Not Original, Not Sin

It was a setup, I tell ya! This week, we're focusing on "the fall," and the two poor suckers who were set up to take that fall. First, we're going through the story of Adam, Eve, the tree and the snake, and parsing out exactly what did and didn't happen in Eden. Who lied and who told the truth? Who knew what and when did they know it? Who, if anybody, actually committed a sin? Then, speaking of sin, we're going to get original. What is the doctrine of "original sin"? Is it in the Bible? Where did it come from, and should we be worried about it, or can we all just relax? ---- 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

  So, here's where I'm gonna say something that is going to annoy an awful lot of people. You can define sin about as well as you can define, what, six, seven?

• 1:52Speaker 00

  It's 100% vibes.

• 1:58Speaker 00

  Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  And I'm Dan Beecher.

• 2:02Speaker 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?

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Oh, man, I'm feeling sinful. Just absolutely sinful.

• 2:19Speaker 00

  That's kind of your baseline, isn't it?

• 2:20Speaker 01

  That's just norm. That's like standard, but like also feels like it was just born there. You know what I mean?

• 2:27Speaker 00

  Oh, oh, okay.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's me tipping off what we're gonna be talking about, I guess. I'm very subtle. I don't know if you guys know that about me, but yeah.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  That's also your baseline, subtlety.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Subtlety is, it's one of the great markers of my character. It's true. So today, we're gonna be talking first, first, we're gonna do a chapter and verse, and we're gonna talk about the Garden of Eden. And we're gonna talk about Adam and Eve specifically. We've talked a lot about Genesis 1, 2, little 3, little 4. We're mostly doing 2 into 3 now. We're gonna get that creation, not the creation story, the fall. The fall.

• 3:12Speaker 00

  We're gonna talk about some of the peculiarities of this story as well. Things that, the unanswered things where we do an awful lot to fill in the gap. There's a lot of frog DNA that we're just chucking in there to fill in the gaps. And that results in a weird Adam and Eve story where, you know, the, they can turn invisible and all this kind of stuff.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure, why not?

• 3:35Speaker 00

  Asexual reproduction, it's, or not asexual, what do we call it? Yeah, I don't know. A-biogenesis, let's call it that.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 3:43Speaker 00

  As a result of that.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  Rare species of frog DNA.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  If anybody should have something to do with a-biogenesis, it's Adam and Eve.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  You would think.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  So I think that's great.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  My, my, my high school daughter is reading Jurassic Park right now in, in, in her class. And so we got her some, a couple of her own copies and, and it's fun to revisit what it was like to read that book back in the 90s.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  They made a book of that? That's interesting.

• 4:10Speaker 00

  They did, they did make a book out of it. They decided the movies were so successful, they might as well write a book. And, and a book that was so good, I ended up reading pretty much everything else that Michael Crichton wrote. And then watch some of the movies they made of those things, which were not as, not nearly as good. So.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, Spielberg tends to make a fine movie. Anyway.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, he does.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Moving on. In the second half of our show, we are going to sort of jump off from that and we'll do a, a what is that about original sin?

• 4:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  So that'll be exciting and fun and weird.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  So hot right now. Yeah.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Everything about the Bible is weird to me. So let's dive in with chapter and verse.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  All right. Uh, you said you wanted to start in chapter two. Now, most of chapter two is, oh, is Adam sitting around in a garden all by himself and God trying to make him less bored.

• 5:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. Twiddling his ribs. Um, and the, the garden of, uh, garden of Eden story really starts in the second half of Genesis two, four, and then runs through the end of Genesis, chapter three. So three, 24 is the end of the garden of Eden story. Chapter four is a different story altogether, but we get this, this creation account. All this is happening on one day. We've discussed in the past about how Genesis 11 through the first half of Genesis two, four is a separate creation account. It's an entirely different creation account that is trying to correct a lot of the stuff that's going on in our creation account. But we have in verse seven, then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and

• 5:50Speaker 00

  breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being. And, you know, reams and reams of, of, uh, books have been written on this passage alone, but I, I really like the theory that what we have is basically a divine image being made where, cause in, in this time and place, divine images would have been made primarily of clay, uh, but also of stone and things like that. But we can represent it as clay and that there would, there would usually be some kind of enlivening ritual or activation ritual where the, the agency of the deity would enter the statue and, or.

• 6:30Speaker 00

  The standing stone, probably. And, and here we have a very similar thing where the dust of the ground is, this is where clay comes from. And the, the word formed there is, if I'm not mistaken, it's yat-zar. Yeah, yat-zar, which is the word that is used to refer to using, making pottery, using, making clay. And, and then breathe the breath of life into the humans' nostrils. And this is one of the illustrations of the fact that breath was considered fundamentally constitutive, or constitutive, for all the people who feel like correcting my pronunciation,

• 7:06Speaker 00

  of life. And so breath is what causes life to be in this story. And then God plants a garden in Eden and chucks the, the man in there whom he had formed, according to verse eight.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  And we, we've talked in the past about how there are some, there's some squirrely translation going on in these passages where the translators try to turn past tense verbs into pluperfect verbs. And, and basically what that means is they change, God caused this to happen to God had caused this to happen because the order of events in Genesis 2 is different from the order of events in Genesis 1. Yes.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Sure. And, and, and so you've, you've got God planting this, this garden.

• 7:55Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  And he throws in a couple of trees.

• 7:59Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Very curiously, I think. I think it is so weird to throw in trees that he knows, it's, it's like, it's like putting a, a, a power socket into a room, into the baby's room.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Without, you know, without any covers or anything and just being like, don't touch that now.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's like MacGuffin Central. We, like, God has no use for these trees. God is, is, just created this garden. It's like, bam, trees. Oh, by the way, don't touch that one.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was, that was bad.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  Could you get any more MacGuffany? Obviously, this is.

• 8:41Speaker 00

  Obviously, this is a lesson in search of a narrative. And so in verse nine, "Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." So we've got these two trees, and this is one of the unanswered questions of the story of Adam and Eve, because later on, at the end of the story, and spoiler alert, if you haven't read the story yet.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  If you've never heard the Adam and Eve story, yes. Podcast listener who's listening to a show about the Bible.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  Yes. God is going to kick them out of the Garden of Eden, and then put cherubim guarding the entry, so that they cannot partake of the tree of life, because if they do that, they would live forever. Again, MacGuffin alert.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  Why this? Because in Genesis, in verse 16, in verse 17, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." So this does not say, "Don't partake of the tree of life." So the question is, were Adam and Eve partaking of the tree of life the entire time?

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 10:03Speaker 00

  And...

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Okay, that's one I've never thought about before. I like that.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  And then is God kicking them out to stop them from continuing to eat from the tree? Or are they not even eating from the tree to begin with? And then God is like, because of these new circumstances, "Oh, we don't want them to suddenly eat from the tree." Because it raises... And this is something that a lot of Christians will say. This God, or Adam's transgression and Eve's transgression, brings death into the world. Prior to that, there's no death. In order to conclude that, you have to conclude that they were eating from that tree the whole time.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Well, you don't have to conclude it.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  Well.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Certainly one of the, that seems like the way that you would do it.

• 10:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, but.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Although if you, if you conclude that, then it makes one wonder, is the way that God is immortal, just that he keeps eating that? Like, you know what I mean?

• 10:57Speaker 00

  Like. It raises more questions than it answers because, because let's see, if they are eating from it already, then they should already be immortal.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:07Speaker 00

  Right. So stopping them from eating from the tree would not suddenly end their immortality unless eating from the tree just keeps you alive temporarily.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  It's, it's not permanent immortality.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  It's just current immortality.

• 11:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, like that. And that's, that's not really what we think of when we think of this. And, and God's warning in, in chapter three, if they take and eat from it, they will live forever. That's a one time thing.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  So what's going on here?

• 11:41Speaker 01

  It's all very confusing.

• 11:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then that brings us to verse 17. In the day you eat of it, you shall die. We've talked about this before as well.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:52Speaker 00

  The consensus view is that this means if you eat from that tree, you will be put to death relatively immediately. On that, on that day, within that 24 hour period, you are executed. That is what the Hebrew demands we understand it to be saying.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  And that doesn't happen. So God's, God's threat doesn't happen. And then when we get to the curses and, and we'll get to them in a moment, there's no indication that they were anything other than mortal the entire time.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  So this, but this is one of the unanswered questions. This is something that. People, if this is how the story, how we have it, if that's how the story was originally read, and originally, whether it was performed, read out loud, whatever, how it was originally consumed, either the audience is not paying attention to these questions because the story is serving some other function, or they already have a background in this, they, they're bringing the correct knowledge to this story that we don't have access to.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  Or there's something going on that's, that's missing. They have additional texts, additional stories that, that we don't have. But, um, I digress. Immediately, God is like, hmm, something's missing. It is not good that the man should be alone. And, and this is one of the big distinctions between this creation account and the creation account in chapter one, because here, God creates something and then goes, oh, my creation is not good. Chapter one, God creates, everything God creates, God goes, damn, that's good.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Nailed it.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Again, man, I am six for six on this.

• 13:39Speaker 00

  So he says, I will make him, uh, the NRSVUE says a helper as his partner. This is, this is a phrase that has taken on increased significance these days as our connecto, particularly as the, uh, University of Oklahoma has decided that it is not in the business of educating people anymore. Um, if you don't know what I'm talking about, don't look it up. You will just get depressed.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Or if you do look it up, you have to read the essay and then read the essay that the essay was supposed to be about. You have to read it. You can't just get mad because of the headline.

• 14:15Speaker 00

  And then, uh, so God's like, I'm gonna make a hel-, literally it's helper equal to, equivalent to sufficient for something like that. A suitable helper.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:27Speaker 00

  So God's like, let's make some animals. Starts making animals out of the, out of the ground, just like the human was made, and brings them to Adam, and Adam's like, not for me, not for me, ew, what are you thinking here?

• 14:41Speaker 01

  This thing doesn't even, I mean, presumably, actually, they do talk, because we're gonna learn later, at least one of them. Has a full grasp of speech.

• 14:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  So I'm going to presume that they all do.

• 14:54Speaker 00

  They could. Yeah. Again, it's something that's not in the narrative, like the fact that the snake is just like, what's up, dude? And he's like chilling.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  I think it is in the narrative because these are the things that God is creating to keep Adam company. So I feel like it makes sense to assume that if that is the point of these animals, and then later on in the narrative, one of the animals talks. I think it is reasonable to say these animals talk cattle, birds, all the things that they're, he's having conversations, they're just not that interesting.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  Well, and he's giving them names. He's naming everything again. So it's very Aesop-y. At this point in the story.

• 15:39Speaker 00

  All the cattle, all the birds of the air, every animal of the field, but for the man, there was not found a helper as his partner. Whether he just wanted, you know, I need something with a little more cake on it. I need whatever he was looking for, the animals were not providing it. So God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept. Then he took one of his ribs is how we've translated it. The word there is literally means sides.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:07Speaker 00

  One of his sides, and this word is never used to refer to human anatomy anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible. It's used to refer to like architectural sides or sometimes the sides of a ship. And people think, well, you know, you've got, you've got these pieces of wood that that kind of go up the sides of a ship. You've got beams on the side of a building. So maybe the, this is supposed to be metaphorical reference to ribs. But it could also mean just a hunk of his side.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, the first time you and I talked about this on the show, I became. And remain relatively convinced that it's supposed to just mean he just split the dude in half and made half him and half her. Like it's, it's one side is him, one side is her. This rib thing is just astounding. So, I mean, and, and probably just comes from like a need for the patriarchy to have the man be the progenitor of the thing and be, and the woman be less than the man in some way.

• 17:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and the story says he took one of his whatever and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib or whatever that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. And yeah, it does sound, sound kind of like Aristophanes.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Oh gosh.

• 17:38Speaker 00

  Uh, it's been a rough morning. Aristophanes myth from Plato's Symposium, which is where all, all humans were originally part of a, a dual entity.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:51Speaker 00

  Which had either two male, sets of male genitalia, two sets of female genitalia, or one male, one female. They were split in half and then we spend our lives trying to reunite with the other half. Um, so it, it sounds an awful lot like that. It could be something like that. But it's not exactly clear. But the man then says, this is, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called woman for out of man. This one was taken. So this is, this is a folk etymology for the Hebrew word esha.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  Cause esh means man, esha means woman. That must mean from man or something like that. Uh, but bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh suggests that this hunk of whatever that was taken out of Adam included bone and flesh.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:39Speaker 00

  So, so, you know, when we talk about going out for ribs, we're not chomping on the bone most of the time. Uh, there's, there's meat on the bone that we're, that we're actually interested in. So maybe this has reference to just a, a big chunk of, uh, bone and flesh.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:57Speaker 00

  But the idea seems to be that all the other animals were created from the dust of the earth, but for a helper that is suitable. Uh, we actually need to, it needs to be created from the man. So, so that seems to be what the idea is, which, which is, which is, um, subordinating woman to man. Uh, man is, uh, has a primacy of place, is the original human. This is the, uh, you know, the co- I don't know if you saw Multiplicity, um, but we're not quite to Steve yet, but uh,

• 19:33Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, we, you're, uh, wow, you went, that is a nineties deep cut, uh, and, and, and not particularly relevant. Don't go watch the movie to, uh, to try and figure anything out.

• 19:45Speaker 00

  It's not gonna have anything to do with Adam and Eve, yeah.

• 19:51Speaker 00

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

• 19:57Speaker 01

  I've heard the construction.

• 19:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, you've heard the construction too. Uh, we're, we're finishing our basement. We're actually adding on to the house. We're, we're, um, doing some stuff in the backyard. And I was thinking the other day about how nice it was to be able to do this, cause 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, our old car and that took actual planning, which you know I hate. Um, 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.

• 20:40Speaker 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.

• 21:07Speaker 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. Uh, 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, the fact of the matter is that all of these concepts are so ethereal, it's hard to sort of wrap your head around it a lot of the time. And with this visualizer, you can see how that debt is going to go down. You can actually simulate your freedom occurring in front of your very eyes. And I think that is an amazing thing.

• 21:52Speaker 01

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• 23:10Speaker 00

  But, but then we get the famous etiology for pair bonding and independent kinship units. Therefore, a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh. The idea is, look, you were torn apart from one entity and so. You become one flesh, you kind of return to the primordial state of being one entity and, and it's just a folk ideology for pair bonding and for independent kinship units because your dad kicks you out of the house and says, get out of my garage. I need this. My midlife crisis is starting. I need to have a band in here. And so you have to go off and start your own household.

• 23:51Speaker 00

  This is not a prescription for monogamy or heterosexuality or anything like that. It's just a folk ideology. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. And so they're, they're in a state of innocence and the idea here seems to be that they are juvenile. They have not matured yet, just like, you know, when you have kids running around, they want naked time to run around nude. They're not ashamed. So that's, that's basically what's going on here.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  I don't know. I, I, I'm going to push back on that just a little bit because I think that, I think that, or, or the way I read it, at least now, and you can tell me if I'm wrong on this, is just that what it's setting up is the fact that they don't have a sense of the knowledge of good and evil. They don't have that yet. That hasn't been, they haven't eaten that fruit. And so, and first of all, I think it's weird that nakedness is already, is, is already being considered basically a function of evil. Like it is like their, their shame over their nakedness is, uh, when it, when that shame rolls around, it's because they know what good and evil are.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  I think that that's weird that, uh, but, I mean, it's a norm now too. So there, and so that's fine. But my, I guess my point is just that it seems to me like what it's saying is, They just don't have that in them. They don't have a sense of good or evil, or what they should be, should or shouldn't be ashamed of.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  And, and I think that that is a function of the lack of maturity, that, that part of the maturation process is learning the difference between good and evil, learning that you ought to be ashamed of being naked in front of other people, uh, learning all these things, that you should be wearing clothes, you know, um, stuff like that. I, cause the nudity in the Hebrew Bible is not associated with, it's not like an erotic state in the Hebrew Bible. It is always about shame.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 26:00Speaker 00

  Um, and, and whether it's Noah, whether it's people who want to pretend that the Bible says women have to cover up parts of their bodies so men don't lust after them. Like, nothing ever says nudity is associated with lust or, or anything like that. It is always about shame.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:20Speaker 00

  Um, and, and I think the, the story is suggesting that as you get older, as you mature, part of, uh, right and wrong is, is feeling shame about your body.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  Um, in, in a nude state.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  Uh, because there's, and, and what's the, we have in the prophecy in Isaiah, uh, Isaiah seven. Okay. So the, um, it is the, uh, a, a young woman has conceived and will, will, uh, bear a child. And what does it say in the next verse?

• 27:00Speaker 00

  He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. So that's saying before he grows up, before he matures. So one of the things you learn as you mature is the difference between good and evil, how to refuse the evil and choose the good. Uh, so, so I, I, I think that's what's going on here. They're, they're created like full size, adult sized humans, but they're in a, in a mental and emotional state of immaturity.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  So now we've moved from multiplicity to big. I got it.

• 27:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um. So wonderful, wonderful analogy there. So

• 27:42Speaker 01

  So as long as, so now we're moving on to chapter three.

• 27:44Speaker 00

  Chapter three is the big one.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:46Speaker 00

  Now we, we, go ahead.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Well, no, I, I, we're, it starts out with the serpent is what I was gonna say.

• 27:53Speaker 00

  Now the, it says the, the serpent is, is more, um, ahum is the Hebrew word, which can mean crafty, but also means nude.

• 28:07Speaker 00

  So, um, which, which is funny because we just got done talking about, uh, how they were, uh, the, the man and his wife were arumim.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:20Speaker 00

  And so now we're talking about how the serpent is ahum. More ahum than, uh, any of the other, uh, animals that the

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Which, by the way, like if it were, I mean, it must mean crafty because if it meant naked, you can't be more naked than the other wild animals in the garden. Like nakedness seems to be, unless we're talking about fur.

• 28:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, which, uh, snakes don't have no fur.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  They've got no fur.

• 28:46Speaker 00

  And what, and here's another unanswered question. Does this snake have legs?

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:52Speaker 00

  Because

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Put a pin in that.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Pin. Cause yeah, it does seem like that's, uh, this, this snake is, is walking around.

• 29:02Speaker 00

  So, and the snake comes up to the woman and says, because snakes talk, uh, in this Aesopian, um, primordial world. Did God say, you shall not eat from any tree in the garden? The woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it or you shall die. So another, two unanswered questions here. How did the woman hear about this? Right. Because she had not yet been created when God wagged the divine finger at Adam. And then additionally, what she says is not what God told Adam in verse 17,

• 29:44Speaker 00

  because she adds to it, "Nor shall you touch it, or you shall die." God's warning was, "Don't eat it." Now suddenly, you're not even allowed to touch it, or you shall die? So what is the audience to think here? Is, are we just so unconcerned with narrative congruity and integrity that we don't care? Did, are we supposed to imagine that Adam was the one who passed on the instructions to Eve? And Adam elaborated on the instructions in an effort to try to make it even extra threatening to Eve? Did God come and talk to Eve about this as well? And changed the commandment? Or did Eve hear it directly from God and then just decide to, she was gonna riff on it herself? You have no idea.

• 30:28Speaker 00

  Um, and, and those, and I, and I think that question is kind of critical to how we interpret the story in a way that allows us to answer the questions that we bring to the text. Sure. Because if you want to ask questions about, um, you know, how did Eve hear about it? What was the precise threat? Uh, is, why is Eve being punished the way she's being punished? All these things, you, we don't have the data to, to answer those questions. Um, "But the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'" So here's something interesting. The serpent was right! Right. What God said would happen, didn't happen.

• 31:13Speaker 00

  What the serpent said would happen, that's what happened. Yeah. Uh, and as, as much as people don't like that, as much as people get angry with me for pointing that out, like, the text itself acknowledges that, that the serpent was right. Because in verse 22, then the Lord God said, "See, the humans have become like one of us." Yeah. Which is precisely what the serpent said would happen. According to the text, what the serpent said would happen is what- What happened?

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Right. So the first liar in the book is God, not the serpent.

• 31:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. Whether you want to take the fact that what God said would happen, didn't happen to me, to be a lie, to be kind of that parental, oh, I don't want to do this to my kid, my boy, look what they did to my boy. I, you know, I'm gonna ease up a little bit. I'm, I'm just gonna make him, you know, sweat a lot.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:03Speaker 00

  Whether you want to interpret it like that, or you want to interpret it as a lie, what we can say is that the serpent was not the first liar. Because the serpent's telling the truth. Now, there's another thing. The serpent just says, you will not die. Does that mean ever? Does it mean you're not what God said about dying on the day you eat of it? You won't die that day, but you know, you might get hit by a bus the next day, you might die. Does, is he saying this will make you immortal? More questions we can't answer with the available data.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And there's, there's a lot. I mean,

• 32:41Speaker 01

  we didn't even get to questions like, why did God put that tree there? Just don't put the tree.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, that's, that's the McGuffin part of it. You know, the, as much as people would like this to be like a verbatim transcript of the dialogue that actually historically happened. It's a story that people told in the middle of the first millennium BCE.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  So I think you're right to call it a fable too. It has all of the trappings of a fable. It's not, it's not meant, I don't, I, you know, you and I have talked about this before, but I don't think that, I mean, and you said this too. It's, it's unreasonable to think that they thought of this as telling a true story. As opposed to telling a, a legend of how things started, or, or, yeah.

• 33:32Speaker 00

  Cause you, you can just look at the, the middle four or five verses of, of chapter three. And you can imagine that this story is a result of somebody coming to their parent and saying, hey, why do women, uh, give, why are they in pain giving birth? Children, why do men have to to work so hard to make food? And why do snakes not have legs?

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:56Speaker 00

  Well, sit on my on my knee, uh, uh, young whippersnapper. And let me tell you a tale. It starts off in the day that God made the earth and the heavens. Like, it's just a, it's just a, an ideology. It's a folk story that tells you how the world got to be the way it was when the story was told. And when the story was told, the men went out and and worked hard to, uh, to get food. The women had pain in childbirth and the snakes had no legs.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:25Speaker 00

  And and even even the the part that is, uh, known as the, um, Protavangelium, the proto gospel in verse, uh, fifteen, six, no, fifteen. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers. He will strike your head and you will strike his heel. That's been held up as this, this prophecy about Jesus. It's no, it's not. It's an ideology for why people don't like snakes.

• 34:48Speaker 00

  It's very basic. Don't make this into more than it what it was.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And and also, yeah, I got, it's funny because I got into a thing, uh, on threads just yesterday. I got into a little, a little spat, a little argument.

• 35:02Speaker 00

  A row.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Because, uh, a guy was, a guy posted just a thing that was just like, he, what he said was, why didn't God ever tell Adam and Eve that Satan was in the garden with them? So I wrote, because Satan wasn't in the garden with them, there was a snake. And and then another guy got into this whole thing with me and was just so mad. It was like, no, no, the snake is Satan. And I was like, okay, well, show me the verse then. And he's like, he goes into all of these things. And I'm like, yeah, but none of that is related to the verse that we're talking, to what we're talking about in Genesis, so.

• 35:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, probably went to Ezekiel 28 and Revelation 12 and 20. Like, that's the best they got.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:45Speaker 00

  And and none of that works.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  So, yeah, they didn't even have a concept of Satan as as the name of a figure.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:52Speaker 00

  Yet, but, um.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Anyway, we gotta get through this story. We gotta get through this story.

• 35:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, we gotta get through the story. So, yada, yada, yada. And I mentioned the bisque. So, the woman saw that the tree was good for food. It was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise. She took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Now, I emphasize who was with her because historically, translations have sometimes left that out for, for no actual reason. There is no manuscript that lacks it. Why would they leave it out? Unless, they don't want to acknowledge that when Eve ate the fruit, Adam was standing right beside her.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:40Speaker 00

  Going, "How's it taste? Does it taste alright? What's it like?"

• 36:43Speaker 01

  "You didn't die. I'm gonna try some of that."

• 36:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. Like, he was there, and, and if you decide that, that, you know, Adam, and we're later gonna see that Paul blames everything on the woman, even though it is the sin of Adam that, that is responsible for bringing death into the world. Paul blames it on the woman. "The woman was deceived, not the man." It's like, well, the man was sitting there with his finger up his nose, right next to her the entire time. I think that makes some people uncomfortable, and some translators in the past have been like, "Just put it out. Just leave the man out."

• 37:16Speaker 01

  He was, he was off tending to the garden. He was talking to the orangutan, and, and she just showed up with some fruit, and he said, "Try this."

• 37:26Speaker 00

  He was like, "Have you seen these lemurs? They're like mini ones of us with big tails." Orangutan means, uh, means jungle man.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Man of the forest. Yeah.

• 37:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, in, um, in Malay. So, anyway, sorry, that was, that was irrelevant.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  So, I, one of the things that I did want to mention, just a brief little sort of issue that I had when I was thinking about this earlier today, was just, how can God be mad at them for this, when he knows they did not yet have a knowledge of good and evil? How can anyone be mad at them? How can it be considered wrong for people who can't, who can't have had knowledge of good and evil, to have done a thing?

• 38:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and- Interestingly, within the LDS tradition, that what they, there's a part where Adam is told to do something. He doesn't know why he's supposed to do it. But he says, "I don't know. I was just told to do it." And that's supposed to be held up as like the, the paragon of, of virtue. You don't ask questions. You just do what you're told. So, so there will be people who will be like, "Well, she can follow orders." They can follow orders. They don't have to know whether it's right or wrong. Is it, well, deciding to follow orders requires some kind of cognizance of good and bad, right and wrong. So.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  You're making a choice there.

• 38:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And, and so, yeah, it is, that's part of the story. That is just inconvenient for the questions that we're bringing to the story. Now, if this is just a folk ideology, it doesn't matter. Why, why does, why did, you know, why did God get them in trouble for doing something that they didn't know they weren't really supposed to do, that that would be bad? Doesn't matter. This is why snakes don't have legs, Junior. That's the point of the story. That's what you asked me. Why don't those snakes have legs? It's because of this story.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Why was, why was mommy screaming when she had my little sister? Well, I don't know. She ate a fruit one time. There's a whole thing.

• 39:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, mommy's got her own issues to deal with. But it's, if you look at the rhetorical goals of the story, if you try to figure, what's the genre here? What are the authors trying to accomplish? If it has, if it's a folk ideology, then these questions are irrelevant. We're bringing questions to the text that it was never intended to answer. And so, we probably shouldn't be asking these questions that were never intended to be a part of the story. Like, if we could, if we could resurrect the author of this text and, and ask him, "Hey, what's going on with this?" I imagine the answer would be, "Uh, I wasn't thinking about that." Because that has nothing to do with why I told this story.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  Sir, this is a Wendy's.

• 40:23Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  It would be, it would be, "Why are you asking the moral implications of hop on pop?"

• 40:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, it doesn't matter what Pop's job was. The story is just about getting you to learn to rhyme words. So, yeah, I think all those questions, as critical as they are for so many of the ways that we try to understand the implications of these stories, and maybe there is part of that going on in the background. I'm sure that these authors were a lot more creative than we give them credit for. That doesn't necessarily mean that they were anticipating all the questions that we're bringing to the text. So, you know, some of these things, I think we're just not intended to ask those questions, much less get answers to them. But that brings up the grand question.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna say, cut you off, because the grand question is our second segment. Is it not?

• 41:23Speaker 00

  It is our second segment.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  All right, so, we're gonna leave that there with now the snake is crawling on the ground. You can read it for yourself. You can go find Genesis 3 if you want to learn.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  It's free online.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, how it all came to be. But now we're gonna move on to the biggest, you know, if asking our questions about how this story is playing out is a mistake, well, wait until we get to Augustine, because things are about to get nutty. So let's move on to what is that?

• 42:03Speaker 03

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• 42:32Speaker 00

  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.

• 42:54Speaker 04

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

• 43:03Speaker 05

  In January of 1915, Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance became encased in the ice in the Weddell Sea. And with that, his attempt to cross Antarctica would turn into a desperate struggle for survival that would last for nearly two years. Through determination, grit, and savvy, Shackleton would lead his men through a brutal winter, then over hundreds of miles of Antarctic ice, followed by 800 miles in a small boat across some of the roughest waters in the world. It is one of the most extraordinary and inspirational journeys in the history of exploration. If you want to learn about Shackleton's remarkable voyage and the details of his colorful life, check out our 10-part series on The Man. That is nine and a half hours of detailed material, perfect for anyone who loves stories

• 43:47Speaker 05

  of adventure, exploration, and survival. Find this story and many others at the Explorers Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts, or at ExplorersPodcast.com.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  And this week's What Is That? is the grand What Is That? The Thing That Plagues and Haunts Us All: The Original Sin. Now, I'm gonna start, I'm gonna throw this out. The Original Sin is neither original nor sin. Discuss.

• 44:20Speaker 00

  Talk amongst yourselves.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Talk amongst yourselves.

• 44:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  All right, so, let's get into this, because, yes, original, I think we all understand that original sin, like, is attributed to the characters of Adam and Eve, specifically Adam usually. You mentioned the Mormon tradition, the LDS tradition, which I think it's the second article of their faith, which says, "We believe that men shall be punished for their own sin and not for Adam's transgression." It was a big, bold stand against the concept of original sin.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  So let's, I guess, start with the question of like, is original sin in the Bible?

• 45:10Speaker 00

  Well, the concept of original sin obviously isn't. It is something that was, is triangulated after the Bible is, is completed by theologians who are, and, and my argument has long been that the, the apologists of the second century and on through the early church fathers, their primary goal was to systematize, create a systematic and philosophically satisfying and defensible articulation of the gospel. And so part of that means finding a way to make all these various pieces fit. I've talked a lot about the analogy of the Bible as a toy chest or a box full of Lego bricks.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:53Speaker 00

  From a variety of different sets. And we just dump that box over and then we go to work. And so in my opinion, the grand project of the apologists and the church fathers was try to use all, as many of the Legos as we can and build, who can build the best whatever.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:12Speaker 00

  And so part of that includes recognizing that we've got this story about Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden. And that is, that is the pivot from, we don't know the difference between good and evil. We know the difference between good and evil. Humanity is kicked out of paradise. And, you know, one of the, one of the main themes of so many of the, the moral and ethical and, and wisdom stories from this ancient time period was, why do we suffer? Why are we mortal? Why do bad things happen? And there are a lot of different answers to this question, but you know, you can look at Gilgamesh, you

• 46:53Speaker 00

  can look in Adapa, you can look in all kinds of different myths. And, and that's just a central lament of humanity, the human condition in this time period. So the Garden of Eden seems like it is the Bible's way of accounting for that. And where bad Things come from. However, it's not the, it's not the only player. It's not the only option. Not the only kid on the block.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:19Speaker 00

  Uh, we also have first Enoch and the Enochic tradition, which tries to use the story from Genesis six. Where the angels, uh, in, in the Hellenistic reading, these are angels, uh, in Genesis six, they're gods.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 47:36Speaker 00

  They, they come down and they have human, uh, they have children with human women. And in the Enochic tradition, they also teach humanity how to do all the bad stuff. Like eye shadow.

• 47:50Speaker 00

  Which is literally on the list. If you read the book of first Enoch.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Just so shameful.

• 47:55Speaker 00

  But weapons of war and all of this kind of stuff.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 47:59Speaker 00

  Um, are all taught by the angels to humanity. And this is kind of an alternative theory of the origin of sin.

• 48:07Speaker 00

  And it is phenomenally popular, phenomenally influential, and an awful lot of the New Testament is based on the traditions from the Enochic, uh, narratives, whether it's found in first Enoch or places like Jubilees, the book of giants, all this kind of stuff. So you have a, a competition, kind of, between the story of Adam and Eve and the story of the fallen angels as the introduction of evil into the world. And for folks like Paul, uh, Adam and Eve seems to win out. But one of the interesting things about the entire rest of the Hebrew Bible is the story of Adam and Eve never comes up ever again. Nobody ever talks about it.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Which is crazy.

• 48:55Speaker 00

  No way.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Like it does. Yeah. It seems, uh, it like, like they, they told the, the origin story, the two people, and then they're like, okay, done.

• 49:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  Like that's, cause it referenced back to like. Abraham, and there are references back to lots of different characters.

• 49:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  But just not those guys.

• 49:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, it's the kind of story where the kids like, well, that's, that's a dumb story for why snakes don't have legs. And the parents like, eh, what are you gonna do? And they go on and, and that, and that story does not become an incredibly popular story. You have a mention of Eden in Ezekiel 28, and the story is entirely different.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:41Speaker 00

  Because there's some guardian cherub that is in Eden that's supposed to be the Adam, the human. There are precious stones everywhere. It's a mountain.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 49:52Speaker 00

  None of that is in Genesis 2 and 3.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:57Speaker 00

  It's, and then you have a genealogy in Genesis 5, and then in 1 Chronicles, where it mentions Adam. That's it. There's no other telling of the story of the Garden of Eden. And then we get to Paul, and Romans 5, Romans 5, 12 through 21, has this kind of meditation on, on the significance of, of sin. And Paul says, "As by one man, sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned;

• 50:38Speaker 00

  for until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law." And, and this seems to be suggesting that there was no death in the world until Adam and Eve's transgression. And he blames it on the man. Because of one man, sin entered the world. He ignores Eve, and, and I think probably because he's trying to draw this parallel. By one man, sin entered the world. By one man, sin is, you know, resolved.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:12Speaker 00

  Jesus is the, the, the second man. And so, you want it to be nice and symmetrical.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  I guess so.

• 51:20Speaker 00

  So, so you say, yeah, this is one dude. And, and, or you can, you can do what the, the person who was pretending to be Paul in 1 Timothy 2:14. Uh, did where you can say Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. So.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does seem like, it does seem like that is a, a, a retrojection of, of an ideology back in like, like trying to, trying to make Paul a little bit, uh, a little bit more misogynistic than even Paul was willing to be.

• 51:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Or, or then it, then it occurred to Paul to be.

• 52:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. And as, as misogynistic as Paul could get, yeah, the, the authors of like Ephesians and first and second Timothy and Titus, uh, whether they were one author or different authors, uh, they are incredibly more misogynistic, but, um.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Well, although I will say this, uh, Paul in Romans five, it's a form of misogyny to be like, the woman couldn't have done a thing.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, we're, we're just gonna ignore the woman.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  There's no way what she did could have affected all of humanity, but, uh, but homeboy over there, he definitely rocked the world.

• 52:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. And for that reason, um, women shouldn't have credit cards and shouldn't be able to take out a mortgage until like the 1970s through 90s.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:49Speaker 00

  So, yeah, it's a, yeah, it's, it's problematic. Uh, and, and so we have this idea here, the presented by Paul, that the story of, of Adam and Eve is what brings sin into the world. And then we've got this other passage in Psalms, in the Psalms, Psalm, uh, 51, I believe it's verse five. I'm just gonna pull it up in, uh, in Yon Hebrew here. So the NRSVUE says, indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me. Uh, the KJV says, behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.

• 53:31Speaker 00

  And the Hebrew is, yeah, behold, in iniquity, I was, I travailed, or I writhed, probably just means I was born. And in cheta, which comes from chata, my mother conceived me. And so if we look at these three passages, if we look at the story of the Garden of Eden, if we look at this notion that I was conceived in sin and was born in iniquity, and we look at Paul's idea that because of the transgression of Adam, sin entered the world.

• 54:14Speaker 00

  We get this idea that humanity is sinful, not just from birth, but from conception.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Just straight out the chute.

• 54:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. Even before you come out the chute, when you're still on the other side of the chute, when you're cooking.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  That's sinful, sinful sperm. That's the problem, I think.

• 54:33Speaker 00

  Yes, they're, yeah.

• 54:36Speaker 00

  They didn't know what they looked like back then, so I'll save that joke for another day.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  The homunculus that the man has been depositing into the woman is already sinful.

• 54:47Speaker 00

  And so it's really a result of putting together the Lego bricks in a way that is philosophically defensible and satisfying and sophisticated. And we get this idea that this sin is passed on from parents to children, and it is something that we all inherit. And it's a way to account for the sinful nature of all humans without having to say that at some point along the way, every single human being is corrupted by something.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:22Speaker 00

  It's a way to say, that's the seed, and then it sprouts in all humans, so everybody gets this original sin passed on.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  When did this idea sort of coalesce into, like, you know, you mentioned these multiple different sort of... Concepts that were being, that were then triangulated to come up with this original sin idea. Do we know when that happened?

• 55:49Speaker 00

  So, we, we have this idea in the middle of the second century CE with like Justin Martyr. We have this idea that, that Adam and Eve's sin brought death into the world. And so, that is, and, and we get from Paul, the notion that the wages of sin is death. In other words, everybody who is mortal is sinful. And, and so there's this idea that we all have some kind of sin that, that we inherit as, as a result of being human. Uh, I think Tertullian is toward the end of the second century is one of the first ones to, to suggest that we inherit sin from parents.

• 56:28Speaker 00

  But it's not until Augustine, around the, uh, end of the fourth, beginning of the fifth century, uh, CE, that we get the phrase "original sin."

• 56:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 56:42Speaker 00

  Not in English, obviously.

• 56:45Speaker 00

  But, but I think Augustine is the first one to, to actually name this idea. And then the doctrine has to be developed from there because you have these ideas of, uh, you know, how is it passed along? Is it passed along, uh, from the mother, from the father? Do they both contribute? Is it, is it, uh, physical? Is it spiritual? Is it, how is it, um, getting from the, the parent to the child? And what exactly is the nature of the sin? And, and something that we get to in the Reformation, uh, is, does baptism absolve us of original sin? Does it make it go away? Or is this something that we always have with us?

• 57:27Speaker 00

  Because if, if the wages of sin is death, then baptism, if it, uh, got rid of original sin, would make us all immortal. And to my knowledge, it does not. So, um.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Not that I've ever seen.

• 57:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, and, and in all of this, we're basically just, we're just chasing down the implications of the result of previous chasing down of implications from the result of previous. Like it's, it's a never-ending cascade of, uh, we answered questions that don't really have answers in, in the scriptures that we, we think have all the answers. And so now we have to deal with the fallout of the answers that we came up with.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  Maybe I need to, I, I need to ask a question that's, that has always like, it just occurred to me that we need to talk about what the heck sin actually is.

• 58:20Speaker 00

  Oh gosh.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  I mean, if we're gonna talk about the original sin, and if we're gonna talk about how, you know,

• 58:28Speaker 01

  human nature being somehow sinful or whatever, like, what is sin? What are we even talking about? Cause I mean, I think we all feel like we have a, a floating sort of nebulous concept of it. It's when you do something bad, but you know, a baby can't have done something bad yet. So it's gotta be bigger than that. But also like, just what is it?

• 58:52Speaker 00

  So here's where I'm gonna say something that is, is going to annoy an awful lot of people.

• 58:59Speaker 00

  You can define sin about as well as you can define what six, seven.

• 59:07Speaker 00

  It's, it's a hundred percent vibes. Sin is whatever somebody says it is because you can, and, and this goes back to my concern with, with just attempts to define conceptual categories. Sin is a, is an abstraction and as an abstraction that is not reducible to anything observable, to anything testable. It can be whatever people want it to be. And, and so, you know, we can look at it etymologically. Uh, and, and we've, I, I even got on Rain, Rain Wilson, is that his name? Yeah. I got on Rain Wilson's case because on his podcast, he was like, it, it's an archery term. It means to miss the mark. It's like,

• 59:50Speaker 00

  okay, the word is an archery term, but it was not used, you know, you didn't say that because you were, oh, talking about missing the mark all the time. That's the etymological fallacy. Um, so.

• 1:00:04Speaker 00

  That's not helpful, but we can look at like in Hebrew, chata is the word. And this has to do with some kind of, in a, in a, a religious sense, and I don't like using the word religious for the ancient world, but it is certain behaviors that are religiously disqualified. Because of, and, and ultimately, I think it's got to be rooted in ritual. Because a lot of the language that we see for sin, particularly in the Hebrew Bible, but even when we get into the New Testament, has to do with uncleanness, with contamination, with, with things that make you impure.

• 1:00:45Speaker 00

  And, and that usually has reference to a, a kind of binary notion of you are qualified or authorized to engage in certain cultic activity, or you are prohibited from doing it. So that usually has to do with some kind of concept of purity. And so, um, in the Hebrew Bible, you see an awful lot of discussion where sin generates kind of a metaphysical contamination that gets it on the temple. And so the, a lot of the purification rites that are described in Leviticus and elsewhere are not about, have nothing to do with cleansing the people.

• 1:01:26Speaker 00

  It has to do with cleansing, conceptually, the sacred space. Because we've dimmed this thing and suddenly splurt, there's a bunch of metaphysical contaminant on the wall of the temple, and we've got to do the stuff to scrub it off. So, um, it seems to originate in the notion that there is, there are behaviors that make us unclean or impure when it comes to religious activity. And then that then kind of expands to include behaviors that are considered wrong. Whether it's, it's about offending other people, or offending God, or hurting other people, or doing things that are, that are considered, um, social no-nos.

• 1:02:12Speaker 00

  So, uh, It is, it is very ambiguous, but we've got these words.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  It is interesting that it, that that word sin isn't always, because in my mind, I associate it almost exclusively with sort of morality.

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  With like a, a, a commission of an act that is, that could be considered immoral or is somehow against morality. But it's interesting that that word doesn't have to have anything to do with morality.

• 1:02:38Speaker 00

  No, and, and I think when it comes to, because there's a deity that is dictating what is and is not sinful in the Bible, I, I, it, like divine command ethics would suggest that it's entirely arbitrary. Sin is whatever God says sin is.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:58Speaker 00

  And God can change their mind whenever they want.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  It doesn't have to, it doesn't have to be anchored in anything that we would consider morality.

• 1:03:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  It's sin, it's shellfish, and that's that, the act.

• 1:03:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, but, but that's not philosophically satisfying. So when we look in like the legend of Aristaeus, which is supposed to be about how the septuagint came to be, at night, the 72 scholars would dine and they would have these symposia with the leaders of Egypt and they would wax philosophic on how it's all systematic. And the shellfish have all these things in common and those things are, are metaphorically like this immoral thing. And so we abstain from eating the, those things in order to, to, you know, perform this refusal to engage in that immoral behavior.

• 1:03:50Speaker 00

  So you, you've always got people trying to explain why, which brings us back to the Garden of Eden story. We always have to, we, we got questions that we're bringing to the text and we need answers, even if the author would have been like, that's a dumb question.

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:05Speaker 00

  That has nothing to do with my story. But yeah, I, I think you get a, a slow kind of generalizing where initially it has to do with your ability to participate in ritual, but then it spreads out to become about morality and about right and wrong as you get more systematic. Development of of what it means for things to be right and wrong. And so the New Testament, I think, is heavily influenced by Greek thinking on what is good, what is bad, what is right, what is wrong. Um, and, you know, by the time you get to the folks who are writing the pastoral epistles, you're you're waxing philosophic on Aristotle's notion of the household, where you've got the potter familius, you've got the wife, you've got the children, you've got the enslaved folks. Those are the four things.

• 1:04:50Speaker 00

  And to be a good household is to have all those things in order and all the members of each of those different classes fulfilling their duties in their specific classes. And, you know, anything outside of that becomes sin. So I don't think you can you can define it. It's kind of like the idea of the atonement. Like, everybody's got different models for the atonement. And and you can't, there's no paper that you can rub on your atonement theory that'll turn pink. And you can be like, ah, I got it. This is the right one. You know, there's no acid you can dip it into and and be like, if it turns purple, that means we got the right one. Like, it doesn't work like that, because these are conceptual categories that literally are whatever people agree they are.

• 1:05:35Speaker 00

  So, um, yeah, that's not a satisfying answer. What is sin? Whatever you want, man.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  It's

• 1:05:42Speaker 00

  Whatever you want.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm pretty sure it's bad.

• 1:05:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, but when we look in the Bible, you know what is not sin? Slavery.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. Plenty of things that plenty of things are never labeled sin that we would find horrific.

• 1:05:57Speaker 00

  Polygamy. Um, we taught, we had a whole episode on on, uh, polygamy recently.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:04Speaker 00

  Um, and then, you know, every now and then you'll get a group come come along, be like, well, we we kind of like that.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  We want, we want to try that.

• 1:06:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  And then the rest of the country or the rest of the world goes, uh, no.

• 1:06:17Speaker 00

  Denied.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  Incorrect.

• 1:06:19Speaker 00

  Stairway denied. So, yeah, it's really about consensus. And if if you want to, you know, and now we've got folks, we've got our Joel Webens and and other, you know, uh, juvenile minds trapped in adult bodies that are like, well, we need to, women shouldn't be voting. That's that's sinful.

• 1:06:44Speaker 00

  By whose reckoning?

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 1:06:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, the, the, it's, it's really just about who you can get to agree with you. So when it comes to original sin and what sin is, when we get to the New Testament, Ha-martia is, uh, i- it's based on the idea of, uh, unclean or impure, uh, unrighteous. Uh, it's missing of virtue or missing the desired goal because of weakness, accident, or, or whatever. So, uh, it's gonna be different depending on the author. Uh, it's not reducible to a short list of necessary and sufficient features. So, uh, and the discussion that would need to be had to review all the different things

• 1:07:30Speaker 00

  that sin can be, I think would, uh, would infuriate both of us and take

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:07:36Speaker 00

  too many episodes.

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  Well, there you go. Uh, if you, the, yeah, well, I think what's nice about this conversation is that we've, we have, uh, gotten rid of the need to have a full episode about sin. But what we haven't done, I think, is gotten all the way through the discussion of original sin, because I don't, I, I guess one of the things that I wanted to know is, what problem are we solving when we decide that original sin is necessary? Like, what, like, what theological? I get that, like, we're trying to solve, we're trying to, you know, solve for why when it comes to, uh, you know, Romans 5 and

• 1:08:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  and stuff, but it just seems like, why can't humans, i- in the, in the Pelagius, uh, style, why can't humans be born morally neutral? Uh, and, and just sin being a, a choice, rather than it being human nature?

• 1:08:40Speaker 00

  And, and there are gonna be, uh, folks in the audience who have a lot more training in, uh, in moral philosophy.

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  Well, and yeah, this is like theology and that's not either of our wheelhouse, really.

• 1:08:51Speaker 00

  Um, and, and I, and I know of some folks, we could probably, uh, get on the show to, to get a better answer than, than what I would give. But what I would say is that in this time period, the nature of sin was, was considered no different from like the nature of blood for, you know, people in the enlightenment who are cutting open cadavers that they stole from the cemetery. Like it's, this is just something, we, we have to search this out and, and we have to figure out what this is because it's very real and we don't, we don't even know all the implications of, of the, the answers that we, that we develop for these questions. So, so I think that folks like Augustine and others, we're just

• 1:09:34Speaker 00

  trying to find the truth of, of what this was and how to think about it because they considered this something as real as, um, you know, your humors that are inside your body and, um, and, uh, yeah, and, uh,

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  And you walk around and

• 1:09:50Speaker 00

  Essential oils and, and

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  Suddenly you have sexual desire and you're just like, why do I have this?

• 1:09:56Speaker 00

  Yes. And, and you know, it has the, it has a lot of implications for how we decide what's right and wrong. Like, you know, these were debates that were going on, uh, among the most important philosophers of, of the ancient world who, who remain some of the most important, uh, thinkers about, about right and wrong.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  This discussion is still happening, right? Like it is a perpetual discussion to some extent.

• 1:10:21Speaker 00

  I mean, is it okay to like the Raiders? Of course not. But you know, there are people who for whatever reason are born with this inclination, concupiscence, uh, you can call it if you want, uh, a hurtful desire. But yeah, for whatever reason, there are Raiders fans out there. But you know, it's, it's, uh, it's the perennial question, why do people like the Raiders?

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 1:10:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's no answer.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  There is no answer. All right. Well, uh, I, once again,

• 1:10:48Speaker 00

  I'm gonna get a bunch of comments on that. As soon as I post this on, on Twitter, I'm

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  They're not, they're not even in Oakland anymore, man. Come on. Surely they're okay now.

• 1:10:57Speaker 00

  They're in Vegas enjoying the, uh, zero Michelin star restaurants, uh, for who knows how much longer.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was, that's a reference to a conversation that Dan and I had before we started recording. So there you go. Well, I think that we have managed to not get to anything.

• 1:11:16Speaker 00

  We've circled the question a lot.

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  And we, yeah, boy, did we talk about some stuff, but I don't know if we got to anything, but it's, I still liked it. If you, if you would like to have an original sin, go out and have one. I think, I think, I think sinning in an original way.

• 1:11:36Speaker 00

  I had two yesterday.

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  It's a fun challenge is what I think. So go, go and enjoy some original sin. If you would like to commit the sin of, of helping this podcast.

• 1:11:48Speaker 00

  Encouraging us.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  I encourage you to go to patreon.com slash data over dogma, sign up, get the, get access to an early and ad free version of the show, get access to the, the, the after party, the additional content that we make every week and also be one of our favorite people. So that's always a great thing to do. Thanks so much to Roger Goudy for editing the show and we'll talk to you again next week.

• 1:12:20Speaker 00

  Bye, everybody.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  Data over dogma is a member of the airwave media network. It is a production of data over dogma media LLC copyright 2025 all rights reserved.

• 1:12:35Speaker 00

  Hey there. I'm Travis Hoyam, one of the hosts of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. Each weekday on Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, we talk through the business news you need to know and the stories moving stocks on Wall Street. On weekends, we game plan personal finance strategies and dive into the industries shaping tomorrow and host the experts, authors and executives that understand them. Tune in for insights and a long-term perspective on investing and of course, stock ideas, plenty of them. To quote a listener, it pays to listen. Check us out and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.