Killing in the Name Of

There have been some disturbing things happening in the world lately, and some of the people most heavily involved in those things are invoking even more disturbing parts of the Bible as a rallying call. When world leaders remind us of biblical genocide when they go to war, you know we're in trouble. So this week, we're discussing Amalek, and the Israelite encounters with the people who bear his name. There is no love lost between the Amalekites and the Israelites. As a matter of fact, Jewish people to this day vow to remember and NOT remember Amalek. So what was so awful about the Amalekites that they stand out as worse than the myriad other enemies of ancient Israel? And what did they do to deserve the total destruction that was ordered by God? Then we're covering some spurious apologetic ground. If you've ever listened to a Christian apologist for more than a few minutes, you've likely heard the idea that "No one would die for a lie." This idea is either preceded or followed by descriptions of the horrific deaths endured by the disciples of Jesus. The problem is that most of those deaths aren't recorded in any books in the Bible. So what are the stories of the deaths of the apostles, and where do they come from? ---- For early access to an ad-free version of every episode of Data Over Dogma, exclusive content, and the opportunity to support our work, please consider becoming a monthly patron at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on the various social media places: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/data_over_dogma⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Have you ordered Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Bible Says So⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ yet??? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• 1:40Speaker 00

  The tradition that we see in the Acts of Andrew is that he was crucified on an X-shaped cross.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  A St. Andrews cross, for those of you in the kink world.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  I think the St. Andrews cross exists outside the kink world.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Outside of the kink world? Oh, okay. You guys can have it too. That's fine.

• 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?

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Things are good. Things are good. How are you?

• 2:20Speaker 00

  Um, my, I'm getting used to a new speech pattern. I've got a bunch of plastic covering the inside of my mouth, mainly on my teeth, but some are embedded in my gums. Uh, I have invisible aligners on my teeth, so my tongue is trying to figure out how to make the sounds it is used to making, uh, while navigating around all this plastic. So if I sound a little odd, or suddenly choke on, uh, my own spit or something like that, uh, that's gonna be the reason why.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  We'll, we'll attempt to be forgiving, but frankly, it's, it's probably not gonna work. Uh, anyway, we got a fun show coming up. Uh, this one, I think we're gonna get some emails about. I think we might get in trouble. Uh, so we'll, we'll see. Um, but the, the first part of our show, the first segment of our show, we're gonna call it a chapter and verse. Uh, and we're gonna be in First Samuel. And it's, it, you know, if you don't know what's happening in current events or whatever, it may just sound like an everyday sort of thing that we're gonna talk about Amalek. But when I say that, uh, we will be invoking the name Netanyahu,

• 3:36Speaker 01

  uh, I think people might know, I think the hairs on a few necks might have stood up just now. So we'll, uh, we'll get to that. Uh, and then the second half of our show is a what's that? I don't know. Is it a what's that? Is it a, I don't know what it is. Yeah, we'll call it a what's that? Uh, we're gonna talk about the deaths of the apostles.

• 3:58Speaker 00

  Yes. We hear about this all the time, that the, nobody dies for a lie. All the apostles went to all kinds of excruciating and fantastical deaths.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:08Speaker 00

  Uh, and we're actually gonna talk about why people think that the apostles died in certain ways. And very little of it has to do with anything verifiable. So.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  And also, can we just get rid of this, nobody dies for a lie thing? Like, unless you're-

• 4:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, people die for a lie all the time.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  People die for lies. Constantly. It's such a frequent thing. Like, if you don't believe in Islam, and you know that there are, you know,

• 4:36Speaker 00

  Martyrs for Islam.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Martyrs for Islam, then you, then you know, people die for things that they believe in.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  And we'll, and we'll talk about, I don't know the degree to which we'll get to that. Maybe that needs to be its own segment, this argument that the resurrection is, is historically defensible because people don't die for a lie, which is also a bit of a straw man. Because the options are not, it either happened or everybody knowingly lied about believing it happened.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  Why can't it just be that these people sincerely believe they experienced a resurrected person and might not have?

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:16Speaker 00

  Definitely didn't.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Or there's a bunch of options. Yeah, there's, there are, there is middle ground. Anyway, that's what we're going to get, get to in the second half of the show. But for now, let's dive into our chapter and verse.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  All right, so, uh, the chapter verse is about the character of Amalek.

• 5:43Speaker 00

  The people, first Samuel's 15 is going to be about the people of Amalek.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  But yes, the people of Amalek take their name from a character.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  A person, right.

• 5:53Speaker 00

  A person, an individual, as it were, or as it really wasn't, but as it, as it was written.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  As it is written to have been, yes.

• 6:02Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  So, uh, so who was Amalek and who are the people?

• 6:08Speaker 00

  So we, we have two occurrences of the name Amalek in the book of Genesis, specifically in chapter 36 of the book of Genesis. We have, uh, Timna, who was a concubine of Eliphaz, and this is Esau's son, so of, um, Esau fame.

• 6:24Speaker 00

  And she bore Amalek to Eliphaz. And then these were the sons of Ada, Esau's wife. And then it goes on from there. And then we have Korah, Gatham, and Amalek are the clans of Eliphaz in the land of Edom. And they are the sons of Ada.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 6:45Speaker 00

  That should be sufficient groundwork to lay our scene.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's hard for me to follow all of that because I don't know who the good guys and the bad guys are in the begats. But presumably that's just, that's just, Amalek is just descended from people.

• 7:07Speaker 00

  Yes. So, well, Amalek was a grandson of Esau. Right. And Esau is the brother of Jacob. So there's, and there's bad blood for a little bit between Jacob and Esau. There's the famous story of him coming, he's got to cross the Yabak River and he's going to meet up with Esau again. He's afraid Esau's going to try and kill him. Esau really misses him. And, you know, it's a whole story.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  It's a whole thing.

• 7:37Speaker 00

  It's a whole thing. And so, but Esau becomes the ancestors of the Edomites and other peoples.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  And so, Amalek immediately is non-Israelite, obviously, and is an other. But we, the main kind of choke point of the friction with Amalek occurs in Exodus 17. So this is where the Israelites, they have, they have come out of Egypt. They're making their way toward the land. And then we have this famous story in Rephidim where the children of Amalek, the Amalekites or Amalekites, come and fight against Israel. And this is a story where as long as...

• 8:33Speaker 00

  Moses and Aaron and Hur were on the top of the hill. And as long as Moses had his hands up, the Israelites were defeating Amalek.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  But if he dropped them, then the Amalekites were defeating Israel. And so Hur and Aaron had to prop up an arm on each side for Moses. And that way, they defeat Amalek. Now, this event like sticks in the craw of Israel.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a real sore spot.

• 9:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  It's one of those sore spots where they tell their children and their children's children about it.

• 9:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, they are uniquely upset about Amalek having attacked them, even though they're getting ready to go attack everybody. And Exodus 17:14, then the Lord said to Moses, "Write this as a remembrance in a book and recite it in the hearing of Joshua. I," and this is important, "I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven." So God is promising to blot out the memory of Amalek. And this is a big deal.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:48Speaker 00

  And we have, and we're going to get to 1 Samuel 15, but there's another story in Deuteronomy 25. You have a handful of commands. And then you have a handful of verses where out of nowhere, Moses, the author of Deuteronomy, presumably, haven't looked into it. Anyway, out of nowhere, verse 17-

• 10:11Speaker 01

  I feel that you have looked into it. I think there's something you're not telling us, Dan.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  Where in verse 17, it says, "Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way, when you were faint and weary, and struck down all who lagged behind you. He did not fear God. Therefore, when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies on every hand, and the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven."

• 10:48Speaker 00

  Do not forget. So.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  I, I love the idea of you shall blot out the remembrance and don't forget. Remember what Amalek did and then blot out the remembrance of, of Amalek.

• 11:02Speaker 00

  Well, this is, yeah, this is one of the things where the, a lot of folks will say, we're supposed to forget Amalek, but remember what Amalek did. And so it's, it's kind of a, you know, maybe, maybe you need some kind of code name then.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:18Speaker 00

  So you don't remember.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  I'm.

• 11:21Speaker 00

  I mean, and, and this is not unheard of, uh, the, the divine name. We don't know how it was pronounced.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:28Speaker 00

  We know it's a name. We have the letters. We forgot how to pronounce it. So like it's, it's not like this is an impossible thing, but, but yeah, it is. Uh, every time they say to forget Amalek, they mention Amalek. So.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  It's not like the one guy, you know who I'm talking about? The guy with the thing who did the thing? Yeah. We don't remember his name anymore, but we remember this dude did some, some gnarly stuff to us. So. So the, the campaign of, of blotting out remembrance is off to a rocky start.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Or at very least a confusing start.

• 12:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. But, and that brings us, I think to first Samuel 17, where, uh, we have Samuel going to Saul, he's, uh, anointing him king.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  And, uh, the Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people, Israel. Now therefore, listen to the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  That's, that's a lot. That is, that is very extreme.

• 12:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  I feel like that's, I feel like it's a bit much, to be perfectly honest with you.

• 12:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. This is, this is commanding not just genocide, but even all of their property, even all their livestock. And, and this is, there's a name for this. This is Charem. And this is a kind of ritual slaughter, but not just ritual slaughter for the sake of ritual slaughter. Ritual slaughter as a means of purifying the land. It's like human sacrifice. And there's a reason it has to be everybody. Because there's a sense in which you are deleting the bloodline because you understand the bloodline to be contaminated.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:31Speaker 00

  And so it's a means of removing the people from the land so that the land can be purged of that evil and be wholly sanctified.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  And to be clear, sorry, I just, I suddenly just realized that it keeps using the word Amalek, but it means like the nation of Amalek. We're not talking about the guy, the guy is long since dead. And we're, and we're well after that. Even, even the Exodus stuff is not talking about the guy Amalek, it's talking about the nation of Amalek.

• 14:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and in the Hebrew, it kind of toggles around between referring to Amalek and, and the people of Ammon or the, the sons of, Amalek, not Ammon, excuse me. Woo. The, the, the people of Amalek are the sons of Amalek. So you'll see Amalekites sometimes in translation, other times you'll see Amalek. So, so Saul gets the people, 200,000 foot soldiers and 10,000 soldiers of Judah, comes to the city of the Amalekites to lay in wait in the valley. And, and then you have this little aside where Saul somehow says to the Kenites, withdraw

• 14:50Speaker 00

  from among the Amalekites, or I will destroy you with them. For you showed kindness to all the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. So the Kenites withdrew from the Amalekites. And there's a theory.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's an interesting thing. Like, did he have walkie talkies that would, like, all the Kenites are on one frequency?

• 15:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, um, the, and the thing is, there's a theory that the Kenite Midianite hypothesis is, is one iteration of this theory that the people of Israel, or at least in the Exodus story, seem to have some kind of close relationship with Midianites and Kenites. And the, the Kenites are supposed to be the ancestors of Cain.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Oh, you mean the descendants of Cain?

• 15:38Speaker 00

  Excuse me, yes, I go, I get the direction mixed up occasionally. But, uh, yeah, the descendants of, of Cain, but they're, they have some kind of close relationship with, with Moses, like Moses's father-in-law was a Midianite priest.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  And so the Kenites and the Midianites are somehow connected. So here we have kind of this nod to the notion that we have, uh, we're friends with the Kenites, so we're gonna let the Kenites go. So anyway, the Kenites bounce. Uh, Saul defeats the Amalekites from Havela as far as shore, which is east of Egypt. And then he takes King Agag of the Amalekites alive, but utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. And in the Hebrew, this is the, uh, this is the causative form of the verb, uh, haram, based, which is related to the noun cherem. Um, and so Saul does this, and spared Agag, and took the best of the sheep and the cattle

• 16:38Speaker 00

  and the fatted calves and the lambs and all that was valuable and would not utterly destroy them, all that was despised and worthless, they utterly destroyed.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  And so that is, that was, that is not what he was told to do.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  You were specifically told to destroy all of the everythings. So I don't know what's, so now we're in trouble.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  Yes. Uh, and then the word of the Lord comes to Samuel. I don't know if Saul made it back to the camp yet, or, uh, or if, if Samuel is just getting this revelation. Uh, he's like, oh no, I got a call coming in.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Samuel's working out at the gym and suddenly hears a beep.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  And then God says, "I regret that I made Saul king." And he's like, "Aw, man." "For he has turned back from following me and has not carried out my commands." Samuel was angry and he cried out to the Lord all night. So he rises early in the morning to meet Saul.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  I invested in this guy. Come on, man.

• 17:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And Samuel was told Saul went to Carmel where he set up a monument for himself and on returning, he passed on down to Gilgal. Samuel came to Saul. Saul said to him, "May you be blessed by the Lord. I have carried out the command of the Lord."

• 18:00Speaker 00

  But Samuel said, "What then is this bleeding of sheep in my ears and the lowing of cattle that I hear?" And Saul says, "Uh, they brought them from the Amalekites." "For the people spared the best of the sheep and the cattle to sacrifice to the Lord your God, but the rest we have utterly destroyed." Then Samuel said to Saul, "Stop. I will tell you what the Lord said to me last night." He replied, "Speak." Samuel said, "Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel and the Lord sent you on a mission and said, 'Go utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.'

• 18:43Speaker 00

  Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you swoop down on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord?" Now Saul defends himself. He's like, "No, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I even got their king and I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites." And then Samuel says, "Yeah, but you took the sheep and the cattle. You took the best things."

• 19:08Speaker 00

  And Samuel then gives a little poem.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  Has the Lord as great, because you know, whenever the boss breaks out the poetry, you know, something bad is happening. Yeah. To obey is better than sacrifice. It's a famous verse that we get here. And this evidently, the poem evidently convinces Saul that he was wrong. And he says, I have sinned, I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. I pray pardon my sin, return with me so that I may worship the Lord. And Samuel says, nah, not gonna do it. Wouldn't be prudent. I will not return with you, for you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  So Samuel turns to go, gives him the cold shoulder.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  And Saul grabs his robe and it tears, the hem of his robe tears. And Samuel, you can see Samuel pausing and kind of glancing down over his shoulder, because he realizes he's torn the hem of his robe. And he goes, the Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this very day. As a, you know, like, this is an apropos symbol, and has given it to a neighbor of yours, who is better than you.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. And Saul again says, I have sinned, yet honor me now before the elders of my people and before Israel. And, um, and yeah. So Samuel turned away, Saul worshiped the Lord, and Samuel says, bring me a gag. And they bring him a gag.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Bring me a gag is, could be a line from a very different story. We'll just go with a gag, the king of the Amalekites.

• 20:58Speaker 00

  Hey now, hey now.

• 21:04Speaker 00

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

• 21:10Speaker 01

  I've heard the construction.

• 21:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, you heard the construction too. We're finishing our basement, we're actually adding on to the house. We're doing some stuff in the backyard. And I was thinking the other day about how nice it was to be able to do this. Cause we, I wanted to get a new car and I wanted to do these, these improvements to the house, but we had to pay off our old car and that took actual planning, which you know I hate. And so I really had to shift my thinking quite a bit when it came to my finances. And we had to set dates and we had to create a budget and it was so satisfying to actually make a plan.

• 21:53Speaker 00

  And then even though it took some discipline and there were some bumps in the road, we actually succeeded and were able to pay off a car, got a brand new car. And it feels so relieving to know that if we actually set these goals and plan for them and stick to them, it goes from, oh, this will never end, actually feeling like you have control over stuff. And that has made a huge difference to me and to my family.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Well, you know, you can try to do that on your own, or you can use a phenomenally useful tool like Monarch to do something like that. Monarch is set up exactly for that kind of financial planning. They have things like their debt pay down simulator and visualizer to help you track your progress, which I, this is brilliant. The fact of the matter is that all of these concepts are so ethereal, it's hard to sort of wrap your head around it a lot of the time. And with this visualizer, you can see how that debt is going to go down. You can actually simulate your freedom occurring in front of your very eyes. And I think that is an amazing thing.

• 23:05Speaker 01

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• 23:38Speaker 00

  Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code DOGMA at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code DOGMA. But they bring the king of the Amalekites and, and he's got this very metal line where he says, surely death is bitter. And then Samuel says, as your sword has made women childless, so your mother shall be childless among women. Hack, hack, hack. Stab, stab, stab. Saw, saw, saw. It says that Samuel hewed a gag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal.

• 24:22Speaker 00

  So this is back when the prophets were real men, when they took the

• 24:30Speaker 01

  They took matters into their own hands.

• 24:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, they took the dismemberment of their enemies into their own hands.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:36Speaker 00

  Before the Lord, because this evidently is, is what the Lord enjoys seeing, according to this narrative.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:43Speaker 00

  So, so anyway, and Samuel never sees Saul again until the day of his death.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:49Speaker 00

  So, so Saul was like, yeah, we'll take some sheep. We'll take some, some cattle. We'll go, but you know, to make it, to make it good and legit, we'll offer them as sacrifices to God. And we'll bring the king and we'll do what we, what we please with the king. And thought that was a good idea. And nope, that was

• 25:07Speaker 01

  It went badly.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  Yes. And that is what results in David being anointed king.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  So if you ever wondered why did Saul rejected his king? Why did David take his place? It's because he was given the command to commit genocide and didn't do it well enough.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Didn't go all the way. He kept one guy and a bunch of livestock. And that was his undoing.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  And oddly enough, though, by the end of the story, all of the Amalekites are dead. Because they killed everybody but the king.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:43Speaker 00

  And it's really the cattle and the livestock that are at issue.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  That are the problem.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, and the king doesn't survive. Samuel hacks him up. So technically, the genocide worked.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  Until you get to the end of the book of First Samuel.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 26:01Speaker 00

  Because in First Samuel, Chapter 30, we have David now, who's in charge. David and his men come to Ziklag on the third day.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Good name.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  The Amalekites had made a raid on the Negev and on Ziklag. They had attacked Ziklag and burned it down and taken captive the women and all who were in it.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 26:22Speaker 00

  So.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  I see a problem.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  Yes, the Amalekites are around.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  They're fine.

• 26:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  And in numbers great enough to do some attacking. It's not just like three.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, it's not this plucky band of survivors that hid in a, you know.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  That put on some Kenite clothes and snuck away.

• 26:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is a war capable people.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:52Speaker 00

  And so, and this is something that apologists have to deal with. But they get a two for one when it comes to this. The apologetic argument is twofold. Because you get this criticism. This is a god who commands genocide and gets upset when you don't adequately genocide other people.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:16Speaker 00

  But.

• 27:18Speaker 00

  Then the Amalekites are back. And the same thing happens in, uh, in the book of Joshua. Chapters 10, 10 and 11 are like, God commands to go slaughter all of these towns of the Canaanites and leave nothing alive that breathes. And it rattles off the names of, of some places like Laquish and, and some other names and says, yeah, they killed, uh, they left no survivors. Killed everybody.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:44Speaker 00

  Over and over again, killed everybody, no survivors. And then like a half a chapter later, it's like, so anyway, uh, all these towns hadn't been conquered yet. It's like, wait a minute, we just went and killed everybody and left no survivors in those towns. So there are a couple of different places where we have commands for genocide, uh, that are not necessarily right next to, but are near references to those people who were supposed to have been genocided, still being around. And don't even bring up the fact that they just barely survived. It's like, yeah, they were, they were around. And so for the apologist, the, the idea is, okay, well, we got to negotiate between the two. They, they both have to be true because

• 28:28Speaker 00

  we are presupposing univocality.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:31Speaker 00

  We can't say, well, one was just propaganda. They didn't get it right. The other one is the, the true one. You can't do that. That's not allowed. So how do you do that? You make up a scholarly development, a scholarly conclusion.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  You say that scholars have discovered that the references to killing every, uh, man, woman, child, and cattle and sheep and, and ox and donkey is actually this common ancient Near Eastern wartime rhetoric that is really just a way to refer to complete victory. To say, we left no survivors, we killed everything that breathed is just a way to say we won the battle.

• 29:18Speaker 00

  And that way-

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a hell of an exaggeration, but okay.

• 29:21Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, it's, it's, uh, it is hyperbolic wartime rhetoric. And that way, you can have your cake after you have already eaten it.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:32Speaker 00

  Uh, you can say, well, the text is technically true because it's just rhetorical. Everybody who heard it or read it would have known, oh, this just means they won the battle. And the texts that say these people, uh, were still around are also true. And so you get to preserve univocality. And also you dodge the accusation of a genocidal god.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  And, and the only problem is that that's claim is entirely fabricated.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Right. It doesn't have any support.

• 30:02Speaker 00

  This is not some, yeah, there, this is not some ancient West Asian literary convention where you say, oh yeah, we totally genocided them and killed every man, woman and child among them and left no survivors. And we killed everything that breathed. Yeah, that, that's just not how that worked. And, and you can see elsewhere. Cause Israel goes to battle a number of times in the Pentateuch and in Joshua and Judges and Samuel and Kings. And they frequently, you know, sometimes they lose the battles, but frequently they win the battles. And the narrator, for whatever reason, doesn't feel it necessary to say, and we killed every man, woman and child and left nothing alive that breathed.

• 30:42Speaker 00

  And we, like they, most of the time that Israel wins a battle, they don't feel the need to say that. It's only in the context of this cherem, in this ritual slaughter, really, in the commands for genocide, that we see that as the description of what they were supposed to do and what they did. So it's a rather silly apologetic argument, but the, the, what we do have here is- A lot of bad blood for Amalek, which unfortunately survives down to today.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna say, we teased something. We gotta swing it back around to that.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  And that is the line that Benjamin Netanyahu has used many times, several times, since October 7th, a few years back, when the first bombs started dropping in the Israel and Palestine.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, there was the terrorist attack on October 7th.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:52Speaker 00

  2023, I believe it was. And then in response, you have Hamas described or equated with Amalek. And then more recently, we have seen Netanyahu say that, "We read in this week's Torah portion, remember what Amalek did to you. We remember and we act," in response to Iran.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:18Speaker 00

  Attacking Israel. And so we have the Prime Minister of the modern nation of Israel comparing Hamas, and depending on how you look at it, maybe all of Gaza, or maybe Palestinians, and Iran to Amalek. Now, to be clear, there's no indication whatsoever that any of them have any relationship to any people that ever actually existed named Amalek.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Well, there shouldn't be any more people named Amalek.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, there shouldn't. But, and so the identification is definitely a rhetorical thing.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:02Speaker 00

  There's not actually any literal relationship there. And so, it's a very disturbing identification, because it's basically saying, "We need to wipe out every last man, woman, and child of these people."

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, or at very least, that is a valid interpretation of what, you know, that is a way that you can interpret that. Phrasing and that invocation. I know that I know that the prime minister's office came out and said, well, what a preposterous thing. Why would you ever possibly associate the prime minister bringing up Amalek in this way with total annihilation of an enemy? And it's just like, okay, I think we've all read the same Bible here. We know what happened to the Amalekites. What are you talking about?

• 33:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  But I think there is sort of some plausible deniability in that they, you know, they basically just say, no, it's a reference to when Amal, when the Amalekites attacked Israel, or rather than when the Israelites attacked them back later on, or something.

• 34:16Speaker 00

  And I don't know the, I don't know the significance of just doing the remember thing.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:20Speaker 00

  Because that's what he said. We read in this week's story portion, remember what Amalek did to you. We remember and we act. Well, it just happened. Like the, the attack, this came immediately after the attack. And then

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:35Speaker 00

  He told IDF soldiers, you, you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our holy Bible. And we do remember. But the other, the other part of it, and you know, this is, this comes in a pair.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:50Speaker 00

  It's not only remember, it's also blot out the memory of that people. And to appeal to one without the other seems kind of silly. In, in my opinion, to say, well, we must remember. It's like, well, this just happened. We don't really need, remembering is not the issue.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:11Speaker 00

  Here. And Israel has, in the Hebrew Bible, has a number of enemies that attacked them. Why is this one the one that gets called to the front of the classroom? Why is this the one that you must remember? It is pretty significant that this is also the one where God says, I will blot them out. And where we get the command to kill every man and woman, every child and infant. And you know, there are an awful lot of people who specialize in genocide and in geopolitics, who say this is, there is a good case to make that this is an attempt to genocide.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, well, the Gaza thing, yes.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  Gaza, yeah, specifically Gaza, Iran.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  The Iran thing remains to be seen, what Netanyahu has in store for Iran. But I do have to say that like, regardless, even if we were to take him, take him at, you know, his office's word that he didn't mean to invoke a genocidal idea with this, with bringing up Amalek, just framing it in a holy war and scriptural context is basically asking for his people, asking his people to give him carte blanche because he is blessed by God to do whatever it is that he's doing. Like, that's what he's asking for, and that's pretty creepy, too.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  And it is appealing to the notion that the people on the other side of this are enemies to God.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:50Speaker 00

  And I think that's phenomenally dangerous. And anytime we try to equate these wars, these battles with, you know, the side of God versus the side of God's enemies, I think we are raising the stakes to a dangerous level, to the level where we can dehumanize the other side and we can excuse all manner of atrocity. And, and we see that kind of thing all the time.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. It's, uh, it's gross. It's not good, uh, but it's an interesting Bible story. So there you have it. Uh, that's that heavy duty story. I, I'm not a fan of, uh, genocides, modern or ancient personally. That's just, that's just a hard line that I draw. I don't know about you, Dan. I assume you're on the same page.

• 37:44Speaker 00

  Same page.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  All right. Well then let's move on to our what's that?

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Okay. So here we are. We got, we got a, a collection of apostles. Yes. 12. It could be a baker's dozen, depending on who you go with because, uh, because some people like to, uh, call an audible and substitute out once, uh, Judas gets got.

• 38:11Speaker 00

  Good old Judas. Uh, so we're, we'll start with, with some of the, the low hanging fruit, some of the easier ones, the ones that are actually, uh,

• 38:20Speaker 01

  I love that. We just talked about Judas and then you mentioned low hanging fruit.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  Considering he hanged himself.

• 38:27Speaker 00

  Uh, he,

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Or did he? Or did he? Yeah. Or did he just fall over and blow up?

• 38:36Speaker 00

  Oh gosh. Um, making me think of the Simpsons where he, uh, tries to steal all the candy from the candy convention and takes the Pop Rocks and the soda and like puts them together and chucks them.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  And like a grenade.

• 38:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. Creates a huge explosion as they run out the door. Um, so, uh, the James, uh, the son of Zebedee.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  Not the other James, cause there's multiple Jameses.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's, there's multiple Jameses, but, uh, according to, uh, Acts, chapter 12, verse two, um, this was, uh, he was put to death by Herod Agrippa.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 39:18Speaker 00

  He had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 39:23Speaker 00

  And so, yes.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  So that one's actually, that's recorded in the Bible.

• 39:28Speaker 00

  In the Bible, that doesn't necessarily mean it's historically accurate, but it is at least recorded in the Bible. So to the degree that we're going to take an account of someone's death in the Bible seriously, we need to take that one.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 39:44Speaker 00

  Seriously. And we've got, and that's really, I think that's it when it comes to the folks mentioned in the Bible. Cause Peter, a lot of people understand Peter to his, he was supposed to have been crucified upside down. And people will appeal to Gospel of John, chapter 21, where it talks about how other people will lead you where you're gonna go and like your arms will be stretched out or something like that. So people think of that as a prophetic allusion to Peter's martyrdom. But we don't really have a reference to Peter's martyrdom for a while.

• 40:26Speaker 00

  You have implied martyrdom, like First Clement, Clement of Alexandria.

• 40:33Speaker 00

  Or no, Clement of Rome would be First Clement, excuse me. Says that he was, he endured many things and then went on to his eternal reward or something like that.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 40:44Speaker 00

  And the implication is that he went on to eternity as a result of the things he endured.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:51Speaker 00

  A lot of people understand that as a reference to some kind of martyrdom.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Some sort of unpleasantness that led to his death.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  Yes. Now, whether or not this was a martyrdom that could have been stopped by Peter denying his testimony of the risen Savior is really not clear. So that's another thing to bring up. Maybe they did say, you know what, I made it all up. I'm not sure that that actually happened. And they were like, too late, you gotta die. So it's not clear that that is actually evidence that he was convinced. But I think Peter, of all the people from the New Testament who claim to have seen the risen Savior, I think Peter has probably the most solid testimony because Paul even talks about having visited Peter.

• 41:40Speaker 00

  And Paul refers to Peter's vision of the risen Jesus. So. So Peter probably did make the claim that that he had seen the the risen Jesus.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Okay, and he and he was theoretically, the story is that he was crucified in Rome, right?

• 41:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, upside down.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Upside down in Rome.

• 42:00Speaker 00

  That tradition?

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:02Speaker 00

  That comes from an apocryphal text.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 42:05Speaker 00

  Called the Acts of Peter. And we're gonna see that most of these traditions actually come from a genre of literature called the Acts of the Apostles, which are New Testament apocryphal texts, usually written between the second and sixth centuries CE. And they're they're filled with all kinds of fantastical tales of of magic and daring do and all this kind of stuff.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  We've met Thecla, so we know we know some of the daring do that can happen.

• 42:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  In in an Acts of book.

• 42:36Speaker 00

  So the account of his being crucified upside down in Rome under Nero comes from a text that was probably written in the second half of the second century. So probably 100 or more years after he was actually dead is when someone writes that account.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 42:54Speaker 00

  So so the the actual nature of his martyrdom, I would say we've got we've got decent evidence for his martyrdom, but the actual nature of it is apocryphal.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 43:04Speaker 00

  So not great. And then let's move on to Andrew. So there's nothing in the New Testament about Andrew. We have an Acts of Andrew, which was written probably second or third century CE that talks about a martyrdom. And then Eusebius of Caesarea also talks about mission traditions that he went gallivanting all around the world. And we're gonna see this as well, sometimes conflicting traditions about where these people went and preached. But the tradition that we see in the Acts of Andrew is that he was crucified on an X-shaped cross.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  St. Andrew's cross.

• 43:49Speaker 00

  So we get.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  In the kink, in the kink world.

• 43:54Speaker 00

  Um, I think the St. Andrew's cross exists outside the kink world.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Outside of the kink world? Oh, okay. You guys can have it too. That's fine.

• 44:03Speaker 00

  But um, yeah, you have, and notice there's, there are variations on a theme. Uh, Peter upside down cross, Andrew X cross.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:12Speaker 00

  Like everybody, everybody gets their own special kind of crucifixion.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Because, because like the iconography of that T is already taken, so we gotta go with something different.

• 44:22Speaker 00

  And that, and that's why Peter was, uh, according to the Acts of Peter, I believe that, um, that's where it explains it. It was because he didn't feel worthy to be crucified in the same manner as the Savior.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 44:35Speaker 00

  Uh, and then we get to John, son of Zebedee.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:40Speaker 00

  Um, and Irenaeus says John lived to an old age. Eusebius of Caesarea says he, uh, dies in Ephesus. Uh, this is one of the disputed ones. Uh, Papius of Hierapolis, uh, kind of maybe there was a martyrdom, who knows? Uh, could have happened, but, um.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  Did I see something about John being boiled in oil? Is that one of the, one of the legends? Or am I mixing that up?

• 45:12Speaker 00

  I don't know anything about, oh, wait a minute, we got, uh, according to Tertullian,

• 45:18Speaker 00

  John was banished presumably to Patmos, where he presumably wrote the book of Revelation.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Oh, oh, we're, oh, right, because we're, we're claiming that this is the same John.

• 45:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, after being plunged into boiling oil in Rome and suffering nothing from it.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 45:34Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  He survived the oil and then just died of old age.

• 45:38Speaker 00

  And then the audience in the Colosseum all converted to Christianity when they saw the miracle.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Of course they did. Okay.

• 45:44Speaker 00

  So, so here, here's one thing, uh, people will say, yeah, John vanished to Patmos, wrote the book of Revelation, uh, lived a long life.

• 45:55Speaker 00

  There's nothing that connects the author of the Gospel of John to, or the Apostle John, to the Book of Revelation apart from the name John.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:05Speaker 00

  Which was a common name.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:07Speaker 00

  And, uh, yeah, so the, a lot of people will talk about the tradition. They're already presupposing the traditional identification of the John who is supposed to have written Revelation with the John who is the Apostle and therefore with the author of the Gospel of John. And that identification is, uh, dubious at best and downright silly. Um, if you listen to, uh, experts and even early Christians, there were early Christians who were like, yeah, these are not the same.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  So if, if John, son of Zebedee and John of Patmos are two different people, which one took the hot tub in oil, uh, and, and gave, and, and impressed everybody, uh, into becoming Christians?

• 46:52Speaker 00

  I vote neither of them.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  Okay, fine, fine.

• 46:59Speaker 00

  After that, we, uh, we get to Philip.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 47:01Speaker 00

  And, uh, we have again, uh, Papius of Hierapolis. A lot of people like Papius because he's the one who says, yeah, the Matthew wrote down all the sayings of Jesus in Hebrew and, uh, and, you know, Mark, the, uh, Peter's interpreter, he wrote down the sayings of Jesus and all this. So he, he's a witness to an early assignment of authorship to the Gospels, but literally everything else he said, Christians are like, haha, nope, that didn't happen. But he's one of the, and it's all, he's the one who came up with that, uh, tells that other story about Judas, uh, dying because he just got so bloated and huge that he couldn't even walk down the street and then, uh, got run

• 47:45Speaker 00

  over by a wagon or something like that.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 47:48Speaker 00

  So, yeah, um, but, uh, Papius says something about, uh, about Philip's death. Uh, Eusebius of, of Caesarea has, uh, something, it's a little vague though. We don't really have, uh, any clear like, yeah, he was, he was crucified upside down as far as I know. I think there is a tradition that he was, uh, beheaded, either crucified or beheaded. There isn't, there isn't Acts of Philip. That is another apocryphal text that's like 4th century. So even further away.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:23Speaker 00

  And I apologize if it sounds like I've got a little lisp. I'm finding out what syllables are more difficult for me to pronounce right now with

• 48:31Speaker 01

  You'll get there, man.

• 48:32Speaker 00

  With all this gear in my mouth.

• 48:37Speaker 00

  And so from Philip, we go to Bartholomew.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 48:42Speaker 00

  What's your name, Barf? Your full name, Bartholomew. So from Eusebius of Caesarea, and Eusebius, by the way, was the historian for Constantine, the Emperor Constantine in the 4th century CE. So he wrote ecclesiastical history. He wrote a bunch of texts and talks about a lot of traditions. He says Bartholomew went to India for a mission. Yeah.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Ooh, that's fancy.

• 49:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then there's a later legend, and I think there's an axe of, is it Andrew and Bartholomew? I think there's a combined axe of, I think it's Andrew and Bartholomew. I don't remember, but says that they went to Armenia.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 49:24Speaker 00

  And in Armenia, they, he converted somebody that ticked off the king and the king had him, had him tortured and executed or something like that. But there's another one that says he died in some other country. So, and then these are very late. These are again 3rd, 4th, 5th century where these traditions are coming from.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 49:48Speaker 00

  So most of the people who say, here's how the apostles all died. They probably just Googled this or some source was like, here's how he died and here's how he died and here's how he died. And they just rattle it off as if it is all sober history.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  Or biblical.

• 50:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, or biblical. And really, it's just these traditions that are being collated from these late Acts of the Apostles, which are apocryphal texts that that talk about these, you know, magical duels that they had with with other magicians and things like that.

• 50:24Speaker 01

  And which were probably written not in conjunction with each other, far from like, these were probably

• 50:29Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  Just this is just fanfic that was written by various and sundry people.

• 50:37Speaker 00

  And and it may be, there's a there's a text called the Golden Legend, which is compiled around 1260, a dude named, I think, Jacobus. And I don't know how to pronounce his last name, but he seems to have, I think it was like a Lives of the Saints, basically. And I think he may have been one of the main collators of a lot of these legends.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 51:04Speaker 00

  So they do go from being kind of spread out, just stray legends, perhaps to being collected in a single volume. And maybe that's what starts people down this this route of of collecting them all. Matthew of Matthew fame?

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Yes, I've heard of it.

• 51:22Speaker 00

  Of Book of Matthew fame. Papias says, mentions writings, doesn't say anything about his death. There is an Acts of Matthew, and I and that one's got to be third or fourth century. I'm not, I don't know exactly when that one dates to. But the traditions have him dying,

• 51:43Speaker 00

  being martyred either in like Ethiopia or Persia.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 51:46Speaker 00

  So you've got you've got different traditions on that. Thomas.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  And I've got I've got Matthew as either stabbed, burned, or beheaded, depending on which source you're looking at. So

• 51:56Speaker 00

  Or yeah, or

• 51:57Speaker 01

  That sounds exciting.

• 51:58Speaker 00

  Why not? Why not all three?

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Why?

• 52:00Speaker 00

  I mean, certainly, that's been certainly, that's happened.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Porque no los trace. Sure.

• 52:05Speaker 00

  Porque no. And that brings us to Thomas, doubting Thomas. We have a third century Acts of Thomas. And I but and there's a tradition of him being martyred in India.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  Okay, another India guy. Okay.

• 52:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know if that comes directly from, I think that comes from the Acts of Thomas, but it has been a long time since I've read the Acts of Thomas. We have another James. Who is, may or may not be, James the Just.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 52:38Speaker 00

  I think if, if they conflate this James with James the Just, then he might be mentioned in Josephus.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 52:47Speaker 00

  As the brother of Jesus.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:48Speaker 00

  Uh, who was, who was put to death. So it all depends on, on whether or not you conflate the two.

• 52:57Speaker 00

  Thaddeus, also known as Jude. We don't see many Thaddeuses these days. I actually come to think that I knew, uh, I had a guy named Thad who, uh,

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:06Speaker 00

  A Hebrew class with me many years ago.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 53:09Speaker 00

  But, um, he is supposed to have had a, a mission to Adai, or Adessa. Uh, and there are, and there are, uh, later apocryphal traditions that have him being martyred in Persia.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 53:24Speaker 00

  And I think those are, again, like, fourth, fifth, maybe even sixth century.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  I've, I've got him killed with a club or an axe.

• 53:31Speaker 00

  All right.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  That's excited.

• 53:33Speaker 00

  You know what? Probably the same. Cause you could have a, you could have a, an axe tip on the end of a club.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Club, club him and ax him.

• 53:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:41Speaker 00

  Uh, Simon the Zealot, uh, talks about, uh, martyrdom in Persia. There are some traditions that have him, uh, partnered up with Thaddeus slash Jude, but these are, again, late. Do you have, do you, do you, are you aware of a tradition that gives specifics about the implements of his martyrdom?

• 54:02Speaker 01

  I, mine says sawed in half.

• 54:04Speaker 00

  Oh, nice.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  I like that one. I mean, I don't like it. I, I would prefer not to be sawed in half.

• 54:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  But, uh, unless, you know, it's, it's in Vegas and I am thereafter restored to wholeness.

• 54:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 54:20Speaker 00

  And then the, the 12th Apostle Judas Iscariot. I guess if we include him, then we do have two different biblical accounts of his, his death. I don't think you would call it a martyrdom. At least not if you want to stay on the good side of the Christians.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think he lost his, uh, he, he lost his chance to be a martyr. He doesn't, he doesn't get to be that.

• 54:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, uh, if you go by the Gospel of Matthew, uh, it was a simple hanging after throwing his 30 pieces of silver into the temple and. Repenting of his wicked deed.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Specifically hanging himself. He was not hanged, but hanged himself.

• 55:00Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. And the Acts of the Apostles, chapter one, verses 18 and 19, offer the account where he buys a field with the money.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:13Speaker 00

  And then is on in his field, just like, this is a nice field and falls and explodes. And.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  That's, that's maybe my favorite biblical death. I think of all of the biblical deaths, that's the one you gotta, you gotta love.

• 55:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, stubs his toe and blows up.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Just, yeah. What, what, what's the, the name of the guy in the Monty Python sketch? The guy that, oh, I couldn't possibly, oh, sir, it's just waffra thing. You remember in, in, in, ah, forget about it. The guy that eats so much, he explodes.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  I vaguely, very vaguely remember the sketch. I remember.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  How, you were literally remember everything that you've ever seen, except that?

• 56:00Speaker 00

  I was thinking of Strange Brew. Where the guy has to drink the entire vat of beer. And then there's like a fire and he's, and he's the giant big old guy.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  It's the whole thing out.

• 56:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's got a, yeah, pee on the fire to.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  I gotta take a leak so bad I can taste it, eh? There, I did one. I got, I got the quote on that.

• 56:21Speaker 00

  Oh, gosh.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  All right. Well, so we have a bunch of dead apostles now.

• 56:28Speaker 00

  Well, they're definitely dead now.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 56:30Speaker 00

  Whether, whether these accounts accurately represent the manner of their death.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Scholars agree that they all did.

• 56:37Speaker 00

  Almost universal, almost universal, almost universal, because there's still an open question about John. Particularly if you're Mormon.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, gosh, yes. Okay.

• 56:49Speaker 00

  And then, and then that's not even bringing into question the three Nephites.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  All right. Well, there you go. They, they, some of them may have died for lies. Or there's no lie, or it's like, anyway, that apologetic is silly.

• 57:06Speaker 00

  It is weak apologetic, yes.

• 57:08Speaker 01

  We'll just say that. But yeah, it's, it's nice to know how these traditions sort of came to be. That's, I think it's very interesting.

• 57:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, and just how much apocryphal literature is out there that is not a part of our Bible, but that continues to influence the way that people think and talk about these figures, and construct arguments for the historicity of what's going on. I think a lot of people would be interested to know that a lot of what they think they know about these figures is actually coming to them from texts they would otherwise dismiss

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:42Speaker 00

  as nonsensical and apocryphal ravings of, you know, somebody who wasn't breastfed properly, or something like that.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  Right. But what's nice about it is just to acknowledge that it's part of the sort of rich, colorful tapestry that is the Christian tradition.

• 58:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, it does not descend ex nihilo from one revealed truth. It comes to us from centuries and centuries of transmission and interaction. And yeah, it's messy.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  All right.

• 58:20Speaker 00

  But what's not messy is the fact that the argument that nobody dies for a lie, therefore Jesus resurrected, is pretty bad.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it is. I declare it defeated. So, there we go. If you, dear friends, would care to join the many people who help to keep this show going and keep our families fed, you can go and become a patron over on patreon.com/dataoverdogma, where you can get early and ad-free episodes, and you can get the after-party, which is a bonus content that we do every single week. And we sure do appreciate our patrons. Thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing the show. Thanks to JJ Newhart for being our producer.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  And thanks to all y'all for tuning in. We sure do appreciate you.

• 59:16Speaker 00

  Bye, everybody.

• 59:22Speaker 01

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