The Grandfather of the Hebrew Bible (and What Is Zion?)

In 1929, a farmer in French-occupied Syria hit a rock with his plow and accidentally uncovered the lost city of Ugarit — and with it, a library of Bronze Age tablets that has been quietly reshaping how scholars read the Hebrew Bible ever since. This week, we're diving into the Baal Cycle: an elderly patriarchal high god named El, a youthful storm-riding warrior who fights the chaotic sea (and then, memorably, drinks him), a goddess who winnows Death himself like grain, and a whole pantheon that ought to look awfully familiar. Then, in History's Mysteries, we tackle a word Dan B has used his entire life without ever quite knowing what it means: Zion. Where did it come from, why does it seem to start out as a dry rocky stronghold, and how did it stretch into a portable, symbolic, cosmic idea that runs from Jerusalem all the way to Jackson County, Missouri? Support Data Over Dogma and get every episode early and ad-free, plus exclusive bonus content — become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma Get your Data Over Dogma merch at our online store: https://data-over-dogma-shop.fourthwall.com/ Watch every episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dataoverdogma Follow us: Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/dataoverdogmapod TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@data.over.dogma.pod Threads — https://www.threads.com/@dataoverdogmapod X — https://x.com/data_over_dogma Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod Get Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book, The Bible Says So: https://static.macmillan.com/static/smp/bible-says-so-9781250347466/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:05Speaker 02

  You see this in some of the Psalms, maybe in Isaiah, Jerusalem cannot fall.

• 1:14Speaker 03

  Famously, Jerusalem kind of fell a time or two.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah, every time somebody's like, "God is with us, we cannot be defeated," that is usually designed for somebody to be defeated.

• 1:27Speaker 03

  Somebody's gonna be playing taps pretty soon.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

• 1:37Speaker 03

  And I'm Dan Beecher.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

• 1:50Speaker 03

  Ready to do some combating. I'm a lot less hot than you because my AC works currently, so that's nice.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, we are 12 years into this home, and the AC has been not working for the last two days, so.

• 2:04Speaker 03

  Cropping out a little bit. So if you're watching this on YouTube and you see Dan a little bit glowier than normal, let's be kind.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  There's a hue, but yeah.

• 2:18Speaker 03

  All right. Well, today, we have some fun to get into. So the first thing we're going to talk about is it's going to be a what's that? And I'm just going to say ball cycle. I'm not, I'll explain nothing else. You can't make me until we get into it.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Thus the segment, what's that?

• 2:44Speaker 03

  What is that? And the second one, we're going to do a history's mysteries. A couple of weeks ago, Dan, you and I asked the question, or you and I were talking about it, and I realized that I didn't know, there's a word that I had used much, and that word is Zion, or Zion, or whatever, and we'll talk about how it's pronounced. But I didn't really know what it meant. And in that episode a couple of weeks ago, you said, "That'd make a good segment." And I said, "Well, okay, let's do it then."

• 3:21Speaker 02

  And in one of the first examples ever of this happening, we actually followed up.

• 3:27Speaker 03

  We actually did it.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  So that's what's coming up. But first, what's that? Okay, so the ball cycle, it sounds like a, I can't even say what it sounds like. It sounds like an exercise bike at the gym that you don't want to use. But talk to me about this. We're talking about Ba'al. We're talking about.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Yes, or Baal, as some folks prefer to call him, because in spelling, it's usually B-A-A-L. Or B-A, and then you've got some kind of indication of an -ine, and then -al. So it's the name of a deity.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  Right. And we're not about to get pedantic about how you pronounce it. You pronounce it however you want.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  Yes, you pronounce it how it's easy for you to understand and pronounce, as with maybe the word won't. If that happens to be your won't, or happens to be your want, whatever your own personal won't.

• 4:33Speaker 03

  However you want to won't, we won't want to correct you.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  But this comes to us courtesy of the Ugaritic literature. And we had to have talked about Ugarit to some degree.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  We have mentioned Ugarit. We have talked a little bit, you know, the word Ugaritic comes up from time to time. But I think we should start by a quick brush up on what Ugarit is, where it was, all that sort of stuff.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Okay, so to lay our scene, it's 1929. A French farmer, well, a farmer is in French occupied Syria, is plowing a field, hits a rock, cannot move the rock, uncovers what turns out to be the top of an ancient stone doorway, or sarcophagus, actually, I think it is not a doorway. But anyway, calls some archaeologists, and they come out and discover a whole damn city called, and we did not know where this city was. It is called Ugarit. We know that now. At the time, they didn't know what city this was. I think there were some scholars who were like, "Could this be Ugarit?"

• 5:42Speaker 02

  Because this was a city that was mentioned in some other literature. But we found a bunch of texts written in cuneiform, but we didn't know that it was not anything anyone had ever seen before.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  Cuneiform is just thumbtack writing.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Well, it's with, it's little wedge-shaped impressions in clay.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  Right.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  Or carved in stone. And people went to work trying to figure out what's going on here. They counted up all of the different signs, and they realized there were only 30 of them. Now, the thing with cuneiform is it usually has well over 100 different signs, because they're usually reflections of a syllable, so a consonant plus a vowel. But you can't write in a syllabic script that only has 30 characters. There are a lot more than 30 syllables, which means it has to be alphabetic. So we went, it's alphabetic, it's close to the coast of Syria, and it probably dates

• 6:46Speaker 02

  to between the 1500s and the 1200s BCE. So we said, okay, this must be, this must be cuneiform alphabet. And it's probably a Northwest Semitic language, so we went about deciphering it based on the assumption that it was that. And one of the assumptions that helped us is, okay, in Northwest Semitic, the most common letter is the mem. And so we're going to catalog how many times all of the different characters occur, and whichever occurs the most, we're just going to say, "That's a mem."

• 7:18Speaker 03

  Our best guess is mem.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  And then we're going to say, "Where are all the two-letter words that have a mem?" Because there are only a handful of words that can be that. And so then we went, the other letter has got to be one of these two or three or four different letters. If we do that, and basically, we deciphered this Northwest Semitic language, and it is Ugaritic, and we found a bunch of receipts, we found a bunch of letters, we found a bunch of ritual texts, we found a bunch of mythology. And one of those texts happens to be this thing called the ball cycle. And what fascinates scholars like me about Ugaritic is it basically stops and is just

• 8:01Speaker 02

  lost about the same time that the people of Israel first show up on the scene, many miles south of there.

• 8:09Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  And so the languages are very, very closely related. In fact, if you want to learn Ugaritic, you should start with Biblical Hebrew, and then you have a foundation. People can say, "Okay, this is just like Hebrew with this word over here and this over here." And so there are a lot of ways that it helps us to fill in our understanding of the development of Northwest Semitic languages, and helps us better understand what's going on in Hebrew. It's revolutionized our study of the Hebrew Bible in a lot of different ways. But the ball cycle has a lot of language, has a lot of terminology, has a lot of titles, has a lot of deities that are very closely related to what we see in the Hebrew Bible. And we're going to talk about a few of those points of contact, and why this is such a boon for the study of the Hebrew Bible.

• 8:52Speaker 03

  As I was reading this and looking at it, even I was like, "Oh, I'll bet that is a cognate to this person." So I'm catching them too. And I'm just the ding dong in the show, so that's kind of fun.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  It's called the ball cycle because there are three different main kind of storylines. So these are narrative arcs, and there are three of them. So similar to how scholars talk about the Abraham cycle, or the Jacob's cycle in Genesis, because we got several stories that are going on.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  Or Wagner's Ring cycle.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Or, yeah, whatever. And you have three different main ones. They have to do with kingship, and they have to do with Baal, obviously. But one of the cool things is that Baal is not the head of the pantheon. Baal is one of the second-tier deities. The head of the pantheon is a dude named El.

• 9:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Now, we know El.

• 9:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  Because El's all over the Bible. El is God. El means God, and El is the potter familius.

• 10:01Speaker 03

  Point of order, El isn't always God in the way that the Bible refers to God, right? Like El, Elion, like high El is the guy that gives.

• 10:17Speaker 03

  Adonai, dominion over Israel.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  Right? So like, but then they become conflated later.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  So, did I get that right?

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Yes. Initially, El and Adonai were distinct deities.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  Right.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  And, and at one point they were conflated and they became the same deity. But when we look at the way that El is represented, separate from Adonai, El is elderly. El is benevolent. El is, has seniority, is basically the ruler over the pantheon. Basically a patriarchal high deity. And what did we find in, in the Baal cycle? We found an elderly patriarchal high deity who ruled over the pantheon. And then when we look at the way Adonai is represented, distinct from El, when it's just Adonai on their own. Adonai is a youthful, violent warrior associated with storm imagery.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  And guess what we find in the Baal cycle? A youthful, violent warrior associated with storm imagery in the character of Baal. Who is a second tier deity. In other words, who's one of the sons of El. Now, when, when we look throughout all the Ugaritic literature, Baal is, is actually sometimes the son of Dagon. Sometimes the son of El. It, it, it's not consistent. What do you know? Just like the Bible. But you also have a couple of other characters who are important. Athirot, which is cognate with Asherah.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, that, that was the one that I was like, hey, I caught one.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  I, I, and then I had to look it up. Is this, is this sort of, is this the same?

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  Basic thing. So, yeah.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  And so Baal and all these other second tier deities are the offspring of Athirot. She is the creatrix of the gods. She is the mother of the 70 sons of El.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  Is, is she the consort of El? Or is she just?

• 12:15Speaker 02

  Okay. Yes. So she's, she's the consort. But when you look in the literature, it is, it does have a very, um, kind of, it, it's an odd kind of royal state of affairs. Cause there's a part where Athirot is going to go to El to, um, butter El up. So that she can request Baal be given a palace.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  Right. She advocates for Baal.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  Right. And, and one of the reasons Athirot has to go do it is because another goddess, Anat, went and threatened Baal.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  Right.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  And that didn't work. So, um, yeah. So, uh, Athirot's like, I'll, I'll take care of it.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  Let me smooth this over.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, and then you've got some other deities, Yam. Yam, who's also referred to as Nahar. And interesting, Yam in Hebrew would be sea, the sea.

• 13:08Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  From sea to shining sea. And then Nahar.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  Yam to shining Yam.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, that, so that's when you go into the grocery store and you see yams. That's where they come from. Etymologically, it's not important. Anyway.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  Is it really?

• 13:22Speaker 02

  No. Uh, and then Nahar means river. So Nahar is another way to refer to Yam. So this is basically the waters. And it, this is, this deity is representative of chaotic waters. Because the sea is dangerous, my friends.

• 13:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Um, it was angry that day. And, and you know, you're, you never know what you're going to get when you go out on the sea. And it consumes a lot of lives. And then you also have mote. And mote literally means death in, uh, ancient Northwest Semitic languages. So in Hebrew as well as in, uh, Ugaritic. And so there's a deity named mote. And then you have, um, Kotar Wahasis is, uh, is a crafts person deity.

• 14:07Speaker 03

  Not, not, not in the, not in the, uh, the television and film version. Crafty is, uh, craft, the craft station is where you get your food, where you get.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Right, right, right. Not craft services deity.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  Not craft services.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 14:21Speaker 03

  But he does.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  Crafts person.

• 14:22Speaker 03

  Right, right. He's a, he's a, he's a builder of things and a maker of things.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  So, um, so this is the deity you go to when you need, uh, you know, your supplies. When you need weapons or when you need to build a palace or, or whatever. This is.

• 14:36Speaker 03

  Some fancy clubs to beat somebody up?

• 14:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Try, try this one. Oh, that didn't work. Okay. Try this other one.

• 14:42Speaker 03

  He's the equivalent of the guy that made Thor's hammer.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Who was, uh, Peter Dinklage, wasn't it?

• 14:48Speaker 03

  Peter Dinklage, that's right. He, he can play that guy too.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then, uh, Shafash is, is, uh, the Semitic word for sun. So you've got the sun goddess who, who functions as kind of a mediator deity as well. So these are the main characters and, and they are cognate, parallel to what's going on in a lot of the, the parts of the Bible. So in the, the first cycle, um, Yam says, hey, everybody, I've been doing really well lately. Um, you know, I've been racking up a lot of, a lot of W's. And so, uh, I want to be king over the divine council. And, and divine council is another thing that we, we see a lot of in the Ugaritic literature.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  That had a lot of scholars going like, oh, this is in the Bible too.

• 15:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. So this is helping us. Just like the frog DNA helps, uh, create dinosaurs. In that, uh, that documentary I saw back in the nineties.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  The Ugaritic literature helped us fill in some of the gaps in the pantheon DNA of, of the Hebrew Bible. So, um, all the other deities are like, uh, you know, bowing down, we're not worthy, we're not worthy, except for Baal. And Baal's like, mm, don't think so. Uh, and, and interestingly, this has a lot to do with, uh, geography. And, uh, environment and stuff like that. Because, uh, there are parts of ancient civilization where the river is what makes civilization possible. Mesopotamia, that's the river. Egypt, that's the river.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  The predictable flooding of these rivers every year allows you to plan agriculture around them. To manipulate, uh, the rivers for irrigation, all this kind of stuff. So if you're in Mesopotamia or Egypt, sure, the, the Nahar, the Yam is what's responsible for civilization. That is the bedrock of your civilization. So the deity who represents that, yeah, would be the most high. But we're talking about a part of, uh, the Levant where it's more rainfall. That is what makes things, uh, that makes agriculture possible. Uh, particularly when you get into the mountains. Now, now Ugarid is kind of close to the coast.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  It's, uh, it's more coastal than it is mountainous. But these deities are all operating far to the north or to the south in the more mountainous regions where the rain is what you count on. Uh, and, and this is what, this is also the case in the, the central and northern hill countries of Israel and Judah. It was not rivers and seas that made their, uh, civilization possible. It was the rain. And who's responsible for the rain? Not Yam.

• 17:43Speaker 03

  The storm deity.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  The storm deity is responsible for the rain. So the storm deity stands up and says, no, I'm more important. Uh, and El is kind of like, yeah, sure, Yam, you can take over. And, uh, El is kind of represented as your, as your elderly, um, uh, kind of, you know, on the back nine deity who's.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  He's the king Lear. He's, uh, he's ready to, he's ready to turn over his, his rule.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. He's kind of treated as a lame duck. Now there, there are some times when, when he will throw it down if he needs to.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  Right.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  But, um, but here he's like, uh, he doesn't oppose, uh, Yam's kingship. So, uh, and there are a lot of different ways that, that people try to explain that. But, but basically Baal and Yam are going to fight.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  And so, um, Baal goes to, uh, Kotar Wahasis and, uh, gets some weapons. And I, I wanted to read just some of that, just so you can get a sense for, uh, what this language is like. And it's very fragmentary. This is one of the most frustrating parts of this. There are a lot of lakunai. It's, it's, you know, you get a sentence or two and then, uh, a gap of maybe a letter or two, or maybe 50 lines.

• 18:58Speaker 03

  And we should, we should make it clear. These, so what we have, where we're getting this is from clay tablets.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  That, that, the, uh, the letters were impressed into the clay and then they were fired. And so that's, that's why they've survived this long. But if the tablets are broken and you got a chunk missing or whatever, then, uh, what are you going to do? You, you just fill it in as best you can.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  So Dan, you've heard me talk ad nauseam about the fact that we've got construction going on at the house. We are-

• 19:35Speaker 03

  I've heard the construction.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, you heard the construction too. We're finishing our basement. We're actually adding on to the house. We're doing some stuff in the backyard. And I was thinking the other day about how nice it was to be able to do this because we, I wanted to get a new car and I wanted to do these, these improvements to the house, but we had to pay off our old car and that took actual planning, which you know I hate. And so I really had to shift my thinking quite a bit when it came to my finances. And we had to set dates and we had to create a budget and it was so satisfying to actually make a plan. And then even though it took some discipline and

• 20:20Speaker 02

  there were some bumps in the road, we actually succeeded and were able to pay off a car, got a brand new car. And it feels so relieving to know that if we actually set these goals and plan for them and stick to them, it goes from, oh, this will never end, actually feeling like you have control over stuff. And that has made a huge difference to me and to my family.

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• 23:15Speaker 02

  So I'm reading in from religious texts from Ugarit, which is Nicholas Wyatt's translation of all these texts, which includes the Baal cycle and a bunch of other texts.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  It's funny because the cover of the, of the book just says Wyatt. And I was like, Ron Wyatt? It's not Ron.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  But Nick was one of the readers for my doctoral dissertation. So always been a fan of Nick. So there's a part where Baal is getting angry. Says, "I shall knock down his houses. Into the underworld will fall my strength, and into the dust my power." From his mouth, his speech barely went forth from his lips, his word, and he gave forth his voice in groaning beneath the throne of Prince Yamm. So Baal is, it's not looking good for Baal. But then Kotar, this translation says, "Kothar and Hasis," and that's what the "wah" means in, in Ugaritic, "spoke. Indeed, I say to you, O Prince Baal, I repeat, O charioteer of the clouds."

• 24:15Speaker 02

  And by the way, that's a title that Adonai has-

• 24:19Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 24:20Speaker 02

  In the Hebrew Bible. Yes.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Yes, charioteer of the clouds, rider of the clouds.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Because the storm deity goes, "Hya!" and rides the clouds around. "Now your foe, Baal, now your foe, you must smite. Now you must destroy your adversary. Take your everlasting kingdom, your eternal dominion." Kotar fashioned two maces, and he pronounced their names. "You, your name is expeller. Expeller, expel Yamm, expel Yamm from his throne, throne. Nahar from the siege of his dominion. You must leap from the hand of Baal like a falcon from his fingers. Strike the shoulders of Prince Yamm, the chest of ruler Nahar. The mace leapt from the hand of Baal like a falcon from his fingers. It struck the shoulders of Prince Naham, the

• 25:04Speaker 02

  chest of ruler Nahar. But Yamm was strong. He did not flinch. His joints did not tremble. His visage was not discomposed. Kotar fashioned two maces, and he pronounced their names. You, your name is all driver. All driver, drive Yamm away. Drive Yamm from his throne. Nahar from the siege of his dominion. You must leap from the hand of Baal like a falcon from his fingers. Strike the skull of Prince Yamm, the brow of ruler Nahar. Let Yamm collapse in a heap. Let him fall to the ground. Then the mace leapt from the hand of Baal like a falcon from his fingers. It struck the skull of Prince Yamm, the brow of ruler Nahar. Yamm collapsed in a heap.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  He fell to the ground. His joints trembled and his visage was discomposed. Baal gathered up and drank Prince Yamm to the dregs. He exterminated ruler Nahar."

• 25:59Speaker 03

  You know what? That is, that is harsh. When you, when you've defeated an enemy and then you drank him, that's, that's pretty definitive.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  It's, yeah, well, that's what you gotta do to, that's, that's the flex over the sea. When you defeat the sea, you just slurp it up. And yeah, there were some other examples in, in Enuma Elish, the Babylonian, the Neo Babylonian version of the creation account. Marduk defeats Tiamat, who is also representative of the chaotic waters of the sea. But when Marduk defeats Tiamat, Marduk splits Tiamat's body into two. And the one half becomes the waters of the heavens, and the other half becomes the earth, which should, which should sound familiar to-

• 26:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. If you've read, if you've read Genesis, chapter one, you may, you may recognize that.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Where the depths are referred to as "tehom," which is the Hebrew cognate term for Tiamat. Only it's not this chaotic deity. It's now just inert water. But it's still split. The waters above, the waters beneath, to facilitate the creation of the earth. So, so yeah, you have a lot of parallels there. And then, so Baal fights Yamm. Baal defeats Yamm. It's the classic story. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Girl finds boy. Boy forgets girl. Girl dies in a blimp accident over the orange bowl.

• 27:30Speaker 03

  Boy drinks girl.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  Boy drinks girl. And then the next part, Baal wants a palace.

• 27:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  Because Baal gets the kingship, but you wanted, he needed to be fully in charge.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  You can't be the king if you don't have a, if you don't have a castle.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Right. And you know, we see something very similar going on in, in the Hebrew Bible. When David's like, "Yeah, we got our, we got our capital city. We got everything that we need, but, but God is still dwelling in a tent. We need a home. My boys need a home, Jerry. We need a, we need a temple for our God." And so in order for Baal to be truly the leader of the gods, Baal needs to have a temple. And so Kotar Wahasis is going to help, but first, they need permission. And this is where Anat goes to Baal and is like, "Give my boy a temple!" And that doesn't work out. Instead, Athirot-

• 28:29Speaker 03

  Threatens him, like threatens to bloody his beard.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like chunks of your, your brain or something are gonna, are gonna be scattered on your, your gray beard.

• 28:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. And Anat, if I'm not mistaken, it might be Baal's sister? Like she keeps referring to him as brother? Is that right?

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Yes, although there are some places where

• 28:53Speaker 02

  their relationship is a little more amorous.

• 28:56Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  So yeah, it's a messed up system, but it's also very inconsistent. But interestingly enough, there is a text from the late 5th century, early 4th century BCE from a Jewish garrison in Egypt, an elefantine that refers to the Jewish god as Anat Adonai, which is widely understood to refer to the divine pair. And so Asherah is not the only consort of Adonai. We also have, at least in Egypt, end of the 5th century, beginning of the 4th century, we have an Anat Adonai divine pairing, it would seem.

• 29:37Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Yes, very interesting. So Athirot negotiates with El, permission is granted. El remains supreme, but Kothar Wahasis builds the palace. And there's a debate about whether or not it should have windows. You know, and this is something that you always have with your contractors. They're just like, can't do it.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  They come at you, they're like, you know.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  We didn't get the permits.

• 30:02Speaker 03

  I got three bids, it's gonna be out of the budget. I don't know what you want to do.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, now, you know, if I had like a thousand dollars right now, maybe I could do something with that. But I assume everybody works with contractors that extort you. But maybe that's.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  But interestingly, windows in Baal's palace, the palace of the storm deity, resonates with this idea of windows of heaven, because what comes out of the windows of heaven? Rain.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  And storm clouds, that's how they get in. That's how they get you. So Baal begins to rule. The thunder rolls, as the great poet once sang, rain falls, agriculture flourishes. And then the next cycle begins, we got a problem though. Somebody else shows up.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Moat, the death, basically sends Baal an invitation. And this is kind of like in the movies where death, you get a note from death. It's like, we have an appointment. That means you're gonna die. And so when you get an invitation from Moat, that means you're gonna die. Oh, and something fascinating about the Ugaritic literature is you've got a bunch of angels running around. Only in the Ugaritic literature, the angels don't communicate between gods and humans. The angels communicate between gods and gods.

• 31:21Speaker 03

  Right.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  You send divine messengers to other gods.

• 31:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we have kind of a parallel pantheon. But in the Bible, it has been renegotiated. It has evolved to serve different functions.

• 31:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  Because.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, that part is very interesting, but I'm trying to speed this up a little bit because we gotta get through this.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Okay, so anyway, Moat is characterized by having this great maw that just swallows people whole. Death is, you know, swallows you whole. And Baal doesn't win this fight.

• 31:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, he dies.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  Yep, goes into the underworld, disappears, rain stops, the earth becomes barren. Very much like the droughts that we have in the Hebrew Bible that are Adonai's responsibility. El is mourning, tears his clothes, throws dust on himself. He's a cutter, cuts his skin. This is kind of conventional mourning behavior, rituals. And Anat is not gonna take it. And so searches for Baal. Anat is the one who ultimately, Anat is, like, in the Ugaritic pantheon, the people you were most scared of were the women.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  The men were, you know, they were warriors, sure, but when Anat was coming at you.

• 32:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that seems like vicious. And that seems terrifying.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. Hack, she like, there are parts of the narratives where Anat has like the hands of her fallen enemies, like strewn together to create like a sash. Or they're like hanging off of her back, just kind of dangling there as a trophy.

• 33:13Speaker 03

  Favorite accessory.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, so she's vicious, but she hacks Moat to pieces. And then death itself is treated like harvested grain. She winnows him, burns him, grinds him, scatters him to in the fields. Because that is, you know, the ultimate flex to not just defeat him, but do all that other crap.

• 33:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  And Baal comes back, rain returns, life returns. And so there are a lot of people who are like, oh, this is cyclical agricultural cycle. This is the changing of the seasons. And there's a degree to which it's related to that. But the dying and rising god motif, which is what a lot of people like to latch on to, that's an outdated 19th century framework. It's not so much dying and rising as it is dying and returning. Because dying is geographic rather than ontological. To die is to travel to the underworld.

• 34:14Speaker 03

  It is interesting to me, like, you know, you mentioned the season idea. But to me, what makes a lot more sense is what you referred to before, which is the idea that there may, there are periodically in any area droughts. And if a period of drought was particularly devastating, people are gonna be asking, where is our god? Where is our storm deity that we've been worshiping, who's been providing for us for this time?

• 34:46Speaker 03

  And, you know, coming up with a way in which, you know, he was eaten by death is an interesting, you know, that's an interesting explanation. And then a few years later, back he comes after he's been rescued.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  And after his sister has gone and committed some violent crimes. And yeah.

• 35:06Speaker 03

  Interestingly, when death is killed, death also comes back eventually.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is, this is something, this is an interesting part of the Hebrew Bible, because you have, you kind of have the death of the gods, like at least Psalm 82 consigns the gods of the divine council, the patron deities of the nation, consigns them to mortality. You will fall like men, you will die like any prince.

• 35:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  But then they all come back. They're, you know, and they get, they get squished down into more angelic slash demonic status, but they come back. And I, and I think that reflects this fascinating feature of this literature, that the literature sticks around, even the older stuff. And so you're always having to renew your kind of engagement with the text. It's kind, you know, like The Simpsons. How old is Bart Simpson by now?

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Every season it starts over.

• 36:04Speaker 03

  He's deep in his 40s, yeah.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, but.

• 36:06Speaker 03

  50s probably.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  But I think I'm supposed to be the same age as Bart Simpson. Because when I, the first time I saw The Simpsons, I was like, hey. It was when it first came out. And I was like, hey, I'm also a 10 year old blonde kid who is kind of stupid. But, you know, this is kind of a feature of this. You can't really, because the literature and the stories kind of establish the foundation of things, you can't move away from them. You can't depart from them, they have to be there. And so if you, you know, if you have the anvil falling on Wile E. Coyote, Wile E. Coyote's gotta come back.

• 36:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  So I think that's an interesting feature of all this. And that's what's going on in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament as well. By the time you get down to the New Testament, a lot's been changed. But guess what? Nothing's been changed. Because all these things still have to be there. Their, their exact nature is just a little different. They're, you know, dismissed as, as powers and dominions and thrones and angels and demons and all that kind of stuff. But they're the same patron deities.

• 37:16Speaker 03

  This whole thing has been so interesting. And it's funny because, you know, as I, as I've been sort of present while you've had discussions with other, with other scholars about, about this stuff, it is clear that studying Ugaritic has become integral to understanding, to Bible studies. Even though, you know, this is not considered biblical by any means. But, but yeah, everybody's clamoring for like, where can I study Ugaritic? Where can I, you know, where can I study the, you know, Ugarit? And I think that that's, that's really interesting.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  And yeah.

• 37:57Speaker 03

  And yeah, it does. It sheds a lot of light on where this stuff came from. Because this all, this definitely precedes everything biblical, right?

• 38:07Speaker 02

  Everything. In fact, it probably, when Ugarit gets destroyed in the Late Bronze Age collapse, and Eric Cline's 1177 B.C. is far and away the best discussion of that. If you want a book on the Late Bronze Age collapse, that's what you should check out. But that is probably the demise of Ugarit. Most of these texts were written in the 13th or 14th centuries BCE. Our earliest reference of any kind whatsoever to any people group known as Israel dates to about 1208 BCE. So right about the time that, that, right just before Ugarit's gonna fall. So, so yeah, the, everything that's written in the Bible is coming from a couple hundred years after the fall of Ugarit, where the language has changed a little bit more.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  We've lost case endings and stuff like that. So, so it's basically taking the pieces of that. The Ugaritic literature is basically the grandfather of biblical Hebrew.

• 39:04Speaker 03

  So cool.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  You have to study it if you want to really dig down to the bedrock of what's going on in biblical Hebrew.

• 39:12Speaker 03

  So cool, so interesting. All right. Well, I think that is genuinely fascinating stuff. And I am excited that we got to talk about it. But it's time to move on. So let's get into it with History's Mysteries.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  So the history's mystery is the word Zion, or the concept of Zion, or whatever Zion is.

• 39:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 39:39Speaker 03

  So let's start by, since I said, since I said we would, let's start by talking about how it is pronounced. What is this word?

• 39:47Speaker 02

  So it's a Hebrew word, and Hebrew, it's spelled Sadiyodvav noon, so it would be pronounced Tsion in Hebrew.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  So.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  So we're all wrong.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  Most people are not gonna say Tsion. Uh, we're, we're going to, uh, Tsion National Park down in Southern Utah.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  So in, in transliteration, we usually, you can say Zion, you can say Zion, uh, you can say whatever you want.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, if, if you're a Wachowski, it's gonna be Zion. If you're a Utahan, it's gonna be Zion.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, but, uh, it's, you know, there's, again, we're not prescriptivists on the Data Overdog Podcast.

• 40:25Speaker 03

  Not at all.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  Uh, because we're adults. So, uh, but the, I.

• 40:29Speaker 03

  I'm not sure about that, but.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  It's debated, uh, among scholars, yes. Uh, so, but this is a word that is used, it's actually used a, a few different ways.

• 40:42Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  And, yeah, and within the Latter Day Saint tradition, it's used even a few more different ways.

• 40:49Speaker 03

  Even differenter ways.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Yes, the, the, but the, what I wanted to do is go back to the earliest uses and see what we could figure out there. And, and go back to etymology and stuff like that. And, and there's not a, there's not really a universally agreed upon etymology. But it probably has something to do with, uh, being dry. It probably comes from, uh, a, a root that has reference to being dry, but is being used to refer to a, a place that is like a rocky outcropping that is used for protection.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  And the, uh, one of the, one of the probably.

• 41:36Speaker 03

  Stronghold sort of thing?

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Kinda, but, but, cause you, we're getting a little, um, we're conflating some different terms. Because the first, one of the earliest references to Zion is from 2 Samuel, chapter 5. And there we have, uh, this is where the Jebusites are occupying Jerusalem, and David is going to fight up against them. And, and they do okay, but then verse 7 says, nevertheless, David took the metsudat Tsion, the stronghold of Zion. And then it says, he irdawid, or that is the city of David. And so the city of David is the new name for the, the stronghold of Zion.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  And, uh, this was probably the name that was given to the location that is to be identified either with the entire little, uh, outcropping. So the, the, uh, if you're, if you're looking at a satellite photo of, uh, Jerusalem, uh, the city of David is kind of the Florida of the, uh, Temple Mount. It kind of pokes down, there's a, there's a ridge.

• 42:44Speaker 03

  A dangling appendage, is that what you're saying?

• 42:46Speaker 02

  Uh, that, that, that comes down from the, uh, kind of southeastern side of the Temple Mount. And that is known as the city of David. And so Zion probably originally referred to, if not that whole thing, maybe kind of a rocky outcropping, an acropolis, uh, that was at one point a part of that, uh, that dangling parterciple. So, uh, that's probably the, the stronghold of Zion. It probably comes from something associated with, with dryness, where it refers to, uh, something that is all rock instead of having any kind of, uh, soil and things on it. But it became associated with a place of protection. You could climb up on top of this.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  So basically the movie Tremors, uh, where would, did they find protection? In the rocky outcroppings. Uh, so they had to go climb up on top of those.

• 43:41Speaker 03

  Just sort of, I mean, it's interesting that just by dumb luck, the LDS people who named the, uh, the national park down south in Utah, they actually nailed it when they used their word Zion for a dry.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  A dry rocky place.

• 44:02Speaker 03

  Place, uh, in, in Southern Utah.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, so.

• 44:06Speaker 03

  That's, that's kinda cool.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  So the, the name may even predate the Judaite occupation of the area.

• 44:19Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 44:20Speaker 02

  Cause since they, they renamed it the city of David, so it may have been like a Jebusite, or, or some other kind of pre Hebrew Semitic name that was given to this, uh, site, which may be why it doesn't, it's kind of hard to gain kind of etymological purchase on what's going on there.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  But then later on, David brings the ark to Jerusalem, uh, Solomon builds the temple. And then you get the emergence, the, uh, the merging of different ideas about the ark and divine presence and Davidic kingship and, and all this kind of stuff. And so Zion begins to take on this sense of God's holy mountain. Um, and even though the temple was not built in the city of David, the temple was built to the north. Mount Moriah, the larger, uh, Temple Mount, that is the, the, you know, torso of which the city of David is the Florida.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  So, um, but, but Zion becomes shorthand for the place where Adonai dwells. And so you begin to, uh, see it used that way as, uh, kind of a way to refer to the presence of God. And this, and this leads to what some people have called Zion theology, which is this idea that because God dwells there, Zion is special, it's protected, uh, it's not going to be harmed. Uh, and you see this in some of the Psalms, maybe in, in Isaiah, um, Jerusalem cannot fall.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  And, you know, it, it's an idea that is, is kind of mocked, uh, in public discourse today. This idea that, uh, you know, this is, this ship is unthinkable kind of stuff.

• 46:14Speaker 03

  Right, yeah. I, famously Jerusalem ki- kinda fell, uh, a, a time or two, so.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah, every, every time somebody's like, God is with us, we cannot be defeated. That is usually designed for somebody to be defeated.

• 46:28Speaker 03

  Somebody's gonna be playing taps pretty soon.

• 46:32Speaker 02

  Yes, they're gonna go down with the ship. Um, like, uh, what's her name, Dido? Who did not go down, no, she did go down with the ship. Dang it. Uh, screwed that one up. But, uh, um, other 90s, other, uh, late Gen Xers or, or elder millennials will know what I was trying to get at. But then the exile obviously happened, and, and so Zion theology gets busted, which doesn't mean, okay, we throw it out the window. We get rid of it entirely. It means we renegotiate it.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  Um, we rewired it. Ha, ha, ha. I, I don't even know how the, uh, the Tim the Toolman Taylor grunts work anymore, but, um.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  All your references, so, uh, so contemporary, so, so hip and now.

• 47:20Speaker 02

  Hey, if anybody's topical, it's, it's me.

• 47:22Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I was gonna make some, uh, you might be a redneck jokes too, but, um, just, just because, you know, that's what everybody's talking about these days. Um, so you have this, when you have a temple that God inhabits, and God is the highest God, uh, if that temple falls, you've got to rationalize how that happens. And usually you, you've got a few options. One option is to say, well, are God lost? Usually you don't like that option.

• 47:53Speaker 03

  That, it's, it's less appealing, for sure.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. Um, another option is to say, okay, God is upset with us and God abandoned the temple. And without that protection, then it was just a, a regular old building and, you know, you can knock it over. So, uh, that's, that's generally what you do. Uh, and then the, in the Hebrew Bible, they went a step further where they were like, it's not just that God abandoned it and, and enemies destroyed it. It's that God brought the enemies in to destroy it. It was God's plan all along.

• 48:26Speaker 03

  Right.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  But because God temporarily abandoned Zion, the Zion theology, uh, has to be, it has to become more symbolic.

• 48:37Speaker 03

  Has to be updated, yeah.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it has to be, uh, something that we are yearning for, a return to, uh, innocence. Just like the commercials that you, uh, would hear in your dreams because you fell asleep on the, uh, uh, the couch with the TV on. And then you had some Enya, um, going when you woke up. But, uh, when the second temple is being built, um, you get Zion kind of expands its scope. It now becomes a lot more stuff. And today, Mount Zion is actually the name of one of the hills in Jerusalem.

• 49:13Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  Uh, one to the west a little bit, which is the, uh, kind of the hill that overlooks the western side of the valley of Hinnom.

• 49:23Speaker 03

  What's the, uh, what's the rocky outcrop situation there?

• 49:26Speaker 02

  Uh, it's not, it's not incredibly rocky, but one of the very interesting features, uh, if, if.

• 49:34Speaker 02

  It becomes possible to return to this part of the world recreationally.

• 49:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  Um, at some point in the future, there are, um, there are some stone steps going up Mount Zion that have been uncovered that have been dated to the first century CE.

• 49:51Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting.

• 49:52Speaker 02

  And so a lot of scholars would suggest that if Jesus was brought to Caiphas, whose palace might have been located on Mount Zion, that those steps, he would have been dragged up those steps. So.

• 50:04Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 50:04Speaker 02

  So that's always a fun place to visit. Uh, if, uh, you happen to be in the area right now, don't be in the area.

• 50:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  There, bad things happening. Um, but Zion becomes increasingly symbolic. Uh, the whole world could be Zion because God's presence is there. Uh, within the Latter Day Saint tradition, you know, you have this idea that Zion is the pure in heart. So wherever the pure in heart will be, there Zion is.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. There's a whole history with the, with the Latter Day Saint tradition of.

• 50:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:41Speaker 03

  Zion being Jackson County, Missouri, and then not that anymore. They, I mean, it's the same thing. There was like, literally it's, that's interesting that it's so parallel to, uh, you know, there was an exile. The, the Mormons were exiled from Missouri. They were literally given the boot.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:01Speaker 03

  And then, uh, and then suddenly the concept of Zion became far more portable.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  A lot more flexible and a lot more portable. Yeah.

• 51:09Speaker 03

  And, uh, and then it came here to Salt Lake. So, uh, that, that's nice.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  But, but you have this, throughout a lot of what's going on in the Bible, you have this hope of restoration of return and Zion is, is one of the main Foci of, of that idea where Zion is now this cosmic kind of God's presence, city, the new Jerusalem, all this kind of stuff. We want to return to the way things were, and that will be our ultimate return to Zion. Uh, so it, it, it basically is a specific location that became associated with God's presence, began to spread out a little bit. Uh-oh, there's an exile. Now, if we want to maintain this concept, it's gotta be made a little more mobile, a little more flexible. We've got to renegotiate what we understand

• 51:59Speaker 02

  Zion to be. It becomes more symbolic. It becomes a little more eschatological. It becomes a little more cosmic. It's becomes this thing that we are constantly reaching for. So, uh, there's, there's a saying, uh, next year in Jerusalem.

• 52:14Speaker 03

  Right.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  Which is kind of this perpetual hope that maybe next year, uh, this will all, uh, be resolved and everything will return to the way it was supposed to be. And Zion is, is a part of that. So, uh, we could, you know, I maybe, I'd have to have my friend Ben Park come on the show to talk about Zion within Mormonism because he's got a whole book on, on, um, American Zion is what the book is called.

• 52:41Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 52:42Speaker 02

  Uh, but yeah, he, he would be able to talk more about how complex it gets with an LDS tradition. But, but yeah, it is parallel. We, we have the, the events of our times have to, uh, they, they force us to kind of renegotiate how we're representing our relationship to God, what God wants from us and, and, um, you know, our spatiality and all that kind of stuff. So.

• 53:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  So where is Zion? Zion is wherever you want it to be.

• 53:08Speaker 03

  It's a, so, you know, it starts as a thing. It starts as a, as a, as a stronghold and then it becomes a bigger thing. It becomes a temple. It becomes a city. Uh, or, so, I mean, I, did we get to it being the city of Jerusalem? Cause, because I believe that that's what we talked about on the episode a couple of weeks ago was that in that particular case Zion was the city of Jerusalem.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Because when, once it gets to the point where Zion is, is the, where God dwells.

• 53:44Speaker 03

  Right.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  In, in the temple, that kind of becomes, uh, metonymy for the city of Jerusalem. So the city of Jerusalem is the body of which the temple is the beating heart. And so Zion kind of represents, can represent all of it. And it's used poetically, uh, in parallelism, uh, where you've got Jerusalem and Zion and Zion and Jerusalem and, and things like that. So.

• 54:09Speaker 03

  Right.

• 54:09Speaker 02

  Um, and, and I imagine there are probably some more expansive poetic uses where it's, it's, um, representing Israel as, as a whole, either as a territory or as a people. But I have, I didn't look any of that up. So, um, but yeah, that's, that's, uh, what Zion is. It's also a national park that has some wonderful stuff. Uh, don't, don't go on Angel's Landing if you, uh, don't have good shoes though.

• 54:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's true. Uh, and don't go if you're afraid of heights either.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  That too.

• 54:46Speaker 03

  Um, I, Zion also becomes, wait a minute, there's one more. I think there's one more.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 54:52Speaker 03

  Because does it not become kind of the people, uh, of Israel? It's not like rather than, rather than just Jerusalem, or is it, doesn't it also at some points become the, the, the, the people of Jerusalem?

• 55:09Speaker 02

  Uh, I, that's, I'm used to hearing that, um, within LDS discourse.

• 55:15Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 55:16Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, but.

• 55:18Speaker 03

  Less, less that, less so in, in biblical stuff?

• 55:21Speaker 02

  I, surely, surely Zion is personified, uh, because Zion as a city, it's, it's feminine in Hebrew. And so it becomes personified. And so sometimes you get references to Zion as a daughter, uh, or something like that. Or you get, you get references to, uh, the people as the children of Zion. Um, and so I, I almost certainly Zion, when it's personified, can be used as metonymy for the people as well.

• 55:56Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  Um, but let me see if, cause, cause you have references where God will talk to Zion, but it's talking to the people.

• 56:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:05Speaker 02

  Uh, so, so that could be metonymy where the city is representative of the people or Zion could have taken on, uh, representation of, uh, the people themselves. So yeah, I'm sure that, uh, that is in use, uh, in, in different places.

• 56:23Speaker 03

  There's, there, you know, we've been talking about the sort of the LDS, uh, traditions surrounding that word. There's another modern usage of that word that we've been kind of avoiding, uh, which, which is the ism.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 56:39Speaker 03

  Which I, I, I, I don't want to get too deep into the weeds of Zionism, uh, except to say that it can be that, that, that that has become a flashpoint of a, of a word. Uh, and I think it means a different things to different people.

• 56:57Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:57Speaker 03

  And it's become troubling. So, uh, do you have a, do you feel competent to, to talk a little bit about Zionism, uh, as it is used in, in, in modern, uh, Judaism, uh, and as, as it relates to Israel or, or should we avoid that?

• 57:17Speaker 02

  I think we ought to avoid it largely because I would feel more comfortable talking about problems with Christian Zionism, particularly among evangelicals.

• 57:25Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 57:26Speaker 02

  Uh, I am well out of my lane to talk about Zionism within Judaism. Uh, although I, I would say the notion that, uh, anti-Zionism is fundamentally anti-Semitic is, is phenomenally problematic, uh, because it is, it is trying to use a, and a political ideology as a proxy for, uh, a very broad and diverse group of people.

• 57:53Speaker 03

  Right.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  And so that, and, and this gets to kind of the personification of Zion and, and its use as metonymy for all the people and all that kind of stuff. So, uh, usually Zionism these days, uh, is collecting a, a set of positions regarding the relationship geopolitically of the nation of Israel to the other nations around it. Uh, and which is not about the Jewish people qua people so much as it is about, uh, political concerns.

• 58:26Speaker 03

  Right.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  Uh, and so I, I would just suggest that Christian Zionists, just leave it alone. Uh, Christian Zionism is, is incredibly harmful and, and in my opinion also itself rather anti-Semitic because it is treat, it's using folks who are, are committed to this particular political ideology as props, basically. You're pawns in our eschatological game and we support you because we know what's coming next.

• 58:57Speaker 03

  Right.

• 58:58Speaker 02

  And, and there, and, and those Jewish folks don't come out on the winning end of, of that event. So, uh, I think, uh, Christian Zionism is, is phenomenally problematic and that's the only one I feel at all qualified to, to speak on. Um, although I will say the overwhelming majority of my friends who are Jewish and colleagues of mine who are Jewish would probably identify as, as anti-Zionists.

• 59:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. I just think, I, I will say that as just sort of a caution, if you don't genuinely understand all of the nuances that are, that surround that word, uh, just avoid it. Just don't, don't start talking, don't call a group of people Zionists because they have a political ideology. I don't know. I'm just like, if you don't understand it, uh, I would, I would, because it can be, it, it can get you in a mess.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:55Speaker 03

  Uh, and, and a mess that causes pain to a lot of people. So.

• 59:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 59:59Speaker 03

  Those are bad messes.

• 1:00:02Speaker 03

  All right. Well, it's an interesting word and, and oh, there was one more thing I did want to ask. You know, we've been talking about the use of the word Zion in Old Testament. And it is a Hebrew word. Does it come up in the New Testament at all? Does that, does that word?

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, we do have Zion comes up a couple of times. I think there's a reference of Mount Zion, at least in the New Testament. Let me, let me do a quick search. I got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven occurrences of Zion in the New Testament.

• 1:00:41Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  Matthew 2115, where we're quoting the prophecy of, of the king riding in on the, the donkey. Tell the daughter of Zion, look, your king is coming to you.

• 1:00:52Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  John 1215, same thing. Don't be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt. Romans 933, as it is written, see, I am laying in Zion, a stone that will make people stumble, a rock that will make them fall. So we've got another quotation. Romans 1126, and in this way, all Israel will be saved. As it is written, out of Zion will come deliverer, the deliverer, I assume that's supposed to say, yes, the deliverer. Hebrews 1222, but you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering. First Peter, again, we're quoting

• 1:01:32Speaker 02

  Scripture 26, see, I am laying in Zion, a stone, a cornerstone. And then Revelation 141, then I looked and there was the lamb standing on Mount Zion.

• 1:01:43Speaker 03

  Okay. There you go. Fascinating stuff. I'm, I, I, we know the word now. I feel, I feel competent, at very least in the biblical use of that word.

• 1:01:57Speaker 02

  Yes. Hopefully we have caused the waters to muddy a bit and you, but you understand now the, the complexity is a little better.

• 1:02:07Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  And that's what learning is, is realizing it's not as simple as you wanted it to be.

• 1:02:11Speaker 03

  It's not one thing. It's a bunch of things.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

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• 1:02:47Speaker 03

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• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  Bye, everybody.

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

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