Who Deserves to Eat?

Remember when Jesus told the poor to get off their butts and pull themselves up by their bootstraps? I don't either, but lots of people think they remember when Paul said it. This week, we're looking at 2 Thessalonians, 3:10. It's one of those passages that, if someone's bringing it up, you know you're about to hear something wild. It's the bit about anyone unwilling to work shall not eat. Which sounds straightforward (if cold-hearted) enough. But does it actually mean what right-wing congresspeople want to claim it means? Then, we're looking at a group of people that might offer some powerful insight into truth claims of the Hebrew Bible. The Hyksos were semitic rulers in ancient Egypt. Could that mean that the Exodus actually happened? Or could it provide evidence of Joseph and his fancy rainbow outerwear? ---- For early access to an ad-free version of every episode of Data Over Dogma, exclusive content, and the opportunity to support our work, please consider becoming a monthly patron at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on the various social media places: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/data_over_dogma⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Have you ordered Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Bible Says So⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ yet??? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• 1:40Speaker 00

  Does the context support that interpretation? Uh, I'm gonna say, along with the majority of scholars, ha-ha-ha, of course not, you jerk.

• 1:56Speaker 00

  Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  And I'm Dan Beecher.

• 1:59Speaker 00

  And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma Podcast, 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?

• 2:12Speaker 01

  As good as can be expected, I think, is the answer to that.

• 2:16Speaker 00

  All things considered, yeah, yeah.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Weighing one thing against another. We're coasting on it. We're going just fine.

• 2:23Speaker 00

  In this economy, with a man in the White House, what else can you expect?

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, what can one do?

• 2:32Speaker 01

  We're doing okay. Today, we're going to be talking about some interesting stuff. I'm actually fascinated by a few of the things that we're going to be talking about. First, we're going to do a chapter and verse. We're going to hit some Second Thessalonians.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  Loving Thessalonians.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, one, you know, I like to write an epistle to a Thessalonian if I can, every now and then. This is chapter three, and the way that it is used to be a jerk.

• 3:02Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, very jerky behavior.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  This is one of the jerk passages. And then we're going to jump to Hixos.

• 3:12Speaker 00

  The Hixos, yes.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  And I have never heard of Hixos. The Hixos, the very, your various Hixes.

• 3:20Speaker 00

  We're still trying to figure out the plural there, I guess.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm, I am, I looked at it, but I'm excited to hear about it. And whether or not it actually helps us understand

• 3:35Speaker 01

  the Exodus, maybe Joseph, there's so many things. This is.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  Avera Matea, or, no, not that Joseph, that's much later.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Which, no, Joseph Fiennes.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Just pick your Joseph, pick your Joseph and Joseph Smith.

• 3:53Speaker 00

  You can't miss with a Joseph.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Right. That one, we'll leave that one to lie. And we'll go on with our first thing, chapter and verse.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  And as we said, this chapter and verse is 2 Thessalonians, Chapter 3. We're gonna, we're gonna do sort of a whole, a whole paragraph, basically.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, a sense unit, if you will.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  A sense unit. 6 chapters or verses 6 through 13.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  There you go. We're gonna really land on one verse, though, because this is the jerk verse. This is where if you bring this up, like jerk, automatically.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  If someone says, "Second Thessalonians."

• 4:35Speaker 00

  "Second Thessalonians 3."

• 4:38Speaker 01

  2 Thessalonians, Chapter 3, Verse 10. You know, you're, you're about to get a really, a jerk argument. Somebody's, somebody's about to be a real piece of work for you. But let's dive in.

• 4:56Speaker 00

  We'll read through the thing.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  And then I want to talk a little bit about context. I want to talk about what scholars think is going on here. And before we get into how people are leveraging this.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Well, since you mentioned context, this is an epistle from Paul. Is this one of the actual epistles, Pauline epistles?

• 5:17Speaker 00

  No. This is, this is one of the disputed Pauline epistles. So I think it's more common among your critical scholars than among your apologists and your, and your theologians to acknowledge this. It's not unheard of among the conservatives and the theologians. But most critical scholars would say that this was likely written by somebody pretending to be Paul after Paul's death.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  This isn't the ones, one of the ones that we're pretty sure.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  No, the, so you've got the Spurius, which is generally just the, the pastoral epistles. So that would be 1st and 2 Timothy and Titus. And these are the disputed. So we don't have as much of a consensus as we do with the pastoral epistles. But, and, and these would be Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  Probably not written by Paul, but we're, we're not gonna put as big a punctuation mark on it as we are with, with the pastoral epistles.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Was it actually sent to Thessalonians?

• 6:23Speaker 00

  Like, yeah, yeah, it was probably was sent to, or, or at least was circulated among the, the inhabitants of, of what we now refer to, at least when I was there, as Thessaloniki. Uh, so up in the, in the top portion of, yeah, of the Aegean, a nice little port city. Last time I was there, there was a TGI Fridays there. Don't know if it's still there, um, but.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  That is, that is an interesting marker of civilization. I will say that. I'm not sure, I'm not sure that what it portends. I don't think it's good.

• 7:01Speaker 00

  Probably not good, no, but, um, I, yes, I, I spent much happier times in, uh, in some of the, the ancient sites there in Thessaloniki. But, um, but yeah, it was, uh, there was a European League basketball game on the TVs there. So it, it was like going to Canada. You've been to Canada many times and it's like going to Canada and it's like, okay, they're speaking my language. I don't recognize the football teams.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:30Speaker 00

  On the TV screen. Everybody says A. Um, it's, you know, it, I'm like, wow, gas is pretty cheap. And they're like, no, that's per liter.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Per liter. Yeah. At one, at one point I wanted, I was, my mom lives up in Canada and I wanted to translate, uh, miles per gallon. I wanted to understand what her mileage on her car was.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  And I was like.

• 7:53Speaker 00

  Kilometers per liter.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Kilometers per liter. I can't, what am I, like, I, I, I was, I was mystified. And then to try and figure out how the gas prices.

• 8:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Like, like Canadian dollars per liter versus American dollars per gallon. I was just like, I give up. I had not.

• 8:10Speaker 00

  That math is beyond me. Yeah. I tried to do it in my head, driving by a gas station and I was like, I give up. I don't know.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  There's literally no amount of math that can possibly figure that out. It doesn't exist.

• 8:20Speaker 00

  We have not. cracked the code yet.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 8:23Speaker 00

  So 2 Thessalonians, we got chapter 3 here. Now, and, and this is NRSV UE as we are wont to, to default to.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  Now, we command you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from every brother or sister living irresponsibly and not according to the tradition that they received from us. So they're getting a little bit of a tongue lashing.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  What's the, who's the we? It's, it's not I, it's we.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, it would be Paul and, and whoever his companions were ostensibly.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Various, Paul and the Paulets. It was the Pips.

• 9:03Speaker 00

  Turtle was there. They probably had different members of his entourage. Yes.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  It was Scooby, Shaggy, Velma. Okay.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  All right. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us. We were not irresponsible when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone's bread without paying for it. But with toil and labor, we worked night and day so that we might not burden any of you. This was not because we do not have the right, but in order to give you an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command. Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Boom. Jer, that's, put a sticker on that one. That's the one.

• 9:49Speaker 00

  We're gonna come back to, we'll circle back to that. For we hear that some of you are living irresponsibly, mere busybodies, not doing any work. No such persons we command. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right. So.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  The verse that gets wrenched out of context and quoted in Congress, that gets quoted on social media, all over the place. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command, and usually that's omitted. Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. So, and this obviously recently has been salient because of the government shutdown and the threat of ending of SNAP benefits for the poor and needy. And there were just an obscene number of people, some of them in positions of prominence and power and privilege, who were just tickled pink about the poor and the needy being denied SNAP benefits.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  It's shocking to me.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  The cruelty seems to be the point with these people.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  Oh, absolutely. I think there's, there's an idea that poor people don't deserve.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  These things, like, you know.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Things like food and shelter.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. You'll, you'll hear people be like, they shouldn't be allowed to buy sodas. And things with sugar. It should just be meat and bread and, and milk and stuff like that.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  They were buying delicious things. How dare they?

• 11:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  They were, they were buying food that they would enjoy instead of just sustenance gruel.

• 11:35Speaker 00

  Things where they're gonna get a lot of calories efficiently and quickly.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:40Speaker 00

  It's not gonna take a long time to prepare and it makes them feel good. Like, I don't know, I don't know how many people listening have lived in poverty. I grew up in, in, I would call it poverty conditions. I have, I don't know, there are some people out here, out there who will get this, but I know the Bishop's Storehouse well.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:02Speaker 00

  I know that I love their salsa. They had a granola cereal I really, really loved.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  And sometimes you want a frozen pizza or a soda because it feels like you're treating yourself after a lot of hard work for not a lot of benefit.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  And it makes you feel human. It makes you feel like you are a part of this grander society where all this amazing stuff is available. And if you are forced to subsist on gruel and, you know, bread and bad meats and, and things like that. It feels like you're being punished, that you don't merit the dignity of the right to choose to, to have something sweet, or have something particularly savory, or fatty, or, or oily, or whatever, whatever your, your poison is. So yeah, the cruelty is absolutely the point. And, um.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  It is so, yeah, the other thing I've been seeing is people who are like, uh, you know, I saw, I saw a, a thread just the other day that said, "Jobs that deserve 20 something dollars an hour," and it listed, you know, like EMT and blah, blah, blah, and then "jobs that don't, McDonald's worker." And I was like, "What are you, what are you talking about?"

• 13:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  "That person works just as hard. That person like, like these people, it's so weird to me that there's this hunger to keep people poor and miserable."

• 13:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. And there were, uh, you, you, you also get a lot of the, you know, "Well, McDonald's job, that's intended for high school kids."

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  "That's intended for part-time high school kids, so they can have a little walking around money," or something like that. And, and, and I think this is overwhelmingly coming from people who live in very nice areas, where maybe their McDonald's is populated primarily by high school kids.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:06Speaker 00

  There are plenty of places where it is.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  Because you can't afford in that neighborhood to live there and on, on the subsistence salaries that they choose to pay.

• 14:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. But, um, you know, the, the whole, and the whole idea of minimum wage, when you go back to where, when it was established, it was supposed to be a living wage, and explicitly not merely a subsistence living.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 14:31Speaker 00

  But a dignified living wage. And it is, and, you know, objectively is, has not been that for many, many years.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  For decades.

• 14:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, anyway.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Thirty, forty years, something like that?

• 14:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and so just the fact that there were a lot of people, and particularly people in, in ecclesiastical positions.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  Who were just like licking their chops at the opportunity to see people go without.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  And, and they had this.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  This passage.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Passage in their back pocket, ready to whip out.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  And so, does the context support that interpretation? Uh, I'm gonna say, along with the majority of scholars, ha, ha, ha, of course not, you jerk.

• 15:18Speaker 00

  And that's, you can quote me on that, that's.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:21Speaker 00

  That is the, the, uh, the formal academic, uh, term, response, yeah.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  And we'll make that the official position of the podcast as well.

• 15:32Speaker 00

  There are, there are a couple of different readings of this that, that I think are interesting. One is the consensus reading. This is where if you look in, in commentaries, this is overwhelmingly going to be the one that is preferred by the majority of scholars. There's another one that is a bit more of a minority reading, but I think is attractive.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  The, and, and I'll start with the minority reading, just because I think it makes better sense of the verses that come before. The author pretending to be Paul, talking about when Paul was there, and is like, you know, I had a right to demand the food, but I didn't.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:04Speaker 00

  Because I was, I was working, um, uh, you know, for my, my wages.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  I was being a good little worker bee.

• 16:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Specifically to teach all of you how to be good little worker bees.

• 16:16Speaker 00

  To set an example. And so the idea here is that he was someone who had an ecclesiastical office, and he was fulfilling duties associated with that office, but rather than treat the fulfillment of those duties as meriting payment through the resources provided by the community, food being, being the main one, he said, no, no, no, my duties towards the church, I'm not charging for. I'm gonna work to earn my, the food that I am, uh, am served and am fed. So. The, the reading that I find attractive, that unfortunately, uh, just for me, uh,

• 17:01Speaker 00

  unfortunately is not the majority reading, is that Paul here is talking about people who actually have responsibilities within the, the governing body of the church. People who hold offices within the church, who are like, "Well, I'm a bishop, I'm an overseer, I'm a pastor, I'm a teacher, I'm an evangelist, whatever. Therefore, I don't need to go out and get a day job. My work for the church should be enough for me to be able to enjoy the resources provided by the congregation."

• 17:32Speaker 01

  It's weird that modern ecclesiastical leaders don't prefer that particular reading of this. I don't know why they wouldn't. That's, uh, it seems so strange that they wouldn't want everyone to think that they should also have to have a day job.

• 17:46Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. Well, the, you know, we've, we've merged the day job with the ecclesiastical, uh, duties, um, within most, uh, within most, uh, Christian traditions denominations.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Well, that's true. Your tradition does not do that.

• 18:03Speaker 00

  Uh, kinda, yeah. When, once you get into central leadership, there is, there is a stipend, uh, that is...

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, the higher ups get paid, but, but like, you know, the, the parish leader, the bishop of the ward, uh, doesn't, he gets bupkis.

• 18:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, and, and that's because he's, has a day job.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  He's not, he's not being, um, you know, he's getting nothing, it's volunteer.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  It's the lay clergy is, is what they call it, but, and then the higher ups, that is their only job that they have, which, which is the rationalization for the stipend. Whether or not you think the stipend is, is fair or exorbitant or whatever, uh, is gonna depend on, on other factors. But, one way to understand this is, hey, these are people who are working for the church, and then saying, "I shouldn't have to have a day job." And the passage is saying, "No, if you're gonna eat the church's food, you need to earn it." Uh, so it's not talking about the poor and the needy. It's not saying that when the, you know, people come into the soup kitchen, and it's like, "How many hours did you work down, uh, at the, you know, the shipyard?"

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  Uh, "But before I ladle your soup into your bowl." That's not what it's saying at all. It's, is saying, "Hey, don't be a lazy apostle." You've got to have your day job.

• 19:28Speaker 00

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

• 19:33Speaker 01

  I've heard the construction.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  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 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.

• 20:16Speaker 00

  And then even though it took some discipline and there were some bumps in the road, we actually succeeded and we're 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.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  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.

• 21:26Speaker 01

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• 22:46Speaker 01

  So that's, that's

• 22:47Speaker 00

  That's one reading.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Interpretation number one.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  The more common reading is based on the understanding that this is, is coming when people are like, ooh, second coming any day now.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:00Speaker 00

  Any day now. And, and that was the historical Paul was like, you know, don't even bother getting married. Don't bother having kids if you don't have kids because it's coming any day now. So you don't want to be stuck in some kind of transition period. You don't want to be having to go through your orientation videos when the Lord comes. So

• 23:21Speaker 01

  With a kid on your side. Like that's just, that's just going to bug everybody.

• 23:25Speaker 00

  And so, based on that, most scholars today suggest that this is a reference to people who, again, are not poor, are not needy, are relatively well off, who are deciding they're just gonna coast into the eschaton. "The church has everything I need. I don't need to continue with my day job because Jesus is coming back too soon anyway." So that's the more popular reading, that this is about folks who have the means to work, who have the resources, but are deciding, "You know what? I'm gonna put my feet up and I'm just gonna let the church prop me up until Jesus arrives."

• 24:05Speaker 00

  So it's an eschatological laziness that is being condemned in verse 10, according to what seems to me to be, far and away, the most common reading of this passage.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  What weirds me out about that is, if the eschaton is coming, why not coast? Let him coast. What are we doing here? It's cut, look, it's all over in just a little bit. If you have the means to coast, feels like coast, baby. Have fun.

• 24:38Speaker 00

  Well, and that is, that is a question that you would bring up if maybe this were actually written by Paul.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  But that's one of the reasons probably for the post-Pauline authorship of this text, is the delayed perusia, the delayed eschaton. "Hey, it hasn't come yet. Generations are passing on. It was supposed to be here."

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Back to work.

• 25:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's when you get people going, "Okay, back to having kids, back to work. Let's, you know, we can't just rest on our laurels and just wait for this thing to happen. We gotta knuckle down and support ourselves." So that may be the reason that this is in this passage, is because people were doing that. People were like, "I thought y'all said it was gonna be any day now, so I decided to cancel, you know, my contracts and this work trip and all that kinda stuff." And they're going, "Well, we need to, we need to do something about this. Write another letter." And, um, okay, well, what are we gonna say?

• 25:43Speaker 00

  Tell them they just, they don't work, they don't get their asses back to work. They're not gonna eat. Uh, you know, the Bishop's storehouse is gonna close.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  So, um, I think that's, that's the more popular reading.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding.

• 26:00Speaker 00

  Okay, I don't wanna quote more of this, um, of the song. You, you have made me paranoid.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat? That's all I'm saying.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  How can, how can I be expected to speak naturally when I'm not allowed to sing?

• 26:17Speaker 00

  And, you know, I'm an awful singer, so that's part of it, but, um, so, so I think that's, that's the most common reading, and that still does not validate the, the folks who are slinging this passage around, uh, to demonize and to try to deny SNAP benefits to the poor and the needy, uh, demanding they have work requirements and things like that. And we've seen that kind of rhetoric from a number of prominent evangelical Christians.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Very much so.

• 26:49Speaker 00

  Eric Hovind is one who has, uh, who has come out and say this. Somebody named Pastor Joseph Hall, I'm not familiar with Pastor Hall. Um, Christopher Arps is another. Uh, and then there's, there's a guy on, on social media, I, I wish I could remember his name, but he does a lot of videos where he's in like Disney World or Disneyland wearing a MAGA hat, and he'll be like, "Heh heh," and, and film people's reactions to him being a jerk in, in public and then make fun of them. But he likes to, uh, to dance off beats and, um, uh, and have anti-woke slogans on the screen. And, and he was doing the same thing, and, and this is an example of somebody, you know,

• 27:33Speaker 00

  he's doing this celebratory dance, "Yay, kids are gonna go hungry." That's how Christian I am. Um, and...

• 27:42Speaker 01

  And I also see it used by people like talking about here's why you don't be a socialist and blah, blah, blah. And, and, and often in the, in the context of people pointing out that like, likely Jesus would have been considered a socialist now, considering some of it, what he said. I don't know that that's correct. We should get into that at some point.

• 28:04Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, that would be a great topic for, for a show.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  But I do think that it, that it is, uh, because here's the thing.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Okay. I, I, but I believe you that scholars have that perspective, those different potential perspectives on this passage. But it does seem to me that a plain reading of the passage feels to me pretty clear. Like it feels like it is a valid interpretation of this passage to say, if you don't work, or if you're unwilling to work, you should not eat. Now unwillingness is a very slippery slope concept, especially considering the fact that, you know, it doesn't take into account mental illness. It doesn't take into account inability

• 28:55Speaker 01

  to work. It doesn't, you know what I mean? Not all disability is visible. You know, it's easy to say, oh yeah, the guy in the wheelchair probably shouldn't be made to do construction or whatever. But like, it's not easy to see everyone's disability and not everybody's capable of work.

• 29:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  However, so I think that that's a, I think, I think it's a valid thing to say, look, it says, if you're, anyone unwilling to work should not eat. It says that.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  But it seems to me that there are many passages, red letter passages at that, that quickly refute it. And if you're willing to ignore passages that are quotations of Jesus Christ himself in favor of.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Potentially pseudographical Pauline epistle. It feels like you're on the wrong track.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, there's. And there are plenty of passages where Jesus talks about the need to provide for the poor and the needy without adding any qualifications to it. And yeah, and you know, you have a lot of Christians today who will talk about. And this is particularly popular among the the folks who confuse Jesus for a libertarian. Surprisingly common. But people who are like, you know, no, the in the New Testament, you know, the Jesus was all about your your own liberty and, you know, didn't want to force anybody to do anything. And say, have you read the New Testament?

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Right. Jesus was all about forcing everyone to do.

• 30:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And then, and then what? And then they they do the whole. The the role of the government is just to protect the rights of the people. Everything else is is the role of the individual. It's like, that's a, that's an Enlightenment era at very best idea. Like, it's developed more in the 19th century. But that's, it's like Austrian school libertarianism, not the New Testament.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:09Speaker 00

  And the notion, and and they appeal to this in order to obviously defend not funding or not supporting welfare programs, a social, a strong, robust social safety net. As if you could make the plausible case that when you look in the New Testament, Jesus is like, look, my priority is not that they get fed. It's just that the correct mechanism is used if they are going to get fed. Like, the notion that Jesus would be like, look, it doesn't matter if they end up with food. It if it's going to go through the government because I don't want it to go through the government. That's asinine.

• 31:53Speaker 00

  That's just laughable. And then they say, no, it's our responsibility. We got to do this. Nobody's been stopping you.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  Like, there are, and, and, and this is not to say Christian, Christians and atheists and Jewish folks and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindu and pagans and other traditions and non-traditions don't give generously. There are, there are generous givers across all of those social identities.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:19Speaker 00

  But Christians have not been stopped from, from solving themselves the problem of poverty.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:27Speaker 00

  And oddly enough, it hasn't been solved.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. That is a funny question. Like, yeah, if someone's like, that should be, that should be up to the individual. Okay. Well, are you doing it?

• 32:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  If not.

• 32:39Speaker 00

  What are you doing?

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Then shut up.

• 32:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. Cause what did Jesus say in Luke, chapter 12? The commandment, sell your possessions.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  Give the money to the poor.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 32:50Speaker 00

  Like, you can, you can dismiss the, the rich young ruler as like, oh, that was just his, that was just the sidebar. Well, here's like, this is just for you. This is what I'm going to tell you and nobody else. Don't write this down. This is just for you. Um, but Luke 12, you don't really have that option. Jesus is like, all y'all, all y'all.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Whoever has two coats must share one, must share with another as none. Whoever has.

• 33:15Speaker 00

  Slightly different context there, but, um.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  I don't know. It just seems like a thing, right? I don't know. I have two coats. I should probably give one away.

• 33:23Speaker 00

  But, but the point is that rhetoric is very clearly intended to absolve them of the responsibility to do it because they're saying, we got to do it ourselves. You're not doing it. And guess what? You couldn't possibly do it.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:36Speaker 00

  Without the government, you cannot,

• 33:41Speaker 00

  as, as a group of Christians, no matter how many you are, you cannot, and you will not.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:47Speaker 00

  Solve the problem.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  And that's the, that's the real issue. I mean, that was pointed, anyone who has been on Tik Tok over the last three weeks or whatever, has seen.

• 33:55Speaker 00

  Oh gosh. The, the experiment?

• 33:57Speaker 01

  The experiment, the woman who, she went and started calling churches, all kinds of churches and, and then.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  Other religions.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  And, and a Buddhist temple and whatever. Asking for, uh, for a thing of

• 34:14Speaker 00

  Baby formula.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  For her, for her nonexistent baby. She, she claimed that she had a baby. Her, she had run out of food and her baby needed to eat. And she just said, can you help me? And of the something like 40 churches that she called, I think nine said yes, including, including the Islamic center and the, and the Buddhist center and stuff. It was, it was rough. If you listen to those, those conversations, you hear people just outright saying, oh yeah, no, we don't do that.

• 34:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:54Speaker 00

  And, and these are, and, and like, there's a degree, degree to which the receptionist or whoever it is, and, and I don't know if she was like, put me in touch with your boss. If she was getting up to decision makers, or if it was just whoever answered the phone.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  But like a lot, and, and some of them have mechanisms for that. They were like, oh yeah, we have, we work with this organization. You just need to call them and they will, and they will get you the stuff. There was an example where, and, and she was like, oh, I called them and they said, uh, they said, no. And they were like, well, they're actually have been closed today and here's the person I know them personally. And there's no way they told you no. Um, so the, so there are, I, I think that there are, um, there are mechanisms in place for a lot of these organizations. A lot of them were just being straight up jerks though.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was shot like to me, I don't care if the church, if the organization that your church has set up to provide things is closed today. If there's a baby that's not going to eat unless you help, that to me like, I don't, if I'm the receptionist, I'm, I'll go in pocket. That's okay. Like it's absurd to me that anyone, that anyone would say no to that. But all of these churches that purports to be following Jesus with all of the commands from Jesus about, you know, again, red letter commands about. You know, I was hungry and you gave me food.

• 36:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  In as much as you do it to the least of these, you did it to me. Like, that seems like the most important mandate possible.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  And she wasn't asking for money. She was like, she made it very clear, I just want the formula.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Crazy. It was, it was nuts to me.

• 36:41Speaker 00

  And there's a, and, and there are some people who have, uh, there've been videos of, of sermons that were preached, where people brought this up and can criticize and condemn the woman. Called her a, so somebody called her a witch. And then there's.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  She was casting spells on all, all the people, making them not be nice.

• 37:02Speaker 00

  She turned me into a newt.

• 37:06Speaker 00

  But, but then there's this, there's this pastor named Stephen Anderson.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh, oh, I know.

• 37:11Speaker 00

  You know this guy?

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Oh, I am familiar with Stephen Anderson.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  Here's what, here's what he posted.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  He's banned from many countries. Did you know that? He is literally not allowed to go to like dozens of countries.

• 37:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, and he's, uh, like, he's, he's just downright a jerk.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:29Speaker 00

  Like, I've, I've responded to a bunch of his videos. He does not have the first clue what he's talking about.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 37:35Speaker 00

  He gets everything wrong. But he posted on Twitter, "I would be pissed if I donated to a church and found out that they were giving, content warning, by the way, they were giving the Lord's money to single mother whores. I would want it to go to the Lord's work or towards helping godly Christians who are in need. Churches should not be funding fornicators and their bastards."

• 37:57Speaker 01

  Who does he think?

• 37:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  The Lord's work? What does he think the Lord's work is?

• 38:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Is it?

• 38:06Speaker 00

  Like, the, the Good Samaritan.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:08Speaker 00

  Remember, that, that was the, the people that they were supposed to hate? Who was, who was his neighbor? Oh, it was the people we hate because he treated him, uh, well.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Famously, also, uh, like.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  Jesus dealt well with prostitutes. Like Jesus, like if you're A, a single mother is not a whore. But B, if she were a sex worker, guess what Jesus would want you to do? Guess, guess how he would want you like, look at how he responded to the sex workers? And maybe go thou and do likewise.

• 38:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. Go read Les Mis.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:52Speaker 00

  And, you know.

• 38:55Speaker 00

  Ah, okay. So.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  So there you go.

• 38:59Speaker 00

  So you got, you got a lot of people who are, who are trying to dig through the Bible to find excuses to not help other people, find excuses to literally demonize in some cases, the poor.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:13Speaker 00

  Find, find excuses to basically hoard more of their money and not, uh, not share it with the poor and the needy, which is repeatedly commanded of followers of Jesus in, in the New Testament. So 2 Thessalonians 310, I, I get the appeal on the surface. It certainly sounds like, hey, we could use this to demand work requirements if you want SNAP benefits. But if you understand the context, you can see it's not addressing that at all. And if you actually consider it within the broader context of the New Testament as a whole, you can see that kind of undermines and directly contradicts the spirit of the command to love your neighbor.

• 39:56Speaker 00

  So, um, go thou and do likewise.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  Is the official, uh, position of the Data Over Dogma Podcast.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Indeed. All right. Uh, let's, let's jump into taking issue.

• 40:20Speaker 03

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• 40:44Speaker 04

  There's all this tech shit going on right now. We have facial recognition. We have our Ring cameras giving data to police. We have the Flock safety cameras. We have Amazon Echo and all these devices that are constantly listening to us and using our data for one purpose or another. Hey, we have a national security problem. When a company like Flock turns it into this organized system that law enforcement can access.

• 41:07Speaker 05

  To hear more on why you should rethink every safe camera you drive past, check out episode 1308 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  And we're taking issue with hixos.

• 41:20Speaker 00

  The hixos.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  The hixos. Okay, let's start by explaining who, who slash what are slash is hixos?

• 41:32Speaker 00

  So, so hixos is a term that we get from the Greek and, and I think probably from Manetho, who was a third century BCE author, historian, who wrote, wrote about ancient Egypt. And he referred to these as, oh, where's the hikusos would be the, the Greek. And so that is, that has come into English probably through Latin as, as hixos. And this is a, a Greek transliteration of an Egyptian phrase that is actually, and, and I know people who

• 42:11Speaker 00

  know how to pronounce Egyptian are probably going to be like, damn. Hekao kasut. And, and this means foreign rulers or foreign lords or something like that.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 42:24Speaker 00

  That is where the Egyptian seems to come from, but.

• 42:28Speaker 00

  Josephus, another Greek writer, a Jewish Greek writer toward the end of the first century CE. He came up with a different etymology.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 42:38Speaker 00

  He called them shepherd kings.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  So you can kinda, you can see where, where he's going with this.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  Huh.

• 42:47Speaker 00

  Because this is a group of what scholars generally refer to as West Asians. These are, these are people who are from the land of and around Israel, but probably mostly north of Israel, Amorite territory, moving east to northern Mesopotamia. So they are Semitic peoples.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  I saw the word Levantine.

• 43:10Speaker 00

  Levantine, yes. The Levant is the, the Fertile Crescent, which would include Mesopotamia up over and down to the eastern Mediterranean shores. So Syria, it would be Lebanon, it would be Israel, down to the Sinai Peninsula, but then also Mesopotamia. So, so that seems to be where these people are from. But they were rulers in Egypt. In fact, they took over a portion of Egypt from the native Egyptian rulers. And, and this happened 1650 to 1550 BCE, somewhere in there, 15th dynasty.

• 43:54Speaker 00

  This is what is known as the Second Intermediate Period. And intermediate periods in Egyptian history are kinda where things got really shaky. And then, you know, there was a power vacuum or a rule broke down or, or something like that. And so you have foreign rulers who come in and take over rule of lower Egypt, and particularly the Nile Delta. And, and here's one of the confusing things about Egyptology. We're used to thinking about countries on a map. Lower Egypt is north of Upper Egypt.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:25Speaker 00

  Because it's a reference to geography.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  To the direction of the flow of the river?

• 44:31Speaker 00

  Of the flow of the Nile River, right. So Upper Egypt is higher Egypt. And, uh, Lower Egypt is... Lower Egypt, the Nile Delta. So there was a city of Aras that is considered to have been the capital of Egypt, the lower Egypt during this period. And there were more native, like native Egyptian is kind of an odd term because the Egyptians, their ethnicity is

• 45:02Speaker 00

  was, has always been kind of complex. But about 500 miles south of the Mediterranean Sea on the Nile is Thebes. And that's where there was another dynasty that was ruling. And they were like, no, you know, they were shaking their fist at the at the foreign rulers.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 45:22Speaker 00

  And we have, we have like little scarab seals where some people adopt, they would identify themselves as the Hixos, as foreign rulers.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  During that period of rule. And for a while, people were using the Egyptian literature that said, these people came in and conquered and they were bloodthirsty and they were vicious and, and you know, they, they just took over and then we, we kicked them out. One of our heroes rose up and, and was able to expel the bloodthirsty heathens from, from the land.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:02Speaker 00

  Sounds like the way a lot of people talk about immigrants to the United States today. But that is not what happened. Based on archaeological and other data, we know that they actually had been not infiltrating, but they had been moving into the land and settling and intermarrying and just getting along just fine for centuries prior to the rise of their dynasty, their rule. And it, and their rule was probably something that was pretty organic. They were like, hey, we'll, we'll take over while, while things are, are, you know, while you're trying to get things figured out.

• 46:45Speaker 00

  Until you get back on your feet, we'll go ahead and we'll be in charge. And while they did seem to, there does seem to be some kind of uprising against them. There were still Semitic West Asian people all over that area for centuries afterwards as well. So.

• 47:05Speaker 00

  A lot of rhetoric and propaganda tries to reduce things to simple binaries.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:11Speaker 00

  And then vilify one side, glorify the other side. Uh, and that is what was probably going on in Egypt, but.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:20Speaker 00

  The reason we bring up the Hixos is because I've been seeing a lot of people trying to argue that the Hixos represent evidence that the Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt, or that this was the context for Joseph's rise to power, uh, in the book of Genesis. And, uh, there have been folks who have argued that, well, if there was already a Semitic, uh, administration in power, it makes it so much more likely that they would have elevated this other Semite, even though, yeah. And in the book of Genesis, when Joseph invites his family to come to Egypt, he says, "Tell them your shepherds."

• 48:05Speaker 00

  And then Egyptians hate shepherds. They'll tell you, "Ooh, go over, take the, uh, that land over there." And then they get Goshen. And so for Josephus to call them shepherd kings.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 48:19Speaker 00

  Is kind of, hmm, yeah, suggesting, oh, these are, these are people associated with, uh, with Joseph and Jacob's family. And so, uh, the, the timelines don't really work out though. That's a, that's a problem if we take the.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  So when, so when are we thinking, you mentioned that the, uh, the Hixos were, were sort of, uh, 16, mid 1600s to mid 1500s BCE.

• 48:45Speaker 00

  17th to 16th centuries BCE.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  And that, so when, when would Joseph theoretically have been supposed to have been alive?

• 48:54Speaker 00

  Well.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 48:59Speaker 00

  So, um, it depends on when you date the Exodus.

• 49:05Speaker 00

  They were supposed to have been-

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Joseph was before the Exodus, right?

• 49:08Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. Joseph was well before the Exodus.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  I mean, I know Genesis is before Exodus, but I don't know how, if it's supposed to be chronological in that way.

• 49:17Speaker 00

  Yes, it is supposed to be, and Joseph, Joseph gets sold into slavery in Egypt, and then the family comes to Egypt to escape famine. Joseph is in power. Joseph says, "Hey, uh, you know, stay with me." And, um, and then that is supposed to explain how it is that the Hebrews became, um, you know, located in Egypt.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 49:42Speaker 00

  Another king rose up that did not know Joseph, and he was like, "Hey, there are a lot of these Hebrews around. Let's enslave them." Precisely as, uh, you know, Columbus did when he arrived, uh, in 1442, or 92, and said, "Hey, we could, we can enslave all these people."

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Right. There's, doesn't seem to be any gold, but, uh, "Look at all these people we could just decide we own."

• 50:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. They're, that's, they're like money.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:12Speaker 00

  So, the, if you date the Exodus to the 1400s BCE, which is what a lot of folks do, they'll say, "Oh, this was Amenhotep II." That was the pharaoh. 1440 to 1420, somewhere around there is the date of the Exodus. That only gives, you know, like, max a little over 200 years from Joseph to, to Moses, which doesn't really make sense. They were supposed to have been in Egypt for around 400 years.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  Well, and there were millions of them.

• 50:42Speaker 00

  Uh, two, yeah, two to five million, um, participating in the Exodus based on, um, calculations from, uh, from what the text has.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  So, that, it, it feels like, it feels like to go from Joseph's family to two to four million people in 200 years. That feels like, feels like a stretch.

• 51:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is, um, enthusiastic, definitely.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  They were enthusiastic, if that's what-

• 51:09Speaker 00

  But you know, this is a folks like Ron Wyatt, folks like Chuck Missler.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Ron Wyatt's a favorite of the podcast.

• 51:17Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. And even actual archaeologists like Bryant Wood, who is somebody who gets appealed to a lot when it comes to Jericho. He's one of the ones who provided this argument against canyon and the consensus view that the big walls fell down around 1550 BCE. He was like, no, it's closer to 1400 BCE. But even he, while being a little more cautious, was like, it could have been when Joseph showed up. But that only works if you date the Exodus to the late 1200s BCE, which some people do and say, well, that's Ramses. And you

• 51:59Speaker 00

  know, you got the city, Pi Ramses is one of the cities that they built. So the 1200s must work better. None of them work. Like the

• 52:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:09Speaker 00

  Neither of those dates works.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  And as we've talked about, there was no Exodus. We can also just say, like, yes, we're entertaining the thought so that we can just sort of follow the logical thing through. But we, I mean, the thing is that we do have evidence of the Hixos, but we don't have evidence of any of the rest of this stuff.

• 52:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Other than the Bible itself.

• 52:36Speaker 00

  And just the fact that they were Semitic peoples, they came from West Asia is not enough. There were lots of Semitic peoples and, and I think most scholars think that they were probably further north. They were probably coming from areas of Syria and around there and into Mesopotamia because there seems to be some Cuneiform, Akkadian influence and stuff like that. So.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  I mean, it makes sense, right? There's, there's a land bridge there. You can just go from Israel to Egypt. It just, you just go there. So like, it makes sense that, you know, if there was a power vacuum in Egypt and there were a bunch of people who were powerful in Israel.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  You could just go. It's just like, you know what I mean? Like,

• 53:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  It doesn't, it doesn't seem like it needs any more, anything greater than that.

• 53:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and there was a lot of genetic admixture. You had people going into Egypt from, from elsewhere. Just like same with the US.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:37Speaker 00

  They, and they didn't even have Border Patrol back then. Um, you know, you could just walk in and, uh, you know, you might be treated quite differently as a foreigner.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:48Speaker 00

  But, uh, uh, yeah, they, they wouldn't say, hey, where are your papes, your papers?

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Right. They might say, hey, what are you doing here? And if you say, I have an army and/or look at how much money I have, look at how much goods and, and, gold I have to trade.

• 54:06Speaker 00

  Say, hey.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Uh, you might, you might get welcomed.

• 54:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, or robbed.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Or robbed.

• 54:14Speaker 00

  So yeah, attempts to find Joseph, Jacob, uh, the enslaved Hebrews, Moses, those, those folks in, in the Hixoses, misguided at best.

• 54:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:28Speaker 00

  Um, and, and does not work. And, and please, please, please, please, anybody out there. If you hear somebody say, well, there's a canal called Joseph's Canal in Egypt.

• 54:43Speaker 00

  Please, please. That is.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  Is there such a canal?

• 54:46Speaker 00

  There is, there is such a canal. However, that name is only a few hundred years old.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. And that, that canal, uh, it, it connects, uh, the Nile to the Fayoum, um, which is, but it is, it is basically a, a deepening of a natural, uh, not constant waterway. Yeah. That, that, uh, broke through, uh, like in the Pleistocene. So yeah, Joseph didn't dig that canal.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, that's one of those things like, uh, Mount Ararat or whatever.

• 55:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  It's like, uh, yeah, don't, uh, don't, don't read too much into that. That name is newer than you think it is.

• 55:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. It is, uh, and, and I think it might be, I think it only might've been like the 1800s that. That that name was added to to that canal. I don't remember. And and it was Islamic in origin, the attribution of that canal to Joseph. So

• 55:48Speaker 01

  The Bar Yusef?

• 55:50Speaker 00

  Yes, there's that's the one. Yeah.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  I I Googled it while you were talking. I can do that.

• 55:58Speaker 00

  Yes, he of not Cat Stevens.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 56:02Speaker 00

  That's Yusef Islam. That's

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Right. That's a different thing.

• 56:06Speaker 00

  Wrote some of the the one of the greatest singer songwriters of all time. But yeah, we're not talking about him.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  Not talking about him. All right, friends. Well, there you go. That's the the Hixos. A little bit of fun with with history and archaeology there. If you would like to become a part of making this show happen, and let me tell you something, it's the it's the main thing that makes this show go is the support from our listeners. You can go to our Patreon, which is patreon.com slash data over dogma, and then sign up where you know, if you sign up at the $10 a month level, you can get the after party, which is bonus

• 56:51Speaker 01

  content. Sign up at the $5 a month level, and you can get early access to an ad free version of every episode. That's always great. If you can't afford that, that's fine. Why don't you find a way to share us if you like us, you know, share on your talk about us on your socials, share the YouTube, do whatever you can. We appreciate all the help we can get. We can always use more help. Thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing the show, and thanks to all you all for tuning in. We sure do appreciate you.

• 57:27Speaker 00

  Bye, everybody.

• 57:31Speaker 01

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