The Bible Gets Sexy!

Look out, romance novelists, because the Bible is coming for your jobs! That's right: Data Over Dogma is finally covering the Song of Songs, and it's fifty shades of ancient erotic poetry hotness! But wait- isn't it supposed to be read as an allegory for the love between God and Israel? Or between Jesus and the church? And isn't it called Song of Solomon? Maybe. But maybe not. Maybe it's just supposed to be sexy love poems with no higher purpose than that. You'll have to decide. Then, we're talking about a mass deception that Bible translators have knowingly committed! Yes, you've been duped. But did these translators do this dupery for good reason? The Bible says that you can't see the face of God and live, so what does it mean when it commands every man to see God's face? Well, those translators punted on the question, but we're not them, so we're going to dive into the quagmire head-first. Enjoy! ---- 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 01

  To me, this was just an erotic dream.

• 1:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe there's a reason that things were dripping all over the place, but...

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, literally, yeah. When he thrust his hand into the opening, it's just like, okay, alright.

• 1:54Speaker 00

  Okay, I get it.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Bible, calm down, Bible.

• 2:04Speaker 00

  Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  And I'm Dan Beecher.

• 2:07Speaker 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?

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Things are good. Uh, I'm glad to have you back. You, you, you were just off and away in the, in faraway lands, magical worlds.

• 2:28Speaker 00

  Yes, magical kingdom.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31Speaker 00

  If, if you will, yes, the happiest place on earth with my, with my family, a little, a little retreat from the cold of a Utah, um, winter. Although this winter has been mild at best.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  While you were gone, you missed a day that was over 60 degrees. So I don't, I don't know that it's that, that it was a retreat from the cold so much as it was.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  A retreat from a mild winter. Well, I was, I was in the sunshine where it was 72 degrees. Um, and, uh, yeah, I, I had a wonderful time. We got back late last night and, and, uh, here we are.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Here we are.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  And yeah, we're set to increase some public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, from what I'm told.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're gonna do a couple of things. We're gonna do, uh, well, first, we're going to do a chapter and verse, and we're finally doing it, folks. It's the Song of Something. I've heard two different titles, so we'll figure out what it is when we get to the segment. And then also, uh, later on, we're gonna talk, uh, we're, we're gonna do an It's the Law, and we're gonna talk about a law that seems to break another law in the Bible.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Uh, or at very least, might kill you. So, so yeah, we, we gotta figure that out.

• 3:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  So, let's dive in to chapter and verse.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  And as I said, Dan, it's, it's the song, I, look, I grew up with hearing about the Song of Solomon.

• 4:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  And I have heard you many times call it the Song of Songs.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  I don't know what's going on, so talk to me.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Well, the, the very first verse of this song is Shir HaShirim, which just means Song of the Songs. And this is a, this is a construction that is used, uh, hyperbolically, uh, superlatively. So King of Kings, God of Gods, Song of Songs, it's not just the, uh, it's, it's the song.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  It's the best of all of the songs.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. And then the, the next two words are, Asher, li shlomo, which means which belongs to, or is for, or is about Solomon.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  So it is sometimes called the Song of Songs, sometimes called, uh, the Song of Solomon. It is traditionally, people have attributed it to Solomon, like they have the Proverbs, like they have, uh, other stuff, the wisdom of Solomon.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  And, and there's a tradition that says that Solomon, you know, wrote a thousand songs and all this kind of stuff. So, so it might've been preserved precisely because, hey, this, this is one that has Solomon's name on it. Maybe this is, uh, maybe this is it. But, uh, but this is definitely not written by Solomon. Uh, this is coming many centuries after, uh, the life of a, any historical Solomon who may have existed, so.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  And do we, do we have a sense of a historical Solomon existed?

• 5:46Speaker 00

  I think there, there are scholar, there are critical scholars who would say there, there probably was somebody there who's, who, uh, may have been named Solomon, who was an early king of Israel. Saul, Solomon, David, those are all folks where there are scholars who are like, yeah, there's some, there's something there, but it's, it's definitely not the way they're represented in, uh, in the text.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Uh, there, and, and there are other scholars who will say, no, there's, there was never any historical Saul, Solomon, or David. So, um, it's, it's, we're a little split in that regard.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  It's, well, so what we do know is that we don't know for sure.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. If, if there's anything that we can say for certain, it is that we don't know.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  And, but another thing that we can say for certain is that the Song of Songs was not written by anybody in that time period. The, this comes from much later, probably the Persian period, like fifth, early fourth century BCE, or the Hellenistic period, uh, late fourth into the third century BCE. So this is a post-exilic, uh, collection of poems. And it is probably precisely that, a collection where they were gathering, um, this poetry over time. And it is erotic poetry.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It very much is. It's, uh, and very much not anything else, really.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  No.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  It's just erotic poetry. It is, is it eight chapters of it?

• 7:19Speaker 00

  Eight chapters of erotic poetry, yeah.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  And it's in, I, I read the whole thing. It's fascinating. It doesn't feel like Bible. I'll say that.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and that was a, a contentious point in the opening centuries of the common era among Jewish folks. There were, there were debates, uh, end of the first century, beginning of the second century CE. There were debates about whether or not the Song of Solomon was a text that defiled the hands. And that was, that was basically a metaphor for is considered inspired. And so, uh, you have.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  So wait, defiling the hands was, was what made it good?

• 8:03Speaker 00

  Was much? Yes, yes. Yeah.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  That's counterintuitive. I'm just gonna say that's counterintuitive.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  It is counterintuitive. The idea is that if you, uh, touch it, it defiles your hands and, and you have to, um, you have to perform the requisite stuff, uh, in order to re, uh, repurify. But, and there's debate about exactly why that is the metaphor that came to be used to refer to inspired literature. My, uh, I, there's a, there's a scholar named, uh, I'm pretty sure it's Timothy Lim who's written on, on this, that I think comes the closest to my own position, which is the idea that the text, because they have the divine name in them, they're not meant for, um, profane.

• 8:48Speaker 00

  Contact, profane in the sense of outside the temple. So you've got the sacred and the profane. And because it has the divine name on it, it's like a divine image. It brings God's presence. And so in a profane context, if you handle it, you cause problems for yourself. So this is, you know, you get the zappy zappy in the Hebrew Bible if you try to steady the ark. And so there's a sense in which it is inappropriate to touch it directly. Only it's not quite as strong as the old touch the ark of the covenant and you get buried.

• 9:29Speaker 00

  It's more touch the scroll of the Torah and you have to go purify. That's my opinion on that. That is not what all scholars think about that. But there has been some stuff written on that. And even in my, even in my open access book, I talk a little bit about that. But you have this famous Rabbi Akiva. And there's a, there's a cool, there's a cool counterfactual history book called As a Driven Leaf, which is, tells the story of Rabbi Akiva. It's a pretty cool bit of historical fiction. But anyway, toward the, the beginning of the second century CE, there's this debate.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  And he says, "Heaven forbid that anyone in Israel ever dispute that the Song of Songs is holy. The Song of Songs is the holy of holies." So again, again, we have that thing where, and so the, there were some rabbinic authorities who seemed to push back against the questioning of the holiness of the Song of Songs by, by basically coming over the top and saying, no, it's the holiest.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Was this like an extolling of the?

• 10:50Speaker 01

  I mean, what was the argument? Was it just like, human sexuality is the, is the, the holiest thing that can be done? Or what?

• 10:58Speaker 00

  Um, it was, it was probably understanding the text metaphorically as representing the relationship of God to Israel.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 11:07Speaker 00

  That became the, the dominant way of, of interpreting the song. And you have some references to, uh, certain identity markers of, of, uh, Israel in there that, that hint at that kind of reading. So, uh, there, there were a handful of texts. Esther was another one. Uh, and some people were like, Esther's in, song is out. Others were like, no, song is in, Esther's out. And so, uh, it, it was a, a back and forth. But you do have some places where some, uh, some rabbis decided to, to get pretty rhetorical about their love for the song of songs.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  So, so in that idea, uh, the idea that, uh, that it's not about two human lovers, but rather about God and Israel.

• 11:54Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  I get, I, I, okay. Here's the thing.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  Raises questions about some, some of God's anatomy.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  We're gonna get to it. Uh, well, what we should probably do is just go back and sort of discuss what it is and like, how it sounds and stuff, uh, before we get too deep into the weeds on how people interpreted it. Because here's the thing, I, as I was reading it, I knew that there had been these theories put out, that it's God and Israel, or that it's, uh, like, Jesus and the church, or whatever.

• 12:26Speaker 00

  That's the Christian, the Christian renegotiation of God and Israel.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Right. Uh, and I gotta say, look, I'm pretty good at metaphor. I get poetry. I was raised by an English professor. I know what's going on.

• 12:39Speaker 00

  You've done Shakespeare.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  I've done a lot of Shakespeare and, um, Ooh, you're stretching. You are stretching on that one. It, it is quite a thing. So let's just talk about what it is.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Just sort of nuts and bolts, because when we say it's erotic poetry, it is like literally the opening line after the first verse, which is the song of songs, which is Solomon's.

• 13:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  It says, "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth." Like, that is explicit.

• 13:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  That's, that's not the kiss, that is not saying, like, you know, the, a kiss of, of-

• 13:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's not some bashful little like, this is a metaphor for love.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Right, right. Yeah, yeah.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  It's, it's pretty explicit.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Right in, and it gets, it gets, I'm not gonna say nasty,

• 13:38Speaker 01

  because I don't think sex is nasty, but it gets overtly sexual.

• 13:42Speaker 00

  Yes. Oh, I, I wanna, there's definitely a, a part I wanna read about the, the lover at the door.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, yes, yes. Absolutely.

• 13:52Speaker 00

  But before we get to that, there is some, there is something very interesting going on in chapter one. And it starts in, in verse five. This is something that's been debated by a lot of folks. It says, "I am black and beautiful.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 14:04Speaker 00

  O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon, do not gaze at me because I am dark, because the sun has gazed upon me. My mother's sons were angry with me. They made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept." And I think in the King James Version, it actually says, "I am black, oh, I am black but cumly."

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  And so, cause it's just, the, the conjunction there is just a, a simple vav, and that could be and, could be but. And so, that, that's a debate there, but the, the word there for black, I, if I recall, it has, the idea is more blackened. And in my opinion, there are folks who will suggest that, and the poetry is really going back and forth between a woman talking and a man talking.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:58Speaker 00

  And they're yearning for the love of the other.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  And can I just say, there are no easy ways to tell when we're switching from one voice to the other. And so I had to go through and as I'm going, I'm marking, like I'm pink highlighting parts of it and blue, just so I can keep track because it doesn't, because suddenly she's, she's talking and then suddenly she's yearning for a woman and then you're like, oh, maybe that's him. Okay.

• 15:30Speaker 00

  And in my opinion, what's going on here is, is the, this is someone who is at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum and must work outdoors, is required to, to work out in the sun. As a result, they have darkened skin because of that. So that, that kind of gives away their socioeconomic vulnerability. And so that there might've been a, a negative stigma associated with that. I mean, that, that still goes on today. There, there are groups of people who, who cover themselves up so that they don't get tan because that's associated with, with classism. And then there, there are other folks who, who understand

• 16:13Speaker 00

  this to the, the beloved, the woman to be a black person, who is, who is not saying, look, I'm black, but I think I'm beautiful, but is, is asserting, no, I am black and, and beautiful. So, so that's a passage that, that has some interesting scholarship behind it. I recommend looking up some of the stuff that has been done on that. If you're interested in more than just the, the blue parts of, of the text.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  It is interesting. Like I definitely, like, especially people who are tuned into sort of a modern context, that black and beautiful thing really pings. It really, it really stands out because it's just.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  I mean, then it was probably, you know, now we have racial constructions. We have the idea of race. Then they didn't have the idea of race. But like you say, it was probably a socio-economic marker. And that's, that's just as interesting. But it is, it, yeah, it, it rings interestingly to a modern ear.

• 17:16Speaker 00

  And there's, there's something in, in chapter six, I want to talk about when we get there that has, that actually has to do with the Shema.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 17:25Speaker 00

  Here, oh, Israel. But, but I want to get to this part of chapter five. See if you can pick up on some of the, some of the imagery that is being used here.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  It might, yeah, you might be able to figure out what the metaphor is.

• 17:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, so.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  I'm guessing you're going to, to verse four.

• 17:45Speaker 00

  Well, I'm gonna start in verse two.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  Um, "I was sleeping, but my heart was awake. The sound of my beloved knocking. Open to me, my sister." And by the way, uh, sister and brother are, are used to refer to the other, uh, throughout. And, and I'm actually going to share some, an Egyptian, uh, erotic poem that does the same thing. Cause this is, this is actually in keeping with a, a prominent, uh, convention in this time period.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Well, actually, there are, like, the incest things start to happen, like, sister, brother, my mother's thing. Like, it becomes this weird, it was, I was getting uncomfortable, I'll be honest.

• 18:26Speaker 00

  "So, open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one. For my head is wet with dew, my locks with the drops of the night. I," and now we're back to the woman talking, "I had put off my garment. How could I put it on again? I had bathed my feet. How could I soil them? My beloved thrust his hand into the opening, and my inmost being yearned for him. I arose to open to my beloved, and my hands dripped with murr, my fingers with liquid murr upon the handles of the bolt. I opened to my beloved, but..." My beloved had turned away and was gone. My soul failed me when he spoke. I sought him, but did not find him. I called him, but he gave no answer.

• 19:11Speaker 00

  So there's a lot of, you know, the, the person is just out of reach. There's a lot of yearning from a distance. There's a lot of, I missed you. A lot of ships passing in the night going on.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  I take this to be a dream sequence. I was sleeping, but my heart was awake.

• 19:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  To me, to me, this was just an erotic dream.

• 19:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. Which, um, maybe there's a reason that, uh, that for, things were dripping all over the place, but.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, literally. Yeah. When he thrust his hand into the opening, it's just like, okay.

• 19:44Speaker 00

  Okay, I get it. Um, so.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Bible, calm down, Bible.

• 19:54Speaker 00

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

• 19:59Speaker 01

  I've heard the construction.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, you 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 because we, I wanted to get a new car and I wanted to do these, these improvements to the house, but we had to pay off our, 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. And then even though it took some discipline and there were some bumps

• 20:46Speaker 00

  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 to actually feeling like you have control over stuff. And that has made a huge difference to me and to my family.

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  Every Sunday, we cover the week's tech news on This Week in Tech. Hi, this is Lee Odeport from the Twit Podcast Network, inviting you to join me this week for a doozy. Jason Calacanis and Gina Smith join me. We're going to talk about so many things. The flying car from Tesla, the guy who bugged the OpenAI conference room, wrapped it in toilet paper, and the new Surface Laptop. It's all coming up on Twit. You'll find it at twit.tv and wherever you get your podcasts.

• 23:10Speaker 05

  Hey, it's Micah Sargent. This week on Windows Weekly, we've got a great show for you. Paul talks about his time with the RTX Spark hardware, three different RTX computers, and the frustrations therein. We also talk about Xbox's Project Helix, and we get a special cocktail, the Theranos Cocktail. If you'd like to check out this episode of Windows Weekly, just look for Windows Weekly wherever you get your podcasts, or head to twit.tv slash W W.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  Here's a, an ancient Egyptian poem. I'm not, I'm just gonna read a portion of it. Okay. There are like eight, nine stanzas to this, but uh. And this, this is from the same era? No, this is actually from almost a thousand years before. Oh! So this is from the late second millennium BCE. Oh wow. So this, this is, uh, and, and the Egyptian erotic poetry is probably what set the standard. That centuries later, the, the authors of these poems are, are following. And there, there are parts of the Song of Songs that, that are no doubt earlier than the final form of the, of the text, but probably, but definitely not, at least in Hebrew, all the way back to this time period. Hebrew didn't even exist when this Egyptian poem was, was written. So, um, here we have,

• 24:25Speaker 00

  stanza number one of this Egyptian love song. "One alone, a sister without her peer, comelier than all mankind. Behold, she is like the star goddess arising at the beginning of a happy year. Of sheen surpassing, of radiant skin, lovely of eyes wherewith to gaze. Sweet are her lips wherewith to speak, she hath not a word too much. Long of neck, radiant of nipple. Of true sapphire is her hair, her arm surpasseth gold, her fingers are like lotus lilies. Drooping of buttocks, firm girt in her midst. Her legs show forth her beauty, fair of gait she treadeth upon the earth. She hath captured my heart in her embrace.

• 25:09Speaker 00

  She maketh the necks of all men to be turned away dazzled at the sight of her. Joyous is whoso embraceth her, he is like the chiefest of lusty youths. One regardeth her going forth abroad, even as hers yonder. The only one..." And then the, the next stanza is, "The brother troubleth my heart, with his voice he maketh sickness to lay hold on me." So we're, we're doing the same back and forth. Um, man, woman, uh, talking about the other as a sibling, uh, going into, uh, lots of, of metaphors about this, uh, that, in, in some places gets really, really close to what's going on here. And that, but it begins and ends that stanza with "one alone" and then "the only one."

• 25:54Speaker 00

  And this brings up what I wanted to talk about in chapter six.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 26:00Speaker 00

  Where we have this statement, this is Song of Songs 6:9. And don't read anything into that. And don't say 6:7 either. But anyway.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Oh, man. Now you've got me thinking about like, there have got to have been moments where some poor pastor or church person got up and said, this is something.

• 26:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Chapter six, verse seven, and some kid went, "Ahhhh!" All the children, all the youth lost their minds.

• 26:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  So it says here in verse nine, "My dove, my perfect one, is the only one, the darling of her mother." And the Hebrew here is actually very, very similar to what we have in the Shema, where it says, "Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad." Here what we have is "achat hi." So she is one. And then we also have "achat hi le'ima," which means she is one to her mother. And this is widely understood by interpreters, not to mean that she's the only woman that exists, because we just got done talking actually about 60 queens and 80 concubines and maidens without number.

• 27:19Speaker 00

  And then it says, "My dove, my perfect one, is the only one." And so this "achat" or "echad" idea is not saying the only one in existence, but the only one for me. And even when it's referring to her mother, it's probably not saying that she is her mother's only child or even necessarily her mother's only daughter, but this is the most important one. This is the one who has that exclusive relationship. And Nathan McDonald is, I think, he's got a book called Deuteronomy and the Meaning of Montathism, where he goes into this idea of covenantal love in Deuteronomy, reflecting what we talked about a few weeks ago.

• 28:04Speaker 00

  Go with the with the vassal treaties of of Essar Haddan and and that whole crowd. But the idea that you love someone as the only one, I think we see reflected here in this erotic poetry. And and I think that's I think that's related to the way that the authors of Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic history understand Adonai to be one, the idea being there is an exclusive relationship. It's not an ontological exclusivity, it's not that God is the only God, but for you,

• 28:43Speaker 00

  God is the only one that matters, just like the dove, the perfect one is the only one that matters to the beloved.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Right. And That dove thing, man, I tell you, the the the metaphors, dove dove is one of those ones that makes that that sort of has continued Shakespeare.

• 29:03Speaker 00

  Still still feels relevant.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Shakespeare used the term my dove or whatever for for a lover. But man, there's a lot, there's a lot of fruit and veg metaphors. There's a lot

• 29:16Speaker 00

  Of agricultural stuff going on.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  Agricultural stuff, there's at one point, your hair is like goats coming down a hill. That one's that one felt a little sketchy. And then your and then your teeth are like ewes. So, okay, sheep, you got sheep teeth. Congratulations on your sheep teeth.

• 29:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  I guess they're white. I guess that's a good thing. But yeah, it does. But but one of the things that's really weird is can you explain why boobs are gazelles? I I could not, I couldn't figure out what the your her breasts are like gazelles thing.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  I well, I there's there's and then there's the part where the beloved's brothers are like she's she's flat as a board.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. What are we gonna do with her? She's she got no boobs.

• 30:10Speaker 00

  Um, I, I don't know.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  There's a lot of breast talk in this.

• 30:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I think maybe, I mean, gazelles, what do gazelles do? They jump. So maybe, maybe you gotta think boing, boing, boing, boing. Um, what is, what is the, the, uh, the thing that, uh, the, uh, when male authors write, uh, romances, like she, she rested boobily down the stairs or something like that.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 30:35Speaker 00

  So maybe you got gazelles going boing, boing, boing, maybe that, I don't know. Um, but, uh, there, there, there's also something famous in verse three, uh, chapter six, verse three. I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:48Speaker 00

  Which is in Hebrew, it's ani le dodi vodidi li. And I've seen this, people get this tattooed, um, um, on them. Uh, but that is a, that's a famous passage from here, but.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  And it points out actually a really interesting thing. Uh, when you say it in English, the translated version, you miss out on a poetic element of it.

• 31:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  That's there in the, in the Hebrew. Will you say the Hebrew again for me?

• 31:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  So I can hear it.

• 31:19Speaker 00

  Ani le dodi vodidi li.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  I think that's one of the things that's so, you know, I, I think it was Robert Frost who said that poetry is what's lost in translation. I think that, uh, I think, I'm guessing that there are lots of poetic elements that I can't appreciate.

• 31:37Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Because I can't, because I can't read the Hebrew.

• 31:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, there, there's absolutely a lot and it's, and it's different kind of poetry. It's, it's not the, uh, the iambic pentameter kind of stuff.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  It's sure, sure, sure.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  It's not the kind of rhyme schemes that we have in, in English poetry, but there, there are absolutely ways that they use,

• 31:57Speaker 00

  uh, that they use, uh, a lot of different, uh, features of, of ancient Hebrew poetry. And I'm, I'm blanking on some of the words. Alliteration is big.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 32:11Speaker 00

  Uh, and, and you know, you use, they'll use, um, a lot of your, your buzz and your pose to give you kind of a sense of, of roundedness.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:19Speaker 00

  Or, or you can use your k and your t's to, to, for more sharp pointed kind of stuff. Just kind of give you a, a flavor of, of these general kind of, uh, senses.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Splashing arounds and around in the sounds of language.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Is one of the things that poetry is, that, that's important in poetry that.

• 32:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  You can't get. Uh, in, in a translated version.

• 32:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and here's something to, as we get to the, the end of, of chapter eight, which kind of draws things to a conclusion. We, we talked about her brothers. Her brothers have a concern. We have a little sister and she has no breasts. What shall we do for our sister on the day when she is spoken for? If she is a wall, we will build upon her a battlement of silver, but if she is a door, we will enclose her with boards of cedar. Uh, my brothers have never said anything like that about any of our sisters, but, um, but then the beloved says, I was a wall and my breasts were like towers, which I guess, I guess she's denying that, that, uh, the, the claim, the brothers, uh, the concern. Uh, then.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  I, I thought, okay, what I thought was happening, I didn't catch that this was, uh, the brothers. I, because it never says, and then the brothers say blah, blah, blah. So I thought it was the woman in the thing concerned for her little sister and being like, oh, you know, I've got these gazelles on my chest and poor girl, she doesn't have any boobs at all. Uh, so I don't know. I, I'll tell you what, I, it's hard to interpret a lot of this stuff.

• 33:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. There, there are, I, I think there, there's discussion of brothers elsewhere. Uh, they give her a hard time elsewhere, but, uh, she says, my breasts were like towers. Then I was in his eyes as one who brings peace. Solomon had a vineyard at Bal Hamon. He entrusted the vineyard to keepers. Each one was to bring for its fruit, a thousand pieces of silver. My vineyard, my very own is for myself. You, O Solomon, may have the thousand and the keepers of the fruit, two hundred. Um, and elsewhere, I, I don't remember off the top of my head where the brothers come into play, but there's, there's a sense in which the, the brothers still assert some kind of, uh, ownership or authority

• 34:41Speaker 00

  over her. And this is, this is where people have said, this seems to be talking about premarital sex, uh, because. Because if she's in a position where the brothers have authority over her, she still lives in her family's household. She is not a part of another man's household. But she does seem to be going out at night to try to meet up with, uh, with this paramour.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:06Speaker 00

  And they are engaging in a lot of, of thrusting hands and openings.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:12Speaker 00

  Before, it seems, uh, they have, uh, tied the knot.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm remembering a moment where she says, uh, that she, it says, she's, it says something like, "If I saw him, I would kiss him outside and no one would complain."

• 35:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Um, the idea being that he's so handsome that like, nobody can be mad that we're not, that we're kissing and out in the open. Uh, cause who could blame me?

• 35:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  I feel like, I, one of the things that I wanted to get to about this, and one of the things that I find remarkable about this.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  And you can sort of tell me if this is just obvious or, or whatever, but I, the woman's voice is not only possibly more present than the man's voice, like it goes back and forth, but I think I, my feeling of it was that I was reading the, from the woman's voice more than from the man's.

• 36:09Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  And the woman seemed fully sexualized, but not, no, I mean, like she was

• 36:17Speaker 00

  Empowered.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Empowered.

• 36:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Of her, of herself, fully, uh, owned her own sexuality.

• 36:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  And she, like, objectified the man every bit as much as he objectified her. It feels shockingly equal.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and that is something that, um, there, there's a wonderful book, uh, by Jennifer Knus called Unprotected Texts, which, um, is, is one of the cleverest titles, uh, for a book.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:48Speaker 00

  It's great, but the, the, uh, subtitle is "The Bible's Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire." And I highly recommend this book. It is, it is a Phenomenal book, but the discussion of the Song of Solomon is wonderful because there are there are hints that this kind of more liberated approach to to sexual desire, it's definitely not the holiness code. It's definitely not later Christians. And she even shares a quote from Origin of Alexandria. This guy who he might have castrated himself. But he says, for this reason, I give warning and advice to everyone who is not yet free of the vexations

• 37:33Speaker 00

  of the flesh and blood and who has not withdrawn from desire for corporeal nature that he completely abstain from reading this book. So the Christians are warning to stay away from that smut. But it and who knows if the fact that the woman seems to be in possession of her own sexuality and to be okay with it. And who knows if that may be part of why it gave the ick to a lot of men.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:07Speaker 00

  History.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Well, one of the things that it did for me was make me suspicious that maybe it was written by a woman. Because it is so positive when it's coming from the it's so non stereotypical when it's coming from the woman's perspective. That I just thought, you know, I this does not feel like so many of the other biblical authors that I've read.

• 38:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  It feels very different.

• 38:33Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, this is a different type of author penning this this prose than than what we normally get. And

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Is anyone out there like proposing that this could have been written by a woman?

• 38:45Speaker 00

  I I'm sure there have been. I don't know that we can know for sure, but I mean, it's it's certainly a plausibility. Again, these are these are collections of poems that that probably circulated independently before being brought together in a single volume or on a single scroll. And so who knows who composed some of these poems? But but and you know, we have the ancient Egyptian stuff, which also goes back and forth between a man talking and a woman talking. So we get both perspectives. And so that's just part of the genre as well.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 39:20Speaker 00

  So I don't I we can't know for sure, but I'm I have no doubt that there are folks who have suggested that.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I did.

• 39:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  I just suggested it.

• 39:30Speaker 00

  Well, I

• 39:33Speaker 00

  I'm not gonna be dismissive, but uh.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Well, oh, cuz I don't have a PhD and haven't studied it and I only just read it this week?

• 39:40Speaker 00

  Sure. And you don't publish on it, but uh, but

• 39:45Speaker 00

  yes, what I meant was published in uh, in peer reviewed venues. But yeah, I, I think it's certainly plausible. I mean, the first, the first known named author is a woman. Who wrote uh, the Princess and Priestess uh, and Hedwana. Who uh, who wrote in Sumerian. So, um, so yeah, it's, it would not be uh, outside the realm of uh, of possibility, plausibility. But uh, yeah, we can't really know.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  We, we, we need to wrap this up, but I do have one more question and that is, was this a song? Was it set to music?

• 40:28Speaker 00

  Uh, I don't know. I don't know about being set to music, but I'm, I'm sure that parts of it at, at different times would have been sung. Uh, and in their original circulation, yeah, they, they would have been sung. Acapella or uh, accompanied by music.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  To the lascivious pleasing of a lute, perhaps?

• 40:50Speaker 00

  There, there, there definitely were musical instruments.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:53Speaker 00

  Going back long before this, uh, this book, so uh, it's certainly plausible.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  I just don't know why it's called a song, if it's, I, as opposed to

• 41:03Speaker 00

  It's not a, it's not a song in the, in the contemporary sense of song, but sheer uh, in ancient Hebrew didn't necessarily mean something that you sang accompanied, accompanied by music. I mean, poet is the idea of a poem is probably uh, got an awful lot of semantic overlap with this, with the idea of a sheer.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  I'm gonna call it poem of poems then.

• 41:25Speaker 00

  Poem of poems, huh? I'm not gonna get in your way.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  All right. Well, I think that's all fascinating. I love it. Uh, I wish we could talk more about erotic poetry, but I think we've gotta move on because it's the law.

• 41:44Speaker 06

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• 42:15Speaker 05

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• 42:44Speaker 01

  All right, so this week's It's the Law. You had sent me a whole bunch of different places where a certain Hebrew construction occurs.

• 42:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  In a bunch of different books, in Deuteronomy, in Exodus, and Isaiah, and Samuel. And talk to me about what about this phrase and how it's translated? Because what you sent to me is not what I see when I'm looking at it.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So this is a commandment. I think the it's most clearly given as a command in Deuteronomy 1616. But the it's always mistranslated. It's always knowingly mistranslated. And It's, I think it's so fascinating. But Deuteronomy 1616, I'll read it and then I'll talk a little bit about what's going on with, with some of the Hebrew. I'm not gonna get too technical, but, um, but I think you-

• 43:45Speaker 01

  I don't believe you. I just, I think you are, and I like it.

• 43:49Speaker 00

  I think this is fascinating. "Three times a year, all your males shall appear before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose: at the festival of unleavened bread, at the festival of weeks, and at the festival of booths. They shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed." Dun dun dun. So this is, this is a commandment to, to come up and appear before the Lord three times a year at specific festivals. However, what's going on in the Hebrew is, is a little peculiar. Uh, because it says, um, literally the Hebrew is, uh, "three times in a year,

• 44:30Speaker 00

  we'll see all of your males the face of Adonai your God." And the, the consonants of the Hebrew say, uh, have it in the active. "You will see the face of God." The vowels have altered it to make it passive. Now, in the consonants, they can be understood in the passive, but the way the rest of the construction works with the particular, uh, particles and prepositions and everything, the consonants want you to understand this in the active. So the verbal root ra'ah means to see. And so in the active, it means you see the face of God.

• 45:09Speaker 00

  But if you twist it into the passive, it's be seen to the face of God, which is translated as appear before God.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Now, when you say God, you're substituting the, it's the tetragrammaton.

• 45:22Speaker 00

  It's the tetragrammaton.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  It is the named God of Israel.

• 45:26Speaker 00

  And then appositionally, it adds your God, Elohechah. Um, you see this in Exodus 3424 as well, but in Isaiah, I think it is the most revealing. Because in Isaiah, it doesn't use a regular, uh, finite verb. It uses an infinitive and a specific kind of infinitive, the infinitive construct. And in the finite form-

• 45:50Speaker 00

  The active and the passive can have the same consonants. In the infinitive construct, they do not have the same consonants. And the consonants that we have in Isaiah 112, I'll read Isaiah 112 from the NRS VUE. "When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more." So the idea is, coming to appear before God, me, this is God talking, means coming into my temple. But the "appear before me" actually cannot mean that. The consonants can't mean that. The consonants are "lir o't," which would be, "when you come to see my face."

• 46:32Speaker 00

  "Lir o't panai," that means "to see my face." But the Mazarites have added the vowels of the passive form. So it's "lega o't," but it should be "lehera o't." So here's where I'm getting technical. But in short, the consonants very definitely are intended to be active. "When you come to see my face, who asked this from your hand?" And so, I think, and there are a lot of scholars who acknowledge this, that this original commandment was not to appear before God. The original commandment was to see God's face three times in a year.

• 47:16Speaker 00

  And as we see in Isaiah, this is about coming into the temple. And so, most likely, this was a kind of ritualistic, bututific vision, where you go into the temple and you see the face of God, probably by looking at a divine image.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  I am really trying to get Wizard of Oz out of my head right now, because all I'm thinking about right now is like...

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. But that's not what we're talking about.

• 47:45Speaker 00

  Not that kind of image. No, it wasn't holographic. It would have been a standing stone. And we've actually found a standing stone in an Israelite Judeite temple in Arad. So we know that they had standing stones in their temples. But to see the standing stone was to see God. And so I think that the idea here is you come to the temple. You see the standing stone. You see the face of God. And you have in the Psalms, you know, when shall I see the face of God? This yearning for the beatific vision. So it's something that is referenced in a variety of different ways.

• 48:27Speaker 00

  But it always gets translated in a passive because people are uncomfortable with this idea that you could see God's face because you're not supposed to be able to see God's face.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:40Speaker 00

  Because of another tradition from Exodus where Moses says, "Show me your glory," and God goes, "Ooh, I'll tell you what. I'm going to put you on this rock right here. And then I'm going to walk by, but I'm going to cover your face with my hand so that you can't see my face. And then I'm going to pull my hand away after I've passed by, and you can see my back, but you won't see my face." And the text says, "No one can see me and live." And the ancient Greek translation says, "No one can see my face and live." So you weren't supposed-

• 49:16Speaker 01

  And then, of course, there are all of these scriptures later where people do see God.

• 49:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Including Moses.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Including Moses, right, right. And like some of his elders too, right?

• 49:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, they, that's Exodus 24:10. They saw the God of Israel. And they're like, and his feet are like standing on this sapphire patio kind of thing. And but yeah, it also has, you have in Numbers that that Moses spoke to God face to face like a man speaks with his friend.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:52Speaker 00

  And so they're very clearly- They've got, they're a little conflicted.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Jacob done wrestled with the guy.

• 50:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, Jacob, and Jacob held his own for a bit.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a tie. So I, one of the things that I wanted to get to with you, because you mentioned the Psalms, going, talking about when, you know, I, when can I see his face? I want to see the face of God. One of my questions is,

• 50:26Speaker 01

  because it sounds to me like the standing stone idea is like you called the thing at the center of the temple, the face of God. We've got this thing, we've got this stone, it's got some inscription on it or something. And that's just what we call the face of God. So, but it doesn't seem like those sort of plaintive cries in Psalms are about, I want to see a rock in the middle of the temple.

• 50:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, so we, Psalm 42, 2, "My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?"

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:06Speaker 00

  I, I think it's, it's something that, there, there was the ritual aspect to it. And then there was kind of the yearning for being in the presence of God.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Of the actual, like,

• 51:18Speaker 00

  Well, well, the,

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Incorporated being.

• 51:20Speaker 00

  Well, the, they, they certainly understood God to be corporeal in this time period, but to be located elsewhere. And the standing stone was really the material

• 51:31Speaker 00

  medium that transmitted the divine presence. And so,

• 51:37Speaker 01

  You're still making me think of Wizard of Oz. I'm sorry.

• 51:42Speaker 00

  So to, to be in the Holy of Holies was to be in God's presence. But you're, you're more sensing it than you are gazing upon it. But the, the standing stone represented the material manifestation of that. And interestingly, I, I said that we have a standing stone found in a Holy of Holies in a Judaite temple. We also, Have two incense altars that were found right just a few feet away from that standing stone and they tested the substances that had been burned on those incense altars 2,700 years ago and there were three different kinds of cannabis that were being burned in

• 52:21Speaker 00

  the incense there. So, so I'm sure that played a role in the, you know, the psalmist is like, I gotta get back there, man. Because I'm sure he had a lovely experience being in God's presence and gazing at-

• 52:37Speaker 01

  Depending on what they were burning at the altar, you might have seen the face of God. I don't know.

• 52:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it was, it was a mystic, it was probably considered kind of a mystical experience. You go into the Holy of Holies, you have this, this mystical communion with God and you see the material representation of God's presence and that is, you know, like gazing upon the face of God. And there's been a lot of research on, on how the divine images kind of represent that gaze. Cause there's, there's this idea also that when you are looking at God, God is looking back at you. And so there's, there's an intimidation that is also

• 53:24Speaker 00

  probably felt by folks there. What's the saying? Don't look into the abyss or something like that? Cause-

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Cause you'll see what's looking back or something.

• 53:34Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, cause like the abyss stares back or something like that. I, I forget what it is. My, my closest exposure to it is from the animated show Amphibia where one of the characters quotes that, but I wish I could remember what it was. But, um, so this is a spiritual mystical experience to be able to, to do that. But, but yeah, it was, I think it's incorporated into this commandment in Deuteronomy 1616 as a way to require that the males actually present themselves at the temple. This was part of costly signaling, but also there were almost certainly offerings that were, and in fact, it even says that at the end, "You shall not see God's face

• 54:16Speaker 00

  empty-handed." So it's, it's being worked into this demand for offerings that are supposed to be three times a year. So it's, it's time for your quarterly offering.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that it feels like is that- Because when I think about something that feels as important as the idea of seeing God's face, that feels like you take your time with it. But if they're doing it on the festivals, meaning everyone has to do it at the same time.

• 54:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's a line forming.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're not taking your time with this. You're like, you're seeing the face, you're dropping off your offering and you're getting out of there. So.

• 54:56Speaker 00

  Yes. Yeah. And, and there's a, there are other parts of the Hebrew Bible where the, you're burning all this incense and all this stuff going on. There's even a degree to which it seems like the, your ability to see the divine image is, is probably obscured by the smoke as well. So, uh, the, there's also, um, you know, when the, later on, when the high priest is the only one who can go, go into the holy of holies on one day a year, it's basically like fill the place with smoke. And then the high priest is going in like, okay, I'm trying not to run into anything. Um, and so there's, there's also some obscuring

• 55:36Speaker 00

  of, of God's presence and God's face as well, which, which could probably lend to the mystical experience. If you just see a hazy outline of something in, in the mist, uh, while you're getting stoned off your gourd, then, um, maybe you do come out of there.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  And, and when, when you go into him, make sure you breathe deep because, uh, it's gonna be a more fun experience.

• 56:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. Just take a deep breath and then hold it for as long as you can.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  And every time I see the face of God, I get real paranoid. I just feel like.

• 56:11Speaker 00

  Why is it like doing a whip it?

• 56:16Speaker 01

  I just, I, I guess part of my, okay. So I have one question. It might sound stupid. Is there a chance that these standing stones, that there was a physical, like a face carved into them? Have they ever found like representative imagery? Or is that, that's actually not even okay, right? Like that's what the-

• 56:38Speaker 00

  Well, according to the Hebrew Bible, even the standing stones are not allowed. Or at least parts of the Hebrew Bible. You're not supposed to have that kind of divine image. In Genesis, you have it. It's really, in parts of Genesis, you have it. It's really later on, and particularly Deuteronomy, where they're like, "You heard a voice, but you didn't see any image, so you know, don't go making divine images." So it's not like the standing stone was, was the approved version, and then anthropomorphic statuary was the non-approved version. They were all unapproved, but I think that just, a lot of scholars would suggest that just shows that the anti-idol polemic is a later developed thing.

• 57:22Speaker 00

  Because we clearly have divine images from earlier periods in Israel and Judah. Now, when it comes to anthropomorphic stuff, if there was, there could have been painted on to the standing stone, something, we haven't recovered any anthropomorphic statuary-

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Now I'm just picturing a stone with a smiley emoji on it. I don't think that's right either. I think I'm wrong about all of the things.

• 57:45Speaker 00

  The, when, if you ever have the, the privilege to travel to Malta, and you go to Marsha Shloke, which is this little fishing village in the southeastern corner of the island. They, the boats are very colorful and they paint eyes on the boats. And, yeah, it's, it's very cool. But I, you know, that could have been part of it, eyes. We don't have any anthropomorphic statuary from ancient Israel and Judah. There is anthropomorphic statuary from Egypt and from Mesopotamia. It, there's a scholar, Trigva Mettinger, who argues that-

• 58:23Speaker 00

  In ancient Israel and Judah, there was a de facto aniconism in the sense that the divine imagery seemed to be non-representational, not because there was actual opposition to institutional opposition to anthropomorphic statuary, but just because the market wasn't there. They didn't have the resources. They probably didn't have the materials. There wasn't as much demand for it. And so it's more-

• 58:48Speaker 01

  Carving is hard, man.

• 58:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and the, the representations are more symbolic. But, you know, you do have the, the Adonai and Asyra thing, the drawing. So that, that's the face of God and it's represented with best imagery. So it's kind of bovine in appearance. And, and there's, uh, there are things where people have argued, oh, this might be a depiction of, of God's face. We don't have anything anthropomorphic because it doesn't seem like that was the in thing-

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:19Speaker 00

  -at the time for these smaller territorial states like ancient Israel and Judah. They didn't have near the complexity and the resources and the market that you had in Babylon or in Egypt. So, but that's an ongoing debate as well. Was there anthropomorphic representation of, of the God of Israel? We don't know for sure. So, yeah, that's a question I would love to have answered as well. I, I think it would be absolutely fascinating to go see what was going on around 1,000 BCE in these temples.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess, I mean, I guess it's just so clear that it's like the face of God. It's not, it's not like the image of God or the, you know, it's the, the idea of God or whatever. It, I think that's what I was flashing on is just that it keeps saying the face.

• 1:00:12Speaker 00

  Well, you know what, what do we have in the, in the priestly blessing that we have on the Catephanum silver amulets that we've talked about? It says, "May his face shine upon you," which is, uh, which is probably a reference to the sun. And so- You know, if the sun is on the divine image and the sun is the symbol of the face of God, like there are a variety of ways that could be understood.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:00:39Speaker 00

  So, yeah, I, I wish we had more details about all of this, but what we can say is that Deuteronomy 16, 16, Exodus 34, 24, Isaiah 112. And, and I think also the story of Hannah and Samuel and, and first Samuel is the Hebrew there is saying that they're there to see the face of God. And it's just been reinterpreted as appear before, or just be in the general proximity of or presence of God.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  It does speak to the,

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  I, I don't, I don't want to assign like an agenda to all of these translators or whatever, a tradition maybe, but it's interesting that none of, none of the translations that I checked are saying the face of God.

• 1:01:33Speaker 00

  Oh, no, they, they won't. That's, that's just, that's widely agreed upon. We're understanding this to mean appear before. And the Masoretic tradition vocalizes it that way. And so you're kind of overturning what the Maserites wrote when, when you translate it differently. So not a lot of folks are there.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  When you, when you do the, the McClellan translation.

• 1:01:56Speaker 00

  The DMV, yeah.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  Are you going to put the, the face of God in there?

• 1:01:59Speaker 00

  Hell, yeah, I am.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Nice. Nice.

• 1:02:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  That's what I like to hear.

• 1:02:04Speaker 00

  And then there'll be explanatory notes. I mean, if you look in, if you go in the NRSV UE to Deuteronomy 16, 16. Or maybe, no, it's not Deuteronomy, it's Isaiah. If you go into Isaiah 112.

• 1:02:22Speaker 00

  There's a footnote marker. When you come to appear before me footnote B and you go down and it says, "Or see my face." So they're acknowledging that this is going on in the Hebrew, even though they're relegating it to the footnote of just one of the passages where, where that's more clearly what the Hebrew is saying.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  I'm fascinated that the NRS VUE doesn't have a footnote. They've got a footnote for booths, festival of booths and/or tabernacles, but no note about, about face of God.

• 1:02:54Speaker 00

  Well, I think, I think it's because in Exodus 3424 and in Deuteronomy 1616, the consonants could go either way. Now, now, when you look at the particles, because it's a, it's a direct object marker and then my face, you don't appear to my face. You appear before me. It should be "leaf nay," but it's "et panai." And so it works, the consonants of the verb could be active or passive, but in the context, I think we got to throw the weight of the evidence in the direction of understanding it as active. But I think that's why there's no note.

• 1:03:37Speaker 00

  Because they're like, eh, the consonants can go either way in the verb. So we're just going to take the passive reading. But with, with Isaiah, you can't. The, the consonants very clearly of the, of the infinitive construct have to be active. So they're like, all right, just put it in the footnote, sir.

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, that is, that's a lot of fun. There you go.

• 1:04:00Speaker 00

  Hopefully not too technical.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  Go see the face of God if you want to, I guess. It probably won't kill you.

• 1:04:07Speaker 00

  Smoke them if you got them.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  Enjoy the smoke while you're in there. All right, friends. Well, that's it for for this episode. Thank you all so much for tuning in. If you would like to become a part of making this show go and, you know, get over and listen to the the after party over on Patreon where we, you know, we talk, we, one of the things we do is we answer our patrons questions. So if you have a personal question that you'd like us to address, you can make us do it by becoming a $10 a month or more patron over at patreon.com/ data over dogma and and we will, we'll, we'll

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  answer your questions for you. Uh, thanks so much for to Roger Gowdy for editing and to JJ for being our producer and we will talk to you again next time. Bye, everybody. Data over dogma is a member of the airwave media network. It is a production of data over dogma media LLC copyright 2026 all rights reserved.

• 1:05:18Speaker 05

  Hey, it's Micah Sargent from Tech News Weekly, and this week we go hands on with Jennifer Patterson Tuitt. 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. Talk about how it's kind of like a big Apple watch tied to a low home pod mini. And we also talk about the other gadgets Apple announced that day, including the Apple TV 4K at its most expensive price, the home pod mini two at well, it's 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 lawsuit, but how it's really about getting

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