No One Can See God and Live… Except These 74 Guys

This week, we're finally reading a chapter verse by verse, and Exodus 24 does not make it easy: in just 18 verses, Moses climbs a mountain, wanders off to write everything down and splash the people with blood, climbs again, and somehow keeps finding more mountain. Along the way, seventy-four people look straight at the God of Israel (feet, sapphire pavement, and all) nine chapters before God insists no one can see him and live, and the seams between the chapter's multiple sources start showing. Then, we lay out the timeline behind all those terms Dan M keeps throwing around, like "Late Bronze," "Iron Age," and "post-exilic," starting with the Bronze Age collapse and the moment a people called Israel first shows up in the record. Explore every episode, searchable transcripts, and our book recommendations on the Data Over Dogma website: https://www.dataoverdogmapod.com Support Data Over Dogma and get every episode early and ad-free, plus exclusive bonus content — become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma Get your Data Over Dogma merch at our online store: https://data-over-dogma-shop.fourthwall.com/ Watch every episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dataoverdogma Follow us: Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/dataoverdogmapod TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@data.over.dogma.pod Threads — https://www.threads.com/@dataoverdogmapod X — https://x.com/data_over_dogma Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod Get Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book, The Bible Says So: https://static.macmillan.com/static/smp/bible-says-so-9781250347466/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  In January of 1915, Ernest Shackleton's ship, Endurance, became encased in the ice in the Weddell Sea. Through determination, grit, and savvy, Shackleton would lead his men through a brutal winter, then over hundreds of miles of Antarctic ice, followed by 800 miles across some of the roughest waters in the world. It is one of the most extraordinary and inspirational journeys in the history of exploration. Find this story and many others at the Explorers Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts, or at explorerspodcast.com.

• 0:31Speaker 01

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

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Because Moses is like, "Show me your glory," and God says, "Eh, tell you what, I'll walk by you, and then I'm gonna cover up your face with my hand, and then when I pass by, I'll take it away. You can see my butt."

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan.

• 1:26Speaker 03

  And I'm Dan Beecher.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same, all through some nice dental trays that are making me feel really awkward right now, because I put new trays in yesterday. And so now I feel like I've got more of a lisp than I normally do.

• 1:50Speaker 03

  That's one of, I take it that that is one of the difficulties of these, of the, instead of traditional braces, the invisible aligners that you have to just level up every so often, and it's like starting over or something.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's really, once my teeth get to the point where I can have a handful of almonds without crying in pain, they're like, "Nope, starting you all over again."

• 2:20Speaker 03

  When are you done with those?

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Gosh, hopefully within the next few months. I would have to look back. It was a 14-month schedule, and I don't remember when it started. It feels like I've always been in these things.

• 2:34Speaker 03

  Well, you did it to yourself, so I'm not feeling all that sympathetic.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:40Speaker 03

  Anywho, we should do a show. There's a whole show that we can do.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  We got nothing else going on.

• 2:46Speaker 03

  And so, let's do that. Our first segment today is going to be a chapter and verse, and we're gonna do it in a way that you suggested, Dan, because it was a way that I apparently promised you we would be able to do long, long ago, when we first started the show, and then we just have never managed to do it this way. We're actually gonna read verse by verse and figure out what's going on in Exodus, Chapter 24. That's actually a pretty wild chapter.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  And then, we're gonna do a lay of the land, where I, this is something that I realized that we should have probably done back at the beginning of the show.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, this is episode 2, 3 kind of stuff.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  Because we're gonna discuss, every time you hear Dan use a phrase like, "Well, that's a post-exilic blah, blah, blah," or that's a, like, he talks about these periods of time, and I'm always, I always struggle to know, like, where that fits in the timeline. Fortunately, Dan, you're very useful, and you say things like, "That's probably 500-something BCE," or whatever, and then that gives us something. But a nice roundup of the actual timeframe, I think, will be very handy, and I will appreciate it. So, that'll be really fun in the latter half of the program. But for now, let's dive into our chapter and verse.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  All right, Exodus 24. Now, I'm gonna, we should get situated in Exodus.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:34Speaker 03

  We've had, the Exodus has itself occurred. We've got 2 million Hebrews

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:45Speaker 03

  meandering the desert.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  Yes, we had got water from a rock, Amalek attacked Israel. Chapter 18, that's where Jethro, Moses's father-in-law, is like, "What are you doing, man? You're wearing yourself too thin." And so, said, "Let them sit as judges for the people." Chapter 19, "They reach Mount Sinai."

• 5:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  And the people are consecrated. Chapter 20 is the

• 5:15Speaker 03

  And I'm gonna remind people that regardless of what apologists will tell you in, with their whole chest, we have no idea where this Mount Sinai is.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Oh, no. Yeah, no. Or if there even was a Mount Sinai, or if maybe one generation was like, "That's Mount Sinai," and then the other generation is like, "That's Mount Sinai over there."

• 5:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, they could've had three or four Sinai's going at the same time. You never know.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  We got three or four Sinai's going at the same time, because we got the one that St. Catherine's monastery is built on top of, in the Sinai Peninsula, and then you cross over the Gulf of Akaba, and then you've got Jabal Maqla, which a lot of people are like, "That's Mount Sinai," because you know, you got the blackened rock on the top, the contact metamorphic rock, that they're like, "Oh, it's burnt." It's like, thousands of miles of Saudi Arabia are covered in contact metamorphic black rock. And then you've got Jabal Al-Laws, which is a little north of there, and they're like, "That's Mount Sinai," because they got stuff around there. So, yeah. Anyway, they reach some mountain somewhere, and Chapter 20 is where they get the Ten Commandments. So Exodus, if you need to have

• 6:26Speaker 02

  that in your back pocket, what chapter are the Ten Commandments in? Exodus 20.

• 6:31Speaker 03

  Well, that's what chapter, what we call the Ten Commandments is, not what chapter the Bible calls the Ten Commandments or the Ten Words.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Yes, if you want what the Bible calls the Ten Commandments, well, that would be Exodus 34. But at the same time, Deuteronomy 4 refers to the Ten Words, and then you get a repetition almost identical to Exodus 20 in Deuteronomy, Chapter 5.

• 6:56Speaker 03

  This Bible needs to get its act together. I'm gonna say it.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Who's in charge?

• 7:04Speaker 02

  So, yeah, the Ten Commandments are in Chapter 20, most of Chapter 20. It goes up through the false witness one is verse 17, and then 18 through 26 is more of the story, where the people are like, "Yee, they're scared." Chapter 21 and 22 and 23 are what are generally referred to as the covenant code.

• 7:26Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Which

• 7:27Speaker 03

  Because the Ten Commandments don't actually stop at 10. They continue on. It's not 10. It's like, it's like, three dozen of them. It's so many commandments.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this is part of what we're gonna talk about in Chapter 24, because if you're paying attention, it's like, "Hey, here are some commandments. Cool, thanks. Little freaky, but cool. Hey, here are some commandments. Whoa, more commandments. All right, cool. Still freaky. Hey, here are some commandments." Like, we have commandments, and you keep giving us more commandments. And then, you know, we get a bunch of narrative, narrative, narrative, narrative, and then we get to Chapter 34, and it's like, "By the way, I would like to give you Ten Commandments." And they keep stacking commandment upon commandment. But 21 through 23, that's the covenant code. And a lot of scholars think that Exodus 21 through at least the end of 22, maybe a little bit into Chapter 23, might

• 8:22Speaker 02

  be the earliest legislative literature in all the Hebrew Bible, because you've got a bunch of different sets of law codes in Exodus. In fact, even you go forward in time to Exodus 13, guess what? Commandments. And then you've got Leviticus, you've got Deuteronomy, you've even got some in Numbers. And there's an awful lot of overlap in these. Some things are like, you can tell they're addressing the same situation, but they're saying, "Oh, the punishment is this," and it's different. Like, this is one of the reasons that scholars are sure, are convinced, that the books of Moses are cobbled together from multiple

• 9:04Speaker 02

  different sources. So, anyway, we get to

• 9:08Speaker 03

  And we're gonna get to another way that, because we're gonna get to something that is contradicted

• 9:15Speaker 03

  Just a few chapters later in Exodus. So, so let's start with, so chapter 24, do you want to, do you want to read it? Or do you want me to read it?

• 9:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll go ahead and read. So, starting in verse one, we've just finished with the covenant code. And God's talking, "Then he said to Moses, 'Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship at a distance.'" So, we have the elites of the nation of Israel are invited to come up to the Lord. Obviously, they're gonna skedaddle up the mountain.

• 9:57Speaker 03

  And the Lord in this case, and all throughout this, is a, uh, small caps, "the Lord," which means that it's a reference to the Tetragrammaton. Is that correct?

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  So, it's not just "the Lord," it's naming the God.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  Right. The God who introduced themselves to Moses in Exodus 3 and said, "Hey, I'm Adonai. Good to meet you." And then in chapter six said, "Hey, I'm Adonai. Good to meet you." So, there's a, this happens frequently, the repetitions.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  So, come up, come up to, and then he says his own name? Come up to, he doesn't say, "Come up to me."

• 10:38Speaker 02

  No, correct. Well, this is funny, uh, cause you can go, uh, to a rabbinic text from like 500 CE, Sanhedrin, I think it's 34B. I could be wrong about that. But you have a story where a heretic goes to Rav Edite and says, "Why does Exodus 24:1 have God say, 'Come up to Adonai,' instead of 'Come up to me'?" And Rav Edite says, "Oh, that's not Adonai. It's Metatron."

• 11:12Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Because his name is like his masters. And then he quotes Exodus 23:20, where God says, "I'm sending an angel before you to guard you on the way. Don't tick him off. Don't disobey him, because he doesn't have to forgive your sins, for my name is in him." So, um, so yeah, somebody else had that question too, 1500 years ago. And the answer was, "Oh, that's not actually Adonai. That's the angel of the Lord."

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Okay. Woo, who knows? Who knows? Uh, come up to, so it's like me saying, "Come up to Dan."

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  You and Aaron and Nadab and Abihu.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 11:50Speaker 03

  And seventy of the elders. All right. So, we're headed, we're headed up the mountain.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Moses alone shall come near the Lord, but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him. So.

• 12:04Speaker 03

  And again, the Lord is, is, is the substitution for the Tetragrammaton.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yep. And then verse three, "Moses went and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances, and all the people answered with one voice and said, 'All the words that the Lord has spoken, we will do.'"

• 12:23Speaker 02

  Huh? God's like, "Come here." And Moses is like, "Anyway, everybody, how are you feeling about the laws?" There's a little bit of a disconnect here.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  I mean, you know, listen, he has had, I, I don't know if he's had this experience yet. When did he, when did the golden calf thing happen? Before or after this?

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Uh, the golden calf thing is later.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Chapter 32.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  Cause I was gonna say, it's, it sounds like he's had the, we, I will say this, throughout the Exodus, they keep going, they keep committing to the Lord, and then they grumble, grumble, grumble, and then the Lord has to like make them sorry. And then, so like, it makes sense that you like, but you, it's, to me, I read it as Moses was like, "Now you guys be on your best behavior while I'm gone." And they're like, "We'll do it. We will, all the words that the Lord has spoken, we will do."

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it, it, the narrative is a little choppy here. Because the words have already been, have been given to Moses, and then we're like moving on to other stuff.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  Right.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  And then the narrative is just hopping back without letting you know. Uh, verse four, "And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord."

• 13:37Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  "He rose early in the morning, built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and set up twelve pillars corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel." So, now Moses is writing stuff down, like, maybe the message didn't get to Moses? God was like, "Hey, I'm, I'm talking to you. Can you, can you hear me?" It's like trying to tell my nine-year-old to go to bed. He's like, "In a minute." It's like an hour later. "What did I say? In a minute." And then verse five, "He sent young men of the Israelites, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed oxen as offerings of well-being to the Lord." So, we got an entirely different narrative going on here. This is unrelated.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Uh, and we're gonna get in, in, once we get through the chapter, there are only 18 verses, so it won't take too long. But once we get through the chapter, I wanna talk about how the narrative is divided up into a few different sources. We actually have different stories that are being woven together.

• 14:36Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  So, verse six, "Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he dashed against the altar." Verse seven, "Then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, 'All that the Lord has spoken, we will do, and we will be obedient.'" So, it, it's kind of odd, because Moses has already told them everything.

• 14:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  And all the people said, "All the words that the Lord has spoken, we will do." And then he's like, "All right, well, hang on. I'll be back in a minute. I'm gonna write it all down."

• 15:07Speaker 03

  "I'm gonna build a building over here and put some pillars up, and then, uh..."

• 15:11Speaker 02

  "And then I'm gonna read it to you again, and I'm gonna need you to sign off on this one more time."

• 15:17Speaker 03

  It also, it also all has the vibe of the Lord is up on the mountain waiting on all these guys that are supposed to come visit.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  I thought I told them today.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  What, did I give him a time? Is he sacrificing oxen right now?

• 15:35Speaker 02

  And then verse eight, "Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people, and said, 'Here is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.'"

• 15:46Speaker 03

  Worst Gallagher show ever.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  So, yeah, we've got the blood of the covenant, and we've got sacrifices and offerings, and we've got pillars, and all the, oh, I've gotta look in the Hebrew. If that, if that's matzavah, 12 pillars, 24:4. So, matzavot, yeah, matzavah. Uh, matzavah, lishonaim. Yeah, so, uh, so those are standing stones.

• 16:14Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  That would be like, uh, like a divine image.

• 16:18Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Here, they represent each of the 12 tribes of Israel. Oh, and, and here's something, uh, people who talk about Jabal El Loz will say, "Hey, we found, uh, 12 pillars down at the base of the mountain." And it's like, "Well, there's a quarry down there with a bunch of marble pillars that don't just number 12, and also the Roman-era circular pillars." So, when the, when the Bible translates it pillar, people think, "Oh, this is a circular pillar, like you see, uh, you know, in front of a building." Yeah, or something like that. It's not. The word matzavah means standing stone, and it is a particular type of stone

• 17:02Speaker 02

  that looks and functions more like a headstone. It would be flat on one side and rounded on the other, and it would be pretty short, and it would just look like a headstone. And so, when people are like, "Oh, it's Moses's pillar." It is 1,000% not Moses's pillar. And this is why Ron Wyatt was so bad at what he did, because he found a Roman-era circular, tall, 15-foot-tall pillar, and was like, "Moses set up this pillar after crossing the Red Sea." It's like, "That's the wrong kind of pillar."

• 17:36Speaker 03

  Point of order, I'm going to, I'm going to quibble with you on one thing, which is that Ron Wyatt was great at what he did. It's just that what he did was not science or like archaeology or anything.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, what he claimed to be doing. Let's, maybe we put it that way. Um, yes. But then verse nine, "Then, then Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy elders, or seventy of the elders of Israel, went up." So, uh, Moses was like, "Hang on, I got crap to do, God."

• 18:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  And then went and did all this other stuff over and over.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  This guy has ADHD like I do.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Weren't we supposed to be doing something?

• 18:22Speaker 03

  Um, I feel like there's something. And I'll think of it. I'll think of it.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  And if you read verse 1, 2, 9, perfectly coherent. I'll, I'll do that real quick. "Then he said to Moses, 'Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship at a distance. Moses alone shall come near the Lord, but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him. Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, went up."

• 18:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Ta-da. We've got a coherent narrative. So, verses 3 through 8 have likely been inserted between verses 2 and 9, or 1, 2, and 9 were added secondarily. Uh, there's a, there's a scholar, a friend of mine, Tim Hoag, who's, who's written some cool stuff on, um, on the 10 commandments, and on materiality and, and agency, and all that kind of stuff. But he's argued that the earliest part of the entire chapter was probably verses 3 through 6, and then verse 8. So, uh, that would be the, uh, you know, write down all the words, and then we're gonna, we're gonna burn offerings and sacrifice oxen,

• 19:36Speaker 02

  and half the blood, and half of the blood, and then we're doing blood offerings, blood of the covenant. And so, that's kind of the early, you know, this is all about sacrifices and offerings, and, uh, and then part of verse 11, which talks about feasting. We'll get to that in a second. But then the, uh, verse 1 through 2 and 9 are probably coming a little later when they're trying to establish who are the leaders of, of this group, and, um, who are the elites? Moses, Aaron, uh, Nadab, Abihu, and thus and so. So, there are a couple of different theories of what's going on here.

• 20:17Speaker 03

  Dan, I don't know if you remember being a child. It was a little minute ago.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  I have forgotten all of it.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  Back in the day, man, sometimes you get around this time of year and it's like, oh, mom, can I just have that? I really want that. I really need that transformer. Can I have it? Or whatever. And then mom said, well, maybe you'll get it for Christmas. Wait until the holidays. Maybe if you just wait until the holiday and you're like, but, but now though, now exists, I would, I would prefer that. Well, with Mint Mobile's holiday deal, there's no waiting because it's on now. Right now, this second, all of their plans are $15 a month.

• 20:59Speaker 02

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• 22:15Speaker 02

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

• 22:21Speaker 03

  I've heard the construction.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, you've heard the construction too. We're finishing our basement. We're actually adding on to the house. We're doing some stuff in the backyard. And I was thinking the other day about how nice it was to be able to do this because 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. And then even though

• 23:05Speaker 02

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

• 23:31Speaker 03

  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

• 24:14Speaker 03

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• 24:49Speaker 02

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• 25:04Speaker 03

  Let's move on to verse 10 because it's about to blow everybody's mind.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  And they saw the God of Israel. And, and here's the cool part. Under his feet, there was something like a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness.

• 25:23Speaker 03

  So, so A, so there's two things that jump out to me.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:27Speaker 03

  I mean, the sapphire pavement is fine, but the things that jump out to me are A, they saw God, which that's, that's 74 odd people who have, who have now, who have seen God. And I recall multiple scriptures that say, you can't do that.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. In fact, we're only, I think, nine chapters away from God saying, no, no, no, you can't see me.

• 25:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Pulling a-

• 25:57Speaker 03

  Because you'll die.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  Pulling a John Cena.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Or no, 3311 is when it says, the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face. It's, I think it's 30, 3022? No, gosh. I used to know this by heart.

• 26:13Speaker 03

  No, it's 33. It's 3320. But he said, you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  Right. And, and in the, and, and because Moses is like, show me your glory. And God says, eh, tell you what, I'll walk by you and then I'm going to cover up your face with my hand. And then when I pass by, I'll take it away. You can see my butt, but you can't see my face. Cause one is, one's a lot more glorious than the other. I'll let you figure out which. But yeah, and the, and the Greek translation says, no human can see my face and live. The Hebrew just says, no human can see me and live. But the idea is, the idea is obviously the face. Cause the, in that time period, and this is where there's

• 27:03Speaker 02

  probably some Mesopotamian influence because in Assyria Babylon, they had, deities were clothed in what they called melamu, which was kind of a radiance, a glory. That was, it was scary because if you saw melamu, you knew you were in the presence of someone who could mess you up. But in, in the Hebrew Bible, it's the radiance itself that can mess you up. Like kind of the, you know, sun stare game we all played when we were 11. You know, it hurts to look directly at that glory. And so God's glory just, you

• 27:42Speaker 02

  know, it'll be like Terminator, just, just scorched, you know, skeleton still holding on to the chain link fence, kind of scorching. So.

• 27:55Speaker 03

  But, but for the purposes of our chapter, chapter 24,

• 27:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:59Speaker 03

  They all looked at him. And then the second part of it that seems clear, he has feet.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:07Speaker 03

  God is corporeal. God is a person.

• 28:10Speaker 02

  Corporeal and anthropomorphic, very clearly in, in this passage. And, and same with the idea of, I'm going to cover you up with my hand and then you can see my backside when I walk by, because I walk.

• 28:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, God has a hand in verse 11.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  Yes. Well, yeah, here, verse 11 says, God did not lay his hand on the chief men of the Israelites. They beheld God and they ate and drank. And yeah, they were like, man, that was weird. We brought food with us, right?

• 28:41Speaker 03

  Does seeing deity make you hungry? Cause it makes me hungry.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. I am famished. So the, a lot of cool stuff going on here. And also the sapphire, it says, like the very heaven for clearness. That probably, let me just look in the Hebrew real quick. Do, do, do.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, that one didn't make any sense to me.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  Well, well, here's the thing. What is the heavens, the skies?

• 29:09Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  There is solid dome.

• 29:13Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  Yes. So, so what the idea is, I think the vibe we're supposed to get is that, you know, God stands upon the vault, the firmament, the expanse of heaven.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  Just walking around up there, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. Walking around on, you know, hopefully there's no rain on that side because it's like sapphire. It probably gets pretty slick at some point.

• 29:37Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  And you just-

• 29:38Speaker 03

  He's, he's got that non, non-slip. He's got that grippy, those grippy sandals.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  I have, I have walked around in the rain in Athens where they have to score the, the marble or granite or whatever is on the sidewalk, just because it, it would turn into a slip and slide in the rain. You just go, and you're gone. So, and then the, the eating and drinking is another ritual thing. The ritual meal is something that happens when, and particularly in making kind of the sovereign and the vassal treaty. Sometimes you would share a meal and, and that kind of ratifies the treaty or something like that. So there's some covenant, there's some covenant imagery that's going on with the idea of them sitting down and

• 30:27Speaker 02

  breaking bread in God's presence. You know, did God eat some of the stuff? No, it doesn't really say, but.

• 30:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I'm just going to point out, there's no, this, I, I'm trying to sort of anticipate what an apologist would say about this because we know we can't see God unless, or will die. But it's unequivocal. They saw the God of Israel in verse 10 and then in verse 11, they beheld God. Like it is, that's, that's 70 people seeing God.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, one thing that an apologist might say, which doesn't tell the whole tale, but the word for beheld is chazad, is the verbal root, which is related to the word for vision. So they might be like, oh, it was, it was just a vision. It wasn't, they didn't, God wasn't actually there. They saw with their spiritual eyes or something like that, which doesn't actually do the trick. But what's interesting, verse 10. I did my master's thesis when I was at Oxford on verse 10, because in the Septuagint, it doesn't say they saw the God of Israel. It says something different.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  It says, "They saw the place where the God of Israel stood."

• 31:47Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  And then, and then it says what was under his feet.

• 31:50Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  And what's interesting, though, is that the, and so for a long time, people were like, ah, the translators were made uncomfortable by that. And so they were like, we're gonna translate it differently. But the, uh, the Greek is, it's kind of awkward Greek, uh, because it's not how they would say, uh, "who estiqui ecchi Joseos tu Israel," uh, or the tom topon, "who, uh, estiqui ecchi Joseos tu Israel." The place, literally, it's the place which he stood there. And that's not how Greek would, would naturally say that. But it's precisely how you would

• 32:32Speaker 02

  say that in Hebrew, using a resumptive adverb, uh, which would, "asher" is the, is the relative pronoun, and then you would use the "sham," which, which would refer back. It, it's, it's details you don't need to worry about, but.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, we're, we're, we're in the reeds, as it were.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  Yes, we, we're, we have, we are off the path. No, uh, but basically, the point is, I argue that the translator probably had a Hebrew source in front of them that already had that change in it.

• 33:03Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  So, uh, so it probably wasn't, as they say, translator exegesis. So, we have them seeing God, verse 12, "The Lord said to Moses, 'Come up to me on the mountain and wait there. I will give you the tablets of stone with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.'" Wait a minute.

• 33:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oopsie.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Moses is already on the mountain.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  And Moses has already written down the law.

• 33:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  We just saw it a few verses earlier. And then God's like, no, no, I, I made these special. So.

• 33:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  So you're, you're gonna take these.

• 33:40Speaker 03

  I did them in stone for you.

• 33:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, verse 13, "So Moses set out with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up onto the mountain of God." So it's no longer Aaron and Nadab and Abihu. Moses is like, you guys suck. You guys had, you took all the, you took all the rolls when we were eating there, you remember, with God? And I didn't get any. So now I'm just taking my assistant Joshua. Uh, verse 14, "To the elders he had said, 'Wait here for us until we come back to you. Look, Aaron and Hur are with you. Whoever has a dispute may go to them.'" So now we got Aaron and Hur.

• 34:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:17Speaker 02

  Instead of Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu.

• 34:19Speaker 03

  Hur is H-U-R, not.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  H-U-R, right.

• 34:22Speaker 03

  Not, not her, not that woman over there.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Capital H-E-R, right. Um, verse 15, "Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain." And "cloud" here is, a lot of scholars think this is particularly priestly sounding.

• 34:37Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  Because, uh, the, in the priestly literature, we have this idea of God's presence being a cloud. And so wherever the cloud goes, God is in the cloud. And the idea is, is basically, you can't see God. God is in the cloud.

• 34:52Speaker 03

  By priestly sounding, do you mean the priestly source?

• 34:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 34:56Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:57Speaker 03

  We're talking, we're, we're talking P.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  We're talking P. Yes.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  The cloud covered the mountain. Okay, verse 16, "The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days. On the seventh day, he called to Moses out of the cloud." So now we got seven-day rhetoric.

• 35:17Speaker 03

  So Moses was camped up there with, hearing nothing for six days, just chilling, waiting?

• 35:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:24Speaker 03

  For this cloud to talk to him?

• 35:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. I got cloud stuff to do, man. Um, verse 17, "Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the Israelites." Verse 18, "Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain." He was already on the mountain!

• 35:49Speaker 03

  He just keeps going upper. I, I feel like.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Upper and upper.

• 35:52Speaker 03

  He finds more mountain. He just keeps finding more mountain.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  Moses was on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights. So, so six and seven, um, oh, no, don't let any, any Gen Z kids hear that. Uh, but, uh, six days and, and on the seventh day, that's priestly language. Forty days and 40 nights is not priestly language. So there's, there's an argument that's, uh, the end of verse 18, Moses was on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights, is actually picking up from the beginning of verse 15. So verse 15, "Then Moses went up on the mountain," skip to the end of 18, "Moses was on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights." That's probably what it originally said, and until this, uh, this priestly author was

• 36:39Speaker 02

  like, I don't like that. I'm adding clouds. We need some clouds in here. And the cloud covered the mountain, the glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, blah, blah, blah, blah. So you can see, there are a bunch of.

• 36:48Speaker 03

  I don't think I'm okay with this. It has become too convoluted. It's, it's, it's, I'm, I'm wading through fog here. I don't know.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  So we got.

• 36:56Speaker 03

  I feel like the cloud has descended on me.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  The, yes, this is the cloud of, of trying to read the book of Exodus, uh, as, as a single unified narrative. Uh, but yeah, it's not. And most likely, we've got at the very least, two sources, probably three, and some scholars like, like Tim, uh, would argue there are four. And they're, they're probably coming kind of consecutively. One is coming after the other, is altering the one that came before. The one after that is altering the two that came before. The one after that is altering the three that came before. But this, this is just one of the, uh, one of the things that points to this, the entire book, really, the entire Pentateuch, really, being cobbled together

• 37:44Speaker 02

  from a bunch of sources. But we can see it on a small scale. In these 18 little verses, we can see things that very clearly were not intended to be understood as a single, unified, and consistent narrative, but are chopped up. And we have things inserted here and there. We have Moses, you know, going up the mountain, and then Moses went up the mountain. So then Moses went up the mountain. And only, it, it doesn't say he came down the mountain.

• 38:13Speaker 03

  No, he never came down. That's where, that's, everything took place on the mountain from then on.

• 38:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, and then, and then at the end of it all, Moses, uh, came down the, like an avalanche, coming down the mountain.

• 38:27Speaker 03

  I feel, have you ever seen videos of people trying to navigate the city of, I think it's Guangzhou, China?

• 38:34Speaker 02

  Oh, where it's like, where it's like, everything's built on top of.

• 38:38Speaker 03

  You're on street level, and you go up 16 floors, and then you're on street level, and there's buses driving past you. And then you go up a bunch of escalators, and you're on street level, and there's, yeah, that's what it feels like. That's, that's Moses.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and that's just the accumulation of textual additions. And, and you can see some of the, uh, some of the indicators of, you know, the, the different sources. You've got priestly language in here. You've got earlier language that is, that is a little more sacrifice and offering kind of, uh, stuff, but not in the, in the priestly sense. You've got the cloud that has Moses's, or has God's presence and burns like fire. And, and then you've got these weirdos, Nadab and Abihu, who are hanging out with Aaron, and you know, they're, they don't do much except for go up the mountain.

• 39:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, but they made the cut.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  And then eat, yeah.

• 39:35Speaker 03

  You know, it's just about, it's about who you know. And, uh, they, they got in to the book, uh, by the skin of their teeth. So good job to them.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 39:45Speaker 03

  Well, I, that is a fascinating bunch of stuff that we just went through. Uh, I, I, I don't know what to make of 12 different stories being snipped and cut and, and melded together. Uh, but it is very interesting. I think we should just move on and dive right into "Lay of the Land."

• 40:13Speaker 03

  Okay, so I, when I was researching for this segment, looked at a bunch of different, different websites, different things. I was trying to get a sense of this. And here's the tricky part about looking at the different periods of sort of history, historical periods is what we're talking about, but it sort of coincides with like the, the periods of the Bible, the things that, you know, there's, and I, the sources were sometimes great and sometimes I'd be reading and it'd be cool.

• 40:53Speaker 03

  And then suddenly I realized, oh shoot, this is like, kind of apologetic or rather it takes seriously. It, it feels like it has to believe the framework of the Bible itself. So, so like, you know, it's telling me when Moses probably was and when blah, blah. And I'm like, I, yeah, but that's not, you know, I was, there was one that's called, that I looked at teachjewishhistory.com or .org rather, and it looked good, but then it's like, oh, the patriarchal period. And then the Israelites emerge and I didn't know what to take seriously because I didn't know what was,

• 41:35Speaker 03

  what was being sort of apologetic in nature, meaning it had to incorporate, it had to believe the Bible and take the Bible at face value and what was scholarly. And so I'm glad that I have a U so that we can walk through all of this and sort of get a good sense of it.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, there are a bunch of different ways to refer to these periods. And sometimes in, in more folks who are talking just about the Bible and are taking seriously the historical narrative of the Bible, and imagine that it is all historical. We'll talk about things like the patriarchal period, but a more academic point of view would actually talk about like the early Bronze Age or the Middle Bronze Age or something like that. So there are, there are ways that, that scholars tend to talk about these things. But even in the scholarly ways of talking about them, there are certainly ways that overlap. But we can talk about, there, there are a couple of periods, broader periods. We've got the Bronze Age ages really, and we've got the Iron Ages.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  And the end of the Iron Age corresponds more or less with the Babylonian exile. And after that, we don't have ages that are named after, you know, prominent tool materials. Right. We, we are into, we're out of Metallica age and we are, we are into.

• 42:59Speaker 03

  Into the grunge period.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  Well, yes, we're into flannel. No, the, then we get into periods that are named after the main, at first the, the main events, but also we're into periods that are named after the dominant empires. So, the main ones you need to know.

• 43:21Speaker 03

  Of that region.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  Of that region, precisely. And, you know, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, that differs from region to region. When one ends and the other begins actually isn't consistent around the world.

• 43:34Speaker 03

  That makes sense.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  So we're talking about ancient West Asia, the Levant, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, that area. And, and the ones that, and the main ones that you should know about are Bronze Age, Iron Age, those are the two that lead up to 586 BCE. And we'll talk about how they are divided up in a moment. And then you've got the Babylonian exile and then it's Persian period. And then it's Greco or Greek period or Hellenistic period. And then you get into the Roman period, but you can also refer to everything from the end of the Persian period on

• 44:17Speaker 02

  to the destruction of the Jerusalem temple as the second temple period.

• 44:22Speaker 03

  Right. We've definitely heard you say that.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  I tend to favor Greco-Roman period, which would be, which would include the Greek or Hellenistic period and the Roman period. And we'll get into the years and we'll get into the events and we'll get into why these divisions are significant and why it's useful to know why they are called those things in a minute. But generally the scholars divide up the Bronze Age into early, middle and late Bronze. And, and the, the dates are, early Bronze is like 3,500 to 2,500 ish BCE.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  And this is generally where people are, people are probably going to put like Noah a little before this.

• 45:12Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 45:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I think they, well, no, they might, they might put Noah in here. Cause I think they want to put Adam at like around 4,000 ish BCE. So, so yeah, the.

• 45:25Speaker 03

  If you're going by Bishop Usher's calculations.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Which one does naturally.

• 45:31Speaker 03

  Why wouldn't you?

• 45:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, and then Middle Bronze Age is around 2,000 ish, which is where a lot of people want Abraham to be located, down to about 1550 BCE. And then late Bronze Age is where we start to kind of get into stuff that's actually relevant to the peoples of the Bible. Late Bronze Age is like 1550 to 1200 BCE. 1200 is a big pivot point. And there are, there are a lot of reasons for this, but the main one that, that we should focus on is what's called the late Bronze Age collapse, which, have you heard that term before?

• 46:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, you, we mentioned it, I think, just a few episodes ago. But yeah, go, so, or maybe I just heard, maybe, oh, maybe I heard you talk about it on the Joe Rogan thing. Cause I think you mentioned it.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  I might have.

• 46:27Speaker 03

  In conjunction with the, the Ugaritic.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Cause the, the Ugaritic literature basically corresponds precisely with the late Bronze Age. It's 1500 ish down to 1200. 1200 is, is when there are, there's a lot of calamity. And there is a lot of migration. You have the sea peoples show up. We have texts from Egypt that are talking about the sea peoples that are invading. They're causing a lot of problems. And so around 1177 is when my friend Eric Klein dates basically when, when everything goes to pot. So that's like the, the, the point of the late Bronze Age collapse. 1177 B.C. is the name of his book.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  If, if you want to know all about the late Bronze Age collapse, why old theories don't work and why it's probably actually the, the intersection of a bunch of different influences from climates to migration to the economy, to a bunch of different things probably contributed to this.

• 47:33Speaker 03

  I personally blame AI.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  Well, that's, that's the future collapse that is about to take place that we're on the verge of.

• 47:43Speaker 03

  But. Which will take us back to the Bronze Age. So that'll be perfect.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  There you go. Yeah. It's all, time is a flat circle.

• 47:54Speaker 02

  You know, the holidays are just around the corner and I don't know how it is with y'all, but in our family, it's about food and particularly about big meals. And these are things we look forward to all year long. We have special stuff that we do that we did around Halloween time. Now we've got Thanksgiving coming up. There's a lot of prepping for them. That takes over a lot of our day and that can sometimes make it harder to be consistent about meals outside of the big meal. They can kind of take a backseat. And so sometimes you find yourself just kind of grazing in the pantry. I know all too well what that is like. And it can be hard to stay on track, hit your macros and eat well around the holidays.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  And this is one of the things that I think factor does really well. This is something I know I'm going to open up my fridge and there are going to be factor meals in there that can take care of my lunch, two minutes in the microwave. It's delicious. These are things I know I enjoy and I can try new stuff every week if I want to do that too. Factor makes a big difference when we get around the chaos of the holidays.

• 49:01Speaker 03

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• 49:43Speaker 03

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• 50:00Speaker 02

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• 50:27Speaker 02

  What happens here is Egypt is a big player in Syria Palestine. They control a lot of the territory. 1208 BCE, so just before the Late Bronze Age collapse, we have their Menephtes Dele, which mentions a people group known as Israel. This is the earliest known reference to the people of Israel. So there's already a group that calls themselves Israel, probably in Syria Palestine, probably in the Northern Hill Country or Central Hill Country or something like that. But they're there and Egypt is exercising a lot of hegemony, which would be control

• 51:12Speaker 02

  of outsiders, so control beyond their borders. And with the Late Bronze Age collapse, Egypt withdraws a lot of that control. So there's a pivot right around 1200. And in the 12th century and then the 11th century, we see a bunch of settlements popping up all over Syria Palestine because we now have less influence from Egypt. And so the locals now want to try to stretch their own legs and want to try to establish themselves. And so we get a lot more, population grows, there are a lot more settlements, you see cities popping up.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  And this is probably where the people of Israel kind of become a little more prominent, a little more established, and identity begins to form. And this is around 1000 BCE. So 1200 to 1000 is Iron Age 1.

• 52:10Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  So that is, that is Egypt is gone, and so the mice will play. So, so the Iron Age 1.

• 52:19Speaker 03

  And I just want to flag, sorry, I, what I realized is that as you were in the sort of the Bronze Ages, you were talking about, this is where people put Adam, this is where people put Noah. That's not where historians, so, so we're now into what historians are actually saying is actually happening.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  Right, yeah. And, and one of the things to note is that all the texts we have about Adam, about Abraham, about Noah, about all these folks, these are all written down, Iron Age 2.

• 52:50Speaker 03

  Okay, so we're not, we, we haven't even written any of these stories down yet.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  Hebrew doesn't even exist yet.

• 52:55Speaker 03

  Okay. Oh, the language is, it doesn't even exist, or at least the written language.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  The language begins, yes, the written language begins toward the end of Iron Age 1.

• 53:07Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  So, and, and there's a reason for this, because there's just kind of a, there's a kind of a generic Canaanite slash proto Semitic language. And the language is not different from one settlement to another. And what happens is around, between 1200 and 1000, and, and even in the centuries after that, you begin to, to get the establishment of what are called territorial states or secondary states. And this is, these smaller groups have banded together and they're like, hey, we want to be a kingdom. And so it's around 1000 that we begin to see the Aramaeans pop up, and the Moabites pop

• 53:52Speaker 02

  up, and the Ammonites pop up, and the Israelites pop up as not just a group of people who have a name, but now we have a name and we speak our language different from everybody else. And so my friend Seth Sanders has, has written a book talking about how differentiation in language was one of the main things that facilitated an ethnic differentiation. I speak the same language as all these people here, so we're a people.

• 54:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  The people across the street, or in the next hamlet over, or whatever, they speak a funny language. They, you know, you can understand them, but they speak it a little differently, and they are a different people group.

• 54:36Speaker 03

  200 years does not feel like long enough, like all that long for a big change like this to be happening. I'm surprised by, by that.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, there is, because one of the things is, it's kind of slowly happening, but at some point, somebody becomes the head chief or whatever, and then is like, you know what, we're doing a kingdom, I'm gonna be king. And then the king then has to kind of establish, you know, the boundaries of the people. And, and it is, it is that kind of kingship that becomes the catalyst for, oh, this is a nation, this is a kingdom, this is a people, we have a specific God, we have a specific language, we have a specific territory. And then, and so it, it's really between 1200 and 1000 that kind of the ground is laid for all of this.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  And then between like 1000 and 800 ish is when they start really popping up and asserting we're this kingdom. So the Moabite.

• 55:38Speaker 03

  I, I, one of the things that you just said was interesting, which is we have a God, and that, that makes, like, one of the things that we have talked about is, like, the, the establishment of El as, as sort of a whole regional God, and then, and then it gets sort of chopped up and everybody gets their, their, their, their local God.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 56:00Speaker 03

  Or their, yeah.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  Right, because you can, because if you look, so El is this broader deity who's still around. When you get down to Israel, you have El. When you get into the Ammonites, the Ammonites have El.

• 56:15Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  The Moabites have El. You can find personal names with El Theophoric elements in them, but those are not their patron deities, those are not their national deities. Adonai is the national, well, Adonai becomes the national deity of Israel. Kemosh is the national deity of Moab. Milcom is the national deity of the Ammonites. So, yeah, it, this is, you see kind of the residue of the earlier, more generic, broader identity in the, in the worship of El, which tends to be more on the, among the hoi polloi. So it tends to be on the more popular level, whereas it's the elites who are the ones who are worshiping the national deity. Why?

• 57:02Speaker 02

  Because they're trying to establish their nation and their identity and saying, this is our God, even though most of the people are like, eh, we're okay with our God.

• 57:10Speaker 03

  That actually makes a lot of sense to me, because you keep hearing in the Bible, as you read it, you keep seeing, I am your God, I am your God. It's like being hammered home.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  And you are my people.

• 57:22Speaker 03

  You are my people, I am your God, stop looking at all these other gods, stop it.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  And I ought to do the, what's the, the meme where the woman's walking by and the boyfriend is turning, yeah, I gotta do that, where it's, it's Israel and maybe it's Baal and then Adonai is like.

• 57:42Speaker 03

  Or Asherah or something.

• 57:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, something like that. But, so that's all happening in Iron Age 1 and then early Iron Age 2. Iron Age 2 is usually like A, B, and C, so, so you can further divide it up. But, so we get these states popping up at the very beginning of the first millennium BCE, these territorial states who are trying to establish themselves as powers, even though they're very local powers. And you've still got Egypt, and you've got Assyria, and you've got Babylon, and you've got the Hittites, who are much larger empires. And so these are, these are just, you know, the, at the kids' table. They're just trying to, to be the, the cock of the walk at the kids' table.

• 58:27Speaker 02

  And so, Iron Age 2 goes all, you've got A, B, and C, C ends at 586 BCE, which is when Babylon comes in and overturns the kids' table, basically. And you have the Babylonian exile.

• 58:44Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 58:44Speaker 02

  So, so.

• 58:45Speaker 03

  So at this point, the Babylonian Empire has come in and just started snatching up everybody.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, well, and, and the Assyrians were doing it before that, so.

• 58:56Speaker 03

  So when, when, when was the Assyrian Empire?

• 58:59Speaker 02

  So you have, so the Assyrians and Babylonians kind of go back and forth, and you have the Assyrian and the Old Babylonian, and then you have the Neo Assyrian and the Neo Babylonian Empire, and.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  Oh gosh, I'm gonna screw up the dates on that, so.

• 59:16Speaker 03

  Well, I was just kind of trying to give you, I can tell you what the dates are.

• 59:19Speaker 02

  Oh, you've got the dates in front of you?

• 59:21Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 59:21Speaker 02

  If you're cheating, if you're cheating, then, then go ahead.

• 59:23Speaker 03

  I'm trying to feed you, man. I'm trying to, I'm trying to make it easy on you, but I, I've got sort of a, I've got some dates and I, I have not verified the dates. I found this thing and I'm, I'm just sort of.

• 59:33Speaker 02

  Okay, I'll tell you if it, if it, if it sounds right, because I know I'm.

• 59:38Speaker 03

  This says Neo Assyrian Empire, 9/11 through 609 BCE roughly. Uh, and then the Neo Babylonian Empire, 626 to 539.

• 59:50Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:50Speaker 03

  Is what it gives. Does that sound correct?

• 59:52Speaker 02

  That sounds correct.

• 59:53Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 59:54Speaker 02

  And the 609, uh, yeah, that's when Babylon takes over and then you have, and it goes down to 539 because who takes over in 539? The Persians.

• 1:00:06Speaker 03

  Persia, yes.

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  Right. Cyrus the Great, my Christ, uh, comes in and, uh, conquers Babylon. Which is where the Judaheids are at the time, because from 586 to 539 is the Exilic period, the Babylonian exile. Um, so.

• 1:00:25Speaker 03

  You just mentioned the Judaheids, but also the Israelites, right?

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  Like, no, no, we forgot to mention this. So here's the thing. The Judaheids, the, Israel and Judah were never one single nation.

• 1:00:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  It was always two separate nations. One was frequently a vassal to the other, but they were always separate nations. Uh, in 722 BCE, you had Assyrians come in and, uh, basically exile the northern kingdom.

• 1:00:55Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  And so the 10 tribes.

• 1:00:57Speaker 03

  Which is Israel.

• 1:00:58Speaker 02

  Right. So that's the nation of Israel. They get exiled. The southern kingdom of Judah kind of takes over the Israelite identity and includes the previous northern kingdom in that identity. So it's the southern kingdom who's kind of like, yeah, they were, we were one kingdom. And, and you know, their, their kings all sucked, uh, and our kings, eh, some of them sucked, but, uh, some of them were good. Hezekiah and Josiah are really the, the two good ones. So the northern kingdom of Israel, gone in 722. The, uh, southern kingdom of Judah, the Babylonians start, uh, beating up on them. 604, 605 BCE.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  596, seven-ish, they, they come in and beat up on them again. And then 586 is when they finally finish the exiling everybody. And so, and so that, that's the pre-exilic period. Everything before 586, you could also refer to as the pre-exilic period.

• 1:01:59Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  586 to 539, you've got the exile, the Exilic period, the Babylonian exile. 539 Cyrus the Great comes in and wails on Babylon and thus begineth the Persian period.

• 1:02:13Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:02:13Speaker 02

  And Persian period goes down to 332 BCE. Who can guess who comes along in 332 BCE?

• 1:02:22Speaker 03

  Helen.

• 1:02:24Speaker 02

  Smelling of Troy. No, uh, uh, Alexander the Great.

• 1:02:30Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  Shows up. And so you have the, basically the periods are named after whatever empire is running things, whatever empire takes over. While the Judaheids are trying to survive, trying to find a way to, to maintain this identity that they started up at the beginning of the first millennium BCE.

• 1:02:50Speaker 03

  Uh, it, it makes me think of, uh, I mean, obviously this is happening over the course of centuries, so it did. But it may, it makes me think of being in a particularly rough ocean and you think you've got your bearings and whatever, and then a wave comes and like tumbles you and crashes you around. You're like, okay, please, okay, let me just get my berry. I'm just gonna breathe like this. And then the next wave comes and tumbles you and, and.

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, there are all these big, powerful, uh, much, much more powerful, obviously, uh, empires.

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:24Speaker 03

  That are, and these guys are just sort of trying to keep their head above water the whole time.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  And the Persian period is where they seem to get a little breathing room because they get to go back, rebuild the temple, all this kind of stuff. So, uh, it's, it's 20 years-ish after, uh, Cyrus the Great conquers Babylon is when the second temple is built.

• 1:03:49Speaker 03

  Which is what year roughly?

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  519-ish.

• 1:03:52Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  Um, is when you get the, the second temple. So you could start talking about the second temple period from 519 on, all the way down to 68 to 70 CE. That would be the second temple period.

• 1:04:05Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  332 Alexander the Great comes through, goes to Babylon, drinks himself to death or something like that. And, uh, and then it's the Hellenistic period. And then we have the Diodoki, we have the battle for control of Alexander's empire among his generals. And it splits up into a bunch of different, uh, places. And so you have the Ptolemies and the Seleucids are the main players associated with Israel, because that's kind of the, the boundary dispute that happens between the two of them. And then that goes down to 63 BCE. So the Hellenistic period is 332 to 63 BCE.

• 1:04:46Speaker 02

  Uh, Pompey comes in and, uh, takes over for Rome in 63 BCE. And from that period on to 70 CE, or even later really, uh, we have the Roman period. And so, so the, the, the Hellenistic period and the Roman period coincide uh, with the second temple period, but part of the Persian period also coincides with the second temple period. And then, and then the Roman period goes beyond the second temple, because Rome is still in control when they destroy that second temple. Um, and then you can talk about the Rabbinic period after that if you want. Usually you'll go from the Roman period to the destruction of the temple, and then the Rabbinic period starts shortly after that.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  Uh, or you also have the Christian period after that.

• 1:05:35Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:05:35Speaker 02

  And so there are pretty big events that are responsible for the changing of, of the, the names of these periods. But the better you know what is causing these, uh, you know, these changes in these periods, the better you can situate what's going on in the Bible. And so when someone says, uh, you know, when I get up and I go, Job is Persian period, uh, you know, that means, okay, it was probably written in that period between 539 BCE and 332 BCE. So eh, six, late sixth century, fifth century, early fourth century. And you were talking about how this is like when the wave crashes down and tumbles you around.

• 1:06:16Speaker 02

  This is a period when they're getting stomped on repeatedly. And so this is naturally the period when you start thinking of the problem of evil and you start thinking of why bad things happen to good people and why good things happen to bad people. And who, when is God's justice going to be achieved? And this is where the ideas about afterlife come into play. And this is where the ideas about Satan come into play. This is where first Enoch is written, like the Persian period is a huge, huge important period. Because probably the majority of the Bible, if not written in the Persian period, is probably compiled, edited, redacted in the, the Persian period. That's probably a big turning point

• 1:07:00Speaker 02

  for the kind of loose, disconnected composition of the Bible toward, moving toward, this is one actual corpus, cohesive, uh, corpus of text. So yeah, knowing these periods is big.

• 1:07:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, as you say, uh, after all of that really tumultuous time, when they get to like, actually like go home and feel like they have some, some sort of grounding to, and that they can sort of be their own people as opposed to, uh, you know, whatever they were in the exile. Uh, yeah, it makes sense that they would start to, to really solidify things and real, and, and try and get their history straight and try and get their, uh, and, and try and get the, their own mythology going in a way that doesn't make them feel like crap, because they were feeling like crap for a long time.

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  And then the, the Hellenistic period, that's when there's kind of a literary explosion. You have a lot more texts, a lot more Jewish literature is being uh, created. And it's also probably, uh, in the 160s, 150s. So that's when we have the rise of the Hasmenean dynasty. So that's when the, the Seleucids are in control. Then you have the Maccabees and they revolt and they succeed. And so for a short period of time, you have an independent Jewish state that you, and, and you had rulers who called themselves kings. And that is, a lot of scholars now are, are moving in the direction of suggesting that that's probably where the Torah becomes an actual public document that people know about.

• 1:08:38Speaker 02

  And that's when the requirements of, you know, not eating pork and circumcision and Sabbath day observance, that's probably when those things begin to be imposed upon people and enforced. Because now we actually have a kingdom again. We are an independent state. And what do we need? We need an identity. And what is that identity gonna be based on? The law. So, uh, so this, this is all about uh, a national identity and the periods, as they change, you get that national identity ebbing and flowing and going through different things. And so the, the notion of is, an Israel

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  and what it means to be Israel is thoroughly kind of contingent upon the, the period that they're in. Whether it's the pre-exilic period or the Babylonian exile, what does it mean to be Israel? They come back, the Persian period. What it means to be Israel is changing. Hellenistic period, changing big time. Roman period, changing even more. So, uh, yeah, understanding how these periods worked, uh, is, I think, very, very crucial to, to having a good grasp of how Israel is moving through its history and understanding itself and representing itself.

• 1:09:54Speaker 03

  Love it. Uh, including it representing itself as Israel and not Judah, what happened there? What, they were the ones that stayed. What are we talking about?

• 1:10:04Speaker 02

  Well, they didn't call them, uh, Israel. The, the Greek and Roman authors referred to them as the Eudaos. The, uh, Judeans or things like that. And so, so the Israel, Israel is really in many ways a literary identity. Uh, at least, you know, based on, on the things that we have preserved down to us.

• 1:10:25Speaker 03

  There you go. Uh, it's, it, it's a, it's a fun, interesting jumble and I, I enjoy it. Uh, so there you have it. That's, that's, uh, that's the lay of the land. That's the, the, the, the broad strokes. Uh, so now, when, you know, when we talk about the Iron Age or the Neo Babylonian whatever, you, you kind of know where you're at. Uh, that was really helpful for me. Anyway. So, uh, thanks for joining us. If you would like to become a part of keeping this show rocking and rolling, we would love for it, for you to become one of our patrons or one of our members

• 1:11:05Speaker 03

  on YouTube. Uh, our patrons over on patreon.com/dataoverdogma can get access to early ad-free versions of the show and, uh, yeah, the, our weekly, um, bonus content that we do, the pre, what do we call it? The pre-game now?

• 1:11:26Speaker 02

  Pre-game.

• 1:11:27Speaker 03

  Uh, cause we record it before the show, even though we used to call it the after-party. Uh, that's always cool or you, you know, and our members on YouTube and our patrons get access to our lives when we go live and they can ask, you can ask us questions in real time as we are there. Um, we really enjoy doing those. So, uh, so yeah, look into it, sign up. It's helpful and it's what keeps us going. Uh, we really appreciate that. Uh, thanks so much to Sam Holden for being our right-hand man. Thanks to Roger Gaddy for editing and thanks to all of you for tuning in. We'll talk to you again next time.

• 1:12:05Speaker 02

  Bye, everybody.

• 1:12:11Speaker 03

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