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Joe Rogan talks with biblical scholar Dan McClellan about ancient texts, the origins of scripture, and how ideology and intuitive cognition shape belief. McClellan argues that texts like Genesis, Paul's letters, and the New Testament were written for specific social purposes and reshaped over time, so readers should let evidence rather than dogma guide interpretation.
- McClellan introduces himself as a biblical scholar with nearly 4,000 videos and explains his channel's reach, along with his creatine use and dietary experiments, including a 60-day carnivore diet.
- Rogan shows McClellan a replica of the Kuntillet Ajrud pithos, whose inscription invokes 'Adonai of Samaria and his Asherah,' which scholars read as evidence of the God of Israel and his wife Asherah.
- The two discuss how biblical stories like Moses and Sargon of Akkad resemble each other, and how texts were written to serve political, ritual, or consolation purposes rather than as literal records.
- McClellan says the Pauline letters include later pseudepigraphical texts, such as the Pastoral Epistles, written decades after Paul, and that Paul's teachings on celibacy differ between the authentic and disputed letters.
- They trace the development of Genesis and the flood story, noting that Enuma Elish, Sumerian king lists, and 1 Enoch influenced the Hebrew Bible and that many texts were composed centuries after the events they describe.
- McClellan explains the origins of hell as an idea that grew from consoling people under oppressive empires into a threat used to enforce behavior, and notes that modern Bible translations omit verses absent from early manuscripts.
- The conversation turns to cognitive science, parochial empathy, and tribalism, with McClellan arguing that intuitive cognition drives people to defend in-group positions and that data should override dogma.
- 0:01Meeting and Parasocial Relationships
- 2:07Diet, Fiber, and Creatine
- 4:23Hypoxia Training and Memory
- 13:34Kuntillet Ajrud Pithos Artifact
- 18:18Sargon, Moses, and Propaganda
- 20:04Genre and Purpose of Texts
- 28:45Pauline Letters and Celibacy
- 34:43Genesis, Enuma Elish, and Chaos
- 43:34Origins of Alphabet and Languages
- 51:38Ugaritic and Leviathan Parallels
- 1:01:27Big Gods and Human Cooperation
- 1:06:46Parochial Empathy and Politics
- 1:13:44Adam and Eve Origins
- 1:18:16First Enoch and Origins of Evil
- 1:23:20Verses Omitted from Modern Translations
- 1:27:49Dead Sea Scrolls Discovery
- 1:33:31Intuition, Illusion, and Ideology
- 1:39:48Prophetic Critique and Social Justice
- 1:43:05Book Promotion and Closing Remarks
Meeting and Parasocial Relationships
0:01Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. >> The Joe Rogan Experience. >> TRAIN BY DAY, JOE ROGAN PODCAST BY NIGHT. ALL DAY. >> ALL RIGHT, we're up. What's up, man? >> Good to meet you, man. >> Good to meet you, too. Thank you so much for having me out. >> It's always weird when you watch a bunch of a guy's content and then you meet him.
0:20You know, >> [laughter] >> it's very odd. >> It is There's a There's a parasocial relationship thing there that that's a little It's a little off-putting at first. I I remember I had uh a long time ago I got a notification I was being followed on Instagram by Joel McHale. And I was like, >> [laughter] >> like texting my family.
0:36And then like a a couple weeks later I got a mess- a message from him. He's like, "Hey, man, big fan. Love your stuff. We got to hang out sometime." And I was like, "All right, cool." And >> He's a really nice guy. >> He's He's incredible. He's He's a wonderful guy. Got a a lovely family. And he was coming out to Salt Lake City to do FanX a couple years ago, which is our version of Comic-Con.
0:54And I was like, "Hey, let's do dinner." >> Oh, yeah, you're a giant comic freak. >> I am. Yeah. And he I was like, "Let's do dinner." He's like, "It's a date, but I'm a I'm a What did he call himself? An arrogant foodie. So he was like, "So I got to pick the restaurant." But he's like, "Let's Let's get on the phone and and chat for a minute."
1:14And I called him. He picked up the phone. He's like, "Dan McGlone. Joel McHale." He's like, "This is so weird talking to you." I was like, "Joel, I promise you it's a lot weirder for me." So I I know exactly what that's like, but uh >> It's very odd. I try to give people as much grace as possible when they meet me because I've probably been in their head more than, you know, with headphones and for thousands of It's odd.
1:35It's odd for me, so I'm sure it's odd for other people, too. >> And And I'm kind of like, I don't even recall if I'm proud of everything that I've ever said, but so I don't know what kind of impression somebody has of me. >> Oh, I have a great impression of you. >> Well, well, I I appreciate that cuz >> And I'm certainly not proud of everything I've said.
1:51>> [laughter] >> We're all good. We're all good. >> Cuz I I don't really watch my stuff back. I don't even remember a lot of the stuff I said, so >> Oh, well, that's a real problem with me. There's people that I forget I talked to and then we bring them up on the podcast. I'm like, "Gosh, you have that guy on?"
2:03And Jamie's like, "Well, actually I had him on 3 years ago." >> [laughter] >> It happens. It happens once every 6 months. >> Yeah, we deal with that when when we're like, "What should we talk about today?" And I'm like, "I don't know. We talk about this?" And they're like, "2 weeks ago we talked about that."
Diet, Fiber, and Creatine
2:17>> Yeah, that is an issue with you, I would imagine, more because you're dealing with very specific structure and texts. And it's also something that you have this incredible deep knowledge of, so there's probably no way you can remember the specific instances in which you talked about it. >> Yeah, definitely it's it's an issue, but it's also I think something that's kind of baked into the reason my my channel is so beneficial to a lot of people because I can repeat stuff over and over
2:47again cuz my as my audience grows, there are always new people who haven't been exposed to a lot of things. So, there are actually a handful of things I kind of not programmatically, but every 6 months or so I'll be like, "Yeah, it's probably time to talk about this again." And then I I already have the foundation there.
3:02I can recall most of what I said, but yeah, I I do have to go refresh my memory. What was that What was that manuscript called? I got to figure out, you know, translate that again, something like that. So, it is it is both a blessing and a curse cuz it means I can if I'm having a a slow day, can't think of something to to talk about, maybe I just recycle something I did 6 months ago and there are going to be thousands of people who who hadn't seen it before.
3:24>> At least. You have an enormous library. Like, how many videos have you put out all told? >> Uh around 4,000. >> Hey! >> [laughter] >> Which is I I see people who put out that many podcast episodes. And I'm like, "Well, that's that's rarefied air." >> Well, I think we're at 2,600. >> Almost 2,900. >> Almost 2,900 plus.
3:44>> Oh, that's including all the other ones. >> Oh, is that including all of them? Yeah. So, almost 3,000 including Fight Companions, MMA podcasts, things of those like. >> that's, you know, two to three hours or more each, too. So, that's >> Cooks the brain, Dan. >> [laughter] >> I don't know if it's good.
4:00My memory is so weird. It's very good sometimes and also terrible other times. And I think my hard drive is overwhelmed. >> I'm I'm the same way, particularly when I'm on the spot. Like I I lose names >> Yeah. >> like like crazy. I went to My kids were like, "You should try out for Jeopardy." And I went through the I got through the first phase and then they were like this not like an in-person thing, but a live online thing and I just froze up.
Hypoxia Training and Memory
4:27Everything I was like, "I can see his face. I know the dude inside out. I can't remember the name." I freeze up a lot. >> Do you do anything to enhance your memory? >> In terms of vitamins or nootropics? >> Um >> Or nootropics, I don't know how to pronounce it. >> There is there is some research that is suggesting creatine might be a little more helpful for for brain function.
4:44So, I actually I do 10 um I don't even know if there's a >> grams or milli- Yeah, 10 g of of creatine uh every day. So, um I'm >> Excellent. >> definitely that's a choice that I've that I've made. I I try to minimize all the different stuff I'm I'm putting in my body, but I you know, I I have a a slew of vitamins and and things like that that I'm taking in addition to got to get the fiber cuz I'm of a certain certain age, so >> That's debatable.
5:11>> You think Yeah? >> Yeah, oddly enough. Yeah, I mean, I'm not I don't know where I stand, honestly, cuz I I take in fiber mostly in the form of fermented vegetables. I'm a big kimchi fan. >> Okay. >> Um but there's quite a few people that have zero fiber and then exist on a carnivore diet. And I think a lot [snorts] of these people are people with autoimmune issues that tend to have problems with plant-based chemicals, like chemicals that are in in plants.
5:38And and then there's a real problem with the American diet with which is glyphosate and herbicides. There's a lot of different herbicides and chemicals used in industrial fertilizer that get into your food. And a lot of people have extreme sensitivities to those things. >> Yeah. >> Perhaps due to prolonged exposure.
5:56It's very difficult to parse out. You have to talk to a bunch different people. And a bunch of different people have like different takes on it. But I know quite a few very healthy people that don't eat any fiber. >> Yeah. >> They just eat like eggs and chicken and meat and fish and that's it. >> Well, for me it was definitely I noticed when I took it things were easier for me in the morning.
6:17>> Oh yeah, for sure. And that was where I was like, "Okay, then done. That's what I'm going to do from here on out." >> period. I did the carnivore diet strictly once for 60 days. I've never done it for more than that. Uh, but for 30 days when I did it, the first four or five um, the diarrhea, my friend Tom Segura described it as remarkable.
6:35>> [laughter] >> Breathtaking. It's just derping. It's like, "What is happening to me?" But that settles down after a while and then your bowel movements are uh, not as frequent, but very easy. It's just like bloop. It's like not much and that's it because there's no fiber. So it's like what is left after you chew all the meat and swallow it.
6:54It's like that stuff comes out in the wash and that's a wrap. >> [laughter] >> I'm not an expert in health and nutrition. I'm not. >> either. >> I've I've absorbed a lot of information, but some of it is con- some of it contradicts. It's very hard to know who's right and who's wrong. And I think it's also it's it varies biologically.
7:13It varies genetically. It varies dependent upon where your ancestors are from. You know, I there's a lot of people that I know that have like real problems with red meat and real problems with, you know, certain Like I have friends that are vegan that exist healthy. >> Yeah. >> with that diet. And then I know friends who've tried it for ethical reasons and their their health fell apart and they're like, "Well, it.
7:36I can't do this." >> Yeah, I've the thing I try to pay attention to is something called FODMAPs. I'm sorry. Have you heard of >> No. >> It's And now I don't even remember what it stands for, the the acronym, but basically it's there are certain kinds of um substances in in foods. The acronym is FODMAP, but they occur a lot in breads and a lot of a lot of things with a lot of carbohydrates in them, but they >> Here we go.
8:01>> Oh, there we go. >> Short-term three-step eating plan to temporarily restrict specific poorly absorbed sugars to help manage digestive distress like bloating, gas, and abdominal pain. Okay. >> So, I I I started noticing if I was eating certain things throughout the day, I was a lot more bloated and and uncomfortable by the time night came around and and I did all kinds of investigating and and I figured out when I was avoiding things that are high in FODMAPs, my I was just I felt better.
8:28>> And what was the word again, Jamie, when FOD's broken down again? >> It's a bunch of words. >> It is a The word is fermentable boy, oligosaccharides, disaccharides, and monosaccharides, and poly's. Polyols. Pol- polyols? Polyols. Short-chain carbohydrates and sugar alcohols that small intestines absorb poorly.
8:52Huh. >> Yeah. >> What's in that category of those things? >> That's what I was trying to get to a picture of. >> Does it say? >> I guess there's low and high. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, the more some things have are higher in those things and some things are lower. >> Uh suitable on a low FODMAP diet. Fruit, obviously, vegetables, cereals, milk, tofu.
9:17And then the bad ones, excessive fructose, lactose, fructans, galactans. Hmm. Legumes. Oh, wow, you can't eat beans? How weird. >> But I think I think they're That's the category and then there are certain members of that category that are high and certain members of that >> Yeah, and as you're baked beans, chickpeas, kidney beans, lentils, >> soy beans.
9:38And And what I really noticed, there was one day I had We got a a watermelon and I had like half of it. My wife's like, [laughter] "Chill out, man." And I like, within a couple [snorts] hours, I was really, really gassy and bloated. And I was like, yeah, and I was like, that has to be the watermelon doing it cuz I haven't had anything else out of the out of the ordinary.
9:56And And so, I started looking at at that. And so, I'm sensitive to that kind of stuff, but that's just my own >> Mhm. >> biological makeup. Some people are genetically gifted in other ways. >> Well, it also depends on what you've done that day. Like, if you've gone a long hike through the mountains and you're exhausted, like a high carbohydrate and high sugar diet or or some a meal is actually good for you.
10:20>> I There are times when I'm definitely craving it. And And I'm like, got to listen to my body. And so, >> there's a reason. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Especially when you're worn out, like hiking in particular. Like, you know, you think about if you're you're at altitude and you do like a three or four mile hike and you're climbing, that's At the end of it, you're spent.
10:36You have no sugar in your body. You're You're You're You have a real issue and your body needs something to replenish your muscles. >> Yeah, I got I got plenty of fat stores, so that when I go out for my run, I can I can last a little longer. But I I run at at altitude and by Salt Lake. So, >> Mhm. >> So, whenever I come whenever I travel elsewhere, like I go to San Diego a couple times a year or I'm on the East Coast or or here, what the altitude here is not very high.
11:02>> No. It's I don't even think it's a thousand feet. >> And it's >> I can run ten times as far. >> Yeah. >> nice. I I enjoy running a lot more cuz the lack of oxygen doesn't take it out of me nearly as quickly. >> We have a hypoxia chamber in the studio. So, we Yeah, we have a gym that's connected to studio.
11:18And in the gym is this thing called a hypoxi- It's called the I forgot the name of it. Exalt Exalt XP is the company. I forget the name of this. The But, this thing brings you to You could vary the altitude and I put it at 14,000 ft. So I do these cardio workouts at 14,000 ft. They're very specific depending upon what you're trying to do.
11:41Like there's a VO I killed myself yesterday cuz I do it this VO2 max one where you're doing 4 minutes of hard cardio at 14,000 ft above sea level and then you have like a 2-minute recovery period and then you get back on it again. You do it again and you do it a cycle four of those and it's hell. >> Yeah, that's that's pretty intense.
12:03I do I do the hit high end intensity interval training from time to time but I don't have the discipline to to do it at 14,000 ft. >> It's not fun but it has it has a giant impact though. So if you do go somewhere like if I had go to Utah and I'm in the mountains, it's a giant benefit. >> Okay. >> Yeah.
12:22>> Yeah, I'll have to cuz I I know I've seen people they'll they'll wear the masks that are supposed to >> Mhm. >> kind of reduce the the oxygen so it's it's a similar training. It's probably not as effective. >> Yeah, the mask thing is controversial. I don't know about that. Yeah, there's there's some devices that you can use that actually strengthen the diaphragm muscles and you breathe through them and you do breathing exercises but those restrictive masks, I don't know about
12:46those. I would imagine they would do the same they would have the same similar function. It reduces the amount of oxygen you get. But they were a thing the training mask. It was a thing with among MMA fighters for a while. They've all abandoned [clears throat] it. >> Okay. >> most of them that I know.
13:00>> Mhm. I don't know. >> Maybe they got tired of it. Maybe it was too hard already. Um what was that thing that you brought in? That big piece of pottery? >> So I I I brought in a couple of things. I'm showing it out. Well, I >> Bust it out. >> So this is a gift for for you. >> Ooh. >> is >> Thank you.
13:18>> This is a a replica of my favorite artifact from the ancient world. A friend of mine uh named Robert Algot uh this website called relics3d.com and he makes these and this is this is what's called the Kuntillet Ajrud uh >> Can I take a guess as to where it came from? >> Uh yeah, go ahead. >> Turkey.
Kuntillet Ajrud Pithos Artifact
13:36>> No. >> No. Damn. >> [laughter] >> Came came from Kuntillet Ajrud oddly enough, which is a um it's down near the Sinai Peninsula. >> Oh, okay. >> And so uh this was a part of a a large jar called a pithos. And this is just one fragment of it. Uh well, it's a bunch of fragments that were that were brought together that were discovered that dates to about 800 BCE.
13:57And it's one of my favorite artifacts because we have an inscription over top and then a drawing of a male and a female deity. And the inscription talks about uh somebody asking for or thanking somebody for blessings uh by Adonai of Samaria or Jehovah of Samaria, the Lord of Samaria and his Asherah. >> Mhm.
14:20>> And so um I think the majority of scholars agree this is probably intended to reflect the interpretation of these two deities as the God of Israel and God's wife Asherah. >> And very weird-looking. >> Yeah, well, they're they're kind of they kind of look almost bovine. Uh and this is probably because they're appealing to some iconographic motifs associated with uh deities Bes and Beset, which are Egyptian deities that that >> That appears bovine to you?
14:50>> Uh the just uh the face a little bit. Like the the body's more anthropomorphic, but >> a image of that on the screen, Jamie? So we can maybe perhaps see it if you want. >> how to spell out that name. >> [laughter] >> I'm trying to find the website and yeah. >> I can spell it for you. Uh k u n t >> Damn it, hold on.
15:07That's k u l Pause. Go ahead. >> i l l e t >> i l l e t >> And then the next word >> I got it now. >> Okay. >> a r a j a r e d >> Mhm. >> And then like relic? >> Uh inscription. Yeah, they're they're actually a >> a bunch of inscriptions in the >> I see I see the bovine now I'm looking [laughter] at it.
15:29>> And there's the actual um >> Yeah, so this is um >> Now I see it. It's hard to look at that thing. It looked almost like the um Go back to the other image. Yeah. Get me that Yeah. I thought the lines I thought the head was where the mouth or the nose is. I thought that's what the eyes and the other thing was like a crown he was wearing.
15:52>> Yeah, well he's got you've got the the headdresses on top that are that are supposed to indicate their deities. >> How weird. It's all the old ancient depictions of deities you like what were they doing? This is This to me is the most fascinating thing about pretty much all religious texts. It's like what was the original thing that they were trying to document whether it was through oral tradition then eventually written down.
16:21Like what was the original event? That fascinates me the most about the Bible. It fascinates me the most about the ancient Sumerian writings. I'm just I don't think all of it is fiction, but I don't think all of it is literal. I think you're also dealing with an enormous amount of time between these events and then the writing down.
16:46And then you've highlighted this very much in some of your videos. There's a lot of weirdness when you compare some of these stories like the story of Moses and Sargon of Akkad. They seem incredibly similar. Like almost too similar. All right, let's talk about AG1 Pro for a second because it's one of the smartest things you can add to your routine.
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17:57That's drinkag1.com/joerogan. >> Yeah, I think I think there's definitely some kind of genetic relationship between the two. And specifically, it's the story of him as a baby being placed into a container and set adrift in in a river. That is Sargon the Great, who dates to long before a historical Moses, but that tradition, I think the earliest version of it we've found in the Akkadian literature dates to maybe 9th or 8th century BCE, which is around the time that people think
Sargon, Moses, and Propaganda
18:30that or at least scholars think that the tradition of Moses and the narrative of the Exodus was beginning to come together. So it makes sense that that they would draw from that tradition. And I think there are a couple of different reasons for it. One of the reasons is to because that already has some some purchase in the the zeitgeist.
18:50And so if you kind of reflect something that people already are aware of, it kind of makes it a little easier to to incorporate into their worldview. And then also it can also be kind of a challenge to the other tradition. It's like, well, you got your guy, we got ours. Our guy did Our guy did it better.
19:08And so And And is a lot of what's going on with the representation of Jesus in the New Testament. Because there are there are certain turns of phrase, there are certain things that Jesus does in the New Testament that reflect what the Greco-Roman world expected from their emperors and their god-men. And so in the New Testament is kind of a way to to do both of those things.
19:29To say we got one of those, too. Only ours did it better. >> Oh, interesting. >> So I I think one of the key things to keep in mind is every text, whether it's a text that's inscribed on on a piece of pottery or something that wound up in the Bible, every author wrote it down because they wanted to achieve something.
19:45>> Mhm. >> We tend to think of language is just about communicating information. But nothing happens in a vacuum. It's all happening in circumstances, in contexts where they're trying to achieve something. And so scholars go to great lengths to try to figure out, well, what precisely would have been achieved by by writing this down or by writing any of the the texts in the Hebrew Bible or in the New Testament.
Genre and Purpose of Texts
20:06And the best way to figure that out is to try to situate the composition within, you know, whatever historical period makes the most sense, whatever we can make the best case for and figure out how it would have worked in that period. Which is why there are some texts that that we think were intended as propaganda.
20:25There are texts that we think were intended to kind of place one person struggling for power over another person struggling for power. There's a lot of political uh propaganda going on. And then there are other texts that are intended to try to make people feel better about why things aren't going well for them, why bad things are happening to good people and good things aren't happening to bad people.
20:48So I There are tons of different reasons that people are writing texts, but a good illustration of this is genre. So all texts have genre of some kind. And that's basically just a conventionalized set of things that are in the text that help cue people to what kind of text they're looking at. So, if I start a story once upon a time, you already know it's going to be a specific type of text.
21:13So, without even knowing that you're aware of genre, you're aware of the genre of a text. And if you found a piece of paper in a parking lot and it said, "dozen eggs, pound of ground beef, uh you know, uh prophylaxis, uh stuff like that, prophylactics actually would be the the plural. You know you found a a grocery list, a shopping list.
21:36And so, that's a genre of text as well. So, just by being aware of these conventions, we can say, "Oh, well, I know exactly what this text was trying to do because it has all these markers of a given genre." And that's a big cue to helping us figure out what text are trying to do. And when people wrote on on pottery, generally this was a little more ritual.
21:56This was something that was intended to be like a votive offering, which might be uh an offering to a deity so that the deity will then bless you or it might be something that people are intended to come in and read out loud so that they invoke the presence of the deity in the the space. And then the the drawing the deity would also be a way of doing that.
22:17So, there are a lot of different reasons for what's going on. And that's the big mystery is is what were they trying to accomplish. >> And cattle worship was very common. >> Um >> It was Çatalhöyük. It was There was like the Hindus, there's a lot of cattle worship. >> Yeah. There are a lot of There's worship of a lot of different animals or or the sacralization of a lot of different animals in a lot of different places.
22:40And And this is probably drawing from Egyptian iconography. So, yeah, this This is the Sinai Peninsula is right in between Syria-Palestine and Egypt. And there was an awful lot of Egyptian influence on things. So, even even if you look at for instance, Hezekiah, there's a there's a a bulla that was discovered, which is a uh something that was left from a an impression a a signet ring or something like that that has the name Hezekiah on it.
23:11And there's an Egyptian drawing of a winged I think it's a winged scarab or something like that, which is directly from Egypt because Israel was under Egyptian hegemony for for a long long time. So >> right next to her. >> Yeah. Yeah, so >> Um you were talking about Jesus and the New Testament and that some of it seems to have been like the the way it was done to appease the people that lived in the same era?
23:42>> Uh yeah, some of it was was a way to I think make people feel better about themselves. For instance, so the the texts were written long after Jesus was was dead. Uh the Gospels, Mark was probably written 69, 70, 71-ish CE. Matthew's probably 5-10 years after that. Luke's probably 5-10 years or more after that.
24:02John's a little after that. And at this time period there's already a following that is developing. And so the people who are writing these texts are are writing them for a literary audience, but they also want them to speak to the experiences of the people who are followers of Jesus. So for instance, uh there's a part where where Jesus says, you know, um I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
24:26And you know, I will set father against son and um mother against daughter and and all this kind of stuff. And people have wondered, well, what on earth is going on here? And there are scholars who suggest that the point of that would have been to make it sound like to people who are struggling with uh inner family relationships, you know, I'm a follower of Jesus now and I got kicked out of my house.
24:46Or I'm a follower of Jesus now and and I constantly fight with my wife or with my brother or something like that. Am I doing something wrong? And this text has Jesus saying, "No, no. I came to cause that. So, that's that means things are working." And that that's a way to make people feel, "Okay, well, then then I'm okay because I got kicked out of, you know, my parents' house or or something like that."
25:07>> crazy someone putting words into Jesus's mouth just so that people of the time feel okay? >> I I think that's probably an awful lot of what's going on. It's either to make them feel okay or to try to push them to um agree with living a certain way or something like that. Or try to make them feel like this is what's coming up for us.
25:30>> Which is a problem with taking everything literally and like people deciding that all of it is the word of God when some of it is just like, "Okay, would God really tell you to do that? Like, why? Why why is God telling you to rape? Why why is God telling you to kill women and children?" >> Yeah. Yeah, that that's something that uh and >> Commanding you to.
25:48>> Yeah, and and people have been struggling with that for the entire history of the circulation of those texts. And and I think there are Yeah, you the word of God thing is is interesting cuz the the that phrase is never used anywhere in the Bible to refer to texts specifically as the texts that are in circulation.
26:06So, word of God is always a reference to just the message however it's circulating whether it's oral or or whatever or to Jesus in the New Testament. Jesus is the word, but it's never used to refer to a specific textual manifestation of the message. And so, there's uh there's not really a case to make that any author of any texts in the Bible use that phrase to refer to the scriptures or the Bible.
26:31And so, even in in 1 Corinthians in a couple of places in Paul, he says, "This is not coming from the Lord. This is just coming from me." And then we take it and say, "Okay, I don't Wink wink, we know what you mean. This is coming from the Lord." >> Paul's a weird one. >> Paul's a He's not that >> into Paul, the more the more I'm like, "This guy First of all, killed a bunch of Christians, right?
26:53Lit churches on fire, at least ordered the death of Christians. >> Yeah, according according to what he said. >> Yeah. >> And then says he met Jesus in a vision. >> Mhm. >> And then all the stuff written down he also says that a lot of it is coming from him, but we attribute it to Jesus. It's It's all It gets super squirrely when you start reading Paul.
27:17You're like, who the What? >> Well, here here's something >> even met him? >> [laughter] >> Hey, 20 years later he's writing all this? >> And there are a couple of different stories about how exactly he did meet him. And then but in an interesting thing >> different ones? There's the road to Damascus.
27:32>> Well, yeah, it it's the it's the vision, but it's told uh in a couple of different ways. You got a couple of tellings uh of the story in Acts and then in the Pauline literature. And it really has to do with uh who heard a voice or saw something or anything like that. There There are minor differences, but but there are still some differences.
27:50But uh I think it's really interesting. A lot of people treat all the Pauline texts as as equally one inspired and two from Paul, but scholars are in pretty widespread agreement that there are several of those texts that weren't written by Paul. They were written decades after he was dead. >> Really?
28:07>> Yeah. So, First and Second Timothy and Titus are called the Pastoral Epistles, and they are widely agreed to have been written toward the end of the first century or beginning of the second century, maybe 30 years after Paul was dead or more. >> Oh, how complicated. >> And then >> [laughter] >> And then you've got uh Colossians, Second Thessalonians, and Ephesians are a little more debated, but it's There is a good solid core of scholars who would argue that they were not written by
28:35Paul. And and one of the things one of the interesting things that happens when you divide up the letters between the genuine Pauline Epistles and then what are called the disputed and then the spurious Pauline epistles is Paul's message in the genuine Pauline epistles is different from the message in the in the others.
Pauline Letters and Celibacy
28:54And for instance, in the genuine Pauline epistles, Paul was like, uh, you know, Jesus is coming back any day now. So, don't change your situation in life. Uh, don't get married if you're not married. If you're married, don't get divorced. Uh, and he he suggests that everybody should be celibate. And unless you just can't hack celibacy, in which case >> Even even while married?
29:15Because you're waiting for Jesus to return, be celibate. >> Because in in this time period, the I think Paul fancied himself a philosopher, but he's kind of cobbling together a bunch of different philosophical, um, movements. >> Where have we heard that before? >> Where have we heard that before? Somebody fancied themselves a philosopher?
29:33>> Well, cobbling together things from different >> that's how everybody does it. Yeah, >> Yeah, yeah. And um, but at the time, sexual desire was thought of as as something that was part of the baser >> Right. >> urges of the flesh. And if you could overcome that, then you obviously were a real one. You were >> Which is why Roman statues had little penises.
29:53>> [laughter] >> I I'm sure that's the main reason. >> Yeah, that's supposedly what it was. >> Really? That's >> Yeah, I had the I had a wonderful, uh, guide when I did a tour of, uh, the Vatican. This guy who was a, uh, university professor who, um, he moonlights, you know, makes extra money in the summertime as a guide.
30:11And he took us on this tour, and this guy was fan- And he loved that I was so into it, so we had these great conversations. And uh, eventually I had to get to little dicks. >> [laughter] >> I'm like, why do these guys have these incredible bodies, but they have these tiny penises? And he explained [laughter] that it was like that was it was gauche.
30:27Like, you didn't want to have a big giant dick. A big giant dick was like a symbol of like a brutish, barbarian type person. >> That it was better to depict these gods with tiny penises. And then eventually they start covering them with leaves. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, and and the early Greek and and Roman gods, yeah, you know, they kind of went to town with with the sexual stuff.
30:52>> Well, it seems like they were getting their freak on quite a bit, those people. >> In in a lot of different ways and with a lot of different species, but uh >> Yeah. >> But anyway, Paul >> [laughter] >> was uh he suggests that yeah, even married folks should um just avoid it. And and we see this in Matthew as well.
31:07There's a part in Matthew in in 19 when uh he's talking divorce. And then the his followers are like, "It would be better for somebody not to get married." And and then he goes, "Hey, man, there are those who are born eunuchs. There are those who are made eunuchs by men. And then there are those who make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven."
31:24And he says, "That's a difficult saying, but for those who can accept it, they sh- should accept it." Basically saying, you know, the the higher law is to be celibate. >> Mhm. >> Because they they thought Jesus was coming back so soon that having a kid would be a waste of time. And so there was no other reason for intercourse, really.
31:43And so the idea was, "Okay, be celibate." And Paul says, you know, "If you can't hack it, then go ahead and and have occasional sex with your spouse, but it should be basically for keeping down the urges because if trying to remain celibate is just driving you nuts, the risk that you might engage in some kind of sexual immorality is so great that you need to have that that little um uh you need to have that little valve to to keep down the urges.
32:13>> Imagine if you're on your on death's door and you listen to him and decide to stay celibate and you're like, "Jesus didn't even come back." >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Look at all the sex I missed. >> Well, the and you kind of see yeah, that's that was would certainly be on the list of regrets. >> This is the problem with not just you know, biblical, but contemporary people that claim to know what's happening.
32:35This is what We're all lost in this weird world that we're living in. Where there's so much uncertainty and there's so many different versions of truth in terms of like the origin of mankind and the universe and we want someone to come along and say, I know. I know. And it's so compelling when someone does, when they say it with authority, when they say it with confidence.
32:57It's like, oh, finally, a guy who knows. And this is how all cults get started. This [laughter] is how everything, you know, I mean, this is how a lot of political leaders wind up taking control. >> Yeah. >> It's like someone who pretends to know and and has this like deep understanding of that's far beyond anything you're ever going to have.
33:18Trust me, you got to stay celibate, Jesus is on the way. >> Yeah. Yeah. And and that didn't really work out too well. >> works out. They're never right, which is [laughter] which is so crazy that people keep listening to them. >> And and this is one of the things that scholars see when they separate out the genuine Pauline epistles from the later ones because in the later ones, you have Paul saying stuff like, oh, there's going to be a delay.
33:42>> [laughter] >> Jesus is stuck in traffic. >> Yeah, yeah. And and and this is because it's it's written by folks who are, [snorts] you know, they're decades down the road. Now it's like, if we don't have kids, our movement is dying out. >> Right. >> So, we kind of got to have kids. And so you've got one of these spurious Pauline epistles that say, women will be saved in childbearing.
34:03So now it's like, your salvation is dependent on you having kids even though the the real Paul was like, put it away. Now [clears throat] we're we're living celibate lives now. And and and so you have and this pops up in Matthew as well where and elsewhere where we've got this what they call delay of the parousia or the second coming.
34:23We expected it any day now. Turns out it might be a little longer. Traffic's bad. And you know, you have this man of of sin that's supposed to show up, or there's supposed to be this falling away, or there's supposed to be something that gets in the way, and that causes a delay in Jesus' return. And 2,000 years down the road, we're still wondering when that delay is going to >> So, we get to the oldest stuff.
Genesis, Enuma Elish, and Chaos
34:45We get to like like the Old Testament. Like if we get to Genesis, >> Mhm. >> what are the what are the oldest versions of that story? Is it the Enuma Elish? >> So, uh there are a bunch of different versions of Enuma Elish, but we probably go back to Sumerian stuff, uh because you actually have a we have these king lists from long, long ago and uh written in Sumerian.
35:12There's no flood story yet in these uh king lists, but they talk about these kings that reigned for 10,000 years at a time. >> What's your take on all that? >> My take on all that? Uh these are these are traditions. You see a lot of different traditions that develop uh in the ancient world to account for uh how creation happened.
35:32Uh the the weirdest one has got to be there's an Egyptian one where the the head god masturbated all of existence. Um so, that's that's a great one for some bedtime reading. It's pretty short, [laughter] um but there's uh there there are just these texts are are intended to serve purposes for these these authors long, long ago.
35:54And this is when writing is just starting to come to be. >> Right. >> and so, it hadn't been around for a very long time. You don't have a lot of mythical narratives and things like that, but you have these poems that tell stories and that talk about the reign of of kings. And that's political propaganda.
36:11>> the weird thing about the kings list is the older ones are the ones that live forever. They live in enormous life spans. And then when it gets to not, you know, closer to contemporary times, >> They're they're yeah, they're the rules become less and less until they're they're more human. And the same thing is in Genesis.
36:27And it happens in the in the later versions of the story, they go from 10,000 years to just a few thousand years. So, but in in one of the secondary versions of the king list, suddenly there's a flood that happens. And then >> Secondary version? >> Yeah, so it's something that's added to the king list.
36:44It's not in our oldest king list. >> Do we know when that was added? >> I We probably have a rough estimate of the date. I don't remember off the top of my head. It's probably somewhere in the early 3rd millennium BCE. So, maybe somewhere mid-2000s BCE. I don't remember exactly. >> contemporary to the oral traditions of Genesis?
37:07>> So, I think the the oral traditions of Genesis actually are much later than that. >> Really? >> Yeah, cuz cuz Genesis was probably written between around the the 8th century BCE down to the like the 5th century BCE. And a lot of it is riffing on the literature that's circulating within Babylon during the exile.
37:26Or it's literature that's circulating within Assyria when Assyria is um is beaten up on Israel. And so, for instance, uh the Tower of Babel. That's famous story from from Genesis. There's a tower called the the Tower of Etemenanki that is just outside of Babylon that was famous because it was uh built by I want to say I want to say Old Babylonian.
37:53Don't quote me on that though. But uh it was later destroyed when the Assyrians came in to take over. They they kind of uh decommissioned it and destroyed it partly. And then for like 80 years, another Assyrian emperor had a uh restoration project. Was trying to rebuild the tower, but it took forever.
38:15It took like 80 years. And that was right in the 8th century. And so, there are a lot of scholars who suggest that the story of this tower that was supposed to be built to heaven that was left unfinished is a reflection of the unfinished tower of Etemenanki. And so that would put it in the in the right date.
38:32And there there's also this problem when we look at historical narratives in the in the Hebrew Bible. They're written in ancient Hebrew and somewhat developed form of ancient Hebrew. And we can chart the developments of the Semitic languages fairly well. And there's no historical narrative prose in any alphabetic script, any language that was written in an alphabetic script until the middle of the 9th century BCE.
38:59And that first happens in like Moabite and Aramaic and some other languages like that. And so most likely our ancient narrative prose in biblical Hebrew was written around that time or shortly after. And the stuff that's older than that is written in poetry. And so the oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible are are not the creation account in Genesis.
39:22They're some poems that we find in uh like Judges 5. So this is a fascinating story about um Deborah, the the general who goes and defeats Sisera. Uh and we have stories in Exodus 15, the Song of the Sea. Some scholars think that's a very very old poem uh which is basically a shortened version of the Exodus story.
39:42And then Genesis 49 has some blessings that Jacob gives to his children that might be really really old. And Psalm 68. There there are a handful of poems that may go back to around 1000 BC. So when Genesis is talking about the things that we think are related to Enuma Elish, the closest connections are actually to versions of that story that were in circulation in Babylon around 600 BCE.
40:13So uh that's probably where Genesis is getting that from, not directly from Sumerian tablets, not directly from oral traditions that are a thousand years older. Uh the the scholars who are looking at that, I think have have made a good case that the closest connections are 8th to 6th century BCE. That's probably where the traditions that were recorded in Genesis were were mainly borrowed or or mainly adopted and adapted to serve the interests of the Judeans who were around in that time period.
40:46>> So, what is the oldest creation story that we're aware of? >> I think it's probably got to be an Egyptian one. Or it's either Sumerian or Egyptian. That's That's the two places where writing >> [clears throat] >> uh were inve- where writing was invented. Uh and I would have to go back and look. There's There's a wonderful set of texts called the Context of Scripture, a three-volume set published by uh this uh very expensive publisher called Brill.
41:15That They have translations of all of the texts that we have from ancient Egypt, from ancient Anatolia, from ancient uh Assyria, Babylon, from uh the cultures of ancient Canaan that are not in the Bible. And so, there They have one of the volumes, the first third of it is creation accounts. And so, it may be the masturbation one.
41:33I I can't I can't say for sure. I don't remember off the top of my head. Um but, you know, that's >> the OG. >> [laughter] >> Uh it could be. It could be. >> Well, the Egyptian language by itself is very bizarre. It kind of emerges out of nowhere. Like hieroglyphs emerge uh sort of fully formed. >> Uh you could There's a There's a development in the uh the way hieroglyphs are used.
41:59But, we we first start seeing inscriptions popping up like monumental inscriptions. Like most of the the early writing probably took place on materials that deteriorated >> Right. quickly. And so, what what we have is the stuff that was written in stone, which is where like the language has got to be a little more developed for us to to start, you know, taking all day to inscribe something in stone.
42:21So, I think there's um I I don't think there's a good case to make that uh it just popped out of nowhere. Like the the ancient alien stuff is uh is fun, but uh we don't have a lot of of evidence that gets us uh to that being really even a plausible solution to to the problem. There there is definitely a mystery about uh about why in similar time periods people in different parts of the world came up with very similar ideas all at the same time.
42:54That might have something to do with uh the evolution of the brain or something like that. >> also we're probably underestimating the amount of travel people were capable of doing back then. >> Yeah, I think so. I think so. But, the writing ten seems to develop from um receipts or from counting. >> Mhm.
43:13>> up stuff, uh and this is your receipt for how many goats you bought >> Right. >> Makes sense. >> And so, as as your needs develop in, you know, your economy is growing, I think you begin to develop labels for things, you do begin to develop characters for things, and then it it goes from there. There there are a bunch of really good uh academic discussions about the origins of of language and the origins of uh the alphabet.
Origins of Alphabet and Languages
43:37And and even the um the stuff that we see, ancient Hebrew is is ultimately derives from Egyptian. >> Really? >> In Yeah, in the Sinai. Uh that is where you have We have some inscriptions from around 1,700 to 1,900 BCE, where they're they look like Egyptian hieroglyphs, but they're not doing what Egyptian hieroglyphs do, because they are either syllabic or ideographic or logographic, where one sign represents a syllable so a consonant and a vowel or one sign represents a word or one sign
44:12represents an idea. And they they change them so that each sign represents just a single sound and the sound is whatever sound is at the start of the word that the symbol represents. So for instance, uh the word for house uh bait and that starts with a b and so if you drew a house that meant the b sound.
44:31And this and this is the development of the alphabets because to learn ancient Egyptian you had to memorize hundreds and hundreds of of signs and to learn Sumerian or uh Akkadian or something like that hundreds of signs. But an alphabet is 22 to 30 letters. So it's a lot easier to memorize. Uh and then that becomes that gets taken to Phoenicia and from Phoenicia it gets spread all over the place and so apart from Hangul which is the Korean uh script I think virtually every other
45:06alphabet on earth is descended from the Phoenician. >> Well the Korean script is fairly recent, right? >> Yeah yeah fairly recent and and they take uh a few different symbols and they group them together to to create syllables. Uh but each each symbol on its own represents a sound very similar to uh to the way uh our alphabet works.
45:27>> I don't know much about Korean but I've heard it described as the most complete language. Like it's the most structurally logic logical language. >> There there are ways that I think it is. There are other ways that an a language like Russian might be more uh systematic or even ways like ancient Latin uh might be more systematic but >> you started learning religion we start studying religion did you start studying languages concurrently?
45:55How how did you do it? >> Uh I I was So I joined the LDS church when I was 20 years old and a year later I went to serve a 2-year proselytizing mission in Uruguay. And I fell in love with studying the Bible when I was doing that. I I loved the stories. I loved learning about the the history, the culture.
46:16And I wanted to better understand the languages so I could I could try to engage the texts as they were originally written. So, I tried to start teaching myself Hebrew when I was down there. I didn't have a ton of time and I wasn't very good at it, but >> That's a task. >> Yeah, it's a tall order. And when I came home, I found out that you could get a degree in biblical studies and be a Bible scholar and I was like, that would be about the coolest career in the world for me.
46:43And so, I I went to school to do that. I wanted to I wanted to learn ancient Hebrew. I wanted to learn ancient Greek. I wanted to learn about the literature. I wanted to learn about the history. I wanted to learn about the archaeology. And so, I started off not really having a narrow focus, but just I want to try and get as much of it in as I could.
46:56And over the course of getting these degrees, you know, you kind of have to narrow your focus on on stuff. And so, as I progressed, I decided I I wanted to learn what was not only what was going on with the languages, but I wanted to focus on how people thought about God and gods. And so, my PhD is actually uh is using biblical studies and then something called the cognitive science of religion uh to I put those two together to try to figure out what we can know about how the authors of the Hebrew Bible would
47:31have thought about and interacted with gods as they understood them. And that that's using a lot of experimental research on living informants. So, interviews and and experiments and things like that to figure out how the brain works and and how we come up with ideas about deities, ideas about rituals, ideas about religious identity and stuff like that.
47:53So, I find that fascinating. So, I would say my main uh focus is now on conceptualizations of deity, of scripture, and religious identity. And cognitive science of religion is is one of the main tools that I use. But But yeah, it all started with having to to learn the languages. >> What such an enormous field of study.
48:13>> Yeah. >> There is so much to learn, especially when you're talking about these different translations and different languages, which is which is what I've always felt like is the weirdest part of about all this. very difficult to translate languages to something that makes sense in whatever language you're currently using.
48:32Like there there's certain concepts that we use that if you tried to use them, you know, in if you try to like I'm sure you've seen Russian translated to English, and you're like, "What are they even What are they saying?" It's It gets weird cuz it's not that's it languages aren't It's not direct. It's not like oh, this is their word for cow, this is their word for drive, this is their word for truck.
48:59Oh, the cow drove a truck. It's not that simple. It's It's depend like the way they talk about things is very different. The way they describe time is very different. >> Yeah. Yeah. And And that when you get into more minority languages, languages that are spoken in and um you know, tiny little islands like Yap or Kitty Boss or something like that.
49:19Um it it can get very very alien to someone who has only spoken English their entire life. Cuz learning Spanish, like there are you know, there are ways it's difficult. Learning any language is difficult. And there But there are a lot of ways it is very very close to English, including even some of the words sound very very similar.
49:37But there are other languages that you learn that are just uh yeah, you have to restructure how you are thinking about things and how you communicate things. And it's not just like in German, oh you got to put all the verbs at the end. Uh there there are very very different ways to to go about. >> So, how complicated is that when you're reading an English translation of the Bible?
50:02Like that's when things must get very strange if you're especially Old Testament, right? You're >> Yeah. >> Or even crazier, Dead Sea Scrolls, right? So, you go in Aramaic to English. >> Like Yeah, it's a lot of people think that it's a simple matter translating from from ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek into English.
50:22And they imagine that because they have an English translation, uh they, you know, have all the insights they need. And And this is why a lot of people will go out and they'll get an interlinear, or they'll go on a website that provides, you know, the Hebrew to English or something like that, and imagine that they now understand.
50:39When the reality is that there is a lot more under the hood of that relationship between the Hebrew and the English translation that they don't have any idea about. And so, there's a there's a saying that somebody uh who, you know, goes online and uses an interlinear or something like that, they do they know just enough Greek to be dangerous.
50:59>> Meaning they >> really what they imagine that they know a lot more than they do. And when they go out and try to to use that knowledge to try to, you know, go make videos on social media or something like that, they end up stepping in it cuz they really don't know what they're talking about. Or the the main reason I'm on social media, the main thing I'm trying to combat, they will spread misinformation.
51:18>> Right. >> Falsehoods that other people are going to eat up cuz they might have a platform with millions of followers. >> That sounds like me. >> [laughter] >> I won't say too much about the misinformation, uh but uh yeah, no, there there's a lot of it out there. I try not to be someone who does that because I can't be a >> No, you're really good at it.
Ugaritic and Leviathan Parallels
51:37You're very good at at breaking down where things go wrong with translations as well. >> Well, I appreciate that. I And I can't be a specialist in all things, which is why I rely on the consensus of the academic world so much. >> ancient Hebrew? Do you Can you read it? >> Nobody speaks ancient Hebrew.
51:53Uh it's it's not a spoken language. Obviously, modern Hebrew is is spoken. Um but it's not a language that anyone would ever grow up learning by speaking with their mother. >> This episode is brought to you by Call of Duty. Modern Warfare 4 is coming and they're going all in on this one. The kind of missions that make you go, "Dude, did they really just do that?"
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52:42Visit callofduty.com for more. Rated M for mature. >> Is there a way to learn how to speak it? >> Um yeah, people people >> interpretation? >> Yeah, you you have to reconstruct some stuff. And so, there there are absolutely like speakers of modern Hebrew uh can look at a text and read it perfectly fluently.
53:00They To understand it, they have to have a knowledge of the difference between modern Hebrew and ancient Hebrew. >> Uh but they're saying it the correct way? >> Mostly. There are some differences in the way they pronounce things anciently from the way they pronounce things um today, but most scholars who are who are looking at the uh biblical Hebrew, ancient Hebrew, are going to adopt a modern pronunciation system.
53:23So, there there are absolutely scholars out there who advocate for uh or have a reconstructed way of pronouncing ancient Hebrew, but for the most part, if I go to a conference and I read a text in Hebrew, I'm going to use something approximating a modern Hebrew pronunciation, and I'm not awesome at it, but uh you know someone who speaks modern Hebrew should understand what what I'm saying.
53:47Uh but I I read it fairly well. It's been a while since uh I've been I've got a translation of the Hebrew Bible I'm I'm working on. I'm uh I haven't been able to touch it for uh almost 2 years now. So, uh my my Hebrew ebbs and flows depending on how frequently I'm in the text working on translation and stuff like that.
54:07But yeah, I've got I'm better at Hebrew than I am at Greek. Uh but there are but there are a handful of languages we have to get some competency in to to do this. Aramaic's one of them. Another fun one is called Ugaritic, which is um considered somewhat of a precursor to Hebrew. It was spoken a little further north on the Syrian coast.
54:28>> Mhm. >> Oh, you've never heard of Ugaritic? >> No. >> It's a fascinating story. 1929, a guy is plowing a field in uh along the coast of Syria, and he hits a big rock that he can't move. And he digs it up and basically discovers an entire ancient city. Calls out the archaeologists. They all come to send on this uh this field, and they discover the ancient city of Ugarit, which we knew from some texts that referred to this city uh called Ugarit.
54:57And they found uh around a thousand or so texts, but nobody recognized the language cuz it was written in cuneiform, but there were only 30 cuneiform signs. So, that means it's got to be alphabetic and not the the other way they use cuneiform signs. >> Mhm. >> And they decided, "Okay, the most common Semitic consonant is mem, the equivalent of our M."
55:21And they said, "So, let's take the most common sign that we see, and let's designate that mem, and then let's look at all the two-letter words, and there are only a handful of words that can be two letters and have the mem in one position or another, and let's try to decode from there this language. And now we have uh we've decoded Ugaritic.
55:40And now we a lot of people who go and learn Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic will also learn Ugaritic because some of these mythical texts mention things that are in the Bible. And so they talk about uh deities like El and Baal and Asherah. >> Oh. >> Asherah, the the one right there. So uh and there there are some things that are in there that help us better understand Biblical Hebrew.
56:04There are some things that are in there that help us understand some of the the cultic rituals [snorts] that would go on in relation to El and Baal and and Asherah. And there's even uh there's one text that's almost directly quoted in the Bible. And and the thing is Ugarit was destroyed around 1200 BCE.
56:21So with the uh what's called the Late Bronze Age Collapse. Um and there's a There's a wonderful book by Eric Cline, 1177 BC. Have you ever heard that that book title? Phenomenal uh book on how the Late Bronze Age Collapse happened. But so the the destruction of Ugarit happens before the invention of Hebrew.
56:45So Hebrew didn't even exist in this time period. And uh but this helps us recover what the languages that were being spoken in that region were like as Hebrew began to develop. But there's a there's a passage There's a reference to uh Baal is is fighting a deity named Mot. And Mot means death. So this is the god of death that's fighting Baal who is the the storm god.
57:04And Mot is like, "I know you're uh you won some battles in the past. You're going to lose this one." Uh but he says, "I know you uh you slew Lotan, which is the Ugaritic version of Leviathan, the wriggling serpent, the twisting serpent, the dragon with seven heads." And what's funny is in Isaiah 27:1, we have uh Isaiah talking about Adonai, the god of Israel, and says, "On that day" so now it's off in the future, "on that day you will strike Leviathan, the wriggling serpent, Leviathan,
57:40the twisting serpent, the dragon that lives in the sea." And so the And the words for wriggling and twisting serpent are identical to the Ugaritic and Lotan and Leviathan are are both the same word just in two different languages. >> Wow. >> And so this passage in Isaiah was probably written somewhere before 700 BCE, but that's coming 500 years after the Ugaritic text that's that says almost the exact same thing.
58:09>> Wow. >> So it's not that Isaiah had access to this text and was quoting it, but it was probably a kind of a poetic saying that was just transmitted all around the area and at some point Isaiah decided to to write it down. And while the Ugaritic one makes reference to seven heads, Isaiah doesn't say anything about seven heads, but we do have in Psalm 74 reference to Leviathan's multiple heads.
58:34That God crushed the heads of Leviathan and the seven-headed serpent dragon is kind of a a pretty common motif in that time period. Just recently in Tel Hazor in a little north in Israel, they discovered a little inscription with a drawing that shows a warrior fighting a seven-headed serpent dragon beast.
58:55So the So the Ugaritic literature helps us an awful lot with understanding what was going on before the Bible happened, but also helps us better understand the Hebrew of the Bible and also the relationship of these gods to one another and yeah, what the the tradition that was inherited by the Israelites and then how they engaged with it as they passed it on down the line historically.
59:24>> Why so many references to dragons? So they didn't have a word for lizard, right? And they didn't have a word for reptile. Like and dinosaurs, that was that was very all that's very contemporary, right? Just even the description of it in that way. >> Yeah. >> But, the term dragon referred to all of these scaly beasts, right?
59:45>> Yeah, it was it was all of the a crocodile. Yeah, it it was a sea monster. The The thing is they were very conscious of uh the ever-present threat of chaos >> [snorts] >> and particularly on the waters. So, the land was safe, the waters were dangerous. >> Right. >> And the chaos of the waters became um kind of personified as a deity who could be represented as uh a dragon just because that's where the the sea monsters live.
1:00:14That's where the the giant fish and the um the alligators and stuff like that. Uh and so, you get traditions that develop about the the the monster that lives in the sea and then our god tames that monster as a way to show that our god has power over chaos. Our god can bring order to chaos. And you talked about creation stories earlier.
1:00:36A lot of the original creation stories were mainly about overcoming the chaos to create order. Order is what allows us to live in harmony. Order is what allows civilization to develop. Order is what we're going for. So, god is the one that brings that order. And so, the the battle between chaos and order becomes a battle between a dragon and our deity who is a warrior who is going to protect us.
1:01:02>> How much of these stories do you think the way they're compiled is to give structure to civilization and to establish rules in order for people to live together harmoniously? Like older, wiser people realize like these these folks have to have something to believe in. And one one of the best ways to get a hold of this is say someone's watching all the time.
1:01:23>> So so >> Man in >> sky. >> Yeah, you you've touched on a couple of different things because the something someone's watching all the time is is definitely a central feature of how scholars think that religion dominated the development of civilization because uh and and there's a wonderful book by uh scholar named Ara Norenzayan called Big Gods, which is which is all about this.
Big Gods and Human Cooperation
1:01:46But uh the idea there is that uh gods develop in a in a variety of different ways, but it's it's rooted in the fact that our minds because evolution has conditioned us to be very sensitive to the presence of agents and agency in the world around us. Uh anciently the the primate that interpreted the rustling in the bushes as something that might have teeth rather than as just the wind survived longer than the one who didn't.
1:02:11And so our minds became very very sensitive to the presence of agency in the world around us. And so anyone who's ever watched a horror movie and then has gone up the bed the basement stairs and a little quicker than normal or you know, you don't close your eyes at night because you feel like there's something there, that is a product of this evolutionarily installed sensitivity to agency.
1:02:34And as this as this kind of plays out through human sociality, we we curate relationships with deceased relatives. Uh we interpret certain events as the work of some kind of entity that we can't see, whether an animal or something more human like that. And one of the things that interactions with these entities then allows us to do is it allows us to suggest there is an eye in the sky.
1:03:07There is someone out there who is uh the the phrase is covertly monitoring us. And once you become in charge of the relationship between the people and the covert monitor, you then have an awful lot of power to say, "Well, it turns out we're all supposed to do this." And the deity is watching us, and anybody who is not doing this is going to be punished by the deity, and that exerts a lot of influence over over people.
1:03:34But, it also allows societies to grow and get larger and more complex without descending into chaos because we have kind of this social superstructure that allows us to to trust other people that we may not know. This is one of the weird things about human evolution is if you're in a family, you know your family, your kin are important to you, and so you can cooperate with your kin.
1:03:58But, if you happen to run into somebody that you don't know, you have no idea if they're going to kill you or what. And as societies grow beyond kinship units, you need signs and signals to be able to let other people know that you you're okay, we're part of the same social group, we can trust each other.
1:04:18And so, these days, you know, it's things like shaking somebody's hand might be a way to do that. That's Wearing a cross is a is a way to It's called costly signaling. It's a way to incur some kind of cost in order to signal to others that you are part of the in group. And but but the these rituals go far beyond religious things.
1:04:42Just even secularly, there are a lot of things that we expect in a normal interaction with a stranger. You expect certain things. Good morning. How are you doing? Shaking in the hand, I'm looking you in the eye. I'm doing all the things to let you know that I can be trusted. And so, that's kind of an outcome of uh just being a part of a human society, and gods, these covert monitors, are very effective rule setters.
1:05:07Only they're not there to directly set the rules. Somebody has to mediate between the deity and the people, and that's where we get religious experts, and we get priests, and we get things like that. >> And so so you know, it would be the elders in very very archaic human societies who would be the ones to say this these are the stories that we're going to tell that we're going to share so that our kids grow up uh adopting these expectations about about how they live their life and who the good guys
1:05:40are and who the bad guys are and and that's one of the big problems in this is that empathy is is something that we develop in in human evolution, but empathy frequently only goes so far. There's frequently a boundary to empathy, and that's called parochial empathy. I I'm very empathetic for anyone in my in-group.
1:05:55Their pain is my pain. I see that pain, I feel that pain. And then somebody who I perceive to be the other frequently I'm not going to have any empathy for. In fact, it may make me feel good. >> Which is very convenient during war. >> Exactly. Yeah, and that's that's one of the one of the reasons that empathy you know, we hear a lot about toxic empathy uh these days, or at least I do I do because the algorithm hates me.
1:06:19But um the the idea that uh we shouldn't extend our empathy beyond a particular in-group boundary is the most toxic kind of empathy. >> Right. >> Because that is the empathy that others someone else and and says no, I I care about my people and I dislike or or am apathetic to someone who's not part of the in-group.
Parochial Empathy and Politics
1:06:46>> But it's so weird because that extends to um well, in this country particularly, it extends to ideologies and politics. >> Yeah. >> And into the point where left versus right, one is the enemy, depending on which side you're on, and they need to be eliminated. >> Yeah, and the more you can dehumanize them and other them and make it seem like they are just so alien and so corrupt.
1:07:09>> Right. >> The more you can do that, the easier it is to justify >> Yeah. >> not just treating them bad, not just voting for the other guy, but but even imprisoning them. >> Or celebrating their death like Charlie Kirk. >> Yeah. That's That's That's a wonderful example. Something just atrocious that happened.
1:07:24Nobody deserves that kind of treatment. >> But >> [laughter] >> A little south of my town. I I was actually on the golf course and I got a text from somebody that when that happened I was and I I just I got a chill. Um but yeah, this is this is uh this is one of the outcomes of of just being human is that we tend to draw a line around those who congregate around the social interaction or the social interaction the social identities that are most important to us and that's what
1:07:54politics is frequently trying to exploit. >> Yes. >> And that's why the more we can paint somebody on the other side of the aisle as so other as to be evil. >> Yeah. >> And even not human, the easier it is to justify torturing them, killing them, a genocide. The The easier that becomes and so that's So I I think of toxic empathy as parochial empathy rather than the global empathy that I think we should all be striving for which is which is a phenomenally difficult thing to do and
1:08:25it's phenomenally complex, but uh but yeah, the more we can humanize people, I think the more we can learn to get along. That's what allowed human civilization to to flourish. In fact, one I'll I'll share one more detail about this. Have you ever heard of Shanidar 1? >> I think so. >> So it's it's an ancient um Neanderthal remains.
1:08:47It's It's a skull and and a few other scattered bones. >> And the skull shows some deformities that indicate that this was a person who was profoundly deaf, probably mostly blind as well, and had other disabilities that would have made it so they could not have survived very long. But, the skull aged to pretty old age for a Neanderthal.
1:09:16Which indicates that that was only possible if they had a social support group around them that did things for them that they couldn't do for themselves. And and it almost certainly would have been kind of a social in-group. So, it's it's not a lesson about about global empathy. But, if we understand humanity to be defined by, and I don't like definitions, but to be defined by the way we're most different from the animals that are closest to us, I think sacrificing our own efforts, time,
1:09:50resources, things like that to care for someone who can't care for themselves, I think if that's about the closest I think we can get to a necessary and sufficient feature of what it means to be human. >> And one of the most universally admired qualities. >> Yeah. >> Amongst I think all cultures. >> Yeah.
1:10:08And this is this is something that we believe these ancient Neanderthal remains preserve in in in the injuries and the disabilities that are very clearly present in that in that individual. So, I So, you know, you could say Shanidar 1 is the oldest human if you wanted to because I I think it shows that this was someone who grew up in a society that was like, "We're going to we'll take care of you.
1:10:34You you can't do these things for you, we'll take that burden on ourselves." >> Well, we have some very weird ideas of what Neanderthals were and how intelligent they are. Their brains were larger than ours. It's which really weird. And they keep finding older hominids that have larger brains than us.
1:10:54The The latest one is this one from China, Homo I think they're calling Juruensis. Um larger brain capacity but I think 20 plus percent than ours. And like, okay, what was their society? Did they have empathy? Did they have culture? Did they have language? Did they have oral tradition? What did they have?
1:11:15We don't know. We only have bones. We have bones and we have this prejudice distinct We have this idea in our head that anything old must have been dumber than us. And we might not make it, okay? We might [laughter] not make it, right? Human [snorts] beings could go extinct. Like we were just having this conversation yesterday with my friend Sam Morril.
1:11:37We were talking about the this AI threat that a lot of these CEOs have said there's a 10% chance it could wipe out humanity. Like that's crazy. So if we got wiped out and then millions and millions of years from now, uh you know, whatever natural catastrophe happens, AI gets wiped out, and then primates evolve slowly over time.
1:11:59[laughter] I mean, and then they find human brains. Like what what or human skull. Like what the was this thing? >> Isn't there like an old series of movies uh about the >> Planet of the Apes. >> Planet of the Apes, yeah. >> Well, it's probably, you know, I mean, I think the the Earth has had numerous enormous natural disasters.
1:12:18The And there's a lot of evidence of that. The Toba volcano knocked us down to a few thousand people 70 plus thousand years ago. I think that's happened a ton of times. And I think it's super possible that it could happen where there's zero. And you got to start from scratch. >> [laughter] >> Yeah, I think I think I just saw something on my phone earlier today.
1:12:42I saw a headline. It was like some AI some AI group said that their AI has has ignored their commands or something like that. And like this is how Terminator starts. This is >> Exactly. It's exactly how it starts. It's so weird. Um but yet we trudge on. >> Yeah. >> Full steam ahead. >> Yeah. >> Cuz we have to.
1:13:03Allegedly. >> [laughter] >> I wonder if that's in the Bible. You know, I've always wondered uh what the original stories were based on. The the I keep going to the origin story because like Adam and Eve being the one that the Christians share. Um is there a similar Adam and Eve story in other older um >> Yeah, you a lot of them have uh the early humans.
1:13:28They're usually not individuals. They're usually groups. Uh >> Well, that makes a little more sense. >> Yeah. Um >> [laughter] >> But we do have um there is an an Adapa tale uh that's uh is somewhat related and and some people think that that features of the Adam and Eve story were borrowed from uh Adapa.
Adam and Eve Origins
1:13:49But but it is the >> Sounds somewhere. >> It well, yeah, the name sounds sounds similar. Um and there there are some folks who uh who try to find inspiration for uh the Garden of Eden story in other like later traditions, even going down to like Nordic traditions and things like that that weren't copied down until only you know, a thousand years or more ago.
1:14:14I I don't know that uh we can hunt down a single source for the story cuz it's primarily it's cobbling together a bunch of different things, but overwhelmingly it's an ideology and an ideology is an origin story for something that is going on today. It's similar to Aesop's fables. You've probably I don't know how many you can remember, but I used to know all the you know, this is how the elephant got its long nose and this is how uh this is why the ants are industrious and there are
1:14:42all kinds of these stories. But when you look at the Adam and Eve story when you and particularly the curses in Genesis 3, it's like, oh, this is why childbirth is painful. This is why men have to work hard to make uh to make plants grow. Oh, this is why we hate snakes. And this is why snakes oddly don't have legs.
1:15:03Like this little guy right here doesn't have any legs. Uh in in an odd way, it's kind of a an etiology for how the world got to be the way it was. And that and you know, you don't need a whole lot of uh inspiration from from other traditions to do that. But but certainly the idea that humanity or the gods created humanity cuz they wanted to do something with humanity uh comes from uh other tales.
1:15:27And the Epic of Gilgamesh is an interesting one. Uh I don't know how much you've read of of Gilgamesh. It's a >> bit. Yeah, it's it's difficult. It's difficult to absorb. >> There's a and and part of the beginning you've got uh Enkidu is is his bud uh and and maybe more. But uh there's a there's a story about basically they have to kind of grow up and become civilized.
1:15:59Uh initially they're running around naked. And then there's a there's a sex worker who shows up. And that uh intercourse is what kind of catalyzes a a maturation. And now [clears throat] they're going to wear clothes. And they're going to not run around uh in the nude like an animal. And and that's very similar to what I think we've got going on in in Adam and Eve because they're they're innocent.
1:16:22They are naked and they don't care. And then when they eat the the fruit, their eyes are open. Suddenly they're like, oh, I'm ashamed of being naked in public. I'm going to you know, we're going to have clothing now. And so the the fact that we've got this maturation going on in the early history of humanity where we go from more like an animal to more like uh civilized human.
1:16:46>> What is your take on the origin for this concept that we were better off ignorant? Because that seems like like you're you're eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. >> Yeah. >> Well, that seems like a good thing to be able to know what's good and evil, but the the idea is that all that's the original sin, and all of our issues happened because people ate from the knowledge of the tree of good and evil, and if they didn't, we would be in paradise still.
1:17:14>> Well, I think that's that's a Christian interpretation. >> Right. >> because in the Hebrew Bible, here one interesting thing about the story of of Adam and Eve, specifically Adam and Eve, their story is never mentioned once again anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. You have in one >> You would think that would be kind of important.
1:17:32>> Yeah, you would think. Nobody talks about it until we get to the New Testament. There's a reference to Adam at the very beginning of a a big genealogy in Chronicles. And in Ezekiel 28, there's a reference to the mountain of Eden, which you would imagine would be the same thing, but there's no mountain in the story in Genesis 2 and 3.
1:17:49So, it's a it's a different tradition. Whatever's going on in Ezekiel 28 is not just they're aware of much more than just what's in Genesis 2 and 3. But uh so throughout the Hebrew Bible, and even in Greco-Roman period Judaism, and down into some parts of the New Testament, it's not Adam's and Eve's fault that evil exists.
1:18:10That's not the main story that they used to understand why evil exists. The main story that they use is from Genesis 6, where the angels, well, they're they're angels in later interpretation, but they're second-tier deities, they come down and they have children with the human women, and then this is what causes God to send the flood.
First Enoch and Origins of Evil
1:18:29But you're familiar with the book of First Enoch. >> Mhm. >> And so that is a version of that story where that is what caused evil to be on the earth. The angels came down and brought all of this knowledge and gave it to the humans including how to make weapons of war and make up is listed as one of the evil things that that the that the angels taught humanity.
1:18:51And so I think that up until the New Testament was written, that was probably the dominant tradition about where evil came from. And then in the New Testament we kind of see both of them. Paul talks about Adam and Eve. But in other parts of the New Testament in Jude for instance, they quote directly from the book of first Enoch call calling it a prophecy.
1:19:17But they they also talk about the angels who left their first estate and and engaged in all this wickedness. And so it seems like these are competing traditions about where evil came from and the first Enoch tradition was probably the dominant one and then because of Paul and the New Testament, we can kind of see traces of both of them in there but but I think Christianity later decided to just go with the one that was in their canon which was the Genesis one.
1:19:45>> And blame the woman for everything. >> And well yeah, you do have you do have uh >> Which by the way, I want to let women off the hook. Adam talked to God. Eve did not. So maybe Adam forgot to tell Eve to not eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It's never specified that he did.
1:20:05>> Yeah, and that's an interesting part of the story because what Eve says is the rule is not what God told Adam. It's different. Now it you know, ultimately it's still don't eat the fruit. But she says we shouldn't even touch it or we'll die. And and there are a couple of details that and and so this is puzzled people for centuries.
1:20:27Where did Eve get her idea of why they weren't supposed to eat the fruit. So, did Adam report it to her and get it wrong? Did God show up off camera, off stage, and tell Eve the same command but in a slightly different way? Now, now this is probably you know, this is a a literary creation. But, for the earliest audience who heard someone sharing this story, they would have probably thought the same.
1:20:53That's not the same thing that God said to Adam. >> Right. >> So, the author probably had something in mind about how to account for why Eve's story was different and we don't have any access to that. So, we have no idea and and this is actually something that scholars talk about. Did Did the author want you to imagine that Adam is the one who passed it on to Eve and just amplified things?
1:21:12Or >> think that would be specified. >> You would think, but it it's not. And and is it the accident of preservation? Do we just have a much shorter version of a story that was originally much longer? Or is that how it was originally written? It seems to be at least based on our earliest manuscripts.
1:21:27It doesn't seem to have changed much since as far back as we can go. So, these are the kinds of questions that that keep us up at night. >> Well, it's so fascinating cuz if you just imagine our version of the Bible today and if we continue to exist as a society a thousand years from now, most likely it would be the exact same version.
1:21:51Because we're really good at keeping records now. >> Right? >> I think there would be versions that are that are very close if not exact, but I think at the same time there would be versions that are very different because the So, the the King James Version is the the I think it's probably still the highest the highest selling Bible translation.
1:22:11I don't think it's the most read. I think the NIV might be the most read, but >> NIV was actually >> NIV, New International Version, or Not Inspired Version, is another reference that I think is kind of funny. Um Um most modern translations of the New Testament have taken out more than a dozen verses that are in the King James Version.
1:22:33>> Why? >> Uh, because since the King James Version was translated, we have discovered hundreds more manuscripts, and we have been able to do a lot more study and a lot better study on those manuscripts to figure out what most likely these manuscripts originally said. Originally is is a complicated term in academics, but the early our ability to to reconstruct the text as it was in its earliest stage.
1:23:01Um, and we know that some of the passages that were are in the King James Version were added later on. They were not written by the author. And so now, when we publish these translations of the New Testament, we just omit the verse. And because versification is kind of complex to just redo, we just leave the verse out entirely.
Verses Omitted from Modern Translations
1:23:22So, if you look in Matthew 17, for instance, you'll see verse 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, and there'll be a footnote at the end of verse 20 that'll say some ancient manuscripts add, and then it'll quote a translation of verse 21. And this freaks people out when they discover this if they don't know the history the reason that these passages were taken out.
1:23:44There are about 16 passages in the New Testament that get have been taken out. >> Is there any debate about whether or not they should have been taken out? >> So, for instance, the the passage in Matthew 17 21, we have some very very old manuscripts that don't have it at all. It's just not in there. And then we have like Codex Sinaiticus, which is mid-4th century CE.
1:24:10So, this this text this codex was probably transcribed a little after the Council of Nicaea. And it's not in the main body of text, but there's a little star in the margin, and then up at the top somebody scribbled in this passage. >> Ah. >> And then in manuscripts after Sinaiticus, it's in the main body of text.
1:24:32And so, we can see >> Right. >> in action the verse being added to the manuscripts. >> What is the verse? >> Uh it says this is where uh the disciples are coming back to Jesus and saying, "Yeah, we've forgiven sins, we've cast out demons, and there's this this one demon we can't cast out." And Jesus says, "Yeah, that kind doesn't come out except by prayer and fasting."
1:24:58Now, this is actually being borrowed from a similar story in Mark 9. And so, what most scholars think happened was an early scribe was like, "Okay, this is the same story. This detail is in Mark, but it's omitted in Matthew. I'm going to scratch it into the the manuscript there." And then they later on gets worked right into the the body of the text.
1:25:18So, most modern translations of the New Testament, there are about 16 verses that are commonly just omitted, and they're they're included in footnotes, but also the the ending of Mark, the whole story of Jesus's post-resurrection appearance at the end of Mark, uh scholars agree that's not original. That was something that was added.
1:25:37So, chapter 16, verses 9 through 20, a lot of translations will put them in brackets, and a footnote will say, uh you know, this comes from um later manuscripts. It's not in the original version. >> And and there are a handful of of stories like that. And then with the Dead Sea Scrolls, we we have a better idea of how some verses read, we have a better idea of what verses might have been added.
1:26:01We even have a a whole paragraph that was omitted that we didn't really know um we knew something was supposed to be there, but we had no idea what, and we found out what was supposed to be there in the Dead Sea Scrolls. So, maybe we discover another cache of ancient manuscripts of the Bible, and maybe they're earlier than the Dead Sea Scrolls and so >> Boy, that would be exciting.
1:26:21>> Oh, it would be phenomenal. I would love that so much. But a thousand years down the road, who knows what the Bible will look like. Now, there are still people who are like, "No, it's the KJV or nothing." And I think people like that will be around a thousand years as well. So, but I I think we will just multiply the available versions of the Bible and some of them will probably be closer to what was originally written originally.
1:26:45And and some of them will be people trying to hold on to their favorite translation or their favorite version. >> It's just such an insane story that a sheep herder or a goat herder threw a rock into a cave and hit a clay vessel and heard it shatter and then realized there was something in there and decided to go look.
1:27:08If not for that >> Yeah, we Oh, yeah. We would still wouldn't know. >> That I mean, it might I mean, that cave might not have ever been discovered. I mean, who knows? That was 1947. Yeah. >> Yeah, I think it actually I think it probably would have been discovered because this that's right around the time that Israel became a state.
1:27:27When Israel became a state, it now had state funding for archaeological research and so excavations >> They start going looking around. >> They start going looking all over the place. And so, within by the '60s or '70s, there would have been enough excavations ongoing at Qumran that they would have I've I've been to Qumran a couple of times.
1:27:45You can see the cave's like not far away. It's like that's going to be a trip to kind of get to it. >> is it that that cave sat undisturbed for 2,000 years? >> Yeah, you had to >> That is so nuts. Is that it? Right there? Where you cursor >> Well, there there are a bunch of caves. But that's one of them.
Dead Sea Scrolls Discovery
1:28:04>> I mean, imagine if somebody decided not to store it there and just leave it out somewhere or they died. They were going to go store it there, and they got killed in a raid. >> This This is one of the one of the kind of tragic things about archaeology is when a lot of people are getting killed at the same time, that's good for us.
1:28:23>> Like it >> Cuz we find the bodies. >> Well, not just the bodies, but that's the circumstance that's most likely to preserve stuff. >> Oh. >> Because when they burn things to the ground, >> Right. >> particularly if you have things on clay tablets, that bakes the clay tablets, and they stay exactly as they are until we find them.
1:28:41So, some of our best discoveries have been because somebody burnt a building down, and it happened to be an archive, or at a library, or the palace where the king stored all the annals, or something like that. And And then the the reason that we have all of the pointing at a blank screen. The reason that we have all of the Qumran stuff is because that whole community was was destroyed by the Romans >> Right.
1:29:04>> around 68-ish CE, and nobody was alive to come back and get all the stuff that they had stuffed in those caves for safekeeping. >> Who knows how long people were living there writing things down that we haven't found yet? >> And the weirdest is, um, you know the megalithic architecture underneath the West Wall?
1:29:26>> Mhm. Uh, the the stones? >> Yeah. The enormous stones. >> Uh-huh. >> Like who the put those there? >> [laughter] >> You know what I mean? Like what we What were those guys doing? >> Yeah. >> And imagine if they find something, you know, with ground-penetrating radar, some new cache of of texts and scrolls, or tablets, or something.
1:29:46>> Oh, we'd have a field day. >> Oh my goodness. I mean, it's it's so interesting trying, you know, or not me, you know, archaeologists trying to piece together this understanding of human civilization just based on what's left over, and knowing that in a lot of places there's not going to be anything left over.
1:30:03You're just guessing. >> That's called the accident of preservation, and >> it results in a problem because we we gather all the data that we might get and we think that this is everything. And we have to constantly remind ourselves, no, this is like only what we're finding in tombs. We try to reconstruct so much stuff from just what we find in a tomb.
1:30:22And it's like a tomb is not a representation of an entire even household, much less society. And and a lot of our our stuff is has a what we call a a mortuary bias, precisely because we tend to find stuff when it gets buried. And usually tombs are the things that tend to get buried. Or we find stuff when cities are destroyed in a what we call a conflagration.
1:30:46And um >> What was this here, Jeremy? >> I went to Google Maps to the Qumran Caves and this is a video. All right, so what it looks like where they're digging. >> And that's that's being taken from a a little ridge. >> like probably from >> Yeah, they've got they've got walkways there now. And that and those are the remains of the uh the community that they built there at Qumran.
1:31:08Most [sighs] most likely >> You imagine going in a time machine and just >> [laughter] >> being able to gaze upon these people just 10 minutes. >> Yeah. >> What was life like? >> This this is something that that I've always found fascinating. The more I'm I've done research in cognitive science of religion and learn more about um you know, why our brains work the way they do.
1:31:30Uh it's helped me understand uh some of the things that I've experienced myself. In relation to ancient stuff like that. Like I was in uh I did one of my master's degrees at the University of Oxford and the Bodleian libraries are just unreal. But I held a tablet that was thousands of years old and looked at the bottom and there was a thumb print on the bottom.
1:31:50It was like I'm looking at the fingerprint of whoever did this. They just happened to leave a fingerprint on that when they were are this tablet and that is frozen in time and it kind of uh and and I have the like cognitive explanation for this but it kind of gins up a sense of their of their presence.
1:32:09It It There's a sense in which you kind of feel the the presence of uh of those people when you have such a clear kind of cue to human involvement and that and that kind of stuff I I live for for that kind of stuff and so I love archaeology. I love going in and seeing, you know, the domestic stuff where it's like, "Oh, this is This is where a kid played with toys in the corner of this house or something like that."
1:32:33>> You get a weird feeling when you go to old places. >> Yeah. >> It's and it's it's hard to understand what you're feeling. Is it Is this your brain playing a trick? Is Like, what is it? Is it because you've attached significance to this site? Or is Would I I would like to go to somewhere that's like really sacred ignorant?
1:32:50Like someone take me, "Hey, we're going to take you around." "How you feeling?" >> [laughter] >> Well, I I think we see we see people doing that a lot when they go travel and visit places they don't know a whole ton about but they might visit one of their sacred sites and and and frequently not treat it very sacredly.
1:33:12>> That's true. Well, especially if it's an opposing ideology or religion. That's a real problem. Like when the Taliban blew up those statues. It's horrific. Um but there's something about some certain sites, um you know, uh I went to Eleusis, is that how you say it? Eleusis? In uh Greece. Uh and uh you know, you get to be at the actual ground where they had those Eleusinian Mystery ceremonies and it it just feels weird.
Intuition, Illusion, and Ideology
1:33:38It feels really weird. >> Yeah, yeah. When you when you understand the import >> Yes, but that's the problem is I understood it and I I had a you know, and I was actually there with Brian Muraresku, which was really cool. >> So you were feeling it in more ways than one. >> For sure. Cuz he was explaining to me like what what I'm looking at.
1:33:55And it just feels super weird. But, you know, there's that thing where you're like, "Okay, am I adding meaning to this?" Like >> Well, I'll I'll tell you about a place that I visited that I'm probably the only person on Earth who thinks of this as a particularly sacred site. But there's in the in the southern Negev, there's a a site called Arad.
1:34:16Which is uh >> Where is the southern >> Negev. The the desert to the in the south of Judea. >> Okay. >> So, Arad is a place where they've got a tell, a big hill. And there was a there was a Bronze Age village there. But on the very top, there are the remains of a fortress that existed in the 8th century BCE.
1:34:33And in the corner of the fortress is an Israelite temple. And in in they've got the the remains of the walls. They've got the three different rooms, the the courtyard, the broad room, and the the debir or the the Holy of Holies. And they found a standing stone, which would have represented the God of Israel.
1:34:54They found they have the altar. They had discovered a bunch of inscriptions. Talks about the house of Adonai, the God of Israel. And they also found a couple of incense altars that were on the steps of the Holy of Holies. And so, I I go there and and that's where because I'm fascinated by the fact that you know, the the biblical story that there was just one temple in Jerusalem is just not accurate.
1:35:21There were temples scattered all around. We found a handful of them. In fact, just like 10 to 15 years ago, we found another one only a few miles outside of Jerusalem at a place called Tel Motza. So, they had temples operating all over the place. And and because of propaganda, like the Book of Deuteronomy, a lot of scholars believe was written so that the king in Jerusalem could say, "Close down all the temples.
1:35:48Mine's the only one that gets to stay open now." And this might have been one of the ones that was closed down as as a result of that. But interestingly enough, people people ask me a lot about um narcotics in the Bible and stuff like that. But But this is one where they tested the burnt residue that was on top of the incense altars, and one of them had three different kinds of cannabis uh on it.
1:36:10So, we know for a fact they were using cannabis in their worship practices uh in ancient Israel. Which completely makes sense. >> Yeah, that's what you use as incense. >> Yeah. >> I mean, if you want to get a contact high going for the entire crowd, and you sing those songs, they have so much more meaning to them.
1:36:26>> Yeah. And that And that's certainly going to make you feel like you're in the presence of of something um unworldly. Uh if you're if you're going in there and the room's filled with smoke, you're not seeing much, but you feel good. >> Did you ever get into any of the John Marco Allegro's stuff? >> I'm I'm aware of the sacred mushroom and the cross.
1:36:45Uh but there's there's It's It's mainly etymological. That's the main argument, and it has been just torn to shreds. >> Has it been? >> Uh yeah. Yeah. It since it came out. Like, back when it came out, there were there were a handful of some of the leading um linguists of ancient Hebrew of uh Sumerian.
1:37:04Um Thorkild Jacobsen is a Sumerologist uh and Barr, James Barr, was one of the leading uh Hebrew Semiticists in the world. Uh and the the argument is basically that the Hebrew and the Greek all goes back to these Sumerian words that have to do with with semen, with >> mushroom >> mushrooms, and all this kind of stuff.
1:37:28The problem is Hebrew and Greek are not descended from Sumerian, and there's not a lot of contact. Uh Sumerian was overwhelmingly gone by the time that Hebrew started existing. There were just a handful of of liturgical uses and and words and things like that. But I'll the connections that are made are just not considered plausible by by linguists today.
1:37:51And um And so yeah, it's it's not been well received by scholars ever since it originally came out. In fact, I think that some of those scholars who were friends of Allegro's cuz he was a phenomenal textual critic. When it came to the Dead Sea Scrolls a lot of the scholars who were assigned fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls just sat on them for years and years and years.
1:38:13And they were doing research, but it was so slow getting out. Allegro was the first one to to get research out the door. So, he was a phenomenal scroll scholar, but uh what I understand some of his friends tried to urge him not to publish that book because they they thought it would be pretty detrimental to his career.
1:38:32And my understanding is that it was unfortunately. >> seems like the book was removed from circulation. And then it only within the last decade or so someone brought it back. >> I'd have to I'd have >> It was a couple of decades ago. >> I'd have to to verify that cuz I know I I know I've seen scans of of the book for a while now, but >> bought it uh online.
1:38:51You can buy old versions of it. >> Yeah. >> But uh a guy named Jan Irvin, I think was the guy who I think he's responsible for republishing it. I think that was in the I don't want to say the early 2000s, somewhere around then. >> Okay. Yeah, I >> But I think it might have been purchased by the Catholic Church or something like that.
1:39:10>> [laughter] >> I have I have heard a lot of people say that that the Catholic Church tried to shut it down. >> Because he wrote another book afterwards called The Dead Sea Scrolls in the Christian myth. >> Mhm. >> That it was covered similar topics. >> Yeah, I think it it was kind of a mythicist take that Jesus never existed or or yeah.
1:39:27>> Yeah, he he likened the word Christ to an ancient Sumerian word that made a mushroom covered in God's semen. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Which is yo. >> [laughter] >> And and the and the Yeah, and and the problem is that when you I remember reading that part of the book a couple of years ago. And it was like, okay, the basically taking recreating a Sumerian word that we have no evidence ever existed.
Prophetic Critique and Social Justice
1:39:51>> Mhm. >> And saying that that recreated Sumerian word was the etymological origin of the word Christ. And And the connection there is is is is as far as any scholars can tell entirely imaginary. There's There's no real plausible link. There's no real chain of custody. There's no real way that knowledge of that etymology could have made it down a a thousand years down the road without anybody finding out about it.
1:40:18So, it it's not that it's impossible. >> Implausible. >> But it's not plausible. Right. It's It's implausible and it's certainly not most likely. >> It's just so fascinating that by the time this is written, the Sumerian language is gone. >> Mhm. >> Which is weird. Like that this is like the idea these languages just come and go is so strange.
1:40:40>> And Sumerian is a language isolate, too, which means it's it's not directly connected to any other languages that are that are still around or that were even around anciently. >> Which is really weird when you get into the ancient Sumerian stories and how they're similar to some of the stories that are in the Bible.
1:40:58Like Like the Epic of Gilgamesh. >> Right. >> The Epic of Gilgamesh is so strange and the the So, the flood versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh, are they inspired by other flood versions? >> So, you've got a few different stories of the flood. And in the Epic of Gilgamesh, he's going to find Utnapishtim, who was the one who survived the flood.
1:41:21So, the flood has already happened in the Gilgamesh Epic. Uh but like Atrahasis is another version of that story. But if you go all the way back to the Sumerian king lists, we have king lists that predate the introduction of a a flood story. And in fact, a lot of scholars think that Genesis actually was circulating in a version that didn't have a flood story.
1:41:44>> Really? >> Until Yeah, until someone put it in there. >> And when do they think that happened? >> Uh that's a great question. I They probably date it to somewhere around the 6th to 5th century BCE because Noah is a horticulturist in the the oldest tales of of what's going on here. And there's no indication of a flood.
1:42:03In fact, if you go in Genesis 4, you have some patriarchs who are mentioned. And it's like, "And this was the progenitor of those who live in tents. And this was the progenitor of those who play the lyre and the harp. And this is the progenitor of those who work in all kinds of metals." And it's like, "With the progenitor of nothing cuz they and all their lines would have died >> Mhm.
1:42:26>> just a couple chapters down the road." So, whoever's writing this doesn't know that they're supposed to all die. Cuz he's talking about, you know, "Look around. We got all these people living in tents, and their ancestor is this guy." And it's like, "What about the flood?" Um and and then >> do you think that story comes from?
1:42:45And how's it get introduced? >> That's a That's a big question a lot of scholars have been trying to solve for a long time. But, some people think that um Genesis 6, the the story of the bene elohim, the children of God, they come down and have children with human women, and that and that ticks God off.
1:43:00And so that seems like an original catalyst for sending the flood. "I'm sending the flood to kill all of these folks because that's Ooh, that's gross. My the these gods had uh demigod children." But, that's not the reason that's given in the text for why the flood came. The reason that's given in the text is there was violence everywhere.
Book Promotion and Closing Remarks
1:43:24>> Mhm. >> And so, that's like That's kind of a different story. And if you look in 1 Enoch, that kind of fills in some of the gaps cuz in in the story of first Enoch, there's violence everywhere because the children of this divine human mating are giants and then the Nephilim are their children and then when the Nephilim die, their souls become the demons that haunt the world.
1:43:51And so that kind of better fits what's going on in Genesis, but the story of first Enoch was probably written down somewhere around 300 BCE. It comes much later and we don't know if that story's actually maybe earlier than the story of the flood that we have in Genesis. So it's how it came together is something that I don't think we're ever going to be really, really sure about.
1:44:19We just got a bunch of speculation that's is based on the observation that some things don't seem to fit together quite right and then we have other versions of the story that would fit much better. >> Mhm. >> Uh and you know, the same is true with the book of Daniel. There are some fragments in the Dead Sea Scrolls that talk about Nabonidus and talk about these stories related to Daniel, but they're not in the book of Daniel.
1:44:40And so some scholars wonder if the book of Daniel was being cobbled together around that time period and we have some of what was left on the editing room floor. >> Oh wow. >> in these references to Nabonidus and and things like that. So it's it's how it all came together is phenomenally complex and there's constantly a debate between how much we can say, how much we can speculate or hypothesize about versus how much we should be um limiting ourselves to saying cuz you know, we can
1:45:14speculate about all kinds of stuff, but until we have enough data to to be confident, it's not really much more than speculation. >> What is the earliest date of the Ethiopian Bible? Like what is the origin of that? >> So the Ethiopian Bible we have a couple of manuscripts of Gospels called the Garima Gospels that date to between the 4th and the 6th centuries CE.
1:45:36And the Ethiopian Bible descends probably from some people who probably brought a version of the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Bible down to the kingdom of Aksum probably late 3rd or early 4th century CE. And so this is right around the time of the Council of Nicaea. So this would have been something that looked similar to what we have in Codex Sinaiticus.
1:46:06And that collection of Septuagint texts which included 1 Enoch, Jubilees, a bunch of other apocryphal and pseudepigraphical texts. It seems like down there in in Ethiopia they were just content to keep on keeping on with what they had just ignoring all of the canon debates that were going on up north.
1:46:26>> Were they just not in contact? >> There there was definitely contact but I think they were they didn't feel any obligation to honor the authority of the folks who were arguing in Constantinople and and Rome and stuff like that. >> Right. >> So as they were figuring out their canon up north down south they were happy to continue to transmit their texts.
1:46:46So today the earliest manuscript of any kind we have translated into Ge'ez, the ancient Ethiopic languages, are the Garima Gospels from 4th to 6th century CE. Most of our manuscripts come from the medieval period around the the 11th century or later. And so there there's a it's popular to say that the Ethiopian Bible is the earliest Bible but it is based on the ancient Greek translation and and while the ancient Greek translation probably does preserve some earlier readings than
1:47:17our later Hebrew does we have better ways of sussing that out. The Dead Sea Scrolls help an awful lot. And so text critically in in trying to reconstruct the earliest possible Bible, the Ethiopian manuscripts are of very little value. They're of inestimable value in trying to understand how Christianity evolved in Ethiopia and how the texts that they were using evolved in Ethiopia and then since uh the world became aware of uh the Ethiopian Bible and and texts like First Enoch and Jubilees and things like that.
1:47:52Cuz we didn't have the whole of First Enoch until we had those uh Ethiopian manuscripts. >> That's crazy. So they were getting it from an early Greek translation. >> Mhm. >> So First Enoch was in the earlier Greek translation. >> Yes. >> So when did First Enoch get removed from the canon? >> So First Enoch probably fell out of favor before the canon was formalized because uh if the people who brought in the Septuagint down to uh the kingdom of Aksum did so uh end of 3rd century, beginning of 4th
1:48:27century CE, it seems quite likely that First Enoch was still considered uh if not uh an inspired text, at least an important text. And particularly because we have in in the letter of Jude in the New Testament this direct quotation introduced by saying "Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied saying."
1:48:44So this is something that uh the author of the Epistle Jude recognizes as inspired prophecy. So um we have uh scholars arguing over the canonicity, the inspired nature of First Enoch in early Christianity. There's one guy in particular named Tertullian, who's toward the end of the 2nd century CE, who defends the authenticity and the canonicity of um of First Enoch.
1:49:12So this is like 175-ish CE. He he writes a text called On the apparel of women cuz you know he's going to and one of the chapters is entirely defending the authenticity of of first Enoch and because the the criticisms were it seems unlikely that this text survived the flood and has been faithfully transmitted ever since then and it seems to contradict itself in a variety of places the stories get told over and over in some slightly different ways and then also it contradicts a lot of the stuff that
1:49:48Christians are finding in the New Testament and in their Hebrew Bible and so it was it was becoming unpopular in the second and in the third century but by the time we get to our Codex Sinaiticus and our Codex Vaticanus in the fourth century in the middle to the late fourth century there's no sign of first Enoch >> How does first Enoch contradict itself?
1:50:10>> The stories about the angels coming down gets repeated a couple different times cuz it's actually not a single narrative it's a collection of five different books traditions you have the book of the watchers you have the parables of Enoch you have the animal apocalypse which is basically retelling the story but everybody's an animal so like the star falls from heaven and and then these other stars come down and then they they breed and they're cows and then they they their offspring are a
1:50:45certain color and these are like different social groups that that they're supposed to represent and it's kind of a compressed history of Israel being told as if everybody was an animal so yeah it's the the vibe is is weird yeah it's it's it's kind of a willow vibe when everybody's turning into pigs like I I get that vibe when I when I read that but so it's it's a collection of five different stories.
1:51:15And the the five different stories and and they're not all telling the exact same story, but where there is overlap, they they don't align perfectly. So it is is is internally inconsistent. >> The Book of the Watchers is one of the weirdest things I've ever read. It's like, yeah, what were these people trying to say?
1:51:31I I just I just this is my frustration with all and fascination with all this stuff. It's like, what was the original story? What what what were they trying to convey? Are they trying to convey a historical moment or are they trying to explain something in a way that makes sense? Why is this guy blue, Dad?
1:51:51You know what I mean? Are they You know what I mean? Are they coming up with a an explanation just to stop questions? >> And and I think that there's a reason that it pops up in the time that it does because this is where we're getting a lot of suffering on the part of the people of Israel and Judah because they've they've gone through the Babylonian exile.
1:52:09They're basically going to be under the boot of some larger empire from then on except for a little slice of time. Um they're going to be subordinate to larger empires that are going to be beating up on them. And so this is a time when a lot of them are are wondering why is all of this going on? Where is our God who loves us so much?
1:52:29And this is where the idea of okay, where where are we going to see our justice? Where's the punishment for the bad people? Where's the reward for the good people? That's probably what gives rise to the idea that oh, it's probably in the afterlife where this is going to happen. And so we first see concepts of heaven and hell in Enoch.
1:52:49And in this time period and they develop as we get into the New Testament. Uh and and so I I think it's trying to accomplish a lot of those bigger questions. Uh what is the meaning of all this? Why do good people suffer? Why are wicked people so successful? And one of the things that it is doing is trying to suggest that evil was introduced to the world by these wicked angels who who came down to earth and taught women how to put on makeup and yeah.
1:53:16>> [laughter] >> There's a woman involved in in whether you like the Adam and Eve story or you like uh the first Enoch story >> It's written by women. It's written by women. It's written by women. >> Yeah, it's written by men. That's a that's a big part of it. >> Probably the root of it. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:53:31Um it's it's so complicated to try to figure out what they were trying to do when they were when we they're explaining certain concepts and there's certain things that get explained today that aren't necessarily really in the Bible. >> Mhm. >> So the concept of hell >> Mhm. >> Let's get into that. Cuz like when when is that So it's first introduced in Enoch?
1:53:59>> Yeah, I think that's the first time we get something like that. I think you get inklings of it at the very end like the very last verse of the book of Isaiah. Uh and maybe in Daniel 12 there's >> Inklings. >> Inklings, yeah. So there's a the the passage ends by talking about uh uh a fire that the flame that doesn't go out and a worm that never dies.
1:54:20And this is uh what scholars would suggest is that the idea here is uh it's talking about some place where the wicked are going. And the idea is this uh the the fire is never going out because there's always more fuel to add to it cuz more >> Mhm. >> people are going into it. And the worm never dies because it always has more food being thrown into it.
1:54:45And that gets reinterpreted later on as the fire is eternal and the punishment is eternal. It's probably wasn't intended to say that. But these are and and then we have in Daniel 12 uh a notion of of the wicked being punished in the >> this described in ancient Hebrew versus the English translations?
1:55:09>> It's pretty straightforward. It's It's not incredibly different. >> Is there something potentially that could have been lost in the translation? >> Um probably not. I think we've got a lot of a lot of different translations of Isaiah and a lot of different scholars have done a lot of good work and there's not really there's not really much that's that's going to be much different.
1:55:26But also we have that idea that is repeated a few times in the New Testament where they're referring to Gehenna as the place where the fire doesn't die and the worm doesn't or the fire never goes out and the worm doesn't die. And so whoever wrote the the the New Testament passages in that time period, they understood it in pretty much the same way we understand it now.
1:55:48>> One of the most disturbing ideas that a lot of secular people have is this notion that Christians like to project that if you do not follow Jesus, you're going to burn in hell forever. No matter how good of a person you are. Yeah. Where does that come from? >> Uh not it's that's not something that's ever stated anywhere in the Bible.
1:56:05That >> Yeah, that's what I thought. >> That is an interpretation. Yeah. Because when we just like just like first Enoch, it's a collection of five different books. If you look back on it and you say this all has to mean the same thing, you basically have to create a new sixth narrative that harmonizes it all, that makes it all fit.
1:56:23And that's what we did with the New Testament. Once we got it all together, we decided this is all inspired. It all has to mean the same thing. More or less. They weren't as strict about it as we are today about it. But that means you have to create ways to harmonize problematic passages. You have to come up with a way to interpret two passages that conflict in a way that allows them to not conflict anymore.
1:56:46And so you're generating a kind of second order story. And that is what is authoritative. It's not the text itself that's authoritative. It's the interpretation that is authoritative. The interpretation that allows the text to all be consistent and uh the word I use is univocal. It speaks with one single consistent unified voice from one single unified and consistent perspective.
1:57:09Uh so, when we get to hell in the New Testament, scholars suggest there are three different ideas about postmortem divine punishment that seem to be represented there. One is annihilation, that the wicked cease to exist. One is temporary conscious torment followed by either salvation or annihilation.
1:57:29So, you go somewhere, you're punished for a little bit, and then you cease to exist, or you go somewhere, you're punished for a little bit, you've paid your price, you now go on to salvation. And then the third idea is eternal conscious torment, which is where you are tortured forever. Now, in in my opinion, and there are scholars who have done a lot more work on the development of the concept of hell than I have.
1:57:49Uh Candida Moss is is a wonderful example, but in my opinion, hell originally developed as a way to feel good about the fact that these these huge empires and these wicked emperors, they're going to get theirs. So, I think that hell probably initially developed as a way to feel like God's justice is going to have its day on the truly wicked people of the world.
1:58:17But, the distance between your average Judean and hell probably got smaller and smaller over time because the threat of hell became a useful stick in the hands of people who wanted to influence behavior. And so, by the time we get to Augustine in the fourth, fifth century CE, and Christianity is trying to nail down its doctrines, I think we probably get to the point where everybody is is under threat of going to hell unless you do the thing.
1:58:51Cuz originally it probably wasn't you have to do the thing or you go to hell. Originally it was we're good over here. The wicked people over there who are beating up on us, they're going to go to hell. We're going to be saved. And then it became everybody's potentially going to hell unless you do the thing.
1:59:09Uh so so I think that the gap closed over time. I think uh in the New Testament you have inconsistent ideas about what postmortem divine punishment is going to be like. And I think it becomes formalized and systematized by the Christian church Excuse me, by the Christian church in the centuries after the completion of the New Testament.
1:59:30>> also tracks with human ideology and you know, what what we know about people today moving goal posts. >> Oh yeah. Yeah. 100%. Every because something I'm fond of saying is that the what is authoritative changes. It always changes based on our reception of the received tradition, which we then have to negotiate with in light of our social, historical, rhetorical circumstances and what we want for the future.
1:59:58And so there are you know, hard-won and and um really deeply held beliefs that people will abandon in a moment if their circumstances change enough to incentivize them to abandon those those beliefs. And as groups pass through time and their circumstances changes and their needs change, they're constantly renegotiating their tradition.
2:00:26And and yeah, some and that results in things like everybody's under threat of hell and oh, Jesus is the only way. Therefore, you have to follow Jesus or you're going to hell. And uh and I think that's that's a post-biblical thing. Certainly some folks who wrote the New Testament, I'm sure that if they were asked that, they would have been like, "Yeah, I would agree with that."
2:00:51But, it's not something that's ever stated anywhere in the New Testament, at least not in those words. I think it's something that we have to read into the text afterwards. >> Well, it's very disturbing to people today. It doesn't even make sense. Like, what if I'm because the idea that secular people can't be good people seems absurd.
2:01:07>> Yeah, I'm I'm kind of the fact that there are an awful lot of folks within Christianity who are trying to draw a harder line between the believers and the non-believers. >> Including biblical scholars, which is really weird. It's really weird when you when you study it, but yet you find things to sort of reinforce your beliefs instead of being objective about the interpretations and how complex this all is.
2:01:34>> Well, and it's it's phenomenally difficult to be objective because uh we are experiencing the world we're not experiencing it directly in an unmediated way. Our intuitive cognition is is governing everything. And so, when we're reading a text that's supposed to be important to our in-group, my I you know, the set of identities that are mine, it's phenomenally difficult to read it in a way that crosses goes against the grain of what our groups tell us.
2:02:02In fact, I I I wonder if I can illustrate >> Sure. >> how our intuitive cognition um is governing everything. Could you pull up an image? Uh could you Google corn sweet illusion? So, it's one word, corn sweet. >> Sweet like candy? >> S W E E T, yeah. And and this is a an illusion I use a lot because it's going to it's going to demonstrate that there's somebody at the controls that we don't know about and that we can't control.
2:02:34Okay, right that one right there. So, it looks like a dark object on top of a light object. >> Right. >> But, if you use your hand, cover up the shadows and the highlight in the middle, and >> Give me the center? >> I was trying to Yeah, like just if if you just hold up your hand and cover up the shadows and the highlight.
2:02:53>> Oh, that's crazy. >> They're the exact same shade of gray. >> That is nuts. >> And so what's going on? >> That's the weirdest thing I've ever seen in my life. That's Jamie, try it. >> I've seen I know I've yeah, I've done this before. >> That's >> [laughter] >> literally crazy though. >> And and we know why this happens.
2:03:10>> Why? >> It happens because your mind thinks it's looking at an object in space. And objects in space, as we know from a whole lifetime of experience, when they're in the sun, they're lighter, and when they're in the shade, they're darker. And so this is toying with us by making them the exact same shade of gray.
2:03:27So the the part of our brain that is in charge of how we perceive things is saying this does not compute. Okay, I'm just going to make it look like >> please. >> Okay. Trying to That is so insane. If you go halfway through, it starts to change. Like if you put your finger over it, just a little bit of it, it stays white and dark, and then as you move it across, you can see it change.
2:03:54>> And it's it's there are a lot of people for for whom it's slightly different. Uh it depends on your experiences, but basically you have someone rifling through the mail of your senses. And this someone >> Someone? >> Well, our our intuitive cognition, our mind. >> Okay. >> And this mind is saying this does not match what I expect, so I'm changing what you're going to experience.
2:04:16So this is true of all of our senses. There there's a there's a fascinating story of um uh there's a a neuroscientist, uh V.S. Ramachandran, he's written some wonderful books. One of them's called the Phantoms in the Brain. The other's called The Tell-Tale Brain. But he shares this story about uh when he was working with people who had phantom limb pain.
2:04:37And there's a particular type of phantom limb pain for folks who are missing uh the bottom part of their arm, where it they would report feeling like their fist was clenched so tightly that their fingernails were digging through the flesh of their palm. And it was just excruciating pain, but there was nothing there.
2:04:55And he devised a uh an instrument to try to treat this. He got a box and cut some holes in the box and put a mirror inside. So that when the person put their existing hand in one hole and then their absent hand in the other, they would look at the mirror and they would see two hands. And then he said he would say, "Clench your fist."
2:05:17And they would see two fists clench, and then he'd say, "Release the your fist." And then the pain would go away. For for some of the people. >> this. >> And the idea there is that yeah, your brain is is creating that pain because of something not going right. And even though you know you're fooling your brain, you're tricking your senses into believing that your um phantom limb that is in so much pain is actually now releasing that that uh that fist.
2:05:44And there's just so much about the way the brain works that shows we we are not experiencing the world in an unmediated way. Evolution has given us lenses that that help us experience it in a way that make is going to make it more likely for us to live long enough to to pass on our genes, but also a big part of that is survival within a society.
2:06:07And so our identity politics are also a big part of of how we not only experience the world, but think about things and and particularly things like values and and things like that. So there's a wonderful book by a guy named Jonathan Haidt called Have you heard of uh >> read him on a few times. >> Okay, yeah.
2:06:24He So you probably talked about his book The Righteous Mind at some point. Yeah. And he and he talks quite a bit about that. He uses a metaphor of an elephant and a rider where you have this quick kind of intuitive um mind that we're not in control of and then you have the or the quick intuitive one is um it's been a while since I've read his metaphor, but his particular metaphor um distinguishes our intuitive cognition which we don't really have control over and usually we're not even aware it's
2:06:54happening and our conscious what we call reflective cognition which is where we're reasoning and frequently our intuitive cognition kind of influences our reflective reasoning. So that if we like something, if we like a political candidate, if we like a particular interpretation of the Bible because that serves our interests within the communities that are important to us, we're going to be loath to accept a different interpretation that complicates things for us and that's that's our intuitive cognition
2:07:23trying to protect us socially and it causes all kinds of problems and everybody has it. Nobody's immune to it. >> a good example of that is this Lindsay Clancy thing. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, the this woman who killed her kids. >> Yeah. >> That there's people that that uh sympathize with her and want to visit her at the courthouse and say she didn't get enough care and they're they're wearing the pink t-shirts and then there's people that think she's a monster and she should be killed.
2:07:52>> Yeah. >> And the the and the people that believe that that one juror was wrong and not releasing her or not not convicting her by reason of insanity that those people are so firmly entrenched in this ideology that they are incapable of seeing other people's positions. >> And and this is one of the reasons that we try so hard to ensure that we're when we put people on a jury that they're not already deeply entrenched in a in one side or another because they then become uh so impossible to to convince of of
2:08:26whatever may or may not be the truth. So, yeah, it is problematic, but we all experience the world in different ways. And nobody nobody is in charge of how we experience the world. >> Right. And there's no way you could really truly understand how another person's seeing the world. >> Yeah. >> You you're guessing.
2:08:41I'm yeah, I'm guessing you see the world the way I do. >> Yeah. And and that's a common assumption that I experience it a certain way, therefore everybody else is going to experience it a certain >> And an arrogance that people love to pursue that you should experience the world the way I do. >> And that's that's where a lot of a lot of projection comes into That's where we draw conclusions about somebody else's motivations because it's it might be our motivations.
2:09:03>> Of course. >> and and sometimes uh yeah, that that causes an a lot awful lot of problems. And and again, nobody's immune to it. We all are susceptible to our intuitive cognition and we just have to try to at least What I try to do is become aware of of when it's led me wrong and then try to correct for that.
2:09:21You can only be fixing it uh looking back. You can't really. Like the the illusion, you can't turn that off. You can't say I'm now going to stop seeing it that way. It doesn't work like that. >> Yeah, you can make attempts, but then you have to also make sure that you don't defend faulty thinking. And that's a that's a thing that people love to do.
2:09:41They love to go back and no no no and come up with some reason why. >> Yeah. Yeah, there's uh in in cognitive science, there are two ways that we refer to what happens when our intuitive cognition conflicts with our reflective cognition. You've got decoupling, which is where your reflective cognition overrules the intuitive.
2:09:59So, if you're asleep at night and you hear a bang and you're and then you realize, okay, that's probably just the furnace kicking on or something like that. That's that's your reflective cognition saying, "Go back to bed, intuitive cognition." And then the other is rationalization. And that's where you use your reflective cognition to try to defend and rationalize the intuitive cognition even though it may be entirely wrong.
2:10:22And >> Which is something we really should have all been taught in school. >> [laughter] >> They're they're still doing so much research on it. It changes so much that that yeah, every every >> the concepts of understanding why you form decisions. >> Yeah. >> And why you have a why we're so um vulnerable to falling into the smooth grooves of ideology.
2:10:45>> And and I think one of the big problems is frequently ideology is what put people who make those decisions where they are. >> Yes. >> And >> Yes. And then again what we talked about before, charisma and confidence and your decisions when most people don't have confidence in their version of the world.
2:11:02So chaotic. >> Yeah. >> You are a religious man. >> I am. >> So that I find that interesting cuz you study all this stuff and you you're trying to get to the root of it all. What what is your version of this? >> My version of of this is kind of like what Russell Crowe says in Gladiator. That's that's for me and my wife.
2:11:26No, I I don't talk publicly about my own personal faith just because I try to keep it compartmentalized from what I'm doing professionally and and online so that I can keep the main thing the main thing because an awful lot of people just want to tear into whatever it is going on in here that that allows me to to share these things while while actively practicing.
2:11:49>> So for sure they want to dismiss you. >> Yeah, and and so I've I've said from the very beginning that's off limits. I just don't talk about that. And and in no small part because I do believe that it is as Jesus in the New Testament says, "When you pray, go in your closet and pray in secret and your father will reward you openly.
2:12:07And don't pray as the hypocrites who are on the street corner to be seen of men because they have their reward." And the more I study religion and how it functions and the fact that those costly signals are such an important elements of lived religion, the less I want to be involved in going out there and shouting on the street corner about my faith.
2:12:31So, uh so I've I've kind of leaned into I'm I'm keeping this for me because I think it makes it it makes me more effective as a a scholar who's trying to communicate publicly about religion and and it also has become a more meaningful way for me to live it privately where I could be out in public influencing a lot of things religiously and I think that would be a an abuse of the platform that that I'm trying to build here.
2:13:03>> That's a very admirable position in my perspective. >> I am glad I've made it sound that way. >> No, I think I I do. I would think it's very admirable because I I have a real problem with the proselytizing. And not just that, but the the real issue is the hypocritical nature of a lot of the humans that are are involved in promoting whatever their version or projecting in a very performative way whatever their version of whatever religion it is, you know, that they wear it like a a shield of virtue.
2:13:36>> Yeah, and that's and that's really when we when we get into the New Testament, that's precisely what what Jesus was criticizing and it and it goes there's a there's a concept called the prophetic critique that we find in some of the prophetic literature in the Hebrew Bible. That's kind of picked up again in the New Testament.
2:13:53And while there are definitely problems with the the authors who are responsible for spreading this cuz they are somewhat hypocritical hypocritical themselves, I think the message is an interesting one cuz the prophetic critique is basically God's saying, I hate your worship. I I your new moons and your Sabbaths and I don't delight in the blood of bulls, and I will have mercy and not sacrifice.
2:14:14And that's what gets quoted twice in in Matthew. And there's a whole series of passages from Isaiah and from Micah and from Amos and from from elsewhere, where it sounds like God is saying, "I hate all the stuff I commanded you to do." And so scholars for a while have been like, "Well, why would God hate the rituals that God commanded?"
2:14:36And I think the best answer to that is that what they then go on to say is I want justice, and I want mercy, and I want righteousness. And what seems to be in the crosshairs is people who go out and put on display their piety, so that they can benefit from publicly being pious. But then behind everybody's back, in secret, they're actually undermining what their religion demands of them, whether that be kindness to the immigrants or supporting the poor, or whatever it is.
2:15:12And in the Hebrew Bible, you have talk about grinding the faces of the poor, and you multiply your houses, which is talking about land consolidation, basically exploiting poor people and stealing their land. And And all kinds of different ways that they exploit the economic system and the justice system and all this stuff.
2:15:26And then they go off or sacrifices to show everybody that they're following God. And Jesus says, uh there one of the things that Jesus says that I that I think kind of puts on display what's going on here, is uh he accuses some people of tithing mint and dill, and then says, "But you neglect the weightier matters of the law."
2:15:47He says you should be doing both. And the weightier matters of the law are mercy, justice, righteousness, basically ensuring that we live in a righteous society, where people are not killed, are not under privileged, are not uh facing additional obstacles only because of of the circumstances uh that they were born into.
2:16:08And this is a negotiation with the text as well. Like I'm I'm kind of interpreting all these passages for you, but but I think the idea there is don't practice your religion in public to serve your own benefit, your own needs, while then going around screwing over all the people around you. When your religion actually expects you to be taking care of them as well.
2:16:31In fact, if Jesus is right, those are the weightier matters. That's more important. You should be concerned more about what's going on with the people around you than uh with, you know, getting more clicks, more views, more money, more power, more influence from [clears throat] going out and publicly saying the right thing or or doing the the rights, the ritual, or whatever.
2:16:56So, >> Which is one of the weirdest aspects of us being uh supposedly a Christian nation, but not developing any of our inner cities. Not not taking care of any of our these areas that we've had in this country that have been crime-ridden and impoverished for decade upon decade and give it no attention.
2:17:16>> And and we kind of designed the inner cities specifically to trap certain people in them. >> Yeah. >> And then we now are saying, "Well, you got there yourself. You you deal with it. We're not going to And and redlining continues to this day." There are lawsuits active right now related to redlining.
2:17:32So, yeah, I think a lot of people want to ignore that there are systems in play that benefit certain people and uh that don't benefit other folks. And the folks who benefit from these systems are like, "Oh, I don't see no systems. We're all just We're all just individuals here. And I don't harbor any hate in my heart, but I'm not changing that system."
2:17:50>> Right. Right. And the idea of a meritocracy. Meritocracy would be great if everybody started the same finish starting line. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> But to take into consideration the fact that there's people in in our country. Forget about let's fix the rest of world. Like we haven't even started in our country to take care of these areas.
2:18:09>> Yeah. I I I don't know how much you travel internationally. >> Like a little bit. >> A little bit. I I frequently will go someplace new and come back like wow, they do this thing so well over there. >> Like what? >> And I wish I could Uh right now my big thing is walkability. Um like go into a a village in the the English countryside or something like that where or even some of their cities, some of their bigger cities you can walk around.
2:18:34Like it's the the place is not set up for cars. Oh yeah, we also better put a sidewalk in there. It's it they're designed around people walking, riding bikes. >> a lot older. >> It's a lot older and we have some old places in the US that are that are very much like that, but but more and more our our new cities that that are popping up are are you know, they're they're not designed for people to walk around in and you're walking, you got to be careful cuz you're going to get hit by a
2:19:02car. Uh or you know, or you've got a >> Well, Los Angeles is the best example of that. Los Angeles is really hard to walk in. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> It's not a walking city. New York City is a very much a walking city, which is really crazy cuz it's more congested. >> Yeah. >> Or more compressed, I should say.
2:19:22More people in a smaller area, but yet much easier to get around walking. >> Yeah. And when I lived in I lived just outside of Oxford when I was going to school there. Like that's walking around that city is is a completely different experience from from any place I've been in in the US. Uh which is why I think they designed Yale after it to try to mimic that.
2:19:42But but that's just one example of of I'll come back from somewhere and be like man, I wish we could do this here. And there are so many things I think we could do here. We have the capacity to do here. We just don't have the desire. >> Right. Because they get too caught up in the the wrangling over power.
2:20:00>> Well, not only that, they're allocating so much money to other things. The idea of saying like, well, let's uh let's cut the Pentagon's budget, but let's dump all this money into Detroit and Baltimore and, you know, fill in the blank, whatever impoverished city you have, and have a systematic sort of sort of a plan from A to B of how we are going to change the economic outcomes for all the people that live there.
2:20:25How we're going to improve the education, stop the crime, what we're going to do to provide more opportunities, more safety. Like, what are we going to do? >> Yeah, I I think so many of the debates are really over over symptoms. And and really we need to be treating the root cause. >> And that is and that is systemic.
2:20:43That is something that that we got to But I'm not a politician or or a city planner. >> I'm not either one of those either. And >> [laughter] >> yeah, it's probably a good thing. >> Yeah, thank God. It's very complicated though. I mean, and it's it's just it's weird how we you know, we consider ourselves a Christian nation, but we don't do those things.
2:21:06And that no one ever holds you to task for that. No one's never never says that. Like, that's never a talking point for someone running for election saying there's an issue that we can take care of in this country that will radically transform the what this entire society looks like in 100 years. >> Mhm.
2:21:24>> Like, in for the better. And my perspective has always been, if you want to make America great again, what's the best way? Well, less losers. So, what's the best way to have less losers? Have more people have more opportunities, more education, and more safety. So, then [clears throat] you would automatically have more people succeed, more people contribute.
2:21:43Who knows how many more inventions, more innovation, more ideas, more art, more fill in the blank. >> I I think I sometimes wonder how many Isaac Newtons or Thomas Edisons lived and died in poverty and in an inner city somewhere because they were never given the opportunity to go uh gain the resources and the access to uh to the resources that they needed to to flourish.
2:22:10And it it's because we Yeah, it it's a big problem that um unfortunately we What is the I There was a saying that that I thought was apropos there and I completely forget it. So, that's or I completely forgot it. So, that's not helpful. But, yeah, this is a problem I think a lot of people recognize, but unfortunately when it comes to actually trying to do something about it, we have to get back we have to get past the problem of uh the people in power are really there to be in power more commonly than they're
2:22:42there to fix problems. >> And their motivation is to keep us at each other's throats and they would like like us to keep arguing and fighting with each other and to keep looking at each other as the other so that they don't have to change anything really and just offer these fake solutions. And then when they get in office, they don't do anything to change it.
2:22:58>> Yeah. >> Fun. >> [laughter] >> But, in the meanwhile, there's your YouTube channel. >> There's plenty of things that are interesting and beautiful in the world today. And I think I think it's you know uh I was just talking about this yesterday. I'm reading this Alan Watts book from 1952. And it's so interesting cuz he's talking about the age of anxiety in 1952 about how much things are changing, how much the world's and it sounds like he's talking about 2026.
2:23:30>> Yeah. >> And I'm like this is constant. This This never ends. And it's a slow sort of like two steps up, one step back, three steps up, two steps back. This is constant changing of what we are in the culture. And generally, like if you look at Pinker's work and a lot of his generally seems to be for the better.
2:23:51But while you're in the middle of it, it seems hopeless. And you seem confused and scattered and Meanwhile, if you ask people, especially like boomers, like when was the time when everything made sense? Boy, in the 1950s, we all knew what a man was and a woman was and you went and you did your job and you raised your kids and the guy delivered milk and they had this this rose-colored glasses perspective of the past.
2:24:18But meanwhile, Allen's writing this book in 1952 about how it's the age of anxiety. And it's fascinating. >> Yeah. >> It's a It's a time machine into this this particular period in history that at least in terms of the things that he's describing mirror some of the issues we're dealing with today. He's like literally talking about technology and improvement of society and all these different things that are like the changing of the family and what it means and it's like, "This is wild."
2:24:46It's literally He's literally talking like it never ends. It never ends. It just has a different title. It just looks different, smells different. It dances different. It's the same animal. >> And I'm sure in 75 years, there will be people who look back on on now and be like, "We sure made a ton of money off of AI or off of exploiting this or that resource."
2:25:06Perhaps. >> Perhaps. >> And there will be there are a lot of people who look back and be like, "I remember it differently. And you know, we were not the recipients of all that funding that the government was handing out." Just like there were a lot of people who were not the recipients of funding back in post-World War II America.
2:25:21And there were others who were the recipients of of an awful lot of funding. So, Yeah, it I think it goes back to the the systemic issues that we have with with our goals and and who's making those decisions. >> Yeah. >> And and goes back to why I am not a politician or a >> [laughter] >> or a city planner.
2:25:39Even though even though I did run for my state legislature twice. >> Did you? >> Yeah. What was your What were you trying to >> Well, I was I was trying to mainly annoy that the um the two incumbents and also just try to move the needle a little bit. I live in a very very conservative part of Salt Lake County and and I had I think a 50-point deficit to make up against the the state rep and then a 40-point deficit to make up against the state senator and I think I took around 16
2:26:11points off of both of them. So, I did make a little bit of progress, but but that was a bizarre experience and >> [laughter] >> and now but I think both of those I think both of them are gone. One of them resigned I think the the term after that election and the other resigned just I believe last year or so.
2:26:31And now we just had another state senator who had some felony charges against him for fraud. >> Oh, fun. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Well, that is the real problem is the type of people that want to run for office are almost all out of their minds. >> [laughter] >> For the most part other than people that are just trying to shake things up like yourself.
2:26:51>> I I think the people who who are doing it for the reasons that are are going to be beneficial to others are in the minority for sure. >> Unfortunately. >> Yeah. Yeah, well, maybe that'll change over time. You know, maybe with more conversations like this and more people realizing that if we keep going in the in the same direction that we're going now, we're not going to ever improve.
2:27:12But it's always there. It's always available. There are people out there that think differently. It's not It's not like these are alien ideas that most people are not willing to even consider. Like most people listen to what you're saying, what I'm saying, and they probably they're probably thinking, "Yeah, that would probably be better for everybody."
2:27:28Except the incredibly rich people that control the defense contracting companies. >> Yeah, and and and also it's it's one thing to be sitting down and and wherever you listen to this podcast and hear these ideas, it's another when you're in the thick of things and suddenly you're you're getting defensive about your position or you're getting critical of another's position.
2:27:49It's once the rubber hits the road, that's where it becomes difficult and where it becomes a lot harder than it is to sit across a table and say yeah, we agree on this. >> Yeah, it's also like you and I I could tell from you you you're very careful with the way you think about things and you're very objective and you try to analyze things and find out why you think about things.
2:28:09There's a lot of people that have not learned that skill. It's unfortunate and again it's not really taught. And you might grow up in an environment with in a family that is like very rigid in their belief system and very angry if you deviate from that. And it's a lot of times people just to fit in, they just they adhere.
2:28:33>> And it's easier to get the 10 Commandments in the school than a critical thinking class. >> Yes. Yeah, I had Tall arico on and we were talking about that and he made a very good point I think that that's going to push people away from Christianity. And you know, I'm and people have resisted that. I'm like, but no one wants to be told like in a school that's supposed to we're supposed to separate school like you you don't want them teaching Islamic tenants >> Right.
2:29:00>> in in your school, right? >> Right. Because well, this is a Christian nation. Okay. >> [laughter] >> It's also it's well, it's not. It's a nation of humans, okay? And freedom is supposed to be one of the things that the right in particular is supposed to hold dear. Freedom. That's they love to say that.
2:29:17Well, freedom also means freedom to not be indoctrinated with other people's ideology. Even if you believe that this is the truth, this is the light, they need to learn this. Well, make your argument. Make it very compelling and do it by example also. Be someone who is admirable in the way you behave and think and talk and the way you live.
2:29:39>> Something that when I went a year after I'd been baptized as a Latter-Day Saint I I went out on my mission. I got a set of scriptures and the first thing I wrote in the inside cover was a quote that I've always loved. A good example is the best preacher. >> Yeah. >> always tried to to live by that.
2:29:55And when it when it comes to the US as a Christian nation. Like I I can I can understand Talerico's concern for what that's going to do to Christianity and and absolutely I I understand that we don't want the state indoctrinating our children. One and one concern I see getting brought up less is what it does to someone who's in the minority for them to go to state-sponsored education and have the states tell them you are unwanted here.
2:30:26>> Right. >> We are this. >> Right. >> You are not that. We're going to let you be here but but know that you're a second-class citizen. >> Right. >> And I I don't think that is a certainly not a comfortable situation to be attending school and probably not a safe situation in a lot of ways for attending school.
2:30:42And at the same time if people are indoctrinated and do adopt Christianity as a result of that, that's not really a desirable conversion in my mind. Oh, the state wants me to be Christian so I'm going to be a Christian cuz I'm I'm doing what the >> own safety you adopted it. >> here you've adopted it so that you can benefit from the resources that you are given access to.
2:31:05>> Or just to stay safe. And this is the same argument they would make if you were in a school district that adopted an Islamic education system and was under Sharia law. You'd be like, "No, this is not freedom." >> And and I think the the Confederate statues, these came up in the early 20th century and we know explicitly the goal was to terrorize the black population to let them know who was in charge around here.
2:31:30>> Not only that, they were shitty statues. They weren't even [laughter] They weren't even This is the thing like people were defending it like the removal. I don't think they should be removed, but I think people should understand why they were put there in the first place. >> But they they wanted kids walking to school, little black children walking to school and seeing this explicitly white supremacist statue so that they knew we we honor this or or this is at least who we are just so you know.
2:31:54>> Yeah. >> future. Just keep that in mind as you grow up in in our state. So >> Yeah, that conversation was lost in the outrage over the removal of the statues. >> Well, it had to be for the removal to be to be defended. They they couldn't allow that conversation to to happen. >> But listen, man, I really love your channel.
2:32:13It's awesome. I've had countless hours listening to you and watching you. So I really appreciate what you're doing cuz it's I know it's a long road to learn all the that you've learned. >> It has been, but it's it's been a lot of fun and I wanted to give you this as well. This is a a book that I published last year.
2:32:31It's called The Bible Says So, What We Get Right and Wrong About Scripture's Most Controversial Issues. It's basically a greatest hits of of what I've done on my on my channel. So I don't know how how much you enjoy reading hard copies of books. >> I do. I It's great to put me to bed. >> [laughter] >> There's nothing like reading a book that makes you sleepy.
2:32:53>> Yeah, I when Joel McHale gave me one of the blurbs for my book and I was like, "You want a hard copy?" He's like, "Yeah, I'll I'll take the audio book." >> Yeah, did you read the audio book? >> I did. Yeah. So I I I recorded that. I'm working on another one right now that's going to be It's going Basically, I'm going to talk about how the God of the Bible changes from the earliest parts of the Bible to the latest parts of the Bible.
2:33:14So right now we're going with God's biography, a biblical history, but I I'm really enjoying writing well, what little I've been able to write of it. I've really been enjoying so. >> How far out do you think this one is? >> [snorts] >> Uh, further out than my contract wants it to be, probably. [laughter] >> Is that always key?
2:33:31>> I've got, yeah, I've got, we've been, we've been dealing with, with a lot of stuff in in my household, medical stuff, school stuff, and and we're also finishing our basement right now and and so I haven't had as much time as I would like to. And this is for my publisher, so when I come and say I don't know if I'm going to be on on time, I have reasons.
2:33:50But, um, hopefully it should be out the beginning of 2028. >> Okay. >> That's, yeah. And and I'm it's it's another book I think that's going to blow a lot of people's minds if they sit down and give it a chance because the more we, like you you talk about how that book about 1950s and how it was age of anxiety, it's unlike how we picture things.
2:34:15>> Yeah, just so people know what I'm talking about, I'll I'll give you the title of the book. >> Okay. But, the >> [clears throat] >> it's called the wisdom and insecurity. >> Okay. A message for an age of anxiety. >> And the and the point I want to make is that you know, there are people who lived that, who are still around, who can talk about it.
2:34:33But, that's not how we tend to represent that time period. That's not how we tend to think about it. And if we go back to 25, 2500 years, our reconstruction of that history is even further removed from how we tend to think about it. And and the digger we, the digger we deep, the deeper we dig [laughter] into the data, the more information we have to understand what was going on.
2:34:58And anybody who wants to actually try to understand what's going on, you have to to let these these kinds of things inform your reconstruction, otherwise it's just ideology. Otherwise, it's just dogma. And that's and that's what that's the name of my podcast, Data Over Dogma. Which is all about trying to ensure that we're letting the data set the terms for the discussion rather than the ideologies, the things that we want to happen, the dogmas that we bring to it, rather than
2:35:29ensuring that they're setting the terms for the discussion. >> Awesome. Hey, thank you very much. Thanks for all you do and I really enjoyed this conversation. [music] >> Thank you. Appreciate it. You too. >> All right. >> Bye, everybody.
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