Jesus is so Fulfilling!

Jesus fulfilled the law! It says so right there in Matthew. But what on earth does that actually mean? Different people have had vastly different interpretations of that idea, and the consequences of their ideas are significant! Are the old laws still in effect, or did Jesus abolish them? Should we throw away Leviticus? Should we stop eating shellfish? What does it mean??? Then, since we talked about Deuteronomy rules of war last week, we're going to take another look. We mentioned the Assyrian vassalage treaties, but only scratched the surface of that lunacy! What do the laws of God have to do with the terms forced on conquered territories by tyrannical rulers? Did God copy from the notes of Assyrian rulers? Is this connection valid or a stretch? And who is S. R. Haddon? ---- 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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• 1:41Speaker 00

  And then Asher Banipal came to power after S.R. Haddon, but...

• 1:46Speaker 01

  You're just making names up.

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  I haven't even gotten to Tiglath Paliser III, okay? So, that's one of the greatest, one of the greatest.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  I think that's one of the cats from the show Cats, isn't it?

• 2:08Speaker 00

  Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  And I'm Dan Beecher.

• 2:11Speaker 00

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

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Things are good. You know, I recently saw a a comment on our YouTube channel that just said, "I'm always concerned because Dan M. always asks Dan B. how he's doing, and Dan B. never asks Dan M.." So I'm fine. How are you, Dan?

• 2:42Speaker 00

  You know what? I'm doing all right. We've got, we've got normal, like, high school kid drama that, that we're trying to navigate here today. But, but other than that, yeah, it's, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. A little on the cold side, woke up to a little snow for the first time this year, apart from a dusting, I think, the day after Christmas. But, so I did have to scrape something off the car this morning. Although, actually, not, it wasn't that difficult, because now I have a new car that allows me to start it from my, from my app.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  15 minutes before I go out there, so it was a lot easier.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Nice and toasty by the time you get there, huh?

• 3:23Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. It was, it was quite fun. I've never used the heat warmers. I don't like having directly under me very hot, and then the edges that my thighs are touching cold. That is an off-putting sensation. So I don't know if other people are like, "Oh, yeah, give me more of that." But I don't like that, so. Anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, and also, this is why we don't actually, like, we don't actually care how we're, how we're doing.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  We, we've already been talking for a few minutes before we actually start the recording.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  So if you hear Dan ask me how I'm doing, and I don't reciprocate, it's because neither of us cares.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  What we do care about, however, is what's going to be on the show. And coming up, we've got a fun show today. We're going to be talking about the law being fulfilled. And what that means, what did Jesus mean when he said he fulfilled the law? Because I have been very confused about that and been, and I've been told very different things about what that ends up meaning. So indeed, so there's that. And then in the second part of the show, we're going to talk about, uh, well, I don't really know. We're going to, we're going to talk about vasillage. We're going to be talking about Deuteronomy, and I don't know how it all fits together.

• 4:42Speaker 00

  Well, the, the rug that really ties the room together is going to be the Vassal Treaty of S. R. Hadden. And, uh, and so that's a what's that segment where we're going to address what exactly that is?

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. All right. So a lot of fun coming up. Uh, let's dive in with our first thing. We'll call it a chapter and verse.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Okay, so the reason, Dan, that I wanted to do this, uh, topic is because I have heard, I've been told by multiple people, uh, from different religious backgrounds, all Christian, but different Christian backgrounds. And I've asked about, you know, a question about why is one law still very much in effect? And why is another law, you know, why is it okay to eat shellfish now and okay to blah, blah, blah. But, you know, obviously we can't, you know, stone our wives if they are whatever, or, you know, sell our girl, our, our daughters off into slavery, or any of those sorts of things.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Just because it feels like there's a, you know, that's a hypocrisy, or, or that's a question that needs answering. In a modern Christian context. And a lot of the time, what I got back was this idea that, well, Jesus fulfilled the old law, the law of Moses, the whatever. And that means that it doesn't apply anymore. And then I would ask, okay, but why do you want, why do you care then about things like the 10 commandments or whatever? And then they're like, oh, but that's still good law. And it just gets very confusing to me. I don't know what's happening. So, so I'm going to make you talk about it and figure out what Jesus is actually saying in Matthew 5.

• 6:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, and this is just one of multiple different ways that people have tried to, to rationalize the fact that Christians are really not hip to a lot of the legislation that is in the Hebrew Bible. And, and I think you're, you're going to bring up the division of the law into different categories and stuff like that. Because I think you said, you told me that you saw somebody who was trying to explain the fulfill along those lines, that there are some laws that were, that were there to be fulfilled the entire time.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And maybe we need to save the, the, the idea of the ceremonial laws versus the moral laws for, for its own segment. I don't know. Maybe, maybe that should be a thing.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  I thought, I thought we had done a segment on that already.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Oh, maybe we did. I don't know. I, oh, gosh.

• 7:21Speaker 00

  I've, I've got the, the, the pleasure of having a parallel social media life to the podcast. And after years of doing this, they begin to blend together.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  It all blurs together. But I mean, you know, if we retread a little bit of ground, we're only helping you remember it better, right?

• 7:41Speaker 00

  Please, please don't hold it against us. So we're in Matthew 5, which is the, the grand sermon on the mount.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, it's a good one.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  We've just got done with the beatitudes.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  His sermon in the hole was no good at all. But once he got on the mount, it was great.

• 8:00Speaker 00

  And we've talked about the salt of the earth, the light of the world, and on and on. And then we get to verse 17. I want to read 17 through 20.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  And then talk a little bit about what's going on here. "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish, but to fulfill; for truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whosoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

• 8:51Speaker 00

  And then it goes on to have the antitheses where Jesus says, "You've heard that Moses wrote, 'You shall not do this.' Well, I say unto you..." And then he escalates things.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:05Speaker 00

  It's not, it's not just, "You shall not murder." You can't even get angry. You can't even accuse your brother of being a bad person or something like that. And, and it's that first verse that a lot of people seem to get snagged on. And they don't seem to move past it. But one thing that I've pointed out in a number of videos that is that if you're trying to rationalize why Christians don't need to follow the law, you run into a problem with, with Matthew 5, because it certainly sounds like Jesus is saying, "Yeah, you do need to follow all the law."

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I guess one of the, I guess sort of a lot of it hinges on this question of what? The heck does he mean by, "I have come not to abolish, but to fulfill"? Like, what does that even mean? I don't, like, in terms of a law, I know what it means if it's like fulfill a promise, or fulfill, you know, an order of

• 10:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  french fries, or something.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. And the Greek word here is plido, which I'm looking in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, no, I'm looking at BDAG, not TDNT, I'm looking in BDAG. To make full, to fill, probably not that. To complete a period of time, fill up, complete, probably not that. To bring to completion that which was already begun, complete, finish. Yeah, we're getting, we're getting closer. And then to bring to a designed end, to fulfill. Here, like, a prophecy, an obligation, a promise, a law, a request, a purpose?

• 10:51Speaker 00

  So, in other words, if one of these things suggests, this is the, this is the circumstance we're trying to arrive at, or this is how things are going to be until this moment, it seems to be that. But Jesus also, and, and what I hear a lot of people say, because Jesus says, "Till heaven and earth pass away," not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, and in the KJV, this is jot and tittle. These are little, little flourishes on, on the letters. "Will pass from the law until all is accomplished." And, and what I hear people say is, well, Jesus accomplished everything that was supposed

• 11:33Speaker 00

  to be accomplished, and so that's the time when, when everything is fulfilled, or something like that. But we've got two. Chronological markers here.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 11:47Speaker 00

  Cause it doesn't just say until everything is accomplished. It says till heaven and earth pass away. So it sounds like.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a different thing.

• 11:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, we've got, we've got dual chronological markers here. And I think the, we really have to assume that these are supposed to be synonymous events. The heaven and earth passing, passing away is supposed to correspond to all being accomplished.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:12Speaker 00

  Which suggests, um, apocalyptics, uh, an apocalyptic vision. This is about everything wrapping up at some point in the future. It really sounds like, uh, Matthew has Jesus saying, none of this is going away. But it, some people think, well, Jesus did accomplish all. And so like, all of the requirements are subsumed in, in Jesus and they're still, they still exist. They're still active, but Jesus like holds them all within him. And no, you're not getting away and this is all I, I am.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  The laws are bouncing around inside of him and can't get to us somehow.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  So for some, for some arbitrary reason, they still need to exist, but they need to exist entirely, uh, consumed by Jesus's righteousness. The, the notion that, you know, this event, the, the atonement, his sacrifice once and for all, kind of trapped the laws within his being and, and they are still in force, but within a, a limited scope or, or something silly like that. Like the, that's a, I think that's a rather ridiculous way to think about what's going on here. Because if you do think of it that way, that the laws are, you know, the, the no jot or tittle has, uh, has been loosed or passed from the law.

• 13:36Speaker 00

  We just don't have to obey them anymore. If you want to interpret it like that, that kind of renders meaningless verse 19, where Jesus says, whoever breaks one of these will be called the least in the kingdom of God. And, and whoever teaches others to break them.

• 13:53Speaker 00

  Will be called least in the, in the kingdom of God. So it seems that what Jesus is saying here is that you have to continue to follow these laws until heaven and earth pass away. And that it's not just this notion that his sacrifice subsumes all of the law and, and frees us from the expectation of following them. Jesus quite explicitly says, no, you still have to follow them.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:19Speaker 00

  So I don't, I don't think that reading makes much sense. And then he goes on to, like we said, escalate things, saying you have to be, you have to be better followers of the law than the Pharisees.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:33Speaker 00

  And this is something interesting. We, we-

• 14:35Speaker 01

  And presumably the Pharisees were really good at following the law.

• 14:39Speaker 00

  Well, that's, that's the thing. The New Testament tries to make the, in some parts, tries to make it seem like the Pharisees were like the super strict followers of the law. But when you look at some of the other literature from early Judaism, the Pharisees were, were kind of mocked as, as kind of relaxed, loose followers.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  Or if not interpreters of the law. And, and which is probably one of the reasons that Jesus is saying Pharisees are not good enough. You gotta be better than the Pharisees.

• 15:10Speaker 00

  Those slouches, they're not, they're not going to make it into the kingdom of heaven.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  But at least it's a lower bar to clear. So that's nice. If, if they're, if they're not like super, if, you know, I was thinking that that's a super high bar.

• 15:25Speaker 00

  Oh, the Pharisees. Yeah, we got it.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I can do better than, I, look, I'm not great, but I can do better than one of those Pharisees.

• 15:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. As long as you're not talking about the Essenes. Like, I don't, I don't want to mess with, with them Essenes. But the Pharisees, I think we can swing Pharisees.

• 15:40Speaker 00

  And so, yeah, the, I don't think that reading makes much sense. It, it, it certainly-

• 15:48Speaker 00

  Seems to me to be an attempt to try to harmonize what's going on with Matthew with what's going on in the other Gospels, particularly Luke, because we have the Sermon on the Plain in Luke. But what Luke has Jesus say is not that "not one jot or tittle will fail until heaven and earth pass away." What Luke has Jesus say is, "it would be easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one jot or tittle of the law to fail." Interesting. And that's a different kind of dimension here. We're not talking about time, we're talking about difficulty.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  And that's something that you could argue Jesus is able to do. Because as the Creator of heaven and earth ostensibly, or at least the mechanism for the creation of heaven and earth, if that understanding of Jesus's role in creation already obtains within Luke, He has the authority to end heaven and earth. So it alters things a little bit. But if you demand that they all agree, then you really have to squint at Matthew until the edges blur and begin to run together with Luke and the others.

• 17:15Speaker 00

  So Dan, you've heard me talk ad nauseam about the fact that we've got construction going on at the house. I've heard the construction. Yeah, you've heard the construction too. We're finishing our basement, we're actually adding on to the house. We're doing some stuff in the backyard. And I was thinking the other day about how nice it was to be able to do this. Because I wanted to get a new car and I wanted to do these improvements to the house. But we had to pay off our old car and that took actual planning, which you know I hate. And so I really had to shift my thinking quite a bit when it came to my finances. And we had to set dates and we had

• 17:58Speaker 00

  To create a budget and it was so satisfying to actually make a plan. 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.

• 18:30Speaker 01

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• 19:15Speaker 01

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• 20:33Speaker 01

  I do want to understand what Matthew is saying, though. I think you're right that it doesn't make sense to say those laws don't, don't count anymore because somehow Jesus.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Jesus, I don't know what like followed them so perfectly that they're done. Like, how do you, like, I understand the fulfillment of a law. If it's a law that says, you know, X, Y, and Z need to happen and then that is fulfilled. But the fulfillment of a law that's like, don't do X, Y, or Z. Don't murder, don't, you know, steal or whatever. You can't fulfill a negative. You can't, you can't, you can just keep not doing it. But like, you can't, it doesn't end. And so, I don't know, that doesn't make sense. One of the things I wanted to ask about you, ask about was, uh, I do, I don't think that I've, I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Uh, I saw somewhere in, in my reading about this, that the law or, and the prophets as a, as a unit was sort of how they referred to the Hebrew Bible. Just a, is that true? Or, or did I just like, did they call it the law and the prophets or, or something like that?

• 21:51Speaker 00

  So this gets into a complex discussion of how, of the concept of scripture and the concept of canon. You do have either a two part or a three part concept of scripture in, in this period within Judaism, where it's either the law and the prophets or the law of the prophets and the Psalms. And so this, it's probably not indicative of a closed, complete canon, but it does seem to be indicative of a kind of general genre division of the different types of of literature that make up the early Jewish scriptures.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  So in the same way that we would refer to an Old and a New Testament, would it have been a common practice to refer to one sort of subdivision of Old Scripture as the law and another subdivision as the prophets? Is that what you're saying?

• 22:53Speaker 00

  Something like that, because you would, you would look at the Pentateuch and there are a few different divisions. You have like the, like the word Tanakh, that's, that's how many modern Jewish folks refer to their Bible. And it's an acronym for the Torah, the Nevi'im and the Ketuvim. And so that would be the Torah, which would be the law. The Nevi'im is the prophets and the Ketuvim are the writings. And so that would, that would be a three-part. And then you have some Christians who come in and say, no, it's four-part. It's the law, the prophets, the writings and the histories. Because you have folks who take like First and Second Samuel and First and Second Kings,

• 23:38Speaker 00

  and that would be lumped in with the prophets. But for a lot of Christians and they look at that and they're like, it's different enough, it should have its own category. And so we would say, no, those are, those are the histories, not, not part of the prophets. And so, yeah, it's a, it's a division of the genre-based division of the Jewish scriptures. And, and yeah, the, the idea is that this is, Jesus is addressing what is the relevance of all of the instruction, all the law that has been passed down to us in the Jewish scriptures? Do we still have to follow all of this? Because it's not just the 10 commandments. And you know, they count up like 613.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  Laws, but you can also find all kinds of, you know, you look in the proverbs and you've got all kinds of wisdom that is probably could be leveraged as something authoritative, or at least prescriptive. A lot of people do that today, talking about why it's good or bad to do this or that, because, you know, they'll appeal to a Psalm or a proverb or something like that. Not one of the 613 commandments of the Halacha, but, or at least the commandments that are interpreted within the Halacha, but, or Halachot, but it's, it's just good advice and it's in the scriptures, so therefore it should be authoritative.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  And I think what, what Matthew has Jesus doing is, is saying, no, this is, we're all, we're still sticking to all of this. And, and I think the idea of fulfill is, is it's, everything is going to be completed, fulfilled, when the heaven and earth pass away. And so at that point, there's no more context for the law. There's no more reason for the law. And so the law wraps up and it's finished. And so I, I think that's, that's probably what's, what's going on here. It's all done. We've, we've completed our, our

• 25:45Speaker 00

  turn in this mortal coil. And, and so there's no more reason to have a law. I think that's probably what's going on there. I don't think we can superimpose upon the author of the Gospel of Matthew, our own notion of, of eternity of heaven, the way we think about it as strumming harps in the clouds, or whatever the reformed folks have turned it into these days.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  I wonder if maybe in light of what you just said, because one of my questions is, what, what question is he trying to answer with this? And I wonder if maybe it's being asked of him as a prophet, in a time when it seems like eschatology is sort of...

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Heavy on the minds of people? Uh, I wonder if it's being asked, are you, uh, bringing about? I mean, he, he talks about himself bringing about the end times, right? Or, or somebody talks about him doing that, so.

• 26:50Speaker 00

  Well, well, yeah, you, you've got, Matthew has a, a pretty eschatological outlook, or at least there's an eschaton off in the, in the future. However, the, I, we're, we're kind of presupposing that this might be historical when we say Jesus might be responding to a question asked of him. I think more than likely what we have is the author aware that there are followers of Jesus out there saying, hey, guess what? We don't have to keep all the law anymore. And Matthew's like, oh, we'll see about that.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:17Speaker 00

  Um, where do you get to this part of what I'm writing? And I'm gonna have Jesus say this, that, and the other. And, you know, it's, uh, it's like if, you know, you can imagine, uh, Jesus being like, and some guy named Dave will borrow something from Matthew and not give it back? And that guy sucks. Like, it's not because somebody asked Jesus about this. It's because the author wants to achieve something with their composition. And, uh, and so this is, this is the perfect opportunity to, to slide this into, uh, the narrative when he's on his, his, uh, sermonizing soapbox.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  But I guess it doesn't actually matter to me for the purposes of my question, whether this is just the author of Matthew sort of making this up, putting some words into Jesus's mouth to conveniently serve, uh, a need, you know, some sort of theological need that he needs to convey? Or if it's actually a historical thing that happened and that Jesus said, I'd like, to my mind, it doesn't actually matter, uh, because it, the, because what I'm still trying to get at is like.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Is he, is he, yeah, I mean, it's, it's that it's like people are starting to think in their minds, maybe this is the end of, maybe, maybe, you know, Jesus represents the, the cataclysm, the end of everything, and we can just relax on all of the laws. And Jesus is saying, nope, sorry, you, you can't relax on the laws. Uh, I'm gonna make them even harsher, even more.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it, and at the time that this is being written, the, the gospel is already being shared, um, among the Gentiles. And so you've got a lot of Gentiles coming in and they're the ones who were like, don't like that circumcision thing. I'm gonna, can I, can I not do that? And, uh, and, and that's what Paul was, uh, that was Paul's big challenge decades before these texts were written. And so I think it's, it's not so much an inner Jewish exegetical thing where Jewish folks were like, well, now that we have Jesus, I guess we don't need any of the other stuff. I, it's a social thing. It's because we're now bringing Gentiles in.

• 29:35Speaker 00

  And to make, to open the door to Gentiles, we have to consider what's, what's required of them. And, and I think you have people scattered across the entire spectrum of, yes, they must keep every last law all the way to, no, they don't have to keep any law.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Well, that, I, I was gonna bring that up. That is fast, because I did remember like, Paul talking about, you don't have to keep the kosher eating laws and you don't have to, do the Gentiles have to get circumcised? Ah, it's probably fine. And so, and, and I, what's funny is that in my mind, probably just because of the order that the books are in, in the book, I was thinking of Matthew as predating Paul, but obviously not. So is Matthew, is the author of Matthew trying to refute Paul's assertion that it's okay for the Gentiles not to follow some of these laws?

• 30:31Speaker 00

  I think that's a reasonable way to interpret what's going on. Matthew is coming around Eighty, eighty to ninety CE, somewhere around there. Paul was in the, was mostly active in the fifties and early sixties CE. And so Paul's, the followers of Paul are probably getting pretty large. And I think the Gospel of Matthew is probably pushing back from the other end of the spectrum. Saying, no, it turns out Jesus doesn't want you to, to not follow these laws. And anybody who teaches you otherwise, Paul, you know, is gonna be leased in the kingdom of hell. Like, I think that's a reasonable understanding of, of the background of this.

• 31:13Speaker 00

  I would have to, I'm sure there are New Testament scholars out there who would know a lot better than me where this, this discussion stands precisely. But, but I think that's probably a reasonable question to ask. And, and it makes sense to me. And, and we have, you know, in the other Gospels, they're a little closer to Paul than, than the Gospel of Matthew is. But Matthew is the place where you find a lot of stuff about making sure you keep the law. So for instance, when, when Matthew has Jesus scold the Pharisees, saying you tithe dill and cumin. And, you know, you, you neglect the weightier matters of the law, justice, righteousness, mercy.

• 31:55Speaker 00

  He says, the, you should make sure you do these without leaving the other undone. In other words, the, the Mathaean Jesus is still saying, yes, you still tithe. You still have to do the tithe. So go ahead and tithe your mint and your dill, but just make sure you're being exactly as precise with the other weightier matters of the law. And, and there's no part of Matthew where Jesus actually endorses the just straight up rejection of any mosaic law. He, there are reinterpretations, but not as a way to say, we're, we're getting a, you know, we're doing away with this. But, oh, you guys have been understanding it wrong. It's actually like this.

• 32:40Speaker 00

  There's, there's still always gonna be an expectation that, that the person is to meet. It just might not be the way it is, has been traditionally interpreted. So that, you find that throughout Matthew. You don't find it in the others. You don't have references to continuing to, to tithe dill and cumin and stuff like that in the other Gospels.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  I guess, you know, I think that one of the things about this discussion that... That is something that we circle back to a lot, which is that there is, you know, the tension that I described early on with me having conversations with Christians about things that seem to be conflicting in their theology. I think that it's very clear that the Bible itself has plenty of those tensions where it is not clear, one book to the next, what the, what, like, you have to bend it to come up with a biblical, a unified biblical

• 33:37Speaker 01

  theology, where, where, you know, probably the, the more, the more honest look at it, and, and maybe the more useful, but more complicated look at, at the theology of the Bible is just that, uh, it's not, it's, it's, it's not clear. It argues with itself about it. Yeah. And, and it should be seen as a conversation more than anything declarative, declarative, or, or, or, or final.

• 34:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think the reason Matthew writes a gospel, or whoever the author of the gospel of Matthew was, it's not because Mark got everything right. It's precisely because, wait, what about all this other stuff? And oh, I disagree about that. And so Matthew is really, it is putting up another, it's a volley. It's kind of a discursive volley. Mark's like, ha! And Matthew goes, uh! And they're, they're kind of going back and forth. And, and suddenly Luke drops onto the court and goes, ha! And, and then John is like, I got you all beat.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  And John's just sitting in the back with a cigarette waiting.

• 34:46Speaker 00

  In the shadows.

• 34:50Speaker 00

  But, but yeah, I think what happens is you've got all these folks making their case for a way of thinking about Jesus's identity and mission, and the responsibility of those who are going to follow Jesus, and they're different cases. And then when that was all done, all the followers of Jesus were like, We need to come together, guys. Why can't we all just get along? And they took the text and went, okay, now they're all one collection. Now let's figure out the one thing that they all mean. And they didn't mean one thing. They meant a bunch of different things. And so now we look back at the text and we impose this unifying framework of of inspiration, inerrancy, univocality, hystericity.

• 35:34Speaker 00

  And you have no choice but to just meddle with and do violence to what the authors were trying to get across and what they were trying to accomplish. And I think that's one of the biggest problems with the presupposition of univocality is that it basically says, I'm in charge of what this is allowed to say. And, you know, if James says, I disagree with Paul, we gotta, we gotta figure out a way to screw with James's text until we can understand it as being in perfect harmony with Paul. And I think that's problematic.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's just so much like you're just gonna do your own brain a big favor. If you just relax and go, okay, they disagree. So I'm gonna figure out what's meaningful to me and make it work in my mind. But like, like the cognitive dissonance is too painful. It's just, so, yeah, I don't know.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  Just treat yourself, just like let that weight just vanish.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  And, you know, there are a lot of things that people are white knuckling because they, it's tied up with that conception of scripture. But good golly, you're gonna shorten your lifespan. If not the, just the acid reflux that you're gonna cause by just bearing down on this, this understanding of scripture. For all that is good and holy, just let the text be what they were intended to be. It's so much, it's so much easier and also I think more interesting.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:13Speaker 00

  Because if you get to say, wow, what is, what is this author trying to do here? Without saying whatever it is, it has to agree with everything that I'm bringing to the text and my pastor and my parents and my wife are telling me I'm not allowed to to deviate from. You know, you, it's, it's pretty milquetoast, it's pretty bland, but, but if it can be whatever it, the author wanted it to be, I think it's just so much more fascinating and, and intellectually honest. So, but you know, that's just me.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  It's just we. It's just the official position of this podcast.

• 37:49Speaker 00

  The royal we, if you will.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  It is, it is the royal, it is us. All right, well, that, that was fun. Let's move on to our, what is that?

• 38:04Speaker 02

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• 39:03Speaker 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.

• 39:26Speaker 04

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

• 39:34Speaker 01

  So as we said, this week's what's that is about is about this this darn treaty and how I don't get me first of all, should we just start with the treaty? Where do we start?

• 39:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, let's start with the treaty just to kind of lay the and then and then we'll kind of cover some some background. So this is the Vassal Treaty of Essar Haddan. Now, Essar Haddan was a ruler in Assyria.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  You're sure that Essar Haddan isn't a like a sci fi novelist or something? That's what it sounds like.

• 40:08Speaker 00

  S. Robert Haddan.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:11Speaker 00

  I oh, gosh, if I ever am involved with making a TV show, I'm going to have a character named S. Robert Haddan and then nobody will get it until they go S. R. Haddan. And he will be he will be a powerful man.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:26Speaker 00

  And he will accede to some manner of authority around 681 BCE. And then he'll reign for for about 12 years. So this is early 7th century BCE. A ruler of the Assyrian Empire. He was preceded by Sinakarib. Everybody knows who Sinakarib was.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  We've talked about him. I don't know if that means we know who he was, but we've definitely mentioned Sinakarib a bunch of times.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's the one who who swung through and caused problems for Lachish, for instance, and then for Hezekiah toward the end of the 8th century BCE. And then Ashurbanipal came to power after Essar Haddan, but.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  You're just making names up.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  I haven't even gotten to Tiglath Pileser III. Okay, so. That's one of the greatest, one of the greatest.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  I think that's one of the cats from the show Cats, isn't it? I don't know. I'm pretty sure. I saw it back in the 80s. I don't know.

• 41:26Speaker 00

  It was and you were probably pretty high.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  As a six year old, I was super messed up.

• 41:31Speaker 00

  Well, you grew up in a in a family of academics, so they were probably experimenting with all kinds of.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  I think that's fair. I think that's fair to say. They're all dead now. They can't defend themselves.

• 41:46Speaker 00

  But, uh, so he's important because he kind of, he didn't really invent this thing, this convention, but he really mastered it in a way that later Israelite scribes would admire. He, uh, he mastered the art of vassal treaties and vassalage is, is basically, on a geopolitical scale, it is some henchmen coming into a mom and pop shop downstairs, downtown, excuse me, or downstairs, I don't know, um, and saying, this is such a lovely establishment.

• 42:26Speaker 00

  We would hate for something bad to happen to it. So you pay us so much a month in protection money and we will protect you from us.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  We will keep you safe from the us's that are wandering the streets, uh, stealing from you.

• 42:42Speaker 00

  It is, it is basically the policy that some people in parts of the world are trying to re-implement with their idea of who's gonna stop us from taking over Greenland.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, or Venezuela.

• 42:59Speaker 00

  Or Venezuela or Cuba. Whatever happens, happens. Yeah. At some point, he's gonna go for Puerto Rico and people are gonna go, okay, that's, that's enough.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  You've gone too far, sir.

• 43:11Speaker 00

  You, you know that this is already a part of your country.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  We already have it.

• 43:16Speaker 00

  But, uh, it, it was basically a larger nation going in and beating up on a smaller nation and saying, like, here's the deal. You work for us now. You're gonna pay us and, and it could be money. It could be gold, silver. It could be sheep. It could be olive oil. It could be whatever. Every year, this is how much we want from you and we will not beat you up further. And then you also have to, um, make sure that you're looking out for our interests. So if, if the neighbor on the other side of you, uh, starts talking bad about us, you need to let me know so we can go beat them up too. And then you're gonna send us soldiers whenever we go out to, to battle and all this kind of stuff. It was not an enviable position to be in.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, we first talked about this, I think, when we talked about, uh, the moment in Judges where, uh, where Moab threw off vassalage.

• 44:08Speaker 00

  Right.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Uh, and told, and told Israel to... Go vassal itself and uh and and then there was a whole war about it and

• 44:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  So uh so yes, it it I like that it's called a treaty rather than a forced uh mechanism like like treaty sounds so nice and so voluntary.

• 44:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, well, wait till you hear about some of the details of of this treaty.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:38Speaker 00

  Because um like we have several versions of it. It's not it's not like there was one version that you they just copied and pasted everywhere they went. They uh it was drafted anew every time for every individual, but there were a lot of uh elements that were pretty consistent. But here's a preamble to one of them. Um, the Treaty of Esar Haddan, King of the World.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  King of the World.

• 45:03Speaker 00

  King of the World, yes, very Titanic.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  It's a great title.

• 45:09Speaker 00

  King of Assyria, son of Sinakarib, likewise King of the World. King of Assyria with whom Barash, city ruler of Neshimarti, etc. His sons, his grandsons, with all the Neshimartians, etc. The men in his hands, young and old, as many as there are from sunrise to sunset. All those over whom Esar Haddan, King of Assyria, exercises kingship and lordship with you, your sons and your grandsons, who will be born in days to come after this treaty. And then we get into the next thing we do is is go and uh name all the divine witnesses to this.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 45:43Speaker 00

  In the presence of Asher and Anu and Il and Eya and Sin and Shamash and Adad and literally dozens of names. Uh by all the gods of Nineveh, by all the gods of Kala, of by all the gods of Arbella and and on and on and on.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 45:58Speaker 00

  And uh

• 45:59Speaker 01

  We're just gonna make sure that everyone's accounted for. So if you think that you're gonna get away with this and your god will not will will not have seen you. No, no, no. All the gods.

• 46:12Speaker 00

  Now, now here's a, we get down to like, section 24. "You shall love Ashurbanipal, the great crown, okay, the great crown prince designate, son of Esar Haddan, king of Assyria, your lord, like yourselves." So Esar Haddan is saying, "My son is, is our, is the point man here, and you shall love him."

• 46:34Speaker 01

  He's in charge of you, and you have to love him.

• 46:37Speaker 00

  "Love him like you love yourselves." And this is, this covenant love idea ought to be ringing some bells with people who are familiar with the book of Deuteronomy.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 46:49Speaker 00

  Because it's very much the same idea, the, what we get in Deuteronomy 6:4, the Shema, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, might, and strength." And, and we have a variation on the "like yourself" with the second great commandment, "You will love your neighbor as you love yourself." So, the, the point I'm trying to make here is that a lot of critical scholars, for, for a long time now, have been convinced that the book of Deuteronomy was basically patterned after the Vassal Treaty of Esar Haddan, at, at least as the main kind of template for what was going on. Because a lot of the segments kind of follow the same themes, and even a lot of the language

• 47:34Speaker 00

  has a lot of significant overlap, up to and including this idea that, "Look, this, this is the, um, the sovereign, and then the vassal, we're making a deal, we're making a treaty, a covenant, and your main responsibility is to love me, as I have loved him."

• 47:53Speaker 01

  So, what we're saying, I mean, Deuteronomy, uh, for those who are not tremendously familiar with the Bible, ends up being a, a, basically a, a book of laws, it's a...

• 48:06Speaker 00

  It's the, yeah, Deuteronomy is, uh, comes from a Greek word that basically means, uh, second law. And, and it is supposed to have been, uh, composed, or at least dictated by Moses toward the end of his life. In fact, the last chapter is, uh, like narrates his death. But it's supposed to date to, or after the Exodus, uh, the, the 40 years wandering before everybody enters into Israel. So 1,200 BCE, 1,400 BCE, depending on where you imagine this, uh, what time period you imagine this happened in.

• 48:44Speaker 00

  The reality is that it was probably brought together under King Josiah toward the end of the 600s BCE. And, and this, this is why the, the resonances with the Vassal Treaty of Esar Haddan is such a problem for folks who think it is historical. Uh, because it very clearly is, is drawing a lot of inspiration from texts that would not exist for anywhere from 700 to five, uh, to, yeah, 500 years later. So the, the Book of Deuteronomy is basically, Esar Haddan is God. And then the Israelites are whatever vassal nation Esar Haddan has just whooped up on.

• 49:29Speaker 00

  Uh, and there are a few different things to, um, that we can compare here. Let me pull up, uh, Deuteronomy 5:7, for instance, uh, says,

• 49:42Speaker 00

  sorry, I'm looking for Deuteronomy in the New Testament. That's not going to work, at least according to accordance, doesn't know what they're talking about. "Deuteronomy 5:7, you shall have no other gods before me." That should sound familiar. That's Exodus, Chapter 20 as well. Uh, but we can look in, uh, Segment 17 of, uh, the Vassal Treaty of Esar Haddan. "And we find, 'You shall hearken to whatever he says and do whatever he commands, and you shall not seek any other king or any other lord against him.'" Is basically saying, "I am the captain now." Right.

• 50:24Speaker 00

  And you shall, you will not go looking for other captains. And then, section 25, "Do not place any other king or any other lord over you." So, this resonates quite a bit with the, "You shall not have any other gods before you." We can go to, let's see, Deuteronomy 30, verse 19. Pull that up. And this is, "I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live." And this is a famous part of Deuteronomy. God gives the law and then says, "Okay,

• 51:07Speaker 00

  if you do everything, you get these blessings. If you don't, you get these curses." And guess what? That's in the Vassal Treaty as well. We can look in, but here, what they're doing is calling upon heaven and earth. But we have Esar Haddad calling upon all the gods of heaven and earth as witnesses to this treaty. So, again, you've got some parallels there. Deuteronomy 28, this is the chapter that famously has the curses in it. And we have one curse, "In the desperate straits to which the enemy siege..." And the curse is basically, "You're going to be constantly under siege from enemies."

• 51:50Speaker 00

  "In the desperate straits to which the enemy siege reduces you, you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your own sons and daughters, whom the Lord, your God, has given you." And that also happens to be in the Vassal Treaty of Esar Haddad. Where we have, as part of the curses, "If you don't do these things, may Zar Panitu, who grants name and seed, destroy your name and your seed from the land," which by the way is Deuteronomy 29. But in section 47, "May a mother bar the door to her daughter. In your hunger, eat the flesh of your sons. In want and famine, may one man eat the flesh

• 52:34Speaker 00

  of another. May one man clothe himself in another's skin." May dogs and swine eat your flesh. May your ghost have nobody to take care of the pouring of libations to him. So, um, pretty nasty curses going on here and Deuteronomy is-

• 52:48Speaker 01

  I like that it really didn't build to a crescendo. That was an anticlimax. Like you don't, and you don't get drinks in the afterlife. So ha on you.

• 53:00Speaker 00

  But, but that was a big deal because your afterlife, now, now here you gotta think of Coco. The ofrenda is basically saying, you're not gonna have anybody taking care of your ofrenda.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:11Speaker 00

  And, uh, and that's basically saying your afterlife is going to disappear like a fart in the wind.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you're gonna be thirsty. You're gonna be a thirsty boy.

• 53:21Speaker 00

  Because you needed, you needed food and drink and you needed your name invoked in order for your afterlife, uh, to continue on. So, um, yeah, we've got, we've got a lot of points of contact between these two, which is why, uh, most critical scholars are in pretty widespread agreement that Deuteronomy is, is picking up a lot of inspiration from what is going on in the Vassal Treaty of Assarhat, which means the idea of covenant comes from this. So when people talk about covenants in the Bible, they're talking about the borrowing of the idea of vassalage and vassal treaties from the empire of Assyria.

• 54:02Speaker 00

  And that then becomes the metaphor for your relationship with God. God is the one who comes in and says, this shore is a lovely establishment.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:11Speaker 00

  I would hate for something bad to happen to him.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a, there's a meme that has gone around for years in especially-

• 54:17Speaker 00

  Oh, is this Jesus knocking on the door?

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:19Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. That's what I immediately thought of.

• 54:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Jesus, and for those of you who don't know, uh, it's Jesus knocking on the door and saying, hey, let me in. Uh, or why? So that I can protect you. Against what? Against what I'm gonna do to you if you don't let me in? Yeah. It's that idea.

• 54:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  But I mean, obviously, Deuteronomy is sort of portrays this vassal overlord of God as a benevolent, loving thing. Does S.R. Haddon also have a sort of, I'm your benevolent overlord? Or is it just like, I will murder you if you don't do this?

• 55:03Speaker 00

  You do have some parts where he does talk about, you know, as long as you do this, we will, as long as you swear, you will not make rebellion or insurrection, then there will be peace, basically.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 55:16Speaker 00

  That you will have what you need. It's not like we're gonna come, you know, throw a party for you. It's not like we're gonna, you know, you're gonna get $2,500 cash back upon signing. Like, that's not, that's not part of the thing, but, but it is, we will not destroy your nation.

• 55:35Speaker 01

  Well, and I guess the fact that Deuteronomy has sections of curses is, is maybe not as benevolent as one might imagine God to be. Like, that feels, that feels like, there's, there's definitely some stick, and not, it's not all carrot on this.

• 55:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And the carrot is really just kind of token carrot. It is, because-

• 56:02Speaker 01

  It's mostly stick.

• 56:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, the real point is the stick. And, and that's what you get with, and even today, you know, when, dang it, I keep forgetting his name. He's the child star who's now the fundamentalist Christian who's on, who I've talked about recently. He recently came out and said he doesn't believe in-

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Kirk Cameron.

• 56:28Speaker 00

  Kirk Cameron, that's the one. Kirk Cameron, he was saying that-

• 56:34Speaker 00

  It does not, he can't believe in a merciful God that would torture someone for eternity for insignificant violations of their law. And, and somebody who is defending eternal conscious torment retorted, no, it actually demonstrates God's mercy. Because you have to imagine the punishment as being the most horrific thing you can ever imagine, and that makes God's salvation all that much more merciful.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:07Speaker 00

  Like that, this is what you could be getting if it weren't for God. But if what you could be getting is that you just cease to exist, then that makes God's mercy not all that powerful. And I feel like that's a, like, yeah, that's a way to think about it. If you're just really, really concerned for trying to make God sound, uh, trying to instill fear in people. Like, that is, that is saying, well, wait a minute, we need the stick.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:39Speaker 00

  That makes that tiny little bit of carrot, if the stick is so big, that makes the tiny little carrot all that much more attractive. If the stick and the carrot-

• 57:48Speaker 01

  Look at how great this carrot looks. Oh my gosh, it's the most amazing carrot.

• 57:52Speaker 00

  It's just a baby carrot. It didn't even grow that way. We had to cut it down to that size. But, you know, look how attractive that is when the alternative is this giant stick. But if the, if the carrot is, is, you know, bigger than the stick, well, that's, what kind of incentive is that? That's not, what kind of decision is that? And so I find that to be, to be highly problematic, the way that people are trying to rationalize what ultimately comes down to identity politics. It's the tradition they're committed to, and they're gonna make that tradition sound good, no matter how ridiculous they have to sound trying to make the case for that.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, you know, I mentioned that I'm in, I'm in atheist circles, I run in atheist circles. And I think one of the things that sort of resonates with, with people who take an outside look at biblical law, is that it becomes clear that it is-

• 58:50Speaker 01

  You know, I hesitate to say tyrannical, but I mean, if it's patterned after a Vassalage treaty, there's tyranny there. You know what I mean?

• 59:03Speaker 01

  That feels emotionally right to me that there is a parallel between

• 59:12Speaker 01

  between the sort of the laws of of Deuteronomy and, you know, what's being laid out by a conquering nation to the conquered.

• 59:23Speaker 00

  Who were world famous for their brutality.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:27Speaker 00

  And, you know, if you if you ever find yourself in the British Museum, you've got to ask where the Lachish reliefs are.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  I remember those. Yeah.

• 59:37Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, you've seen them. Right. Haven't you? That commemorates. And then you got to go to Lachish. But that commemorates that commemorates Sinakirib's taking of this of this city. And and you can still go to the city and you can see the siege ramp that they built up. And you can go look at some of the buildings and and on the but on the reliefs, you can see what they're doing. They're they're skinning people.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:04Speaker 00

  They're cutting off heads. They're throwing babies from city walls. They're doing all of this stuff while Sinakirib literally sits on a throne and gets fanned with palm fronds and, you know, sipping on Mai ties or whatever.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:18Speaker 00

  And, yeah, they are famous for their brutality, the entire kind of rhetorical leverage of the Book of Jonah is the fact that the Assyrians were so hated for their brutality and their viciousness. But and yeah, the Book of Deuteronomy takes a look at it and goes, we should make God like that.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  That sounds like my version of God. I like that. I'm gonna keep some of that.

• 1:00:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, and, uh, and you know, you sympathize more and more with Job.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  Indeed.

• 1:00:53Speaker 00

  And then less and less with his friends. But the, yeah, so that's the, uh, the, a little bit about the Vassal Treaty of, of Essar Haddan, um, and, uh, and his son Asher Bonny Paul. And, but you definitely want to check out Tiglath Paliser III.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, check them all out. Uh, it's the best names that, that we have access to. Anyway, uh, I think that's fascinating. I, that was a, that's, that's a really fun discussion and I'm guessing some people will want to, uh, comment and get mad at us and all that sort of stuff.

• 1:01:33Speaker 00

  We will, we will take any corrections that are, that are accurate, happily and humbly.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  Yes, indeed. I, I don't know how humble we are, but we'll, but we'll, we're humble enough to take correction when it's, when it's accurate. Uh, anywho, thanks so much for tuning in. Uh, if you would like to become a part of making this show happen every week, the best thing you can do is head on over to, uh, to patreon.com slash data over dogma, where you can get early ad-free versions of every episode as well as access to our, uh, weekly bonus content that we do, the after-party. It's a lot of fun and, uh, and you can ask us questions and, and, and get, uh, a really good, there's a really good chance you'll get an actual

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  answer from us, which is not always the case because we're us and we try, but we, we're not great at everything. And, uh, it's a, anyway, it's a vibrant, wonderful community over there and also it helps keep the show going and that's vital to us. So thanks so much to all of our patrons and, uh, go be one and we will, oh, and also thanks to Roger Gowdy for editing the show and we'll talk to you again next week.

• 1:02:53Speaker 00

  Bye, everybody.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

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  Hey everybody, Jason Snell sitting in for Leo Laporte this week on MacBreak Weekly. There's so much going on in the Apple world, so much, a little too much if you ask me. Look, next week, they're doing their pro event. OLED touchscreen MacBook Pros, a touchscreen Mac, is it even possible? Plus, maybe a new iPad Mini, people love the iPad Mini. But that's not all. We're still dealing with the fallout from last week when Apple introduced the $299 Apple TV 4K and the Home View. What's the app story there? And on top of all of that, it's iPhone Duo week. Did we get our orders in? Are we getting it before the new year? We will find out all of that this week on MacBreak Weekly. Get it at twit.tv or wherever you get your podcasts.

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  Hey, it's Micah Sargent from Tech News Weekly, and this week, we go hands-on with Jennifer Patterson-Tuey. Jen was at the Apple Welcome Home event and had an opportunity to try out Home View, the new device from Apple for the smart home. We talk about how it's kind of like a big Apple Watch tied to a low HomePod Mini, and we also talk about the other gadgets Apple announced that day, including the Apple TV 4K at its most expensive price, the HomePod Mini 2 at, well, its less saturated colors, and so much more. Then, I've got a quick little story about how eight states have decided to sue OpenAI as part of a consumer protection

• 1:05:10Speaker 07

  lawsuit, but how it's really about getting the reins on training AI with AI. You can check out Tech News Weekly by looking for Tech News Weekly wherever you get your podcasts or by heading to twit.tv/tnw.