
Speaker 2: Right. And there's no way you could really truly understand
2:08:39
Speaker 2: how another person is seeing the world.
2:08:40
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:08:41
Speaker 2: You're guessing. I'm guessing you see the world the way
2:08:44
Speaker 2: I do.
2:08:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's a common assumption, that I experience it
2:08:47
Speaker 1: a certain way, therefore everybody else is going to experience
2:08:50
Speaker 1: it a certain way.
2:08:50
Speaker 2: And an arrogance that people love to pursue, that you
2:08:53
Speaker 2: should experience the world the way I do.
2:08:55
Speaker 1: And that's where a lot of projection comes in. That's
2:08:58
Speaker 1: where we draw conclusions about somebody else's motivations because it
2:09:02
Speaker 1: might be our motivations. Of course. And sometimes— Yeah, that
2:09:07
Speaker 1: causes an awful lot of problems. And again, nobody's immune
2:09:10
Speaker 1: to it. We all are susceptible to our intuitive cognition
2:09:14
Speaker 1: and we just have to try to, at least what
2:09:16
Speaker 1: I try to do is become aware of when it's
2:09:20
Speaker 1: led me wrong and then try to correct for that.
2:09:22
Speaker 1: You can only be fixing it looking back. You can't really,
2:09:25
Speaker 1: like the illusion, you can't turn that off. You can't say,
2:09:28
Speaker 1: I'm now going to stop seeing.
2:09:30
Speaker 2: It that way.
2:09:30
Speaker 1: It doesn't work like that.
2:09:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can make attempts, but then you have to
2:09:33
Speaker 2: also make sure that you don't defend faulty thinking. And
2:09:39
Speaker 2: that's a thing that people love to do. They love
2:09:42
Speaker 2: to go back and, no, no, no, and come up
2:09:44
Speaker 2: with some reason why.
2:09:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. In cognitive science, there are two ways that
2:09:49
Speaker 1: we refer to what happens when our intuitive cognition conflicts
2:09:54
Speaker 1: with our reflective cognition. You've got decoupling, which is where
2:09:57
Speaker 1: your reflective cognition overrules the intuitive. So if you're asleep
2:10:02
Speaker 1: at night and you hear a bang, And then you realize, okay,
2:10:06
Speaker 1: that's probably just the furnace kicking on or something like that.
2:10:09
Speaker 1: That's your reflective cognition saying, go back to bed, intuitive cognition.
2:10:13
Speaker 1: And then the other is rationalization. And that's where you
2:10:16
Speaker 1: use your reflective cognition to try to defend and rationalize
2:10:20
Speaker 1: the intuitive cognition, even though it may be entirely wrong.
2:10:24
Speaker 2: Which is something we really should have all been taught
2:10:26
Speaker 2: in school.
2:10:26
Speaker 1: Yeah. They're still doing so much research on it. It
2:10:30
Speaker 1: changes so much that.
2:10:32
Speaker 2: Uh, that yeah, every, every, at least the concepts of
2:10:34
Speaker 2: understanding why you form decisions and why you have, why
2:10:39
Speaker 2: we're so, um, vulnerable to falling into the smooth grooves
2:10:44
Speaker 2: of ideology.
2:10:46
Speaker 1: And, and I think one of the big problems is
2:10:47
Speaker 1: frequently ideology is what put people who make those decisions
2:10:51
Speaker 1: where they are.
2:10:52
Speaker 2: Yes. Yes. And then again, when we talked about before
2:10:55
Speaker 2: charisma and confidence and, Your decisions, when most people don't,
2:10:59
Speaker 2: have confidence in their version of the world. It's so chaotic.
2:11:04
Speaker 2: You are a religious man. I am. So I find
2:11:08
Speaker 2: that interesting because you study all this stuff and you're
2:11:13
Speaker 2: trying to get to the root of it all. What
2:11:15
Speaker 2: is your version of this?
2:11:18
Speaker 1: My version of this is kind of like what Russell
2:11:21
Speaker 1: Crowe says in Gladiator. That's for me and my wife. No,
2:11:27
Speaker 1: I don't talk publicly about my own personal faith just
2:11:30
Speaker 1: because I try to keep it compartmentalized from what I'm
2:11:33
Speaker 1: doing professionally and online so that I can keep the
2:11:37
Speaker 1: main thing the main thing because an awful lot of
2:11:40
Speaker 1: people just want to tear into... whatever it is going
2:11:43
Speaker 1: on in here that allows me to share these things
2:11:47
Speaker 1: while actively practicing.
2:11:49
Speaker 2: Oh, for sure. They want to dismiss you.
2:11:51
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so I've said from the very beginning, that's
2:11:54
Speaker 1: off limits. I just don't talk about that. And in
2:11:57
Speaker 1: no small part, because I do believe that it is,
2:12:00
Speaker 1: as Jesus in the New Testament says, when you pray,
2:12:04
Speaker 1: go into your closet and pray in secret and your
2:12:06
Speaker 1: father will reward you openly. And don't pray as the
2:12:09
Speaker 1: hypocrites who... are on the street corner to be seen
2:12:13
Speaker 1: of men because they have their reward. And the more
2:12:16
Speaker 1: I study religion and how it functions and the fact
2:12:19
Speaker 1: that those costly signals are such an important elements of
2:12:25
Speaker 1: lived religion, the less I want to be involved in
2:12:30
Speaker 1: going out there and shouting on the street corner about
2:12:33
Speaker 1: my faith. So I've kind of leaned into, I'm keeping
2:12:37
Speaker 1: this for me because I think it makes it, It
2:12:39
Speaker 1: makes me more effective as a scholar who is trying
2:12:43
Speaker 1: to communicate publicly about religion. And it also has become
2:12:47
Speaker 1: a more meaningful way for me to live it privately
2:12:50
Speaker 1: where I could be out in public influencing a lot
2:12:54
Speaker 1: of things religiously. And I think that would be an
2:12:58
Speaker 1: abuse of the platform that I'm trying to build here.
2:13:03
Speaker 2: That's a very admirable position. In my perspective.
2:13:06
Speaker 1: I am glad I've made it sound that way.
2:13:08
Speaker 2: No, I think– I do. I think it's very admirable
2:13:11
Speaker 2: because I have a real problem with the proselytizing. And
2:13:16
Speaker 2: not just that, but the real issue is the hypocritical
2:13:19
Speaker 2: nature of a lot of the humans that are involved
2:13:23
Speaker 2: in promoting whatever their version or projecting in a very
2:13:27
Speaker 2: performative way whatever their version of– whatever religion it is,
2:13:33
Speaker 2: you know, that they wear it like a shield of virtue.
2:13:36
Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's really when we get into the New Testament,
2:13:40
Speaker 1: that's precisely what Jesus was criticizing. And it goes, there's
2:13:45
Speaker 1: a concept called the prophetic critique that we find in
2:13:49
Speaker 1: some of the prophetic literature in the Hebrew Bible that's
2:13:52
Speaker 1: kind of picked up again in the New Testament. And
2:13:54
Speaker 1: while there are definitely problems with the authors who are
2:13:59
Speaker 1: responsible for spreading this because they are somewhat hypocritical themselves.
2:14:03
Speaker 1: I think the message is an interesting one because the
2:14:06
Speaker 1: prophetic critique is basically God saying, I hate your worship.
2:14:09
Speaker 1: I hate your new moons and your Sabbaths, and I
2:14:12
Speaker 1: don't delight in the blood of bulls, and I will
2:14:14
Speaker 1: have mercy and not sacrifice. And that's what gets quoted
2:14:18
Speaker 1: twice in Matthew. And there's a whole series of passages
2:14:22
Speaker 1: from Isaiah and from Micah and from Amos and from
2:14:25
Speaker 1: elsewhere where it sounds like God is saying, I hate
2:14:28
Speaker 1: all the stuff I commanded you to do. And so
2:14:31
Speaker 1: scholars for a while have been like, why would God
2:14:33
Speaker 1: hate the rituals that God commanded? And I think the
2:14:37
Speaker 1: best answer to that is that what they then go
2:14:40
Speaker 1: on to say is, I want justice and I want
2:14:42
Speaker 1: mercy and I want righteousness. And what seems to be
2:14:48
Speaker 1: in the crosshairs is people who go out and put
2:14:53
Speaker 1: on display their piety, so that they can benefit from
2:14:57
Speaker 1: publicly being pious. But then behind everybody's back, in secret,
2:15:03
Speaker 1: they're actually undermining what their religion demands of them, whether
2:15:06
Speaker 1: that be kindness to the immigrants or supporting the poor
2:15:11
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. And in the Hebrew Bible, you
2:15:14
Speaker 1: have talk about grinding the faces of the poor and
2:15:17
Speaker 1: you multiply your houses, which is talking about land consolidation,
2:15:20
Speaker 1: basically exploiting poor people and stealing their land and And
2:15:23
Speaker 1: all kinds of different ways that they exploit the economic
2:15:25
Speaker 1: system and the justice system and all this stuff. And
2:15:27
Speaker 1: then they go offer sacrifices to show everybody that they're
2:15:31
Speaker 1: following God. And Jesus says, one of the things that
2:15:35
Speaker 1: Jesus says that I think kind of puts on display
2:15:38
Speaker 1: what's going on here is he accuses some people of
2:15:42
Speaker 1: tithing mint and dill and then says, but you neglect
2:15:45
Speaker 1: the weightier matters of the law. And he says you
2:15:48
Speaker 1: should be doing both. And the weightier matters of the
2:15:50
Speaker 1: law are mercy, justice, righteousness, basically ensuring that we live
2:15:54
Speaker 1: in a righteous society where people are not killed, are
2:15:59
Speaker 1: not underprivileged, are not facing additional obstacles only because of
2:16:05
Speaker 1: the circumstances that they were born into. And this is
2:16:10
Speaker 1: a negotiation with the text as well. Like I'm kind
2:16:14
Speaker 1: of interpreting all these passages for you, but I think
2:16:17
Speaker 1: the idea there is— Don't practice your religion in public
2:16:22
Speaker 1: to serve your own benefit, your own needs, while then
2:16:25
Speaker 1: going around screwing over all the people around you when
2:16:28
Speaker 1: your religion actually expects you to be taking care of
2:16:32
Speaker 1: them as well. In fact, if Jesus is right, those
2:16:36
Speaker 1: are the weightier matters. That's more important. You should be
2:16:38
Speaker 1: concerned more about what's going on with the people around
2:16:40
Speaker 1: you than with getting more clicks, more views, more money,
2:16:47
Speaker 1: more power, more influence. From going out and publicly saying
2:16:51
Speaker 1: the right thing or doing the right ritual or whatever.
2:16:57
Speaker 2: Which is one of the weirdest aspects of us being
2:17:00
Speaker 2: supposedly a Christian nation but not developing any of our
2:17:05
Speaker 2: inner cities, not taking care of any of these areas
2:17:09
Speaker 2: that we've had in this country that have been crime-ridden
2:17:12
Speaker 2: and impoverished for decade upon decade and give it no attention.
2:17:17
Speaker 1: And we kind of designed the inner cities specifically to
2:17:20
Speaker 1: trap certain people in them.
2:17:22
Speaker 2: Redlining.
2:17:23
Speaker 1: And then we now are saying, well, you got there yourself.
2:17:27
Speaker 1: You deal with it. We're not going to. And redlining
2:17:29
Speaker 1: continues to this day. There are lawsuits active right now
2:17:32
Speaker 1: related to redlining. So, yeah, I think a lot of
2:17:34
Speaker 1: people want to ignore that there are systems in play
2:17:37
Speaker 1: that benefit certain people and that don't benefit other folks.
2:17:41
Speaker 1: And the folks who benefit from these systems are like, oh,
2:17:43
Speaker 1: I don't see no systems. We're all just individuals here,
2:17:47
Speaker 1: and I don't harbor any hate in my heart, but
2:17:49
Speaker 1: I'm not changing the world. that system.
2:17:51
Speaker 2: Right.
2:17:51
Speaker 1: Right.
2:17:52
Speaker 2: And the idea of a meritocracy. Meritocracy would be great
2:17:54
Speaker 2: if everybody started the same starting line.
2:17:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
2:17:57
Speaker 2: But to take into consideration the fact that there's people
2:18:02
Speaker 2: in our country. Forget about let's fix the rest of
2:18:04
Speaker 2: the world. We haven't even started in our country. Right.
2:18:08
Speaker 2: To take care of these areas.
2:18:09
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know how much you travel internationally.
2:18:13
Speaker 2: A little bit.
2:18:14
Speaker 1: A little bit. I frequently will go someplace new and
2:18:18
Speaker 1: come back like, wow, they do this thing so well
2:18:20
Speaker 1: over there. Like what? And I wish I could. Right now,
2:18:23
Speaker 1: my big thing is walkability. Like go into a village
2:18:27
Speaker 1: in the English countryside or something like that where, or
2:18:31
Speaker 1: even some of their cities, some of their bigger cities,
2:18:34
Speaker 1: you can walk around. Like the place is not set
2:18:38
Speaker 1: up for cars. Oh, yeah, we also better put a
2:18:41
Speaker 1: sidewalk in there. They're designed around people walking, riding bikes.
2:18:46
Speaker 2: Well, it's probably a lot older.
2:18:47
Speaker 1: It's a lot older. And we have some old places
2:18:49
Speaker 1: in the U.S. that are very much like that. But
2:18:52
Speaker 1: more and more, our new cities that are popping up,
2:18:58
Speaker 1: they're not designed for people to walk around in. They're
2:19:00
Speaker 1: designed for people to drive around in. And if you're walking,
2:19:03
Speaker 1: you've got to be careful because you're going to get
2:19:04
Speaker 1: hit by a car. Or, you know, or you've got a.
2:19:07
Speaker 2: Well, Los Angeles is the best example of that. Los
2:19:10
Speaker 2: Angeles is really hard to walk in.
2:19:12
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's not a walking city.
2:19:15
Speaker 2: New York City is very much a walking city, which
2:19:17
Speaker 2: is really crazy because it's more congested.
2:19:19
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:19:20
Speaker 2: More compressed, I should say. More people in a smaller area,
2:19:23
Speaker 2: but yet much easier to get around walking. Yeah.
2:19:26
Speaker 1: And when I lived in, I lived just outside of
2:19:30
Speaker 1: Oxford when I was going to school there. Walking around
2:19:32
Speaker 1: that city is a completely different experience from any place
2:19:36
Speaker 1: I've been in the U.S., which is why I think
2:19:38
Speaker 1: they designed Yale after it to try to mimic that.
2:19:42
Speaker 1: But that's just one example of I'll come back from
2:19:46
Speaker 1: somewhere and be like, man, I wish we could do
2:19:48
Speaker 1: this here. And there are so many things I think
2:19:51
Speaker 1: we could do here. We have the capacity to do here.
2:19:54
Speaker 1: We just don't have the desire. Right. Because they get
2:19:57
Speaker 1: too caught up in the wrangling over power.
2:20:00
Speaker 2: Well, not only that, they're allocating so much money to
2:20:03
Speaker 2: other things. The idea of saying like, well, let's cut
2:20:06
Speaker 2: the Pentagon's budget, but let's dump all this money into
2:20:09
Speaker 2: Detroit and Baltimore and fill in the blank, whether impoverished
2:20:13
Speaker 2: city you have and have a systematic sort of a
2:20:19
Speaker 2: plan from A to B of how we are going
2:20:23
Speaker 2: to change the economic outcomes of all the people that
2:20:25
Speaker 2: live there, how we're going to improve the education, stop
2:20:28
Speaker 2: the crime, what we're going to do to provide More opportunities,
2:20:32
Speaker 2: more safety. Like what are we going to do?
2:20:34
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think so many of the debates are really
2:20:37
Speaker 1: over symptoms. And really we need to be treating the
2:20:41
Speaker 1: root cause. And that is– That's a great way to
2:20:43
Speaker 1: put it. And that is systemic. That is something that
2:20:46
Speaker 1: we got to– But I'm not a politician. No. Or
2:20:48
Speaker 1: a city planner.
2:20:50
Speaker 2: I'm not either. One of those either. Yeah.
2:20:52
Speaker 1: It's probably a good thing.
2:20:54
Speaker 2: Yeah. Thank God. It's very complicated though. I mean– And
2:20:57
Speaker 2: it's just– it's weird how we, you know, we consider
2:21:03
Speaker 2: ourselves a Christian nation, but we don't do those things.
2:21:06
Speaker 2: And that no one never holds you to task for that.
2:21:09
Speaker 2: No one's never, never says that. Like that's never a
2:21:11
Speaker 2: talking point for someone running for election saying there's an
2:21:15
Speaker 2: issue that we can take care of in this country
2:21:17
Speaker 2: that will radically transform the, what this entire society looks
2:21:23
Speaker 2: like in a hundred years, like for the better. And
2:21:26
Speaker 2: my perspective has always been, if you want to make
2:21:28
Speaker 2: America great, Again, what's the best way? Well, less losers.
2:21:33
Speaker 2: So what's the best way to have less losers? Have
2:21:36
Speaker 2: more people have more opportunities, more education and more safety.
2:21:40
Speaker 2: So then you would automatically have more people succeed, more
2:21:44
Speaker 2: people contribute. Who knows how many more inventions, more innovation,
2:21:48
Speaker 2: more ideas, more art, more fill in the blank.
2:21:51
Speaker 1: I think I sometimes wonder how many Isaac Newtons or
2:21:56
Speaker 1: Thomas Edison's lived and died in poverty and in inner
2:22:00
Speaker 1: city somewhere because they were never given the opportunity to go, uh,
2:22:05
Speaker 1: gain the resources and the access to, uh, to the
2:22:08
Speaker 1: resources that they needed to, to flourish. And it is
2:22:12
Speaker 1: because we, yeah, it's a big problem that, um, unfortunately we,
2:22:18
Speaker 1: what is the, uh, there was a saying that, uh,
2:22:21
Speaker 1: that I thought was apropos there and I completely forget it.
2:22:24
Speaker 1: So that's, or I completely forgot it. So that's not helpful.
2:22:27
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is a problem I think a lot
2:22:29
Speaker 1: of people recognize. But unfortunately, when it comes to actually
2:22:33
Speaker 1: trying to do something about it, we have to get back.
2:22:35
Speaker 1: We have to get past the problem of the people
2:22:39
Speaker 1: in power are really there to be in power more
2:22:42
Speaker 1: commonly than they're there to fix problems.
2:22:43
Speaker 2: And their motivation is to keep us at each other's throats.
2:22:46
Speaker 2: And they would like us to keep arguing and fighting
2:22:48
Speaker 2: with each other and to keep looking at each other
2:22:50
Speaker 2: as the other. So that they don't have to change
2:22:53
Speaker 2: anything really and just offer these fake solutions. And then
2:22:55
Speaker 2: when they get in the office, they don't do anything
2:22:57
Speaker 2: to change it. Yeah. Fun. But in the meanwhile, there's
2:23:02
Speaker 2: your YouTube channel. There's plenty of things that are interesting
2:23:07
Speaker 2: and beautiful in the world today. And I think it's,
2:23:10
Speaker 2: you know, I was just talking about this yesterday. I'm
2:23:12
Speaker 2: reading this Alan Watts book from 1952. And it's so
2:23:19
Speaker 2: interesting because he's talking about the age of anxiety in 1952.
2:23:23
Speaker 2: About how much things are changing. How much the world
2:23:27
Speaker 2: is changing. And it sounds like he's talking about 2026.
2:23:29
Speaker 2: And like this is constant. This never ends. Yeah. And
2:23:35
Speaker 2: it's a slow sort of like two steps up, one
2:23:39
Speaker 2: step back, three steps up, two steps back. There's this
2:23:42
Speaker 2: constant changing of what we are in the culture. And generally...
2:23:48
Speaker 2: Like if you look at Pinker's work and a lot
2:23:50
Speaker 2: of it generally seems to be for the better. But
2:23:53
Speaker 2: while you're in the middle of it, it seems helpless.
2:23:56
Speaker 2: And you seem confused and scattered. And meanwhile, if you
2:24:00
Speaker 2: ask people, especially like boomers, like when was a time
2:24:03
Speaker 2: when everything made sense? Boys are in the 1950s. We
2:24:06
Speaker 2: all knew what a man was and a woman was.
2:24:09
Speaker 2: And you went and you did your job and you
2:24:11
Speaker 2: raised your kids and the guy delivered milk. And they
2:24:14
Speaker 2: had this this rose colored glasses perspective of the past.
2:24:19
Speaker 2: But meanwhile, Alan's writing this book in 1952 about how
2:24:23
Speaker 2: it's the age of anxiety. And it's fascinating.
2:24:26
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:24:26
Speaker 2: It's a time machine into this particular period in history
2:24:32
Speaker 2: that at least in terms of the things that he's
2:24:35
Speaker 2: describing mirror some of the issues we're dealing with today.
2:24:38
Speaker 2: He's like literally talking about technology and improvement of society
2:24:42
Speaker 2: and all these different things that are like, The changing
2:24:44
Speaker 2: of the family and what it means. And it's like,
2:24:46
Speaker 2: this is wild. It's literally, he's literally talking like it
2:24:49
Speaker 2: never ends. It never ends. It just has a different title.
2:24:52
Speaker 2: It just looks different. Smells different. It dances different. It's
2:24:56
Speaker 2: the same animal.
2:24:56
Speaker 1: And I'm sure in 75 years, there will be people
2:24:59
Speaker 1: look back on, on now and be like, we sure
2:25:01
Speaker 1: made a ton of money off of AI or off
2:25:05
Speaker 1: of exploiting this or that resource. Perhaps. And there will be,
2:25:08
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people look back and be like,
2:25:10
Speaker 1: I remember it differently. And, you know, we were not
2:25:13
Speaker 1: the recipients of all that funding that the government was
2:25:16
Speaker 1: handing out, just like there were a lot of people
2:25:17
Speaker 1: who were not the recipients of funding back in post-World
2:25:21
Speaker 1: War II America.
2:25:23
Speaker 2: Yeah.
2:25:23
Speaker 1: And there were others who were the recipients of an
2:25:25
Speaker 1: awful lot of funding. So, yeah, I think it goes
2:25:28
Speaker 1: back to the systemic issues that we have with our
2:25:33
Speaker 1: goals and who's making those decisions and goes back to
2:25:37
Speaker 1: why I am not a politician or a city planner.
2:25:41
Speaker 2: Yeah.
2:25:41
Speaker 1: Even though I did run for my state legislature twice.
2:25:44
Speaker 2: Did you? Yeah. What were you trying to?
2:25:47
Speaker 1: Well, I was trying to mainly annoy the two incumbents
2:25:54
Speaker 1: and also just try to move the needle a little bit.
2:25:57
Speaker 1: I live in a very, very conservative part of Salt
2:26:00
Speaker 1: Lake County. And I had, I think, a 50-point deficit
2:26:03
Speaker 1: to make up against the state rep and then a
2:26:06
Speaker 1: 40-point deficit to make up against the state senator. And
2:26:09
Speaker 1: I think I took around 16 points off of both
2:26:12
Speaker 1: of them. So I did make a little bit of progress.
2:26:14
Speaker 1: But that was a bizarre experience. And now I think
2:26:21
Speaker 1: both of them are gone. One of them resigned, I think,
2:26:26
Speaker 1: the term after that election. And the other resigned just,
2:26:29
Speaker 1: I believe, last year or so. And now we just
2:26:31
Speaker 1: had another state senator who had some felony charges against
2:26:37
Speaker 1: him for fraud. Oh, fun. Yeah.
2:26:39
Speaker 2: Well, that is the real problem is the type of
2:26:41
Speaker 2: people that want to run for office are almost all
2:26:44
Speaker 2: out of their fucking minds. For the most part. Other
2:26:47
Speaker 2: than people that are just trying to shake things up
2:26:50
Speaker 2: like yourself.
2:26:51
Speaker 1: I think the people who are doing it for reasons
2:26:54
Speaker 1: that are going to be beneficial to others are in
2:26:58
Speaker 1: the minority for sure.
2:26:59
Speaker 2: Unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe that'll change over time. You know, maybe...
2:27:05
Speaker 2: with more conversations like this and more people realizing that
2:27:09
Speaker 2: if we keep going in the same direction that we're
2:27:11
Speaker 2: going now, we're not going to ever improve. But it's
2:27:14
Speaker 2: always there. It's always available. There are people out there
2:27:16
Speaker 2: that think differently. It's not like these are alien ideas
2:27:20
Speaker 2: that most people are not willing to even consider. Most
2:27:23
Speaker 2: people listen to what you're saying, what I'm saying, and
2:27:26
Speaker 2: they're probably thinking, yeah, that would probably be better for
2:27:28
Speaker 2: everybody except the incredibly rich people that control the defense
2:27:33
Speaker 2: contracting companies.
2:27:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also it's one thing to be sitting down
2:27:37
Speaker 1: and wherever you listen to this podcast, and hear these ideas,
2:27:41
Speaker 1: it's another when you're in the thick of things and
2:27:44
Speaker 1: suddenly you're getting defensive about your position.
2:27:47
Speaker 2: Of course.
2:27:47
Speaker 1: Or you're getting critical of another's position. Once the rubber
2:27:50
Speaker 1: hits the road, that's where it becomes difficult. And where
2:27:54
Speaker 1: it becomes a lot harder than it is to sit
2:27:56
Speaker 1: across the table and say, yeah, we agree on this.
2:27:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's also like you and I, I could tell
2:28:02
Speaker 2: from you, you're very careful with the way you think
2:28:05
Speaker 2: about things. And you're very objective and you try to
2:28:08
Speaker 2: analyze things and find out why you think about things.
2:28:10
Speaker 2: There's a lot of people that have not learned that skill.
2:28:14
Speaker 2: It's unfortunate.
2:28:15
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:28:15
Speaker 2: And again, it's not really taught. And you might grow
2:28:19
Speaker 2: up in an environment within a family that is like
2:28:22
Speaker 2: very rigid and In their belief system and very angry
2:28:26
Speaker 2: if you deviate from that. And it's a lot of
2:28:29
Speaker 2: times people just to fit in. They just, they adhere.
2:28:33
Speaker 1: And it's easier to get the Ten Commandments in a
2:28:35
Speaker 1: school than a critical thinking class. Yes. Yeah.
2:28:39
Speaker 2: I had Tallarico on and we were talking about that.
2:28:41
Speaker 2: And he made a very good point, I think, that
2:28:43
Speaker 2: that's going to push people away from Christianity. And, you know,
2:28:47
Speaker 2: and people have resisted that. I'm like, but no one
2:28:50
Speaker 2: wants to be told. Like in a school that's supposed to,
2:28:53
Speaker 2: we're supposed to separate school. Like you don't want them
2:28:58
Speaker 2: teaching Islamic tenets in your school, right? Right. Because, well,
2:29:03
Speaker 2: this is a Christian nation. Okay. It's also, well, it's not.
2:29:08
Speaker 2: It's a nation of humans.
2:29:10
Speaker 1: Okay.
2:29:10
Speaker 2: And freedom is supposed to be one of the things
2:29:12
Speaker 2: that the right in particular is supposed to hold dear. Freedom.
2:29:17
Speaker 2: They love to say that. Well, freedom also means freedom
2:29:20
Speaker 2: to not be. indoctrinated with other people's ideology. Even if
2:29:24
Speaker 2: you believe that this is the truth, this is the light,
2:29:27
Speaker 2: they need to learn this. Well, make your argument, make
2:29:30
Speaker 2: it very compelling and do it by example also. Be
2:29:34
Speaker 2: someone who is admirable in the way you behave and
2:29:37
Speaker 2: think and talk and the way you live.
2:29:39
Speaker 1: Something that when I went a year after I had
2:29:43
Speaker 1: been baptized as a Latter-day Saint. I went out on
2:29:45
Speaker 1: my mission. I got a set of scriptures. And the
2:29:48
Speaker 1: first thing I wrote in the inside cover was a
2:29:50
Speaker 1: quote that I've always loved. A good example is the
2:29:53
Speaker 1: best preacher. And I've always tried to live by that.
2:29:57
Speaker 1: And when it comes to the U.S. as a Christian nation,
2:30:01
Speaker 1: I can understand Tallarico's concern for what that's going to
2:30:05
Speaker 1: do to Christianity. And absolutely, I understand that we don't
2:30:09
Speaker 1: want the state indoctrinating our children And one concern I
2:30:13
Speaker 1: see getting brought up less is what it does to
2:30:16
Speaker 1: someone who's in the minority for them to go to
2:30:20
Speaker 1: state-sponsored education and have the states tell them, you are
2:30:25
Speaker 1: unwanted here.
2:30:26
Speaker 2: Right.
2:30:26
Speaker 1: We are this. Right. You are not that. We're going
2:30:29
Speaker 1: to let you be here, but know that you're a
2:30:32
Speaker 1: second-class citizen.
2:30:32
Speaker 2: Right.
2:30:33
Speaker 1: And I don't think that is certainly not a comfortable
2:30:37
Speaker 1: situation to be attending school. And probably not a safe
2:30:40
Speaker 1: situation in a lot of ways for attending school. And
2:30:43
Speaker 1: at the same time, if people are indoctrinated and do
2:30:46
Speaker 1: adopt Christianity as a result of that, that's not really
2:30:50
Speaker 1: a desirable conversion in my mind. Oh, the state wants
2:30:54
Speaker 1: me to be Christian, so I'm going to be a
2:30:55
Speaker 1: Christian because I'm doing what the state wants me to do.
2:30:57
Speaker 1: For your own safety, you adopted it. You've adopted it
2:31:00
Speaker 1: so that you can benefit from the resources that you
2:31:04
Speaker 1: are given access to.
2:31:05
Speaker 2: Or just to stay safe. Yeah. And this is the
2:31:07
Speaker 2: same argument they would make. If you were in a
2:31:11
Speaker 2: school district that adopted an Islamic education system and was
2:31:15
Speaker 2: under Sharia law, you'd be like, no, this is not freedom.
2:31:18
Speaker 1: And I think the Confederate statues, these came up in
2:31:21
Speaker 1: the early 20th century, and we know explicitly the goal
2:31:25
Speaker 1: was to terrorize Muslims. the black population, to let them
2:31:29
Speaker 1: know who was in charge around here.
2:31:31
Speaker 2: Not only that, there were shitty statues. This is the thing,
2:31:34
Speaker 2: people were defending it. I don't think they should be removed,
2:31:38
Speaker 2: but I think people should understand why they were put
2:31:39
Speaker 2: there in the first place.
2:31:41
Speaker 1: But they wanted kids walking to school, little black children
2:31:43
Speaker 1: walking to school and seeing this explicitly white supremacist statue
2:31:47
Speaker 1: so that they knew, we honor this, or this is
2:31:51
Speaker 1: at least who we are, just so you know, for
2:31:54
Speaker 1: the future. Just keep that in mind. As you grow
2:31:57
Speaker 1: up in our state.
2:31:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, that conversation was lost in the outrage over the
2:32:03
Speaker 2: removal of the statues.
2:32:04
Speaker 1: Well, it had to be for the removal to be defended.
2:32:08
Speaker 1: They couldn't allow that conversation to happen.
2:32:12
Speaker 2: But listen, man, I really love your channel.
2:32:15
Speaker 1: It's fucking awesome.
2:32:16
Speaker 2: I've had countless hours listening to you and watching you.
2:32:19
Speaker 2: So I really appreciate what you're doing. I know it's
2:32:23
Speaker 2: a long road to learn all the shit that you've learned.
2:32:27
Speaker 1: It has been, but it's been a lot of fun.
2:32:28
Speaker 1: And I wanted to give you this as well. This
2:32:30
Speaker 1: is a book that I published last year. It's called
2:32:32
Speaker 1: The Bible Says So, What We Get Right and Wrong
2:32:34
Speaker 1: About Scripture's Most Controversial Issues. It's basically a greatest hits
2:32:39
Speaker 1: of what I've done on my channel. I don't know
2:32:43
Speaker 1: how much you enjoy reading hard copies of books.
2:32:46
Speaker 2: I do. It's great to put me to bed. There's
2:32:50
Speaker 2: nothing like reading a book that makes you sleepy. Yeah.
2:32:53
Speaker 1: When Joel McHale gave me one of the blurbs for
2:32:57
Speaker 1: my book and I was like, you want a hard copy?
2:32:59
Speaker 1: He's like, I'll take the audio book. Yeah.
2:33:01
Speaker 2: Did you read the audio book?
2:33:03
Speaker 1: I did. Yeah.
2:33:04
Speaker 2: Oh, excellent.
2:33:04
Speaker 1: So I recorded that. I'm working on another one right
2:33:06
Speaker 1: now that's going to be, it's going, it's Basically, I'm
2:33:10
Speaker 1: going to talk about how the God of the Bible
2:33:12
Speaker 1: changes from the earliest parts of the Bible to the
2:33:14
Speaker 1: latest parts of the Bible. So right now we're going
2:33:17
Speaker 1: with God's biography of biblical history. But I'm really enjoying writing. Well,
2:33:21
Speaker 1: what little I've been able to write of it, I've
2:33:23
Speaker 1: really been enjoying.
2:33:24
Speaker 2: How far out do you think this one is?
2:33:27
Speaker 1: Further out than my contract wants it to be, probably.
2:33:30
Speaker 1: Isn't that always the case? We've been dealing with a
2:33:34
Speaker 1: lot of stuff in my household, medical stuff, school stuff,
2:33:38
Speaker 1: and we're also finishing our basement right now. And so
2:33:42
Speaker 1: I haven't had as much time as I would like to.
2:33:44
Speaker 1: And this is for my publisher. So when I come
2:33:47
Speaker 1: and say, I don't know if I'm going to be
2:33:49
Speaker 1: on time, I have reasons. But hopefully it should be
2:33:52
Speaker 1: out the beginning of 2028. Okay.
2:33:56
Speaker 2: That's, yeah. Beautiful.
2:33:58
Speaker 1: And it's another book I think that's going to blow
2:34:00
Speaker 1: a lot of people's minds if they sit down and
2:34:02
Speaker 1: give it a chance. Because the more we, like you
2:34:06
Speaker 1: talk about how that book about 1950s and how it
2:34:11
Speaker 1: was Age of Anxiety. It's unlike how we picture things.
2:34:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, just so people know what I'm talking about, I'll
2:34:17
Speaker 2: give you the title of the book.
2:34:19
Speaker 1: But the.
2:34:22
Speaker 2: It's called The Wisdom of Insecurity. Okay.
2:34:23
Speaker 1: Okay.
2:34:25
Speaker 2: A message for an age of anxiety.
2:34:27
Speaker 1: And the point I want to make is that, you know,
2:34:30
Speaker 1: there are people who lived that, who are still around,
2:34:32
Speaker 1: who can talk about it. But that's not how we
2:34:34
Speaker 1: tend to represent that time period. That's not how we
2:34:38
Speaker 1: tend to think about it. And if we go back
2:34:42
Speaker 1: to 2,500 years, our reconstruction of that history is even
2:34:47
Speaker 1: further removed from how we tend to think about it.
2:34:50
Speaker 1: And the digger we... The digger we deep. The deeper
2:34:53
Speaker 1: we dig... Into the data, the more information we have
2:34:57
Speaker 1: to understand what was going on. And anybody who wants
2:35:00
Speaker 1: to actually try to understand what's going on, you have
2:35:02
Speaker 1: to let these kinds of things inform your reconstruction. Otherwise,
2:35:07
Speaker 1: it's just ideology. Otherwise, it's just dogma. And that's the
2:35:14
Speaker 1: name of my podcast, Data Over Dogma, which is all
2:35:18
Speaker 1: about trying to ensure that we're letting the data set
2:35:22
Speaker 1: the terms for the discussion rather than the ideologies, the
2:35:25
Speaker 1: things that we want to happen, the dogmas that we
2:35:27
Speaker 1: bring to it, rather than ensuring that they're setting the
2:35:30
Speaker 1: terms for the discussion. Awesome.
2:35:32
Speaker 2: Hey, thank you very much. Thanks for all you do.
2:35:34
Speaker 2: And I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you.
2:35:36
Speaker 1: I appreciate it.
2:35:37
Speaker 2: Bye.