Dem Dry Bones (and Pierced Hands?)

This week, we're wandering into a valley full of dry bones! Ezekiel 37 is the Bible at its most horror-movie: bones rattle together, sprout sinew and skin, and stand up as "an exceeding great army," before the chapter loses steam with a much less metal bit about two sticks. What was Ezekiel actually promising the exiles in Babylon, and how did those sticks turn into the Book of Mormon? Then we're taking issue with the piercings of Jesus. Zechariah 12:10, Psalm 22:16, and Isaiah 53 all get cited as prophecies of the crucifixion, but did the gospel writers read them that way? And does "they pierced my hands and my feet" even work in Hebrew? (Spoiler: no, it doesn't.) Explore every episode, searchable transcripts, and our book recommendations on the Data Over Dogma website: https://www.dataoverdogmapod.com 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

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

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  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from Star.

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  Filmed for IMAX. Make them remember you. The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.

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• 0:47Speaker 03

  He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. Nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. So if Isaiah 53 is about Jesus, you have to stop putting up good-looking pictures of this guy in your church. You gotta make him ugly.

• 1:02Speaker 04

  He has to be a magoo.

• 1:10Speaker 04

  Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan.

• 1:12Speaker 03

  And I'm Dan Beecher.

• 1:14Speaker 04

  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, be it crispity, crunchity, or peanut buttery, as is our want or won't, if you're nasty, which we've been told we are on occasion.

• 1:34Speaker 03

  We're the nastiest, man. We keeps it nasty.

• 1:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've got all kinds of things that would all probably be copyright violations that I would say right now if I had the freedom. But, you know, we're locked into this thing, so we're not allowed to say some things. Anyway, how are things, Dan?

• 1:53Speaker 03

  Things are good. Things are good. I'm excited about today's show. We got some just fascinating stuff coming up, including zombies. I'm gonna say zombies. I know that you're gonna, you're some quibble out there in the world. But it's a whole chapter full of, well, half zombies, half sticks. And then, and that's Ezekiel 37, so we'll do that as our chapter and verse. And then after that, we're gonna dive into the piercing, the multiplicitous piercings of Jesus.

• 2:32Speaker 04

  Yes. And he didn't just have the one piercing. He had a few of them.

• 2:38Speaker 03

  Yeah. Which makes, which makes certain religious schools' policies on the subject a little suspect, in my opinion. BYU has a very strict piercing policy. I'm like, do you know what you're, what's going on with your guy there? Anyway, but the question is, were his, were the piercings of Jesus prophesied? And what do those prophecies mean? We'll get to all of that. That'll be our taking issue, because I think we're gonna take some issue.

• 3:15Speaker 04

  I think we might.

• 3:17Speaker 03

  All right, well, let's just dive straight in with chapter and verse.

• 3:25Speaker 03

  All right, zombies, bones. Let's dive right in.

• 3:31Speaker 04

  There are no, I didn't read about brains.

• 3:33Speaker 03

  No, there is, well, there's sinew, there's flesh.

• 3:38Speaker 04

  The brain wasn't really a big deal in this time period.

• 3:40Speaker 03

  Right, yeah.

• 3:41Speaker 04

  It was all, the heart was the seat of not just emotion, but cognition as well. The brain was just, you know.

• 3:48Speaker 03

  That was just a shock absorber up in the old noggin. Talk to me, before we get into it too far, place Ezekiel 30, place the Book of Ezekiel in our timeline. You know, a couple, a couple of episodes ago, we talked about sort of the actual periods, the historical periods that things were, might have been written in, that they might have taken place in. Give me some, some situation here. Situate us.

• 4:15Speaker 04

  So Ezekiel is an exilic prophet. If I recall, I'm flipping back to Ezekiel, chapter 1, verse 1, "In the 30th year in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the river Hebar, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God." So we're starting in Babylon. So, so this is, the Book of Ezekiel is written to the exilees in Babylon. And Ezekiel, obviously, came together over, over a period of time. It wasn't all written at one go on the side of the river. I mean, you don't have that much papyrus handy by the side of the river, and so.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  Do we, do we think it was written by a guy named Ezekiel?

• 5:01Speaker 04

  I mean, we don't have too much reason to doubt that whoever at least started this could have been

• 5:11Speaker 04

  some dude who styled himself a prophet named Ezekiel. And we do, let's see, the, so my trusty SBL Study Bible in the authorship and date portion of Ezekiel says, "The prophet Ezekiel had been born the son of a priest, Boozy." Anything like that.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  Nice.

• 5:30Speaker 04

  Yes, and his father was Shaboozie. No, that's not true. "He was married, though his wife predeceased him. The book mentions no offspring. Before 597 BCE, he lived in Jerusalem. Afterward, he lived not far from the Mesopotamian city of Nipour on the banks of an irrigation canal."

• 5:52Speaker 04

  I think, yeah, I think we have reason to think that, like, the text, at least the original form of the text, seems to be informed by an exilic experience and worldview, and so probably was written by some dude named Ezekiel, so.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  So, and if he's, if he was born in Jerusalem,

• 6:15Speaker 03

  that makes him a Judaite, who was then, who was then, who physically experienced the exile.

• 6:22Speaker 04

  Yes, would have been among those who was forcibly migrated in 597, 587, somewhere in between there, BCE. So the northern kingdom of Israel, the 10 tribes of Israel, destroyed over 100 years before. 722 BCE is when the Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom. And so the southern kingdom of Judah is all that remains, which is overwhelmingly the tribe of Judah, and then Benjamin, according to tradition. And then there would have been also a smattering of a bunch of other tribes just because people traveled back and forth and stuff like that, so.

• 6:58Speaker 03

  This tribe thing will come up a little bit, a little bit as we venture down the page a bit.

• 7:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  So that's good to know. All right. What, okay, so let's get into, what we have here is very clearly a metaphor. I don't think we're meant to take this literally as something that this person experienced.

• 7:23Speaker 04

  Right, this is a vision, and this is, this is obviously symbolic. Verse 1 says, "The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley, and it was full of bones." I always wonder how these prophets imagine being plucked up and set somewhere by the hand of the Lord. Because we talked about, was it, it wasn't Belle and the Dragon, was it Susanna? No, which was the?

• 7:51Speaker 03

  No, I think it was Belle and the.

• 7:53Speaker 04

  Was it Belle and the Dragon?

• 7:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, where the dude was whisked away.

• 7:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, by the hair.

• 7:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:02Speaker 04

  Some of them are at least explicit about that. Ezekiel's gonna be in a little cagey with the details of this.

• 8:07Speaker 03

  I do, I do like the idea, like, "The hand of the Lord came upon me." I like the idea of a giant hand just picking you up by the back of your shirt.

• 8:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  Just dropping you off in a valley, in what is a terrifying valley. Which is to say, apparently just human bones as far as the eye can see.

• 8:28Speaker 04

  Yes, "He led me all around, yeah, in the middle of the valley, it was full of bones. He led me all around them. There were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry." Which I suppose is better than the alternative.

• 8:42Speaker 03

  The Valley of the Moist Bones?

• 8:46Speaker 04

  I think of, my wife and I always giggled when we watched, we tend to watch a lot of shows with the, with the closed captioning on. My wife grew up in a family with a deaf child, and so she, she does sign language, and that's just how she grew up, watching television with the Kellows captioning on, so we still do it. But when we watched Stranger Things, the word that we love hearing was, or seeing on the screen was "squelching." Because there was a lot of squelching in.

• 9:17Speaker 04

  So, so yeah, dry bones better than wet. I would take, I would take a crinkle over a squelch, uh, seven days out of the week. He said to me, mortal, can these bones live? And mortal here is, uh, Ben Adam, son of man, or son of humanity, or son of a human, or something like that. And,

• 9:36Speaker 03

  and this is- I think that's interesting because I, I looked at multiple, uh, translations, as I am wont to do, and some of them render it, son of man, can these bones live?

• 9:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  Which I'm guessing the reason to avoid that is just to avoid the confusion. Once we get to Jesus, is that what we're doing?

• 9:54Speaker 04

  I, I, I, maybe, um, certainly, certainly that's useful because it does create confusion, but at the same time, it kind of severs that intertextuality because son of man does derive ultimately from this Hebrew phrase, which is intended to just identify someone as a mortal human. Usually, it is over and against a deity, a divine being. So it's, it's kind of like saying, hey, you, uh, you know, what, and we've all seen all kinds of movies where deities and, and ghosts and things will talk about you fleshbag or something like that. It's a way to kind of,

• 10:33Speaker 04

  uh, denigrate the other person for being a mortal. But, uh, son of man, uh, and not the banger of a, of a Phil Collins song, but it just, it just here means mortal. Uh, I answered, oh, Lord God, you know. Then he said to me, prophesy to these bones and say to them, oh, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord, thus says the Lord God to these bones, I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live, which is interesting.

• 11:04Speaker 03

  We've encountered that scripture before, uh, when we did our thing about the, about abortion, when we did our episode about abortion, because one of the questions that is always on the mind of people who are looking into abortion is, when does life enter? When, when, when is a, uh,

• 11:26Speaker 04

  fetus of person?

• 11:27Speaker 03

  Life. Uh, and the Bible, as we, as you and many others have pointed out, is pretty clear that it's at breath.

• 11:36Speaker 04

  Yes. And, and it's, it's interesting. We, we could go to Ecclesiastes. The idea of breath being kind of the fundamental, uh, constitutive element of life is so pervasive that even the quickening in, in a certain passage in Ecclesiastes is compared to breath entering the bones of the fetus.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:00Speaker 04

  The, the idea that the, the ability of the fetus to move on its own and to feel that movement, that is like breath coming to the fetus. It's not a person yet. It's just a, a figure of speech. But, but yeah, here, the idea is very clearly that the bones, uh, come to life once they have breath within them. Now, there are other ingredients that are as yet missing. Verse six, I will lay sinews on you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live and you shall know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied, as I had been commanded, and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the

• 12:43Speaker 04

  bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked and there were sinews on them and flesh had come upon them and skin had covered them, but there was no breath in them. I'm thinking of army of darkness. Isn't there a part where, where the bones come together and then all the other stuff? That's kind of squelchy. Um,

• 13:04Speaker 04

  then he said to me, yeah, this is a horrifying vision, by the way.

• 13:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I, yeah, this is, I mean, one has to imagine that several horror films have, have drawn upon this imagery just because some kid, you know, some Clive Barker read this passage when he was a kid and it stayed with him.

• 13:26Speaker 04

  And yeah, that's-

• 13:28Speaker 03

  So metal. Um, then he said to me, prophesy to the breath, prophesy mortal and say to the breath, and the word here breath is ruach, which could mean breath, it could mean wind, it could mean spirit. So, uh, Yeah, ruach, we've, we've encountered as spirit, uh, a whole bunch of times.

• 13:45Speaker 04

  In fact, let me see if, uh, what is that? Thirty-seven, shmigadoon, thirty-seven, eight-ish? Uh, and I saw and look upon them, flesh upon them, is it haruach? Yeah, haruach. Uh, you shall say, or say to haruach, which is rendered here the breath, but it could just as well be rendered the spirit. Uh, prophesy to-

• 14:10Speaker 03

  Or the wind, as you say.

• 14:11Speaker 04

  Or the wind, yeah.

• 14:13Speaker 03

  Which I think other, I think other translations I saw said the wind, say to the wind.

• 14:19Speaker 04

  Say to the wind?

• 14:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:21Speaker 04

  To the wind of my soul. Is that, that's, that's Cat Stevens, isn't it? Or Yusef, excuse me, Yusef. Um, what a wonderful song. Prophesy to the breath, or the wind, or the spirit, prophesy mortal and say to the breath slash wind slash spirit, thus says the Lord God, come from the four winds, oh, breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live. I prophesied as he commanded me and the breath came into them and they lived and stood on their feet, a vast multitude. Now we have our zombie army. So-

• 14:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. Um, and then we have an explanation.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  Well, and I think actually, uh, again, I think it was KJV that didn't say multitude, it said army. I think it said the word army.

• 15:09Speaker 04

  Oh, does it? Uh, so that would be,

• 15:14Speaker 04

  Chail, I've seen the great-

• 15:16Speaker 03

  I should just, I should just switch to KJV. So we're reading two different things.

• 15:21Speaker 04

  It, it says Chail, so that would be, uh, that means like, it could mean valiant, uh, it can mean wealth, uh, but yeah, it can also be something like an army, a force.

• 15:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, it says, yeah. In KJV, it says, and they stood upon their feet and, and exceeding great army.

• 15:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, it says Chail Gadol Ma'od Ma'od. So Gadol means great, and then Ma'od Ma'od is doubling up the adjective, uh, for, uh, or the adverb very. Um, yeah. And then, uh, then he said to me, mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say our bones are dried up and our host is, our hope is lost, excuse me, we are cut off completely. And this is, this is interesting, being cut off here is, uh, is kind of a, is figurative death language, but the idea is really, this is the exiles in Babylon. They're cut off from the land of the living, which doesn't mean

• 16:26Speaker 04

  necessarily that they're dead, but they're no longer in the promised land. They're no longer in the land of Israel, Adonai's inheritance. So they're cut off in that sense. Therefore prophesy and say to them, thus says the Lord God, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from your graves, oh, my people, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel, and you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and bring you up from your graves, oh, my people.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  Now, when it says the land of Israel,

• 17:01Speaker 03

  I, what, what are we talking about? Because there's the northern kingdom, there's a southern kingdom. Are we talking about the whole area? Are we talking-

• 17:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, that, that, I think the main idea is Jerusalem is, is kind of the capital, but, but yeah, I think they imagine Israel to include, uh, everything. However, by this time period, the southern kingdom was, was kind of appropriating that identity as, that national identity as Israel. So irrespective of, of what geographic extent they associated with their nation, I, I think they had decided, because this is around the time period that the whole 12 tribes and, you know, we were a united monarchy and all that kind of stuff was, that tradition was developing. So I think they had, they understood by this time period, or they, they thought of themselves as,

• 17:52Speaker 04

  as a single identity, as a single people.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 17:55Speaker 04

  But, but yeah, Jerusalem is the beating heart of the land of Israel. So,

• 18:01Speaker 04

  uh, and, but I will put my spirit within you. I'm just going to look at the Hebrew there. I will give my, yeah, I will give my spirit within you, netati, v'netati ruach, v'achem, uh, yes, and you shall live and I will place you on your own soil. Then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord. So the whole thing is, is basically, this whole puppet show is basically just God saying, hey, I'm gonna restore the house of Israel to the land of Israel, and I'm gonna tell you the story in the most creepy way you can imagine.

• 18:40Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 18:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:41Speaker 03

  I know you guys feel like bones right now, but, uh, I'll, I'll give it back, I promise.

• 18:51Speaker 04

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

• 18:57Speaker 03

  I've heard the construction.

• 18:58Speaker 04

  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

• 19:43Speaker 04

  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.

• 20:07Speaker 03

  Well, you know, you can try to do that on your own, or you can use a phenomenally useful tool like Monarch to do something like that. Monarch is set up exactly for that kind of financial planning. They have things like their debt pay down simulator and visualizer to help you track your progress, which I, this is brilliant. The fact of the matter is that all of these concepts are so ethereal, it's hard to sort of wrap your head around it a lot of the time. And with this visualizer, you can see how that debt is going to go down. You can actually simulate your freedom occurring in front of your very eyes. And I think that is

• 20:51Speaker 03

  an amazing thing. Monarch has other things like, you can watch your timeline move, you can play out the options, you can choose the fastest way to alleviate your debt. Most apps just tell you what you've spent and how much debt you're in. Not Monarch. Monarch even has an AI assistant that will tell you, help you with anything to do with your finances. You can ask, how much did I spend on travel last summer? Or can I afford the vacation that I want to do? And it'll walk you through it all. It's super easy. It's super useful. I love it.

• 21:24Speaker 04

  Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code DOGMA at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code DOGMA. You know, the holidays are just around the corner and I don't know how it is with y'all, but in our family, it's about food and particularly about big meals. And these are things we look forward to all year long. We have special stuff that we do that we did around Halloween time. Now we've got Thanksgiving coming up. There's a lot of prepping for them that takes over a lot of our day. And that can sometimes make it harder to be consistent about

• 22:06Speaker 04

  meals outside of the big meal. They can kind of take a backseat. And so sometimes you find yourself just kind of grazing in the pantry. I know all too well what that is like. And it can be hard to stay on track, hit your macros and eat well around the holidays. And this is one of the things that I think Factor does really well. This is something I know I'm going to open up my fridge and there are going to be Factor meals in there that can take care of my lunch. Two minutes in the microwave, it's delicious. These are things I know I enjoy and I can try new stuff every week if I want to do that too. Factor makes a big difference when we get around the chaos of the holidays.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. And you know, it used to be, if you're thinking about a two minute meal, you could think about the wildest, saddest vegetables, the just, it was a misery to eat one of these meals. But Factor's very different. It's made with high quality ingredients that you recognize and trust with over 175 banned ingredients. You always know you're eating something that's good for you. And as you say, Dan, ready in two minutes. So if it's lunch between meetings or dinner after holiday shopping, Factor doesn't require any prep, doesn't require any cleanup. It is no effort for delicious, healthy meals. You're gonna have Heart Smart options like the

• 23:31Speaker 03

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• 23:45Speaker 04

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• 24:12Speaker 04

  And this is, you know, this is kind of Ezekiel's thing. This is Ezekiel's style. Loves to get kind of explicit with some stuff. We've talked in the past about some of the sexually explicit stuff that's going on. There's, there's even sexual violence that that is going on. Ezekiel, we've talked in, in the past about how Ezekiel says, yeah, God commanded you to, to sacrifice your own children. So, yeah, yeah. And here it's like, let's, let's drop you off in the pet cemetery and watch as flesh and sinew and, and blood go, and suddenly these, these bones

• 24:55Speaker 04

  are all living members of the house of Israel. So, yeah, whoo wee. And then it's gonna get-

• 25:02Speaker 03

  So that was, that was the, that was the Halloweeny, we, we're, it's, we're a little late for Halloween, but that was the Halloweeny sort of metaphor. And then we get to the boring metaphor.

• 25:16Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then Ezekiel was like, you know what, I am checked out. We're just gonna, he phones in, he phones in the last part of the chapter.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  He's like, it's too hard to come up with, maybe, maybe whatever was burning on the altar ran out.

• 25:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, not, not everything's a home run. Okay. So, you know,

• 25:39Speaker 04

  then we have the, the two sticks. Yeah. So verse 15, "The word of the Lord came to me, mortal," that is again, son of man, "take a stick, write on it." And, and this stick would have been more like a tablet.

• 25:57Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 25:58Speaker 04

  Well, the, the word is just ate in Hebrew, but, so that just means wood, or it could even mean tree, but probably what we're talking about is a tablet, because that was, the writing implement was, that you used back then was, was a tablet. And, and you would put like a, you could put some, a layer of wax on it or something like that. And then you would write in, in the wax. That was kind of your temporary, you know, writing surface.

• 26:27Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 26:28Speaker 04

  Okay. So take, we got a stick, write on it. "For Judah and the Israelites associated with it." And the, the Hebrew there is, it's not quite as long as the English. "Li Huda, v'livne Israel chavero." So, yeah, pertaining to it. Then take another stick and write on it, "For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim and all the house of Israel associated with it." So we've got, we, we talked about Israel. You, maybe your question was based on the fact that you read ahead in the chapter

• 27:08Speaker 04

  and saw that there was, you have Judah and Israel. So these are the two houses, both alike in dignity. And, and then we have verse 17, "And join them together into one stick, so that they may become one in your hand. And when the people say to you, will you not show us what you mean by these?" Because obviously, everybody who talked to Ezekiel was like, what are you talking about?

• 27:36Speaker 03

  Although it, one wonders who would be confused by, you're right.

• 27:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:43Speaker 03

  This is Joseph. And this is for this one. And now they're together.

• 27:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:47Speaker 03

  I've got these guys, I got these guys, I'm sticking them together.

• 27:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:53Speaker 03

  Do you get the metaphor?

• 27:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:57Speaker 04

  "Say to them, thus says the Lord God, I am about to take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim and the tribes of Israel associated with it, and I will put the stick of Judah upon it and make them one stick, in order that they may be one in my hand."

• 28:14Speaker 03

  I just literally had the vision of him like making the sticks.

• 28:21Speaker 04

  Now, kids.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  Now this stick is going to be dating this stick.

• 28:28Speaker 04

  When two sticks, when two sticks love each other very much and, and they go get a, pay $50 for a license.

• 28:38Speaker 04

  And go in front of a judge.

• 28:42Speaker 04

  When the sticks on which you write are in your hand before their eyes, then say to them, thus says the Lord God, I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from every quarter and bring them into their own land. I will make them one nation in the land on the mountains of Israel, and one king shall be king over them all. Never again shall they be two nations, and never again shall they be divided into two kingdoms. And, and here, this is a bigger prophecy than just I'm restoring Judah to Jerusalem. That's, that's the, the capital, the center. But obviously, what the prophecy is, is, is we're going to restore the lost 10 tribes. This

• 29:25Speaker 04

  is not just the Southern Kingdom. And they're going to be one and the same. They will be a united kingdom once again, never to be divided. Verse 23 says, they shall never again defile themselves with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. I will save them from all the apostices into which they have fallen. Apostices? What is the word for apostases in, in Hebrew?

• 29:53Speaker 03

  Well, interestingly, KJV has, I will save them out of all of their dwelling places wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them.

• 30:03Speaker 04

  Oh, gosh. Yeah. So we've got Moshevo Tehem, which is based on Moshav. So that would be, that would be like a dwelling place or a seat. So it's a, it's a nominal form of the verbal root yashav, to dwell or to sit. Where are we getting apostases?

• 30:24Speaker 04

  Oh, we've, probably the Septuagint has something to say about this. Let me just see what we've got here.

• 30:32Speaker 03

  Those nutty Greeks.

• 30:36Speaker 04

  Anomion. Yes. From all of their anomion, which would be lawlessness. But that would be mishpat. Would that, that be, yeah, that would be mishpat that maybe they're reading in the Greek.

• 30:56Speaker 04

  Based on the LX X, a slight emendation of two vowels, including a mardelactionis, yields the reading from their turning. So that would be instead of yashav, you read it as a nominal form of the verb shuv. Oh, so turning aways, their turnings away, a reference here to their turning from God and deviating from his commandments. Okay, so it's not mishpat. They're, they're saying it's based on shuv instead of yashav. So that would be from their turnings. Usually you turn to something unless there's a, a preposition that says away. But, okay, fair enough. Apostices. All right. Anarasyue.

• 31:40Speaker 04

  Into which they have fallen. Okay. So we've got dwellings which they have sinned in them. Huh. In the Hebrew.

• 31:52Speaker 04

  So that would be which they have sinned in them, or by them, if we take that as a bait instrumentalis. And will cleanse them. And, and that is the tahar, to be clean, to purify. So not, not just scrubbing clean, but purify. Purify. And they will be to me, they shall be my people, and I will be their God. Nice. So, yeah.

• 32:18Speaker 03

  And here, this all sort of smacks to me of.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  It's, correct me if I'm wrong. I think that you have said in the past, that when there were the two kingdoms, it kind of felt like you, one of them wanted to take over the other. Well, you know what I mean? Like, they wanted to go ahead and grab them. But like, you can't just do that because they're kind of your cousins and whatever. But now that, now that the Northern Kingdom was already sort of disseminate, dissentiment, not disseminated, decimated is the word I'm looking for.

• 32:56Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 32:57Speaker 03

  By the Assyrians. Now it's like, this, this Judahite is like, hey, man, it's all just one now. We win. It feels like a power grab, a little bit of a power grab. And it feels like verse 24 kind of cements the deal. Because, because we're, now, the, the next verse is, and David, my servant, shall be king over them, and they shall have one shepherd. They shall also walk in my judgments and observe my statutes and do them. And as I recall from what you, from you saying, the, the, the Southern Kingdom felt like they had continued the Davidic line in their monarchy. And so that, that feels like it's just sort

• 33:42Speaker 03

  of like a, and by the way, the, the right, the right monarchy is the Davidic monarchy.

• 33:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. The, you know, the, the winners write, write the histories.

• 33:53Speaker 03

  Right.

• 33:54Speaker 04

  And here, it's really the survivors. They're the only ones left. And so they get to say whatever they want. But, but yeah, when it was a Northern Kingdom and a Southern Kingdom, they were never one, they were never one and the same. Maybe in the earliest years, there was an attempt to start off this kingdom as, as one kingdom. But I think the Southern Kingdom really derives from, from a dynasty that was started when someone, maybe the historical David conquered Jerusalem, and said, this is, this is the seat of my dynasty here. And that became the Southern Kingdom of Judah over time. But, you know, they, they

• 34:35Speaker 04

  subjected each other to vasillage and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, they were always at loggerheads. And then when, when one of them gets destroyed, the other one goes, you know, gets to appropriate all of their traditions and their literature, and, and then rewrite stuff and be like, and we were all one big happy family. And then they kept doing all this naughty stuff. And we were always like, come on, guys, we're supposed to be doing. And, and so, yeah, the, the Davidic line is, is really a Southern vision of what Israel was supposed to be and could still be. My servant David shall be king over them. They shall live in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, in which your ancestors lived.

• 35:20Speaker 04

  They and their children, and their children's children shall live there forever. And my servant David shall be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them, and I will bless them and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary among them forevermore. My dwelling place shall be over them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations shall know that I, the Lord sanctify Israel when my sanctuary is among them forevermore. And they did come back to Jerusalem. They did build a temple. And then that temple then got destroyed. So.

• 35:56Speaker 03

  Can I, can I just say that all of this talk of, because it doesn't say the line of David. It just keeps saying, and David shall be the king, and my servant David shall be their prince forever. And it just occurred to me as you were reading it, how great it would be if one of those bones, bag of bones stepped up and was like, hey, I'm David. I'm going to be the new king.

• 36:23Speaker 04

  And went, Sally, Sally forth.

• 36:30Speaker 04

  Calling back, calling back to that, that, that classic movie. Yeah, there you go. That is the, and, and if you get yourself a copy of the SBL Study Bible, there's a wonderful black and white version of Giorgio Giesi's Vision of Ezekiel, painted in 1554 C E, which shows it's almost as creepy as I imagine it.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  There's, there's a, I could, I could find some more creepiness to.

• 37:01Speaker 03

  I'm assuming you're talking about the bones and not the sticks.

• 37:05Speaker 04

  Correct. Yeah. No, the, the stick part of the vision, again, not, not everything can be a home run. So, yeah, that was, finally, you're done with the, with the squelching. And we get on to just, look at these sticks, everybody. I got two sticks. Now watch, ta-da, one stick. Do you get it?

• 37:24Speaker 03

  It's, it's unfair that, that the sticks get such short shrift in the, in the visual landscape, in the art world.

• 37:32Speaker 04

  Of course, this is a very famous passage for Latter Day Saints. Are you familiar with the Latter Day Saint version of this, interpretation of this?

• 37:42Speaker 03

  No.

• 37:42Speaker 04

  Okay. Just briefly, the renegotiation of this for Latter Day Saints, which is definitely not what the author had in mind, was that this is a reference to the Book of Mormon and the Bible. That one is.

• 37:56Speaker 03

  The two sticks.

• 37:57Speaker 04

  Yes. Yes. It's a writing on it. They're books. They represent, they're figurative books. And so one is representative of the lost tribes, and one is representative of the Bible. And so, or the, the, the account of the lost tribes, the, the Lehiite party that escaped. And so the Book of Mormon and the Bible, and they will be brought together and will be one. And that is how Latter Day Saints have traditionally read their own tradition into the Bible. So.

• 38:30Speaker 03

  There you go. I mean, considering that's what, that's what everybody did. That's what everybody has always done, reading their own tradition into the Bible. Fair play, I guess.

• 38:40Speaker 04

  Yeah. Like, where do we get to the Trinity? Like, yeah.

• 38:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.

• 38:45Speaker 04

  Woo.

• 38:47Speaker 03

  Or.

• 38:49Speaker 04

  Psalm 22, and somebody being pierced.

• 38:53Speaker 03

  There you go. You know, I think that that is a wonderful transition point. So I think we should dive right into taking issue.

• 39:05Speaker 03

  All right. So we're taking issue. This is, uh, there's a lot, uh, going on here.

• 39:12Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 39:12Speaker 03

  So you, you sent me several different, uh, places where people are talking about, uh, about someone, uh, being wounded or being pierced or being something.

• 39:27Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:28Speaker 03

  And, and, and those things are frequently referenced. Uh, these are, we're talking about Hebrew Bible, Old Testament stuff.

• 39:36Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  That are referenced when referring to Jesus as one of, as, as prophecies that Jesus fulfills. Uh, and at least one of them is, uh, overtly referenced by the gospel writer, who is writing, who, who is writing about it, maybe a couple of times. I'm not sure. You'll have to tell me.

• 40:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. I, I think that that would be a great place to start. The Gospel of John, chapter 19. When, when you think about Jesus being pierced, there are a couple of different ways that people tend to think about it. But one of them is the fact that the soldier was supposed to have taken the spear and gone, ha ya, and pierced him in his side ostensibly to see if he was dead or something like that.

• 40:22Speaker 03

  Which is so weird because it, it overtly says he's already dead.

• 40:28Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  I, I had to go and read through the, uh, let me tell you something. I went through and read through the synoptics and John, uh, their accounts of this. We probably should have saved this until Easter time, but we didn't. It's fine. Um, but I was surprised by a few things that I will let you know as we go.

• 40:51Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 40:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. One of, one of the things that I was surprised by, because when I've imagined the soldier, uh, stabbing Jesus, I've always imagined Jesus wincing in pain and it being another one of the things that Jesus is experiencing.

• 41:04Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 41:04Speaker 03

  But, uh, but no, it's, it's, it's, this is in response to, uh, I'll just read, I'll just read a little bit.

• 41:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:12Speaker 03

  In, in John 19, uh, it says, uh, "The soldiers came and broke..." So actually they called the, the Jews around the crucifixion, didn't like that it was happening on the Sabbath. "And then they asked Pilate to have the legs of the crucified men broken and the bodies removed." Now, I don't understand that at all. Do we know what's happening there?

• 41:39Speaker 04

  Well, the, the, why they were upset or why the legs breaking?

• 41:42Speaker 03

  The legs breaking thing. Uh, yeah. Is that just to finish them off? Is that the idea?

• 41:46Speaker 04

  Basically that would send them, if they were not already, uh, expired, that kind of shock to the system would get them over the finish line, basically. So, um, and, but yeah, the logic of, and in verse 34 it says, "Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear and at once blood and water came, came out." So I was like, oh, this one's already dead. Well, why don't you just stab him?

• 42:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. Cause it says, "But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs." So that, so, so really the poke, the, the stab with the spear was just like, I don't know, extra. I guess it was just to make double sure. Ah, ah, I'm going to stab him with a spear.

• 42:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:28Speaker 03

  Uh, so, so anyway, yes, Jesus didn't, uh, didn't even feel it because he was already dead.

• 42:34Speaker 04

  Right. This was a postmortem, um, inflicted wound. And, uh, this is the only gospel that talks about it. It is not in Mark, Matthew, or Luke. And

• 42:45Speaker 03

  Which shocked me.

• 42:47Speaker 04

  Yes. Um, and John is probably the last gospel written, maybe Luke, but it's definitely not one of the early ones. And it's probably the most, takes the most artistic license, offers the most additions and alterations to the story.

• 43:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. My experience of John is that when it tells the same story as the other gospels, John is the one that like, does it well, gets a good, like, goes into detail. John cares about storytelling. I'm just gonna say.

• 43:20Speaker 04

  He, he's working on his craft.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, man.

• 43:28Speaker 03

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• 43:32Speaker 04

  I have forgotten all of it.

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• 44:10Speaker 04

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• 45:26Speaker 00

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  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

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• 46:12Speaker 04

  And he goes on to say, "He who has saw this has testified so that you also may believe his testimony is true and he knows that he tells the truth so that you also may continue to believe." Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

• 46:29Speaker 03

  Right.

• 46:29Speaker 04

  These things, these things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled. None of his bones shall be broken. And again, another passage of scripture says, "They will look on the one whom they have pierced." So here we have the first reference to pierced and that is exicent, uh, exicentosisan. Sorry, I'm tripping over my, my stuff. Exicentisan. And that is stabbed, poked, uh, pierced. And so the idea of, and, and this is obviously a reference to, uh, Zechariah 12 10.

• 47:11Speaker 04

  And we, I don't think we've covered directly Zechariah 12 10, but, uh, let's just briefly go there. We have, uh, Zechariah, one of the prophets, and we're prophesying on about, "On that day, the Lord will shield the inhabitants of Jerusalem so that the feeblest among them on that day shall be like David and the house of David shall be like God, blah, blah, blah." Zechariah 12 10, "And I will pour out a spirit of compassion and supplication on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem so that when they look on the one whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and weep bitterly over him as one weeps over a firstborn."

• 47:54Speaker 04

  Now here's the problem. That's the NRSVUE.

• 47:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:58Speaker 04

  Which is actually altered the, the text a little bit.

• 48:02Speaker 03

  Are you talking about the footnote that I'm seeing? Cause that's a pretty major footnote.

• 48:06Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, so Zechariah 12 10, in the Maseratic text literally says, "They shall look at me

• 48:16Speaker 04

  at whom they pierced him and they shall mourn for him." And so this is a passage that a lot of, uh, Christians will appeal to as a prophecy about the Messiah who is identified as God themselves, uh, being pierced at some point in the future. Now, there are a bunch of issues with this. Uh, scholars point out that with that first person object suffix on the preposition, uh, you would expect the rest of the phrases, the, the rest of that sentence

• 48:54Speaker 04

  to also refer in the first person to not, uh, "They pierced him" and not "They will mourn for him", but "They pierced me and they will mourn for me." But it is third person. And, and this brings up a problem with, uh, the difference between a yod and a vav in ancient Hebrew manuscripts.

• 49:15Speaker 03

  If I had a nickel for every time I had a problem with a yod and a vav.

• 49:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. How are we going to distinguish these yods from these vavs? Uh, this is a perennial problem. And funny enough, uh, one of the other passages we're going to talk about, the argument that, oh, this means pierced actually requires we take the Maseratic text's yod as a vav.

• 49:38Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 49:39Speaker 04

  Yeah. So like we, uh, there is good reason to doubt that this text originally said, "They look upon me, they pierced him and they will mourn for him." Probably said, "They will look upon him whom they pierced him and they mourn for him." But, uh,

• 50:00Speaker 03

  Let me ask you this. What, uh, just so that I understand what we're talking about here.

• 50:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  Obviously Zechariah precedes Jesus.

• 50:10Speaker 04

  Yes. By centuries.

• 50:13Speaker 03

  By centuries. Let's just talk about what someone in the time of Zechariah who reads this, what do they think this is talking about?

• 50:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. It probably has to do with the fact that, um, you've got a

• 50:28Speaker 04

  There's calamity all over the place. Let me see if we go up a little further. There's an oracle. "I'm about to make Jerusalem a cup of reeling for all the surrounding peoples. It will be against Judah, also in the siege against Jerusalem. On that day, I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples. All who lift it shall grievously hurt themselves, and all the nations of the earth shall come together against it. I will strike every horse with panic, and its rider with madness. But on the house of Judah, I will keep a watchful eye." And we go down to, "I will pour out a spirit of compassion and supplication on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that when they look on,"

• 51:13Speaker 04

  and then it's either me or him, "whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him as one weeps for a firstborn. On that day, the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadad Ramon in the plain of Megiddo. The land shall mourn each family by itself, the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves," and on and on. And so the idea seems to be that there's going to be all this calamity, but I am going to make the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem compassionate towards the people who are being injured, so that the one who is pierced, we mourn for that individual.

• 51:51Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 51:52Speaker 04

  I think that's most likely what's going on, and I'm checking the Greek. I think they probably have, look, no, no, it has prosme, so it has, they look upon me. So the Greek seems to reflect what we have in the Maseratic text, and I imagine we do not have this passage preserved in the,

• 52:21Speaker 04

  in the Dead Sea Scrolls. But I'm just gonna, because that would be really useful if we did. I'm just going to, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say, "Yeah, but the scrolls prove it is or isn't," or whatever. So I imagine it's not there, but I'm just gonna coast right through. There's Hosea, there's Joel, there's Amos, there's John, Jonah, that must be what that, Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah. Okay, we got Zechariah 2, 3, 5, 6, 12.

• 53:02Speaker 04

  Oh, we do have, we do have a fragment that preserves a handful of words between Zechariah 12, 7, and 12.

• 53:12Speaker 03

  Oh, there you go.

• 53:13Speaker 04

  But all we have preserved is the very end of, "They pierced him," and the very beginning of, "They mourned for him." So that doesn't really, that doesn't really help us out much there. So, yeah, but, but the, the main point I wanted to make here is the author of the Gospel of John looked at Zechariah 12, 10, and when it says, "The one they pierced," he didn't say, "Oh, well, they pierced his hands and his feet with nails," so that counts. He had to come up with a story

• 53:47Speaker 03

  Right.

• 53:47Speaker 04

  that actually had them jabbing a spear into his side so that this prophecy could be fulfilled. So one of the things I want to point out is that, according to the author of the Gospel of John, in order to fulfill this prophecy, Jesus actually needed to be stabbed, not just have nails driven through his hands or wrists or his feet.

• 54:09Speaker 03

  Well, that brings up one of the points that I was blown away by, which is that Matthew, Mark, Luke don't mention nails at all. They don't mention the piercing of the hands or the feet. I think the closest we get that I could find was, I think it's Luke who says, who has the resurrected Jesus say, "Look at my hands and feet," but he doesn't say, "Look at the holes in my hands and feet." He just says, "Look at my hands and feet," to prove that he's him. And then John is the only one, and during the, during the crucifixion, John doesn't mention nails.

• 54:53Speaker 03

  It's just afterwards, the resurrected Jesus in John says, "Look at the holes," like, like, like.

• 55:01Speaker 04

  Does it say holes or wounds?

• 55:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, or I don't know what it was. I'm, I'm just saying, like, he actually finally, somebody says,

• 55:12Speaker 03

  "I got, you know, I got something," mentions the, the thing, having been pierced, you know, by those things. So, yeah, it's, it doesn't seem, the piercing of Jesus doesn't seem, at least the piercing of his hands and feet never seems to be on the minds of any of the, the gospel authors at all.

• 55:37Speaker 04

  No, not at all. And, and a lot of people appeal to, one of the other passages we'll talk about is Psalm 22, 16, which has traditionally been understood to mean, "They've pierced my hands and my feet." That's never quoted anywhere by any gospel author. Nobody ever brings that up. In fact, I think Justin Martyr is probably the first person to say, "Hey, what if that's talking about that?"

• 56:02Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 56:03Speaker 04

  I, I think Justin Martyr is the first to do that.

• 56:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's interesting, because that was another one where I had to look at two different versions, because I, you said Psalm 22.

• 56:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:16Speaker 03

  I read Psalm 22 and could not find anything about piercing, and was like, "What are you talking about? I don't see it anywhere." And I had to go back to the KJV to find Psalm 22, 16, because in, in the NRS VUE, which is what we prefer, it says, "For dogs are all around me. A company of evil doers encircles me. They bound my hands and feet."

• 56:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:41Speaker 03

  And I just glided, glided right past that, because I was like, "There's no piercing yet, so where's the piercing happening?" So, so I went to the KJV, and it says, "They pierced my hands and feet."

• 56:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:54Speaker 03

  Talk to me about, A, that translation business, and B, and B, what are we talking about?

• 57:01Speaker 04

  Straight up mistranslation. That is not a plausible rendering of any version of the Hebrew, not even the.

• 57:07Speaker 03

  The piercing, the pierced part is not plausible.

• 57:10Speaker 04

  To say, to say, to say, "They pierced my hands and my feet," and that is, in any way, shape, or form whatsoever, approximating a prophecy of the crucifixion is, is pure and utter nonsense. And here's why.

• 57:23Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 57:23Speaker 04

  One, our, our text in the Maseratic text reads, "Ka'ari yedai v'ragla," "ragli," which means, "Like a lion, my hands and my feet." Which doesn't make a ton of sense. But this.

• 57:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, the lion thing is like, not always there too. Like, there's a whole, that's a weird.

• 57:43Speaker 04

  Right, but, but ka'ari looks like, like a lion. And we have this exact phrase, "Like a lion," that occurs elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. In fact, it looks like it occurs five total times. So we can go to Numbers, do, do, do, as, Numbers 24? Yeah, we have a few "as a lion" things. And then Isaiah 38, 13, "I reckoned till morning that, like a lion, so he will break all my bones." And then Ezekiel 22, 25, "There is a conspiracy of her prophets in the midst thereof, like a roaring, roaring lion ravening their prey." And then 22, 16, ka'ari,

• 58:28Speaker 04

  "Like a lion, my hands and feet" doesn't really mean much. And so there are two different ways you can go about this. Either something has fallen out. There's a verb somewhere that has fallen out. "Like a lion, they,"

• 58:42Speaker 03

  They bit my hands and feet.

• 58:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, something.

• 58:44Speaker 03

  Claw, they ripped off my hands and feet.

• 58:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, or you could say that the, the yod there is supposed to be a vav. And, you know, similar to whatever's going on in, in Zechariah 12, 10. But we, we have a Dead Sea Scroll

• 59:03Speaker 04

  fragment that seems to have what looks more like a vav than what the Maseratic text has.

• 59:10Speaker 03

  These are two letters, I take it, that look very similar?

• 59:14Speaker 04

  The, yeah, they, they are pretty much identical. Their distinction is, is the vav is longer than a yod. It extends lower. However, because scribal hands vary, you can have, there, there are Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts where we're like, "Yeah, we're pretty sure that's a yod and that's a vav, even though the yod is longer than the vav." It's like, eh, it's fuzzy.

• 59:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, context is important.

• 59:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. So they say, "Oh, well, this is a verb, kara." Kara means to dig. And it doesn't have an aleph in it, and ka'ari has an aleph in it. So we would have to say, "Okay, that's not a yod, it's a vav." And the aleph just somehow slid in there, and it's not supposed to be there. So once we do that, then we've got, "They dug my hands and feet." And this cannot mean, "They pierced my hands and my feet." Because kara, the verb, always means to dig out, and we, and it always has focus on either the material that is dug out or the space that is left behind by the digging out.

• 1:00:22Speaker 04

  You dig out a canoe, you dig out a canal. If you, if your ears are stopped up, you dig out your ear.

• 1:00:30Speaker 03

  If you need, if you need a long place for all of your baseball players, you dig it out, and then you have a dug out.

• 1:00:36Speaker 04

  Then you have a dug out, right. And so never once does it refer to driving something through a surface, one, and never two, do you, is the object of the digging out, the surface being dug out. If you dig something out, you're digging out the material you're taking out. Or you're, you're not digging out the hands and feet in the sense of driving nails through the hands and feet. It's just not a plausible interpretation. And, and people want to fudge on this all the time. They want to go, "It kinda mean, you get it." You get it. It's close enough. We can squint at it. We can blur the edges and they,

• 1:01:18Speaker 04

  and it runs together with the idea of piercing. No, it simply does not. You can look at it.

• 1:01:22Speaker 03

  No one has ever in the history of the world thought to take a shovel to hands and feet. As a, as a, as an idea to, something to do, maybe in a, in a pinch. But certainly not a lion. Lions have never done it. Lions don't dig hands and feet at all.

• 1:01:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's the last part of the body they want to be picking at. So, but, and, and also the hands, like that's, that's a pretty small little piece of, of material there. There's not a lot of digging out to be done. So, um, as mu, and the Greek, people go, well, the Greek says that. No, it doesn't. It also says, dig out. It's using a verb that always refers to digging material out of something with focus on either the material that is being removed or the space that is left from the removal of the material. So, no, it just doesn't work. It, it's not a plausible rendering, period.

• 1:02:20Speaker 04

  So, it does not say, they pierced my hands and my feet, even if you say, we're going to ignore the aleph, even if you say, we're going to make the yodavav, it cannot mean they pierced my hands and my feet.

• 1:02:32Speaker 03

  Take that, King James.

• 1:02:35Speaker 04

  So that's, uh, that's just a mistrans, a mistranslation. But also, that is,

• 1:02:43Speaker 04

  that is taking the piercing of Jesus as a reference to the driving of nails through the hands and the feet, which we've already seen is never a focus of any of the gospel authors. Even the gospel of John had to go create a new story in order to say that Jesus was pierced. So, that author didn't think that. And, and John does say, I, I looked it up in John, uh, what is it, 2025? He says, um, yeah, touch me, uh, put your finger in, or I will put my finger into the, uh, the mark of the nails.

• 1:03:23Speaker 04

  So, so, yeah, the, very clearly, the author of the gospel of John understands Jesus to have had nails driven through his hands and his feet, but that didn't qualify as piercing Jesus. So, we got a bit of a problem there. And, and that brings up the other passage that I am increasingly frustrated by, by apologetic appeals to. Can you guess which one that might be?

• 1:03:50Speaker 03

  Uh, you're, well, since you get, since you sent me three.

• 1:03:54Speaker 04

  Oh, I, I guess I did send you.

• 1:03:55Speaker 03

  I'm gonna guess that it's Isaiah.

• 1:03:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. So Isaiah 53, which, oh man, the lies that have been spread about Isaiah 53. The notion that like it's forbidden in the synagogue and, and stuff. They used to read it in the liturgy and now they don't. Ooh, none of that's true. Um, we have the idea of, uh, of piercing here, although I think you might have to look at the right translation. Is it verse four? And I just, I was just translating this yesterday. Uh, he was despised and rejected by others, a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity, as one from whom others hide their faces. He was despised and we held him of no account. Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases, yet we accounted him stricken, struck,

• 1:04:43Speaker 04

  downed by God and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed because of our sins. Uh, brub, upon him was the punishments that made us whole, and by his bruises, we are healed. It says he was pierced.

• 1:05:02Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:05:02Speaker 04

  They've talked about this. Does this, does this translation, or is it verse?

• 1:05:08Speaker 03

  I'm in, I'm in KJV and I'm not seeing any piercing happening. I'm seeing stricken, smitten, afflicted, uh, wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. So, yeah, I'm not, I'm not seeing.

• 1:05:31Speaker 04

  You know what? I think it's probably, it's this verb, cause I've been, I've seen people share translations that say pierced, but I think it's this verb, uh, that probably means crushed. I think that's the problem. Where you, our translations are, are, um, not apologetic enough. 53, yeah, it's, it's the halal verb, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In, in verse five, uh, and he was, uh, wounded for our transgressions is what the King James has. The NRSVUE says he was wounded for our transgressions. The NET has, he was wounded because of our rebellious deeds. Thanks for that. Uh, NET.

• 1:06:16Speaker 04

  Uh, and then we have, yeah, there we go. ESV says he was pierced for our transgressions.

• 1:06:22Speaker 03

  Oh, NIV also has pierced.

• 1:06:24Speaker 04

  NIV has pierced, okay, which means the LSB is gonna have, he was extra super double pierced, cause, cause the LSB's a joke. Okay, Legacy Standard Bible, he was pierced with a footnote or wounded. Pierced through. So they do, they do double up. They do make it.

• 1:06:44Speaker 03

  Pierced through.

• 1:06:46Speaker 04

  Pierced through for our transgressions, yeah. Uh, and the verb here is, um, halal, which generally means to, to be profaned or something like that. But, uh, there's another sense that is, and this is the, the polal, right? Yeah, wounded, but I guess Isaiah 51 nine uses it in a sense that is understood as pierced. So, well, that was awkward, uh, for our listeners. Apologies for not preparing beforehand, the, a translation that was crappy enough to make our point for us.

• 1:07:22Speaker 03

  I mean, it does make the point that like, this is very translation specific. This particular one is very, uh, so, so talk to me briefly about why NIV, why, why certain ones say pierced and other ones don't?

• 1:07:39Speaker 04

  Well, I think the idea is that they want any excuse they can to read a prophecy about Jesus into the text because they want Isaiah 53 to be about Jesus so badly. And if it says he was pierced, it's like, hey, that's gotta count for something. That's pretty, uh, that's pretty strong evidence if, and, and pierced through. I don't know if the translators are thinking hands and feet or are thinking spear in the side, kind of pierced through.

• 1:08:08Speaker 03

  Well, and what did they, like, yeah, you don't need to add the through. If the hand is pierced, it's pierced. You know what I mean? Like, the, the through seems extraneous.

• 1:08:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was, uh, was not necessary. Um, but obviously Isaiah 53 is central to early Christian, uh, attempts to try to find Jesus and particularly a suffering and dying Messiah in the Hebrew Bible. So this became a big one.

• 1:08:38Speaker 03

  And, and I can see why. I mean, it's a very, it's very attractive in that way, uh, to, to, it, so I, what's interesting is, I don't know what this is about if it's not Jesus. Uh, clearly, the, the author of Isaiah is not talking about Jesus. So who is the author of Isaiah talking about? He keeps saying he. Now, I will say this, before you dive in, if it were about Jesus, if we were to accept the premise that this is about Jesus, they need to stop depicting him as handsome, because it keeps saying things like, uh, like, it, it keeps saying that he was, uh, he had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in

• 1:09:21Speaker 03

  his appearance that we should desire him. So, if 53, if Isaiah 53 is about Jesus, you have to stop putting up good looking pictures of this guy in your church. You gotta make him ugly.

• 1:09:34Speaker 04

  Yeah. He, he has to be a magoo. Uh, if, if you're, if you're gonna lean into that interpretation, uh, we have a, so this is one of the servant songs, and we have the author of Isaiah, Deuteronomy Isaiah, so 40 through 55, um, on like three or four occasions says, my servant is Israel, or my servant is Jacob. And so, uh, this is a, it's kind of like a, an avatar, a proxy. It's kind of the Uncle Sam for ancient Israel, because this is a person who's, uh, is not doing the things wrong that Israel does, but all

• 1:10:14Speaker 04

  of the punishments are heaped upon this person who vicariously suffers them on behalf of the nation of Israel. But in, and the idea that, uh, you know, he basically suffers unto death and then gonna be restored, see his generation, all that kind of stuff. The idea is that this is a symbol of the exile and being cut off from the land of the living, as we talked about in a previous segment with Ezekiel and the dry bones, them dry bones were cut off, uh, but they would be restored to the land of Israel. So the idea is that this person's, uh, suffering all of these wounds and illnesses and all of this

• 1:10:56Speaker 04

  being pierced slash wounded, being crushed. That's not in any of the crucifixion accounts I read where, where Jesus was crushed.

• 1:11:08Speaker 04

  I'm thinking of Three Amigos. I was crushed. But, and I completely lost track. But anyway, um, the idea is that this is kind of like you, you, you've seen posters where like Uncle Sam is battered and bruised and wounded and on crutches. Because they suffer for the, the things that have happened to the United States or where Uncle Sam is-

• 1:11:31Speaker 03

  It's a representation of all of us. So in this case, uh, this is the, the servant who, who, uh, is despised and rejected by mankind. A man of suffering and familiar with pain is we. It is, it is the nation of, of us.

• 1:11:50Speaker 04

  But, but at the same time, and, and this is where you get a lot of objections. I had somebody respond to a video of mine saying, it's impossible that this could refer to anybody but Jesus. Literally said that. It's impossible because it says there was no sin in him. He didn't do anything wrong. And so they're like, ah, ah, if it's Israel, Israel did do a bunch of stuff wrong. But that, but that's where it's, it's not just the collective personification of Israel, but it's a, it's a symbol of a proxy for, an avatar of, just like Uncle Sam. You've got depictions of Uncle Sam who's, who's despondent and sad because of like a lynching in some depictions from the middle of the 20th century.

• 1:12:34Speaker 04

  And Uncle Sam represents a country that has done a bunch of bad stuff. Uncle Sam didn't do these things. Uncle Sam is saddened by these things, but Uncle Sam is-

• 1:12:43Speaker 03

  He's pure and, and sinless.

• 1:12:46Speaker 04

  But he's still a symbol for, or a symbol of the nation, the collective nation, just like the, the servant is kind of this separate proxy avatar symbol representative of and for the nation of Israel without being isometric with Israel. So you can still say, hey, uh, the servant did nothing wrong, but the servant is going to take all of our, our, uh, suffering for us. So-

• 1:13:13Speaker 03

  So to sum up, I think this whole segment, I think if I understand you correctly, we should understand that Jesus was Uncle Sam and was pierced on the cross and, uh, something, something for prophecy.

• 1:13:33Speaker 04

  And they took shovels to his hands and feet because they were like-

• 1:13:36Speaker 03

  Dug his hands.

• 1:13:37Speaker 04

  The nails won't go through. We gotta dig them out.

• 1:13:39Speaker 03

  You don't need a shovel. You can use like a spade or a, you know, a trowel, a garden trowel. It's fine.

• 1:13:45Speaker 04

  Yesterday I had the worst flu symptoms because I got, I got a flu and a COVID vaccine the day before. And yesterday I got home from a walk and just like wham, it just hit me. I was like, I gotta lay down. And, uh, of course I was laying down right outside a spot where people were using a jackhammer. A literal jackhammer 10 feet away from me while I was trying to take a nap because of flu symptoms from my, by vaccines. So anyway, that's neither here nor there. That, that was just-

• 1:14:16Speaker 03

  All right. Well, I think, I think we can stop it there. This has been a fascinating discussion. Uh, apparently Jesus, uh, Jesus isn't mentioned in the, the Psalms and the, the Isaiah's and the whatnot.

• 1:14:30Speaker 04

  Or anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible.

• 1:14:31Speaker 03

  Anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible. Uh, so there you go. That's, that's that. Heck, he was, even the word pierced was wrong in at least one of those places. So stop disseminating that nonsense and we'll just move on from there. Thanks so much for joining us today. If you would like to become a part of making this show go, and in so doing, get access to early and ad-free versions of every episode, you can head on over to, uh, to patreon.com/dataoverdogma where you will get, uh, access to, you, or you can get access to patrons only content that we do every week.

• 1:15:12Speaker 03

  As I said, the early and ad-free version of the show, lives that we do, all sorts of stuff, or you can be a member on YouTube. It's all there waiting for you and all you have to do is give us a little bit of your money. And, uh, and that's what keeps us going. So thanks so much to all of our patrons. Thanks also to, uh, Roger Gowdy for editing the show and to Sam Holden for being our right-hand man. Uh, and, and the wizard of our, of our new website. I hope you've gone and checked that out. And thanks to all of you for joining us. We'll talk to you again next time.

• 1:15:47Speaker 04

  Bye, everybody.

• 1:15:53Speaker 03

  Data Over Dogma is a member of the Airwave Media Network. It is a production of Data Over Dogma Media LLC. Copyright 2026. All rights reserved.

• 1:16:02Speaker 00

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.

• 1:16:04Speaker 01

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 1:16:07Speaker 05

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from Star.

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  Film for IMAX.

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  Make them remember you.

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  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Leaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.

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  This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Thanksgiving football starts a day early this year with the NFL's first ever Thanksgiving Eve game. A total marquee NFC matchup. The Green Bay Packers take on the Los Angeles Rams at SoFi Stadium in a primetime showdown. More football, more action and a head start on one of the best weekends of the NFL season. Watch Packers versus Rams live on Netflix, Wednesday, November 25th at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific.