Polygamy!

Look out! 'Cause this week we're looking at a controversial issue, and perhaps strangely for us, the impetus for this has nothing to do with Mormonism. No, recently a Missouri pastor named Rich Tidwell made waves in Christian circles by claiming that the Bible--yes, even the New Testament--is pro polygamy. And, really putting his matrimony where his mouth is, he has the wives to prove it. So is the Bible as positive about plural marriage as Tidwell claims? And if so, does that mean that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints should reclaim their highly decried practice? Then we'll move on to one of the Bible's most prolific polygamists: Solomon. Or rather, his son Rehoboam. If Solomon was wise (and really... was he?), Rehoboam was rash, impetuous and authoritarian. The apple fell far from Solomon's tiny little tree. But what is this story really about? ---- 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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• 1:39Speaker 00

  Thus you should say to them, "My little finger is thicker than my father's loins."

• 1:45Speaker 01

  I'm gonna assume that means what I think it means.

• 1:47Speaker 00

  It does. He's, he's holding up his pinky and going, "This is bigger than, than my dad's Johnson."

• 2:00Speaker 00

  Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  And I'm Dan Beecher.

• 2:04Speaker 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 that pernicious spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Things are good, things are good. Yeah, we've got, we've got a fascinating one. This, I'm looking forward to this because the comments are about to get unhinged up in her.

• 2:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  If you don't watch our show on YouTube, which is totally great, most of our, the people who, who partake of our wares don't, you might want to head over there and just see what the people are saying, because people might get riled up, because we're going to talk polygamy, and Dan's a Mormon, so ipso facto, problems or something. Historically speaking. And so, yeah, we're going to talk about that in the first half of the show, and then in the second half of the show, we're going to get to one of, one of the great practitioners of polygamy, but we're not going to be talking about that.

• 3:14Speaker 00

  Probably one of the most famous, yeah.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're going to do some Solomon stuff. He, we're not going to talk about his polygamy in the second half, we might talk about it in the first half, probably.

• 3:25Speaker 00

  Probably will.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're going to, we're going to talk about the end of his reign, and the beginning of his son, and all kinds of other historical stuff surrounding that, or ahistorical, or whatever. So that'll be, it'll actually be a lot of fun, and it's very interesting. But first, let's, let's dive in with taking issue.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  And the issue we're taking, as we said, is polygamy, but more specifically, I think, polygyny.

• 3:57Speaker 00

  Polygyny, yes.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Because, uh, polygamy is, as the Google has told me, uh, is, is the practice of marriage with either multiple men, multiple husbands, or multiple wives.

• 4:11Speaker 00

  Right.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Uh, and I don't think that that first thing is what the Bible has anything to say on.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  New, not so much new. So, yeah, we're talking about polygyny, or plural marriage is another, uh, more English term. I don't know, but, uh, but is also unclear, but generally is referring to a man taking multiple wives. And this is in the news right now, because, well, as of recording.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:41Speaker 00

  Who knows what the, the news cycle will be like.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  We may have been scooped by a couple of weeks on this one, but that's okay.

• 4:48Speaker 00

  There is a, uh, there's a pastor in like Missouri named Rich Tidwell, who posted back in June on his blog about basically coming out as, as polygamists.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:03Speaker 00

  Uh, he has two wives and eight children between the two of them. Some of them have been adopted. Uh, but this, for whatever reason, people have only become aware of it, uh, recently, the beginning of November, and it is really-

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Somebody went, "Oh, wait a minute, wait, what?"

• 5:20Speaker 00

  And so, uh, it has caused a bit of a firestorm on social media as evangelicals are swooping in to condemn, uh, this, this pastor who posted a biblical defense of polygamy on his blog. And I want to talk about the argument that he makes, uh, and then talk about whether or not I think it's supported by the data.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  Uh, but yeah, and, and certainly, you know, hijinks will ensue. There's plenty of opportunity for, for all kinds of, uh, of comedy and, uh, and other things.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  I'm just gonna put a marker down now. Uh, be, me being the ignorant guy on the podcast, I'm, I am definitely putting a marker down for- The Bible supports polygamy quite a bit.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  Quite a bit, yes.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  It may not, it may not be across the board. It may not be a, you know, a total like support every which where. But there's, there's a lot of polygamy in the Bible and sanctioned polygamy at that.

• 6:25Speaker 00

  Exactly, yeah. And that is where, and that's one of the things that, that he starts off with. There are, there are three passages that he points to from the Hebrew Bible that he suggests indicates God's sanctioning of polygamy. God's approval of polygamy.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  And, and I think there, I think, um, I think a couple of them at least make good sense. One of them, I'm, I'm not so convinced by the, and the, uh, the, and that would be the earliest one chronologically, canonically. Genesis 30, verse 18. Uh, and this is where we have, uh, Jacob and Jacob gets tricked into marrying the wrong woman and has to work for another seven years. And we've got an episode where we talk about this.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  That was a fun trick. What a great, what a great trick that was.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Sorry, you said this was Genesis, what?

• 7:20Speaker 00

  Chapter 30, verse 18.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:22Speaker 00

  And so the woman he, uh, was tricked into marrying, Leah, said, God has given, obviously this is NRSVUE, but I'm going to talk a little bit about the translation. God has given me my hire because I gave my maid to my husband. So she named him Issachar. And, uh, and, and hire here is, uh, a word that means like recompense, wages, payment.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:50Speaker 00

  So God has given me my wages because I gave my maid to my husband. And maid there, I'm pretty sure is, uh, the word for, uh, yeah, maid servant or, or a female enslaved person.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:06Speaker 00

  So Leo's like, here, hubby, have this other wife. And uh And then God rewarded her for that. That is what Leah is saying, that God has rewarded her for uh for making that sacrifice of giving uh her husband another wife. So Jacob is just racking up wives. Yeah. And uh the 12 sons of of Israel slash Jacob uh come from a variety of different uh women. So so that's a suggestion that at least according to Leah, God is okay, was happy with this, rewarded her for that. Right. Um, another one that I think is a a little better uh

• 8:49Speaker 00

  argument, has a little better uh case to make, is uh in 2 Samuel. And this is 2 Samuel, chapter 12, and verse 7 are, 7 and 8 are the important ones. And this is where Nathan is chewing, Nathan, excuse me, is chewing David out. So you remember the the you are the man speech? And uh and here he says, you are the man, oh hey, there it is. Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul. And then verse 8 says, I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah, and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  So here we have God ostensibly, through the prophet Nathan, declaring that God gave David many, many, many, many wives. Right. Basically, he said, Saul's wives, they're now your wives. Right. Among other, you know, various cash and prizes. Yes, yes, there are other prizes as well. And and the argument that I've seen made is that when it says gave them into your bosom, the idea here is, I transitioned them to your protection.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  In other words, they were living in Saul's household and now you're responsible for them, which, which is nonsense because one, it's like, I gave you all this cool stuff. Oh, and also this burden.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  This responsibility.

• 10:22Speaker 00

  Yes, which is very clearly not what God is saying here. God is saying, I gave you all these women to have sex with.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  You're welcome.

• 10:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and so very clearly that represents God prophetically as not only endorsing, but facilitating plural marriage, including women who had been with another man, which is little peculiar. And then there's another one that I think is, might even be a little stronger. 2 Chronicles 24. And we're looking at verses, and we can start at verse one, but we're gonna go to verse three. Verse one says, "Joash was seven years old when he began to reign. He reigned 40 years in Jerusalem.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  His mother's name was Zibya of Beersheba. Joash did what was right in the sight of the Lord all the days of the priest Jehoiada."

• 11:26Speaker 00

  And then verse three says, "Jehoiada got two wives for him, and he became the father of sons and daughters."

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 11:35Speaker 00

  Pretty clearly, the author is suggesting that if Jehoiada got two wives for Joash, and Joash did everything that was right in the sight of the Lord all the days of the priest Jehoiada.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  And Jehoiada is the priest, is God's representative, or whatever.

• 11:55Speaker 00

  That that is sanctioned, endorsed by God.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Right. And that, and that's some New Testament stuff, because I think, I, I, I think when we talk about this, that's gonna, it tapers off towards the, like, the, the support for polygamy, I thought, tapers off.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  It does, it does tapers off.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  But, but, so I'm actually surprised to hear a, to hear that, yeah, that sounds like.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  It's not, there's certainly no full-throated condemnation happening of, uh, of, of

• 12:30Speaker 00

  No, no, not, uh, not by any stretch of the imagination. Although, there is a passage that some people will point to as an indicator that polygamy was not what God wanted.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  And this is a weird one. Again, it's an interpretation that is forced and is nonsensical. Um, but Leviticus 18:18, uh, from the NRSVUE, "And you shall not take a woman as a rival to her sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is still alive." So, the idea here is obviously, hey, if you've already got a wife, don't marry her sister also.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 13:13Speaker 00

  That's, you know, that's, uh, that's a problem.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Again, that, that casts a weird light on the Jacob story.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um,

• 13:27Speaker 00

  but, and, and some folks think Leviticus 18 and 20 were actually, these laws are actually following the narrative of Genesis. And so, the idea is that they're making laws basically to address all of the circumstances and situations that are, that are happening in Genesis. And so, this could be precisely saying, hey, what happened with Jacob and Leah and Rachel? Yeah, maybe don't do that.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  That's not, that's not for you. That was for him, not you.

• 13:59Speaker 00

  But the argument is that, uh, this does not mean, this is not only limited to a biological sister, but just don't take any woman as a, uh, who could become a rival to a first wife. Meaning, polygamy, no good. Uh, and, and that reading isn't supported by anything. That's, um, that's silly.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:24Speaker 00

  But probably the most common objection, and I, you know what? I don't even know if, if, uh, Tidwell, uh, actually brings this objection up in his blog post. Seems like he should.

• 14:39Speaker 00

  But I don't think he does. I don't think he engages the argument. Genesis 2:24, which we've talked about many times in the past. "Thus a man shall leave his father and his mother's house and cleave unto his woman, and the two of them shall be one flesh." Right. And this is taken as a prescription of how, what God's pattern, plan, ideal for marriage is. In other words, it's supposed to be one man, one woman, one vote.

• 15:12Speaker 00

  But, as we've discussed before, it's clearly not a prescription of proper marriage. It's just a descriptive ideology of pair bonding and independent kinship units. It's not saying it must be one man and only one woman, because obviously the rest of Genesis is chock full of Israel's heroes and even precursors marrying multiple women. And so the authors are very clearly okay with polygyny, and so are obviously not condemning that. So, there are a bunch of passages in the Hebrew Bible

• 15:51Speaker 00

  that just outright endorse, if not just condone, polygamy. Things start to change when we get to Greco-Roman period Judaism. And not because of the Bible, but in spite of the Bible. It's because of Greek philosophy and Greco-Roman social conventions and mores. Because while the Greeks and the Romans were pretty socially loose, maybe? You know, fidelity within marriage might not have been at the top of their list of priorities. But they did find polygyny to be a practice of weirdos. They didn't really like it.

• 16:36Speaker 00

  Then there were Greek philosophical treatises that kind of talk about the the structure of society and things like that in the household and how it's all supposed to work. And and that endorsed monogamy as well, although, you know, slaves were entirely permitted and everything like that.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Totally fair game.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, and you know.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  And a side piece here and there is obviously fine.

• 17:01Speaker 00

  Right. So this this rubbed off on Greco-Roman period Judaism. And so they didn't come out and say, we no longer accept polygamy. But it was less and less common. So that you didn't really, you didn't really see it happening because it wouldn't have been acceptable within this Greco-Roman context. And so by the time of the New Testament, you, polygamy is not really polygyny, excuse me. We agreed before filming that we were going to use polygyny and not polygamy.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  I mean, we could say polygamy. It's because most times when someone uses the word polygamy, they're talking about the practice of marrying multiple wives. Because that's been the only one, you know, the only thing that's been practiced in for most of what we, what is commonly known in human history. There may be some, some polyandrous societies, but I've never heard of them.

• 18:01Speaker 00

  Yes, I think they mostly exist in comic books.

• 18:07Speaker 00

  But yeah, I can't think of any off the top of my head. But if you do know of some, by all means, let us know.

• 18:17Speaker 00

  And and so you, polygyny is not really that big a deal. But you do have some places where it seems to be poo-pooed, or if not condemned. So in the Dead Sea Scrolls, it seems to to not approve of polygyny.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:35Speaker 00

  New Testament has no outright condemnation of polygyny at all. It just seems to have been the norm that that you only marry one wife at a time. The one exception would be 1 Timothy 3:2. Now, 1 Timothy, Pastoral Epistle?

• 18:53Speaker 00

  Not Paul. Okay. This is, uh, this is, uh, pseudo Pauline. This is after Paul's death. This is somebody trying to appropriate Paul's authority by pretending to be Paul. But we have, uh, in this passage, the author is explaining what is required to be an overseer or a bishop. And says that he must be a man of one woman. Which is probably intended to address fidelity within marriage and then not remarrying after either divorce or the death of a spouse. Because there, there was actually, and, and you know, you see this in Matthew, that if a man divorces his wife or anything other than, than sexual infidelity, that, uh, he

• 19:37Speaker 00

  commits adultery by marrying another woman and causes her to commit adultery if she marries another man. So, um, you know, you weren't supposed to get remarried. You have one wife and, and that's your wife and, and that's it. You used yours. You used your one. You're, you're, you're done. Yeah. Um, but it does seem to suggest that they're not, they would not approve of a polygamous, uh, polygynous, uh, marriage for a, a leader. And, and a lot of people try to insist that when it says, uh, overseer or bishop, that means pastor, but it doesn't. Uh, pastor is only mentioned once in all of the New Testament, and that is in Ephesians four. What's the difference?

• 20:22Speaker 00

  Well, they're different offices within the church and they're entirely different words in Greek, but, but there are folks who try to make the case that there's a, there's a passage in Acts that talks about elders and overseers kind of being the same and talking about how they are to pastor or pastor the flock. So it uses verbs associated with pastoring to refer to them. And, and so people will say, see, that means a pastor is just the same thing. But.

• 20:53Speaker 00

  The Gospel of John uses the verb pastoring to refer to an apostle as well as Jesus, as well as Jesus' followers. So like that, the use of that verb by itself doesn't mean this is a reference to the ecclesiastical office of a pastor, which again is only ever, only known from Ephesians. Ephesians? Also probably not, Paul. That's not one of the outright spurious epistles, but one of the disputed epistles. So anyway-

• 21:24Speaker 01

  But also probably a later thing, like, you know, it sounds to me like that's, that's when the organization, the organization chart has started to appear.

• 21:33Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. The org chart is showing up in emails and irritating everybody. But yeah, that's, that's a more developed hierarchy, a more developed institution, where they've got these offices. And that's, and Paul would not have been operating with those, with those institutions anyway.

• 21:54Speaker 00

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

• 21:59Speaker 01

  I've heard the construction.

• 22:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, you heard the construction too. We're, we're finishing our basement. We're actually adding on to the house. We're, 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.

• 22:43Speaker 00

  And then even though it took some discipline and 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.

• 23:10Speaker 01

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• 24:43Speaker 00

  But anyway, 1 Timothy 3:2, even though it probably is not directly addressing polygyny, it would preclude polygynous marriages, even though it is also just about the standards for someone who wants to hold that position. It's not necessarily saying any follower of Jesus cannot do this, but it probably would have been a standard that became pretty widespread. So we do have one passage that does seem to, uh, seem to prohibit polygyny in the New Testament. And Rich Tidwell is not ignorant of that passage. So he makes an argument for why 1 Timothy 3:2 does not prohibit polygyny.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  Uh, he says, "In 1 Timothy 3:2, Paul utilizes the Greek word 'mia'."

• 25:34Speaker 00

  Which we translated as "one" in English, and he talks a little bit about this in another passage. Although "mia" may translate as an indefinite "one" or "a" as in the indefinite article, in the context of marriage in 1 Timothy 3:2, "mia" means "ordinal," "first." If Paul intended to communicate, "A man must have numeral one wife to be in ministry," he would have employed the word "he's," as he did in 1 Timothy 5:9, the same epistle, because "he's" explicitly means numeral one. "Mia" must be used in 1 Timothy 3:2 as a grammatical rule. Read my response titled "The Mia and He's Saga." Therefore, 1 Timothy

• 26:16Speaker 00

  3:2 ought to be translated "the husband of his first wife," as Paul, like Jesus, is preventing hypergamy and divorce. In other words, he still has to be married to his first wife.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Should I make a guess as to your response to this?

• 26:38Speaker 00

  Let's see.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Because I don't know anything about the grammar or words of Greek, but I'm going to guess that you're going to object to his explanation of how these words are used.

• 26:50Speaker 00

  Yes, it's nonsensical. He says, "A man who divorces his first wife to marry another," as Jesus prohibits in Matthew 19:19, also see also Malachi 2:15-16, "is not fit for eldership in the church." Paul is not addressing polygyny, nor disqualifying the patriarchs from ministry. He is prohibiting hypergamy and serial monogamy among the elders of the church. And then he goes on to say something interesting. "Moreover, do we truly believe that if Abraham, Jacob, or David resurrected, a possibility according to Matthew 27:52-53, they would not be permitted to hold office or preach in the church?"

• 27:33Speaker 00

  These polygamous men wrote or are featured in many of our holy scriptures, but we wouldn't give them a microphone today? What utter nonsense. I believe the answer to these questions lies in Romans 11:23. "These polygamous men of the Bible were called by God and retained their offices despite their having several wives." And I saw somebody who responded to that particular argument by barking that, "Yes, absolutely, they would be prohibited from being pastors." And they went on to say, "Even God prohibited David from building the temple because he was a man of war."

• 28:13Speaker 00

  And so God can withhold certain offices and responsibilities from people. He didn't address Jacob or Abraham. But I think that's an interesting argument. And yeah, the 1 Timothy 3:2, the notion that that Mia and he's really carry these significant differences that must be maintained, context independent, doesn't really work. It can be used that way, but it doesn't mean we have to use it.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Well, if it can be used that way, then there's some legitimacy maybe to his argument.

• 28:51Speaker 00

  Well, there's the, yeah, it's basically the, "You can't prove it's false."

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:56Speaker 00

  Argument. It's possible. We're ginning up that tiny little sliver of not impossible.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:05Speaker 00

  But yeah, there are no scholars who read it that way.

• 29:10Speaker 00

  But it is-

• 29:11Speaker 01

  He does seem like he has a motivation, a specific motivation-

• 29:15Speaker 00

  Little bit, little bit of a motivation.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  I feel like the most interesting part of this whole thing is that the, you know, if you want to use the Bible to justify polygamy, polygyny, whatever. That seems easy. That's like, he's not wrong.

• 29:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, not as easy as defending slavery, but certainly easier than than defending same-sex intercourse or something like that.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  Like, there's, there is ample, ample

• 29:52Speaker 00

  evidence that that it was considered okay by God. And this is another thing that he talks about. According to the Bible, God does not change.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:00Speaker 00

  So God is okay with polygamy in the Hebrew Bible. God is okay with polygamy in the New Testament. And this is something that, that is a bit of a problem for the folks who who want to understand the Bible to be condemning polygamy. Why would God allow it in in one part of the Bible and then prohibit it in another if God does not change?

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Allow it in the most important figures in the Bible.

• 30:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, condone and even endorse it, yeah.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  And and so it it does raise the question of, you know, we have other, well, not we as in me, but a lot of these folks assert certain dogmas about God's unchanging nature and about the universality of the moral principles on which the gospel is founded.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  How do you get around that? And that is why I think you have a lot of folks who try to argue that that God actually prohibited or didn't like polygyny, just tolerated it. Like, I'm not sure about this, but I'll, you know, I'll see where this is going. And and so people will bring up the argument that throughout the Hebrew Bible,

• 31:07Speaker 00

  polygynous marriages are are characterized by conflict and problems. It's like, every relationship in the Hebrew Bible is characterized by tension and conflict.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Every relationship in humanity is characterized by, like, I don't know if you've had a spouse or a or a relationship, but you're gonna have conflict. That is, that that's a guarantee.

• 31:33Speaker 00

  And they're like, bad things always happen. It's like, Adam and Eve are a monogamous marriage. The worst thing happened.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, yeah.

• 31:40Speaker 00

  And you know, you've got all kinds of, all kinds of circumstances. Like, everybody who has a brother in the Hebrew Bible runs into all kinds of problems. It's like, does that mean that having a brother is frowned upon? God's like, mm, I don't know about this one.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  Let's get him.

• 31:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  You know, I think it's so interesting that the Bible is so obviously explicit about this and so overwhelmingly, so loaded with it as, you know, example after example. And, you know, I suppose we should bring up Solomon, who like is the, he's putting up Wilt Chamberlain numbers.

• 32:23Speaker 00

  And that, that works on two different levels.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Well, we might get to the rest of that. But, uh, but yeah, I mean, what does he have? 700 wives and 300 concubines? Or something like, according to the thing? So like, and you know, there's no part of that that's condemned. There are things that like, the Bible's like, oh, Solomon wasn't good about this or whatever. But it's not that. Well, that's, except that they're foreign wives.

• 32:50Speaker 00

  Yes, they're foreign wives and they influence him towards, and so, and you know, people will bring that up as well. Well, look what happened to Solomon with all them foreign wives. It's like, well, he still had more than one local wife and that didn't cause any problems. God wasn't like, I'm not too hot on that other thing either.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  And his dad was like, his dad was loaded up too.

• 33:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  David, David had multiple wives as well.

• 33:14Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  So I don't know, it's just, the thing that's weird to me is that you can look at this book. You can read all of those stories of all of these men who have all of those wives. And then. Because your culture obviously is not okay with that. You know, I, my, my parents were both LDS historians. They were both historians of Mormonism and they, so I'm, I'm fairly familiar with Mormon history. And of course, famously.

• 33:47Speaker 00

  Infamously.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Infamously. The Mormons, the early Mormons and then later fundamentalist break off offshoots of Mormonism, practiced polygyny.

• 33:59Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  And the way that the world.

• 34:02Speaker 00

  I live in a city where one of them ran for mayor.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  I can, I can see the house, their compounds from my front yard.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay. Well, there you go. So it's, it's still around, but the way historically that the, that American, American culture came crashing down on these people for this thing. And I, you know, to, on one hand, I get it in the sense that I, I think that

• 34:33Speaker 01

  the, the polygyny of Mormonism

• 34:37Speaker 01

  creates a, a wild power imbalance. It is something that is entered into often unwillingly by the women.

• 34:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  And, and it is often forced upon women and it is, it like, the way it is practiced is not consensual and therefore not, there's no way to excuse it. But how did these, did this country come down so incredibly hard? Like literally people were saying the dual barbarism. I don't remember the exact quote, but they were equating slavery and polygamy as being the, the two barbaric practices of the United States of America.

• 35:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. Reynolds versus the United States from 1879.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 35:22Speaker 00

  There was the, yeah. And a lot of people have been like, they didn't really have that good of an argument. Cause it, cause it was mainly just like, you know, this is characteristic of barbaric people.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:37Speaker 00

  And, and, and I think also said it, it always leads to abuse or, or something like that.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Right. Which I, I think it's plain to see, if you watch any reality TV, you know that it doesn't necessarily lead to abuse. I never actually watched a single episode of Sister Wives, but it it seems like he probably wasn't abusive. I don't know. Would they? He wouldn't get to keep his his reality show if he was abusive.

• 36:05Speaker 00

  I didn't watch any of it either. I don't I don't knew. But yeah, you I think

• 36:10Speaker 01

  I couldn't get past his hairstyle, to be perfectly honest. And I'm not one to talk. I know that.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Uh, I just think

• 36:17Speaker 00

  I wasn't gonna say anything.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  I just think that it's really weird that that Bible believing people, people purporting to be Bible believers are so vehement against this. Like, I get why you're vehement against slavery. That makes sense to me. And I get why you'd be vehement against a practice that was entered into against a woman's will. That I understand as well.

• 36:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  But presuming that adults enter into an arrangement of their own free will and with their with their consent, full consent and and approval. I don't know how biblically minded people condemn that. I don't get it.

• 37:05Speaker 00

  Well, we've already seen that that folks who would identify as biblically minded people have have a way of massaging what the Bible is minding them about. So, but it's interesting within Judaism, because I've mentioned before, one of the reasons that Christianity and Judaism deviated so significantly from each other is because Christianity really leaned into Greek philosophy and the Greco-Roman world, whereas Judaism tried to distinguish itself from it and rejected Greek philosophy and to some degree. It was still quite influential.

• 37:48Speaker 00

  But, you know, they were like, Septuagint, not for us. We're going back to the Hebrew. We're going back to Hillelachic legislation, all this stuff. And so for centuries after the split from Christianity, while Christianity is is rejecting polygamy, Judaism was kind of like We're a little uncomfortable with this. We can't really find a reason to object in the Hebrew Bible, but we just don't like it. So like you have, Joseph is referring to it as an ancestral custom in one of his texts. But, and it's like around 1,000 CE. When Greek philosophy and just philosophy in general becomes a lot more influential within Judaism,

• 38:33Speaker 00

  that you finally have some Jewish philosophers who are like, yeah, no polygamy. We're just outlawing it. It's just not good. So, um, so they, they had a longer time, um, coming down as firmly as they ultimately did against polygamy. But, but yeah, it does seem like something that's, uh, you know, people appeal to, all the time, people appeal to the Hebrew Bible and God's design for marriage as what should be governing how marriage works. And, uh, except when it comes to that part, when they're like, and then they'll go to Genesis 224.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  And, and I just want to be clear, uh, because people are going to accuse me of being a dirty, dirty Mormon who is just trying to defend polygamy.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:26Speaker 00

  You could not be more mistaken about my position on marriage. So, so as frequently as I have to remind people that I'm doing my darndest to just represent the data and the scholarly consensus. That's what I'm doing here. And this should in no way, shape or form whatsoever be misconstrued as me defending polygamy because I like it. I have already been accused of that countless times just because I posted a video a few days ago about this, so.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Of the two of us, I'm the one who's more likely to come to the defense of,

• 40:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Of, uh, of. A non-traditional marriage slash love practices.

• 40:13Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  I suppose. I don't, I don't support polygyny, religiously mandated polygyny.

• 40:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  I certainly don't support that.

• 40:21Speaker 00

  Certainly not, yeah. And, and, and, and I think that's one of the, the big issues is, is if it is something that is religiously sanctioned, then I, I think it does pressure folks, particularly young folks growing up in that kind of society that

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:36Speaker 00

  conditions them to think this is, this is my role. This is what I have to do. I mean, you already have women on Twitter saying, we need to repeal the 19th amendment only because the men around them in their lives and, you know, kind of in control in, of their worldview are, are conditioning them and convincing them that they need to defend that, that particular limit to their agency. And, and I think the last thing we need is, you know, a bunch of folks raising up young girls to, to believe that they have, their only goal in life ought to be becoming a

• 41:16Speaker 00

  polygamous wife of, of another tidwell or whomever.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, and too often in those situations, as we see with fundamentalist Mormons currently and historical Mormons back in the 1800s and early 1900s, when it, when it's, when it's culturally, especially when it's shrouded in cultural shame and, and becomes this insular thing, really bad practices crop up. So like, you know, 14-year-old women being forcibly married off to 50-something-year-old men, that sort of thing.

• 41:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, because God said so.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's Epstein-level not okay. So, so yes.

• 42:04Speaker 00

  And as of recording,

• 42:06Speaker 01

  As of

• 42:07Speaker 00

  there, there's been a bunch of emails that have dropped and, and, you know, well, I'm sure that the dust will have settled to some degree, unless more emails are dropping.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. It's, it's raining Epstein letters at this point.

• 42:19Speaker 00

  Good grief.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Let's, let's erase our brains from that for a little bit and let's actually move on to our chapter and verse.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  And the chapter, I guess, is, I guess what we're gonna do is we're gonna get to First Kings, Chapter 11.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  And this is, this is, it's, this is the thing, it starts out with talking about the marriages of Solomon. And, and the fact that he loved many women, many foreign women. That was the problem. It wasn't the many women. It was the fact that they were Moabite and Ammonite and Edomite and Sidian and Hittite women.

• 43:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  And not only were, was he in love with these women, but he was building shrines to their gods on the hills.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  So, so that's, that's sort of the, yeah, 700 princesses and 300 concubines. Princesses, okay. I have seen wives in translations.

• 43:30Speaker 00

  What does it say? It says Nashim, which would mean women or wives in Hebrew. Why, why does, why does it say princesses?

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Oh, N R S V U E. Are you getting sassy?

• 43:41Speaker 00

  No, no, it says wives and then it says Sarot, which would be, which would be the feminine plural of Sar, which would be a prince or a noble.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 43:52Speaker 00

  A nobleman. So, yeah. Princesses and 300 concubines.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  So, wait, it says among his, his wives were 700 princesses.

• 44:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  The non-princesses probably, there's a couple hundred more of those. Who knows?

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Again, it's, it's those Chamberlain numbers.

• 44:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, um, yeah, who knows how many trombones and, and the camels. Yes, June, love the camels. I see, I see how I was able to bring in not just the music man, but also Aladdin.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Man, you, you, you went all over the map with that. You, you encircled the globe twice on that one.

• 44:32Speaker 00

  But it says, "When Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David." Kinda.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:43Speaker 00

  Trying to. And David kinda got the, the raw end of the heart.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  David fudged the rules a little bit here and there, but sure.

• 44:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  So, and, but I mean, I think the main thing is, and this is something that we've talked about. The main, one of the things that we need to remember here is that, uh, and one of the things that was never talked about in my religious upbringing was the fact that these other gods that Solomon was, uh, was kind of falling prey to were real gods.

• 45:12Speaker 00

  They believed them to be, yes.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  They believed them to be real gods. So this is a, this is like really treading on, uh, on Adonai's turf here.

• 45:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And you, you have, uh, First Kings 11 is interesting for so many reasons. Verse five refers to Solomon following Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:38Speaker 00

  So Milcom was a patron deity of, of the Ammonites, but then you, excuse me, you go down to verse seven and it says, then Solomon built a high place for Kemosh, the abomination of Moab. We've talked about Kemosh before and for Molek, the abomination of the Ammonites. So we've just seen it was Milcom who's the abomination of the Ammonites.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, that's right.

• 45:59Speaker 00

  And now we have Molek, the abomination of the Ammonites. This is, this is a, a scribal corruption.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 46:06Speaker 00

  There has been a, a change where Milcom and Molek, the only difference in written Hebrew, anciently, there's one letter, the M on the end of, of the, uh, the word, the name. And so obviously the, the Mem has just fallen out, uh, from, excuse me, from the, uh, from the word Milcom. And so a lot of people use this as a, to argue that Molek was recognized as a deity. And Molek is, was not a deity. Molek was just a, a type of sacrifice. And then later Greek translators and, and later folks confused it for the name of a deity that never existed.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  So we're, we're saying that Milcom is the actual deity and Molek was, was, uh, an incorrect.

• 46:50Speaker 00

  A corruption, yeah.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 46:52Speaker 00

  Textual, um, oopsie.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  I do think that Milcom is, would be a good name for a software company.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  Um, yeah.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  It just sounds right. I don't know. Milcom and Molek would be a good, would be an interesting name for a, like a.

• 47:09Speaker 00

  A buddy comedy.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  Oh, a buddy comedy. I love it. The two, the two abominations of the Ammonites. I like it.

• 47:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  All right. So, so.

• 47:21Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  So, let's, yeah, let's go on with, with the story here.

• 47:25Speaker 00

  I'm going to get down to verse 23.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Okay, sounds good.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  We have some adversaries raised against Solomon. Resin, son of Eliah, who had fled from his master, King Hadad Azair of Zoba.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  You just wanted to say that.

• 47:43Speaker 00

  Whenever on, like The Simpsons, they always have Ned Flanders saying some kind of nonsensical name from, from, from the Bible. This is, this is one that I would have, if I didn't know this passage, I would have been like, they made that up. That's not in the Bible.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  King Hadad Azair of Zoba. Hadad Azair. Yeah, okay.

• 48:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, it, it's just Hadad Azair. Uh, Hadad was the name of a deity. Azair would just means help of. So, so help of Hadad. Hadad's helper. And, um.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Ooh, while we're talking about names, because it's going to come up, what is the, what does the suffix Bohem mean? Cause we're gonna get a Jeroboam and a, and a, uh, what's the son's name?

• 48:28Speaker 00

  Jeroboam and Rehoboam.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:32Speaker 00

  Yes. Um, so the, uh, the am on the end is not, is not clear. Uh, it could mean, uh, like it could mean people. Am means people. It could mean, uh, uncle. Like there's, there's a, um, there's a form of this word that, that has reference to a male, uh, ancestor. Could mean an uncle god. Uh, it could be a deformation of Jerubal.

• 49:03Speaker 00

  So Jeroboam, Jeroboam, they're spelled the same except for the Mem on the end instead of a Lamed. So at least when it comes to Jeroboam, it's not clear what exactly is going on with the with the Am on the end of the name. Now, when it comes to Reboam, this is more likely to be, like the Rahav means to be wide. And this is a word that can mean "street" in Hebrew. So it might be this "uncle God" has made wide.

• 49:46Speaker 00

  Or maybe it's the people have become extensive, they've spread out.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 49:53Speaker 00

  So...

• 49:54Speaker 01

  Uncle God on the street is what I'm going with.

• 49:57Speaker 00

  Uncle God on the street, yeah.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Alright, sorry, that was a, I took us off down a rabbit trail.

• 50:05Speaker 00

  No worries. But we have Jeroboam, and this is an interesting story. Oh, so anyway, a lot of people made trouble in Solomon's neighborhood. They were up to no good. And then Jeroboam shows up. And he's like a day laborer. And he's coming down to Jerusalem, and he's helping out with stuff. And verse 28 says, "When Solomon saw that the young man was industrious, he gave him charge over all the forced labor of the house of Joseph." And so, forced labor, this would be korve labor. This is the king of Judah requiring that the people from the northern kingdom, who would have been subjugated to Judah,

• 50:50Speaker 00

  require they send folks on a certain schedule to do forced labor. So, this is not really slavery, it's something a bit different. And then Jeroboam's leaving Jerusalem, workday's over, he's going home. And a prophet, Ahijah, the Shilah knight, found him on the road. And he had a new garment on, and he gives it to...

• 51:20Speaker 00

  To Jeroboam, but tears it into 12 pieces. Which is kinda like, "Cool, thanks, what?"

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Thanks for the shirt. I guess it's rags now?

• 51:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, he says, "Take for yourself 10 pieces. For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel. See, I am about to tear the kingdom from the hand of Solomon, and will give you 10 tribes. One tribe will remain his, for the sake of my servant David, and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city that I've chosen out of all the tribes of Israel. This is because he has forsaken me, worshipped astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians, and so on and so forth."

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:00Speaker 00

  So, it's this symbolic, you know, the prophet's always doing weird symbolic stuff. "Look at this jar, I'm gonna break this jar! Look, I'm nude! Look, I'm tearing your coat into 12 pieces."

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Can you just put, can you put your clothes back on? Please? No? Oh, you're tearing it up, great, okay.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  So basically, the 10 pieces are, represent the 10 tribes of Israel, which would be the northern kingdom.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  So Jeroboam, so what he's saying is Jeroboam is gonna get to be king, even though he's just this day laborer guy.

• 52:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, the prophet is like, "Hey, guess what? You're gonna take over 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel." And Jeroboam is represented as rather humble. But Solomon finds out about this. And Solomon-

• 52:48Speaker 01

  You never want that, that's never any good.

• 52:50Speaker 00

  Solomon, not happy. But, so he tries to kill Jeroboam. Jeroboam promptly flees to Egypt, to King Shishak of Egypt, and he remains in Egypt until Solomon dies.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:02Speaker 00

  And then Solomon's dead, reigned in Jerusalem 40 years, slept with his ancestors, was buried in the city of his father David, and his son Rehoboam succeeded him. Now Rehoboam, and here's the thing, there was never a single united kingdom.

• 53:20Speaker 00

  Scholars are pretty sure that Judah in the south and Israel in the north were originally separate kingdoms. And there was, there would have been a time, maybe where, where Israel might have subjugated the southern kingdom, or maybe the southern kingdom subjugated the northern kingdom, which is how it's represented in this text, which is, by the way, being written from the perspective of somebody who lived in the southern kingdom. And so, Rehoboam goes up to Shechem, which is the, the capital of the northern kingdom. For all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king. And then Jeroboam heard about it, and

• 53:59Speaker 00

  he comes back from Egypt. And, or no, he stays in Egypt, and they, they call him, and all the, they sent and called him, and Jeroboam, and all the assembly of Israel came and said to Rehoboam, "Your father made our yoke heavy." So, you know, Jeroboam is a forced laborer. "Now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke that he placed on us, and we will serve you." Basically saying, "Look, the northern kingdom, your dad was mean to us. If you will be nicer to us, we will happily be part of your kingdom."

• 54:33Speaker 01

  Right. Chill out a little bit. Let's, let's be kind, rewind, and, and maybe we can all get along.

• 54:41Speaker 00

  And King Rehoboam took counsel with the older men, who had attended his father Solomon while he was still alive, saying, "How do you advise me to answer the people?" So he's, he's basically going to the elders, who were his dad's advisors. And they said, "If you will be a servant to this people, and serve them, and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever." Then he went to the cool kids, the younger crowd.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:10Speaker 00

  And who grew up with him, so his-

• 55:12Speaker 01

  The Stephen Millers of the world.

• 55:15Speaker 00

  His friends and, and he says, what do you advise? Uh, and they said, thus you should say to this people who spoke to you. Your father made your yoke heavy, but you must lighten us for us. Thus you should say to them, my little finger is thicker than my father's loins.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  I'm gonna assume that means what I think it means.

• 55:37Speaker 00

  It, it does. He's, he's holding up his pinky and going, you know, this is, this is bigger than, than, uh, my dad's Johnson.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  Me, meaning, meaning, I suppose that like, my dad was a wimp. Yeah. And, and because having a big schlong is, uh, it makes you stronger as a human, as a person or something, makes you more powerful as a man.

• 56:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. You, the, the, the one with the bigger schnitzel gruben is, is the, the man or man. So he says, my father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions. So he like the sound of, uh, of that more than the elders, uh, recommendation that.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  I want to make it worse for these people rather than better.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  Cause though I gotta say scorpions, I'd, I'd probably take a scorpion over, over a whip. Whips seem like they do like way more damage to me.

• 56:41Speaker 00

  Because yeah, he wants to flex on him.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:45Speaker 00

  And you know, that's, that's the, the tendency.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  Show off the girth of his little pinky.

• 56:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. See that ring? That's like a, that's like a 12. That's a 13.

• 56:57Speaker 00

  So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day, as the king had said, come to me again the third day. The king answered the people harshly. He disregarded the advice that the older men had given him.

• 57:07Speaker 00

  And spoke to them according to the advice of the young men. My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions. And basically they tried to kill him.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  It does seem like when it, when he came face to face with the people, he skipped the, uh, the little finger bit. So, you know, it sounds like he improvised a little bit in the moment.

• 57:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, so the.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Wimped out on that one.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  He was like, ah, I don't want to try that one out with this crowd. So, but he goes back to Jerusalem. He sends Adorim, who was the taskmaster over the forced labor. And he sent him up to Israel to basically say, all right, come on, let's go. And they stoned him to death. And so, yeah, King Rehoboam then hurriedly mounted his chariot to flee to Jerusalem. So, Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day. So, it's, it's the explanation for how the two kingdoms that were always separate kingdoms came to be separate. So, it's kind of an Aesop's fable for, for a people who kind of

• 58:23Speaker 00

  came up with this, this origin story that we were once a united kingdom and we got separated. And that is probably fiction. And it's being told from a southern perspective because after the destruction of the northern kingdom, the southern kingdom kind of appropriated all their traditions and was like, we're Israel now.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Right. And we're, and we've got the lineage of David.

• 58:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. And the idea is, oh, we were always Israel. The northern kingdom just rebelled against us. And that's why. That's why they got destroyed in 722 BCE.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Is there any archaeological evidence that Rehoboam and Solomon, were Solomon, was Solomon a real person?

• 59:09Speaker 00

  The scholars are a bit divided on that. I think there are, there are those who would argue that David was probably a real leader of a dynasty. We do have the Tell Dan inscription.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  I remember you talking about that.

• 59:23Speaker 00

  Where the Tell Dan Steely, no relation to Steely Dan. But that, that talks about how the Hazael, the Arab man, killed the, somebody who would have been the.

• 59:37Speaker 00

  Part of the house of David. So that would have been a dynasty, not a kingdom, just a dynasty that occupied Jerusalem. And so it's certainly plausible that there was a historical Solomon. Relationship to David unclear. Because they, you know, it tries to make David out to be Saul's, you know, right hand man initially.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:04Speaker 00

  And Saul then is trying to kill David and David is a, you know, a mercenary for the, for the Phoenicians. Not Phoenicians. Oh my gosh. Did I say Phoenicians? I'm having the worst time with, with names. Oh my gosh. Who are the, the sea peoples? Oh gosh.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  I can't help you.

• 1:00:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  I mean, we've told that story. Go back, go back and look in a back catalog. You'll get that.

• 1:00:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, you'll get that story. So, um, so anyway, the, a lot of these stories seem to be coming from centuries later. Where people are just kind of dressing it up to serve their, their memory of this golden age. And, and so there's a lot of, a lot of propaganda, a lot of fiction. So it's, it's certainly possible. Rehoboam, Jeroboam. More likely probably, I think than, than Solomon to be, to be historical.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 1:01:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I think so. But it's really about a hundred years after that, that we get into a period where we can begin to archaeologically confirm. These kings. So the Amride dynasty is, is where things really take off. And, and some scholars, and, and that was probably the most successful ruler, ruling dynasty in Israel. And, and some scholars think that it is the memory of the Amrides that has been shifted to David. To make it seem like David was really the one who expanded Israel the most. Cause we want the glory down in the south, down in Jerusalem, rather than in Shechem in the north.

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  Okay. Interesting. Well, there you go.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  Shuck 'em if you got 'em and we'll, we'll close it out there. If you would like to help us make this show go, please consider becoming one of our patrons over on patreon.com slash data over dogma. You can just search it if you want to, uh, you know, be a, become a monthly subscriber and you could get access to an early and ad-free version of every show as well as access to our after-party, which is a weekly, we just do it every week. Uh, it's bonus material. It's, it's Dan and Dan at their best. A lot of the guests come in and say cool stuff. So, uh, you, you don't want to miss out on that. You, you want to

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

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• 1:02:57Speaker 00

  Bye, everybody.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

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