# The Bible EXPLODED! (part one)

An episode of [TheThinkingAtheist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/412308695), 27 Jan 2026, 1 h 02 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/711/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/69557972/podcast855_biblestudyjustindz_pt1.mp3

Former pastor and exvangelical Justin DZ of "Deconstruction Zone" joins us in a Bible study that just might blow your mind. PART TWO of this podcast VIDEO of this conversation: Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
[0:09] Speaker 1: an idea.
[0:10] Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through.
[0:13] Speaker 1: The rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If
[0:18] Speaker 1: I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
[0:22] Speaker 1: not because I put my hand on a book and
[0:24] Speaker 1: made a wish and working together for a more rational world.
[0:29] Speaker 2: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness.
[0:32] Speaker 2: Truth Usian wisdom will come to you that way.
[0:35] Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
[0:43] Speaker 1: Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
[0:59] Speaker 2: What you are about to hear is one of the
[1:01] Speaker 2: most compelling, fascinating, entertaining conversations about the Bible that I
[1:07] Speaker 2: have ever been a part of. And I've been doing
[1:09] Speaker 2: this for eight hundred sum shows over sixteen whatever years,
[1:13] Speaker 2: and I mean seriously, so freaking good. I was going
[1:17] Speaker 2: to go an hour and it turned out to be
[1:19] Speaker 2: double that. So I've divided the show into two halves.
[1:24] Speaker 2: This is part one, with Part two releasing in just
[1:27] Speaker 2: a few days. Coming through the Old Testament, often bouncing
[1:31] Speaker 2: into the New Testament and back, we are deconstructing, debunking,
[1:37] Speaker 2: and just learning about what the Bible is and what
[1:40] Speaker 2: it isn't, So buckle up. We've talked so much recently
[1:48] Speaker 2: about politics, christian nationalism, brain psychology, smart technology. Today I
[1:55] Speaker 2: want to get back to basics. I want to talk
[1:57] Speaker 2: about the Bible or the bump in the Bible. Who
[2:02] Speaker 2: better to do that than Justin DZ Deconstruction Zone. Hi,
[2:08] Speaker 2: justin first time on the show man. I'm glad to
[2:10] Speaker 2: have you, Seth.
[2:11] Speaker 3: I'm thrilled to be here. You're a household name in
[2:15] Speaker 3: these circles, so I'm happy to you said something about
[2:21] Speaker 3: schlepping at some point, you're schlepping with me. At this point, I.
[2:25] Speaker 2: Was thanking you for, like, you know, joining me on
[2:27] Speaker 2: the broadcast when I have hosted or co hosted the
[2:31] Speaker 2: line with you, I said back, and I'm you know,
[2:34] Speaker 2: I thought I had a pretty good beat on the Bible,
[2:36] Speaker 2: and I do, but you are able to really get
[2:39] Speaker 2: specific chapter and verse, which is why I thought you
[2:42] Speaker 2: would be perfect for this conversation because a lot of
[2:45] Speaker 2: our audience still engages with Bible believers or they're looking
[2:50] Speaker 2: for a better tool set to help explain why the
[2:53] Speaker 2: Bible is so problematic and why Christianity as a religion
[2:58] Speaker 2: just really splinters at even the most cursory of examinations.
[3:02] Speaker 2: I made a few notes of some stuff I wanted
[3:04] Speaker 2: to get into before we get any further. Give everybody
[3:08] Speaker 2: your background, introduce yourself. Well.
[3:10] Speaker 3: I actually formally have an education in engineering, so I
[3:14] Speaker 3: worked twenty years as an austrial engineer. But when I
[3:17] Speaker 3: was younger, I wanted to go into ministry. So when
[3:20] Speaker 3: I finished that education, I went to Bible College and
[3:23] Speaker 3: then seminary. I went to Bible College at Bethel University.
[3:27] Speaker 3: But when I was there, because I'm a dinosaur now,
[3:29] Speaker 3: when I was there, it was Bethel College, and then
[3:31] Speaker 3: I went to seminary at Ashland Seminary in Ashland, Ohio.
[3:35] Speaker 3: I specialized in the Old Testament. I know, most people
[3:39] Speaker 3: go to school and they want to read the New Testament,
[3:41] Speaker 3: they want to do all the theological work. I was much
[3:44] Speaker 3: more interested in the relationship between the Old Testament and
[3:48] Speaker 3: the New Testament. And ultimately it was my higher education
[3:52] Speaker 3: that led me away from Christianity. It didn't lead me
[3:55] Speaker 3: specifically into atheism. I came to that after the fact,
[3:59] Speaker 3: but certainly I think reading the Bible, doing the textual criticism,
[4:03] Speaker 3: doing the Hermoneutics, and you know, doing all the the
[4:07] Speaker 3: real work of asking yourself, hey, is this like actually true?
[4:11] Speaker 3: When I freed myself to ask that particular question, it
[4:14] Speaker 3: was very difficult to go to the text and say
[4:17] Speaker 3: that it was true. And so I had to get
[4:19] Speaker 3: real with the data that I had, and that's why
[4:22] Speaker 3: I left Christianity. And now I do deconstruction work on
[4:26] Speaker 3: TikTok and YouTube, and I primarily focus on the book.
[4:30] Speaker 3: And one of the reasons why I do that is
[4:32] Speaker 3: because I think most people in the Christian variety have
[4:36] Speaker 3: this idea that, well, the book is like sacred and perfect,
[4:40] Speaker 3: and like we can trust that Jesus is the Messiah
[4:44] Speaker 3: because of this book. The book is the evidence, right,
[4:47] Speaker 3: But if the book is the evidence, it's not good evidence.
[4:51] Speaker 2: But justin if somebody is confronted with some of the
[4:54] Speaker 2: contradictions or you know, the moral dilemmas that we see
[4:58] Speaker 2: in the Old End, then New to Testament, don't they
[5:00] Speaker 2: begin to drift out to it's not a religion, it's
[5:03] Speaker 2: a relationship kind of thing. Jesus lives in my heart.
[5:07] Speaker 3: You absolutely get some of that. With the moral quandaries
[5:11] Speaker 3: alone aren't usually going to cause a Christian to leave
[5:15] Speaker 3: their faith. They were difficult for me when I was deconstructing.
[5:18] Speaker 3: You know, I got to some of the common stuff
[5:21] Speaker 3: like the slavery, the treatment of women, different things like that,
[5:24] Speaker 3: the genocide, and you know what, as a Christian, you
[5:28] Speaker 3: kind of make those moral qundries go away because you're like, well,
[5:32] Speaker 3: that was God's judgment right now, it's not as clean
[5:35] Speaker 3: as that. When you actually get down to reading the passages,
[5:38] Speaker 3: it's not as clean as well. They needed to be punished.
[5:41] Speaker 3: But for a lot of Christians, like they can get
[5:43] Speaker 3: around that. Now, that's not true of all Christians. I
[5:46] Speaker 3: knew some Christians who read about the moral atrocities and
[5:50] Speaker 3: it was like, m it doesn't strike me as a
[5:52] Speaker 3: God that's believable. But for me personally, I was somewhere
[5:57] Speaker 3: in the middle of those two camps. I didn't really
[6:00] Speaker 3: rationalize it, but I wasn't ready to throw the whole
[6:02] Speaker 3: thing out because of it. For me, I was like,
[6:04] Speaker 3: We're gonna put that on the shelf. Well, we'll address
[6:07] Speaker 3: this later. This is a piece of the pie, but
[6:09] Speaker 3: I'm not going to eat this piece just yet. I
[6:11] Speaker 3: need to see the rest of it.
[6:12] Speaker 2: Isn't much of that a riff on divine command theory.
[6:15] Speaker 2: I mean, whatever God wants to do, we are antswering
[6:18] Speaker 2: his and farm who are we to question what he
[6:21] Speaker 2: wants to do with it? So, I mean that's sort
[6:23] Speaker 2: of a thought stopper right off the bat, right.
[6:27] Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely. And the problem with divine command theory is
[6:30] Speaker 3: once you get to divine command theory, there's nothing that
[6:33] Speaker 3: you can't justify with it, right, And I think that's
[6:35] Speaker 3: the scary part with the religion.
[6:37] Speaker 2: If I made justin I guess I should do our
[6:39] Speaker 2: due diligence, would you explain divine command theory for us?
[6:43] Speaker 3: Yeah? So there's this classic episode in Plato. He writes
[6:49] Speaker 3: through the voice of Socrates, unless you think Socrates really
[6:52] Speaker 3: spoke this, but he writes about the youth row dilemma
[6:55] Speaker 3: where it's like what is good?
[6:58] Speaker 2: Right?
[6:58] Speaker 3: So is do something because good because God spoke it?
[7:02] Speaker 3: Or is something good because there's a subjective form of
[7:05] Speaker 3: good and God can only speak what is objectively good?
[7:09] Speaker 3: And so there's this big quandary about objective morals verse
[7:13] Speaker 3: divine command theory. If God speaks it and it's good
[7:16] Speaker 3: because God speaks it, well, then you have divine command theory.
[7:20] Speaker 3: But if you actually have objective morals, what that means
[7:23] Speaker 3: is that there's something outside of God that he has
[7:25] Speaker 3: to abide by. He's like bound by it. And that's
[7:28] Speaker 3: why most Christians don't realize it. They've been told by C. S.
[7:31] Speaker 3: Lewis that they have objective morals, but they don't. What
[7:34] Speaker 3: they actually have is divine command theory, which is it's
[7:36] Speaker 3: good because God said it. Because once you posit the
[7:39] Speaker 3: idea that there's something outside of God that he has
[7:42] Speaker 3: to follow, well they get they can't get on board
[7:45] Speaker 3: with that. But that's what objective morals are. Objective morals
[7:48] Speaker 3: are completely stance independent, completely mind independent, even independent of
[7:53] Speaker 3: God's mind.
[7:54] Speaker 2: And then we see a riff on that in Christian nationalism.
[7:58] Speaker 2: They can just decide arbitrarily which of man's laws are wrong,
[8:02] Speaker 2: and that they can ignore because God wants something greater,
[8:06] Speaker 2: and of course they're cherry picking. I don't know if
[8:08] Speaker 2: it's a is it like what Susan B. Anthony once said,
[8:11] Speaker 2: I distrust people who say they know what God wants
[8:14] Speaker 2: because it's so often aligns with their own desires.
[8:17] Speaker 3: Do you buy that justin Not only is that dangerous,
[8:20] Speaker 3: but I don't think it fits with all of the
[8:23] Speaker 3: classical models. So for example, even in Judaism, if you
[8:27] Speaker 3: talk to a typical Jew today, they're okay with questioning God.
[8:31] Speaker 2: Right.
[8:31] Speaker 3: It's really more of like Christianity adopted this authoritarian point
[8:36] Speaker 3: of view where you can't question God. In number two,
[8:40] Speaker 3: this person over here speaks for God, like this person
[8:43] Speaker 3: is getting the divine revelation, or the Bible speaks perfectly
[8:46] Speaker 3: for God. One of the two things. Not all Christians
[8:49] Speaker 3: believe that the Bible's in errant, but most of them do.
[8:52] Speaker 3: So this is this is just a recipe for a disaster.
[8:55] Speaker 3: But it didn't always have to be that way.
[8:57] Speaker 2: You know.
[8:57] Speaker 3: Classically, even in the period of the Greeks, in the Romans,
[9:01] Speaker 3: they could question the gods like that. They could call
[9:03] Speaker 3: into account somebody's behavior that's above the human realm. But
[9:08] Speaker 3: we're we're in a dangerous spot right now where people
[9:11] Speaker 3: are like, not only can you not question God, but
[9:13] Speaker 3: I'm going to tell you what God said.
[9:16] Speaker 2: We go back to Genesis chapter one and two. I
[9:19] Speaker 2: love the idea that God, who is the smartest being
[9:22] Speaker 2: in the history of history, created this master plan, a
[9:26] Speaker 2: divine blueprint made perfection just whispered his plan into existence,
[9:32] Speaker 2: and within three chapters of Genesis it all goes to shit.
[9:36] Speaker 2: I mean right.
[9:37] Speaker 3: Away, right away. And you know, the funniest thing is,
[9:41] Speaker 3: like you may or may not have been to like
[9:43] Speaker 3: the Creation Museum. One of my favorite things is at
[9:46] Speaker 3: the Chriatian Museum. They've got this big hall of like
[9:49] Speaker 3: the downfall of man, Like God made this beautiful thing
[9:52] Speaker 3: and then man ruined it. And there's this big sign
[9:55] Speaker 3: that said something along the lines of it wasn't supposed
[9:57] Speaker 3: to be this way, but as preposterble if God designed
[10:01] Speaker 3: it this way and knowing what it would do, and
[10:04] Speaker 3: he could have designed it another way, and he's all knowing, well,
[10:08] Speaker 3: then it was designed to be that way. Like he
[10:10] Speaker 3: did it that way on purpose. He could have did
[10:12] Speaker 3: it a different way. He could have did it without
[10:14] Speaker 3: the tree. He could have did it without the snake.
[10:16] Speaker 3: He could have made the desires of man just a
[10:19] Speaker 3: little bit different. He could have changed the heart, because
[10:22] Speaker 3: he's going to do that later, if you read the
[10:24] Speaker 3: Hebrew Bible, He's going to change the heart of man
[10:26] Speaker 3: later so that they don't have these evil desires. He
[10:29] Speaker 3: could have done that from the very beginning there's so
[10:31] Speaker 3: many solutions. But the reality is the way the modern
[10:35] Speaker 3: Christian reads Genesis is fundamentally different from what the ancient did.
[10:39] Speaker 3: The ancient this was a mythological tale. This wasn't supposed
[10:43] Speaker 3: to be actual history. It takes a little bit of
[10:46] Speaker 3: time for a mythology to get planted in the culture
[10:50] Speaker 3: before people start to treat it like it's a religion.
[10:54] Speaker 2: The Creation Museum, I remember two big things about it, except,
[10:58] Speaker 2: you know, the dinosaurs are the easy one. Beyond that,
[11:00] Speaker 2: there's this big sign of Adam. You know, he's out
[11:04] Speaker 2: there and he's tilling the earth, and there's a big
[11:07] Speaker 2: sign that said that our sin is responsible for weeds.
[11:10] Speaker 2: So there were no weeds in the Garden of Eden
[11:13] Speaker 2: until the fall of Adam and Eve. And then there's
[11:15] Speaker 2: a whole exhibit justifying incest. And I'm doing it from memory,
[11:20] Speaker 2: but it was like, you know, essentially our DNA was
[11:23] Speaker 2: purer back then. So God said, okay, I don't know,
[11:28] Speaker 2: what do you think about incests justice.
[11:31] Speaker 3: So that's a real thing. And the problem for the
[11:36] Speaker 3: Christian is that the Hebrew Bible forbids incests. If you
[11:40] Speaker 3: go to Levitigus eighteen and Lavidigus twenty you'll find laws
[11:43] Speaker 3: regarding this, and so then you have to ask yourself, like,
[11:46] Speaker 3: if you believe that God's laws are objective, which they're not,
[11:50] Speaker 3: but if you're a Christian, you think they are and
[11:52] Speaker 3: that they're unchanging because if they're objective, they can't change.
[11:55] Speaker 3: Unless you believe that objective morals can be relative, which
[11:59] Speaker 3: they don't, then you've got a serious problem. How is
[12:02] Speaker 3: it that God's unchanging objective moral law code says that
[12:06] Speaker 3: you can do polygamy and you can do incests and
[12:10] Speaker 3: stuff at some points, but then not at other points. Right,
[12:13] Speaker 3: So this gets you again, This breaks the entire argument
[12:18] Speaker 3: of objective morals because the morals are coming from God's
[12:22] Speaker 3: mind and they change over time, which means you've got
[12:25] Speaker 3: subjective relative morals. And that's the only way you can
[12:30] Speaker 3: deal with this whole situation with incest. And it's also
[12:34] Speaker 3: true that like listen, like, unless God was controlling the
[12:39] Speaker 3: way your genes change with each successive generation, then the
[12:45] Speaker 3: data we have today showing the dangerous effects of incest
[12:49] Speaker 3: breeding would have been true. Then. The only way that
[12:52] Speaker 3: it couldn't have been true then is if God put
[12:54] Speaker 3: something in place and then removed it like God had
[12:57] Speaker 3: a mechanism in the human body to keep the the
[13:00] Speaker 3: DNA from not replicating in a deleterious way, and then
[13:05] Speaker 3: when they fell, I guess he just removed that part.
[13:07] Speaker 2: A lot of people in this community love the irony
[13:10] Speaker 2: of having a host with a biblical name, and for
[13:13] Speaker 2: those who aren't exactly it's funny because some people will
[13:16] Speaker 2: bring a Bible to a convention and they will say,
[13:18] Speaker 2: would you sign my Bible? And what I do is
[13:20] Speaker 2: I sort of flip over to the seventh or eighth page,
[13:23] Speaker 2: and I find Seth in the Book of Genesis, and
[13:25] Speaker 2: I circle at night. I say I'm on page seven
[13:29] Speaker 2: and that I sign next to it. I like to
[13:30] Speaker 2: tell people I'm the one of Adam and Eve's sons
[13:33] Speaker 2: that was not involved in a homicide. It was always
[13:37] Speaker 2: a good way to set that up. So let's get
[13:39] Speaker 2: into canaan Abel. We're talking about incest with mom to
[13:45] Speaker 2: populate the earth, or going to a different town that
[13:49] Speaker 2: somehow existed to find whys you want to explain this
[13:54] Speaker 2: whole dilemma for us.
[13:56] Speaker 3: This has always been a problem even for scholars. So
[13:59] Speaker 3: if if Kine has to go east, to Nod and
[14:04] Speaker 3: there's going to be people there. Where did they come from?
[14:07] Speaker 3: The only way there could be people here is if
[14:09] Speaker 3: one of two things happened. God created more than this
[14:13] Speaker 3: small cluster of humans. He maybe he created some over here,
[14:16] Speaker 3: Maybe he created some over there. And certainly there are
[14:18] Speaker 3: Christians who believe that that's a real thing that Christians believe.
[14:22] Speaker 3: But also there's the possibility that there are children of
[14:27] Speaker 3: Eve and Adam that just don't get mentioned, right, so
[14:30] Speaker 3: because they live for so long, the theory is that listen,
[14:33] Speaker 3: there were other children that we don't learn about, especially
[14:37] Speaker 3: because if you look at the lineages, most of the
[14:39] Speaker 3: lineages don't include the girls. They mostly just include the men.
[14:43] Speaker 3: And so without mention of the women, we could ask ourselves, Okay, well,
[14:48] Speaker 3: maybe they had a whole bunch of girls that grew
[14:51] Speaker 3: up to be women, and maybe there was some reproduction there.
[14:57] Speaker 3: Maybe there was some brother on syste or reproduction that
[15:01] Speaker 3: was enough to create some people. But the problem that
[15:05] Speaker 3: that solution fails because when you like look at the
[15:08] Speaker 3: problem with Cain, like Caine's concerned that there's gonna be
[15:12] Speaker 3: like some sort of killing, like he's gonna go and
[15:17] Speaker 3: because of what I've done, somebody's gonna murder me. But
[15:20] Speaker 3: like the problem that you're gonna have with that is like, well,
[15:22] Speaker 3: theoretically that person would have been like, you're a very
[15:26] Speaker 3: near kin, right, Like they would have known the whole story.
[15:30] Speaker 3: They would have like, I don't know how much time
[15:32] Speaker 3: has to pass for you to not know like your
[15:34] Speaker 3: brother or your half brother or your cousin. But it
[15:37] Speaker 3: seems to me kind of preposterous to think that there's
[15:40] Speaker 3: a bunch of people that are related to you directly
[15:42] Speaker 3: related to you over here and when you when you,
[15:46] Speaker 3: when you go and wander in that direction, they're gonna
[15:48] Speaker 3: be like, hey, who's this guy? I heard about what
[15:50] Speaker 3: he did? Maybe we should off the It's just it's
[15:53] Speaker 3: just it's a really weird solution.
[15:56] Speaker 2: That takes us into Noah's ark too. You've got eight
[15:58] Speaker 2: people committing in sound to create what up to twenty
[16:01] Speaker 2: thousand ethnic groups and four thousand years, and people are
[16:05] Speaker 2: okay with it, like okay, mom and sisters, yay, right.
[16:09] Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's funny because it there's a really weird
[16:14] Speaker 3: genealogical issue that I don't think it gets a lot
[16:16] Speaker 3: of airtime. But I feel like most people who want
[16:20] Speaker 3: the seminary know about it. So, like, there's this really
[16:22] Speaker 3: interesting thing in the lineage that you get in Genesis four.
[16:27] Speaker 3: In Genesis five, we've got these lineages from these individuals,
[16:32] Speaker 3: and in part of the lineage it talks about like, hey,
[16:36] Speaker 3: from this ancestor of Adam, we get the people who
[16:41] Speaker 3: who make who does all this that they make? They
[16:44] Speaker 3: might like harps buyers, metalworks, different things like that, And
[16:49] Speaker 3: so they're like, hey, this is how this people group
[16:51] Speaker 3: got here. But the interesting thing is, like this text
[16:55] Speaker 3: is being written after the flood, right, So if this
[16:59] Speaker 3: is being written after the flood, what that means is
[17:01] Speaker 3: that those people groups don't exist. They're gone. They got
[17:03] Speaker 3: wiped out in the flood. Right, So it can't be
[17:06] Speaker 3: true that one of these children or great grandchildren of
[17:11] Speaker 3: Adam and Eve became one of these people groups over
[17:15] Speaker 3: here after the flood, because all of those people groups
[17:19] Speaker 3: after the flood actually just came from Noah and Noah's family.
[17:22] Speaker 3: They didn't come from any of Adam and Ned's descendants.
[17:25] Speaker 2: Because the Book of Genesis is not wacky enough, would
[17:28] Speaker 2: you like to tell everyone what the Nephilim are? Because
[17:32] Speaker 2: the Nephilim are awesome.
[17:35] Speaker 3: So not all Christians believe in Nephelim, and the reason
[17:39] Speaker 3: is because it's so goofy that they don't want to
[17:43] Speaker 3: associate in public with people who know that they believe
[17:46] Speaker 3: in it. But it goes back pretty deep in ancient
[17:51] Speaker 3: Near Eastern Lore and even in Mediterranean lor, this idea
[17:54] Speaker 3: that there were these gods. Now in the ancient Eur
[17:58] Speaker 3: Eastern literature, a lot of people believe these were the Onanaki.
[18:01] Speaker 3: They're not. They're not the Aanaki. They're called the Apkalu.
[18:04] Speaker 3: The Opclu come down, and they show up in the
[18:06] Speaker 3: Book of Enoch as well, but not as Opkalu. But
[18:09] Speaker 3: the Bible calls them sons of God, and in the
[18:12] Speaker 3: ancient Ugarritic we have parallels to this. They're called the
[18:15] Speaker 3: bene Elohim, and they were thought to be literal sons
[18:19] Speaker 3: of God. They were seventy sons born between el and
[18:24] Speaker 3: Atzerote we call her at Scheron nowadays, and they had
[18:28] Speaker 3: they were in charge of all the nations. They got
[18:30] Speaker 3: put in charge of each individual nation. But at one point,
[18:33] Speaker 3: according to Genesis chapter six, these sons of God were like, hey,
[18:38] Speaker 3: these women, we got some down there, which is a
[18:44] Speaker 3: wild thing that if you're cause you're if you're an angel.
[18:48] Speaker 3: In modern Christianity, you think of the angels as being
[18:51] Speaker 3: non corporeal and then they have to like manifest into
[18:55] Speaker 3: corporeal form. But in reality, like listen, if in fact
[19:00] Speaker 3: the angels are up in the sky because that's where
[19:02] Speaker 3: Heaven is, and they're looking down on Earth and they're
[19:05] Speaker 3: lusting after the women, it would assume that they're in
[19:09] Speaker 3: corporeal form up there too, because what is lust. Lust
[19:13] Speaker 3: is a chemical reaction from within the body, right, So
[19:17] Speaker 3: how are they lusting without a body? So they go
[19:18] Speaker 3: down and they sleep with these women and they produce
[19:21] Speaker 3: a race of giants. Poor women who had to give
[19:23] Speaker 3: birth to these gigantic babies. I'm not sure how that
[19:26] Speaker 3: worked out. And they were on the earth, and there's
[19:28] Speaker 3: a huge like meta narrative in the Torah about like
[19:33] Speaker 3: having to get rid of all these giants, even Ogg
[19:37] Speaker 3: the last of the Refaem as he's called the Refem
[19:40] Speaker 3: is another name for the giants, just like the on Achem.
[19:44] Speaker 3: So we have this weird narrative where like God is
[19:48] Speaker 3: like having to stamp out these giants and it's so weird,
[19:52] Speaker 3: and like, then the question has to arise, like, well,
[19:56] Speaker 3: if Ogg is the last of the refeem and God
[19:59] Speaker 3: sent the flood to deal with the giants, well, how
[20:02] Speaker 3: in the world did Ogg or any of the giants
[20:05] Speaker 3: for that matter, survive the flood, because in Deuteronomy chapter
[20:08] Speaker 3: two we find there are more giants. So, like, I
[20:11] Speaker 3: don't know if you know about this solution, but according
[20:13] Speaker 3: to the ancient rabbits, if you read the Tumid, what
[20:16] Speaker 3: they say is that there's one animal that's the Rama,
[20:20] Speaker 3: and there's one Og, and they survived the flood by
[20:25] Speaker 3: clinging on to the outside of the boat. And that
[20:29] Speaker 3: is how both the Rama and King Ogg were able
[20:33] Speaker 3: to survive the flood, even though they believed that just
[20:37] Speaker 3: like the people in the Arab tradition, they believe that
[20:40] Speaker 3: the water was boiling. So not only was the water boiling,
[20:44] Speaker 3: but also a god had to create a pocket of
[20:48] Speaker 3: cool water around the arc so that the arc didn't overheat.
[20:52] Speaker 3: And because there was a pocket of cool water there,
[20:55] Speaker 3: that allowed both King Og and the Rama to survive the.
[21:00] Speaker 2: I guess that gets us around the did no one
[21:03] Speaker 2: else in the Middle East own a boat problem with
[21:07] Speaker 2: the Noah's ark story, because some people have mentioned that
[21:11] Speaker 2: so incess to repopulate the earth, Jesus, we're still in
[21:16] Speaker 2: the Book of Genesis. Speaking of Genesis, you talked about
[21:19] Speaker 2: corporeal forms for the angels. I'm reminded in later Genesis
[21:23] Speaker 2: Jacob wrestles with some say with God, some say with
[21:26] Speaker 2: an angel. Right, that would be a physical form of
[21:29] Speaker 2: the divine interacting with mortal humans. Right.
[21:33] Speaker 3: Yeah, And in the early days, for sure, this idea
[21:37] Speaker 3: that a god was like a corporeal but was like
[21:41] Speaker 3: more of a superhuman that was common. In fact, there's
[21:44] Speaker 3: a really good book on this subject. I recommend it
[21:47] Speaker 3: a lot. It is expensive, so I apologize ahead of
[21:49] Speaker 3: time because it started out as I think a PhD
[21:52] Speaker 3: dissertation and then it got turned into a book by
[21:55] Speaker 3: Esther Memorius when it's called When God's Were Men, and
[21:59] Speaker 3: it goes through the the engiineer Stern idea of like, hey, listen,
[22:04] Speaker 3: in the old days, the gods were really man like.
[22:08] Speaker 3: They had arms and legs and noses, and they could smell,
[22:14] Speaker 3: and they could eat. And maybe a good follow up
[22:17] Speaker 3: on this you might want to check out is Francesca
[22:20] Speaker 3: Stavrakapulu's book God and Anatomy. This idea that God had
[22:25] Speaker 3: a body is so pervasive in the Bible and in
[22:28] Speaker 3: the ancient eur East it's hard to get rid of it.
[22:30] Speaker 3: It's not until we get like this later Greek philosophical
[22:33] Speaker 3: nonsense that we start to get this weird concept of like, no,
[22:37] Speaker 3: there's this God that's completely immaterial and transcends all reality.
[22:41] Speaker 3: That's not part of the ancient Jewish mindset at all.
[22:45] Speaker 2: Isn't this a lot like you know, let's say the
[22:48] Speaker 2: Greek gods, right, they had very human characteristics, whether it
[22:51] Speaker 2: was Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite, et cetera. They were jealous, they lusted.
[22:56] Speaker 2: There was all this scheming and drama going on. I
[22:59] Speaker 2: mean we see that in the Christian God, oh for sure.
[23:03] Speaker 3: Like if you look at the Christian God, he comes
[23:05] Speaker 3: down and eats, so we find him in corporeal form
[23:08] Speaker 3: eating in Genesis eighteen when he visits Abraham, it's Yahweh
[23:13] Speaker 3: and two angels that visit. And there's a really easy
[23:18] Speaker 3: case to make for that. We find elsewhere, like in
[23:21] Speaker 3: Exus twenty four there's seventy elders along with Moses, Aaron,
[23:25] Speaker 3: Nadab and Abby, who they go up on a mountain
[23:28] Speaker 3: and share a meal with Yahweh. He's got feet that
[23:32] Speaker 3: you can visibly see. They see him. In Exus twenty four,
[23:36] Speaker 3: Ezekiel sees it as well. And then also we find
[23:40] Speaker 3: in Believe the Book of Job, which I think we'll
[23:43] Speaker 3: get into at some point here today. It talks is
[23:46] Speaker 3: either Job or one of the Psalms or Proverbs where
[23:48] Speaker 3: it says God walks on the top of the firmament.
[23:52] Speaker 3: There's this idea in the Hebrew Bible where God's thrown
[23:55] Speaker 3: like Psalm one fifty says, it says his habitation is
[23:58] Speaker 3: in the firmament, that is at the very top of
[24:00] Speaker 3: the firmament, and he looks down from his heavenly throne.
[24:05] Speaker 3: And then even says he walks on the firmament. So
[24:08] Speaker 3: this idea that God, hey, God's up way up here,
[24:11] Speaker 3: He's way above us, but like he still is, like
[24:13] Speaker 3: he's got feet, arms, legs, and even the angels. We
[24:18] Speaker 3: learn in the Psalms that the manna that came from
[24:22] Speaker 3: heaven was the food of the angels. Like these these
[24:26] Speaker 3: people up here in heaven, they eat, they drink, and
[24:30] Speaker 3: this is common if you read the bail cycle that
[24:33] Speaker 3: comes from the Canaanite literature, and the Canaanites were the
[24:36] Speaker 3: precursors to the Israelites. But if you read the Canaanet literature,
[24:39] Speaker 3: like they're up there drinking wine and getting tipsy and
[24:42] Speaker 3: having eating buffets and so like this idea of a
[24:47] Speaker 3: non corporable, you know, pantheon of Gods is just complete
[24:52] Speaker 3: nonsense that came thousands, you know, fifteen hundred years later, which.
[24:57] Speaker 2: Takes us back to the shame of Adam. And even
[25:00] Speaker 2: they're hiding from God in the garden of Eden. So
[25:02] Speaker 2: now I'm picturing God. He's wandering through trees, you know.
[25:06] Speaker 2: Oh look, they're behind a shrub. God's like, hello, my children.
[25:10] Speaker 2: It's just a bizarre isn't it true? Not check me
[25:13] Speaker 2: on this. The story in Exodus, I want to say,
[25:16] Speaker 2: it's like one of the thirty something where God is
[25:19] Speaker 2: going to appear to Moses, but he says, you can't
[25:22] Speaker 2: see me in my full glory. Irt'le freaking I'll kill you.
[25:26] Speaker 2: So when I walk past, you can see my ass.
[25:30] Speaker 2: It's how I read the verse, and I'm sure I'm
[25:32] Speaker 2: reading it wrong. Just to help me out with that.
[25:35] Speaker 3: I think it's usually just not translated. There's a passage
[25:39] Speaker 3: in there where God says, I'm going to back that
[25:41] Speaker 3: ass up, but they translate that out.
[25:47] Speaker 2: The verse says something like I will let you see
[25:50] Speaker 2: my backside, which I mean, I guess might mean his shoulders,
[25:54] Speaker 2: the back of his hair or something. You can see
[25:57] Speaker 2: you can glimpse just enough of me so you won't
[25:59] Speaker 2: be in physic danger. Would that be more accurate?
[26:02] Speaker 3: That is it? Yeah, we're so, that's the Exos thirty three.
[26:06] Speaker 3: Exous thirty three. As you said, God is like, you
[26:08] Speaker 3: can't see my face and live, you can see my backside.
[26:10] Speaker 3: But it's funny because they're in the same chapters. There's
[26:14] Speaker 3: this weird phrase where it talks about Moses, is that
[26:17] Speaker 3: Moses uh spoke with yahweh face to face as a
[26:21] Speaker 3: man speaks to his friend. And then in the same chapter,
[26:25] Speaker 3: God's like, hey, you can't see my face and live, Like,
[26:27] Speaker 3: wait a minute now. To be sure. While this is
[26:33] Speaker 3: a it in the most literal sense, it is a contradiction,
[26:37] Speaker 3: but it's also an idiomatic expression. When you talk to
[26:40] Speaker 3: somebody face to face, it doesn't always mean that you're
[26:44] Speaker 3: literally like physically face to face. It just means that
[26:47] Speaker 3: you're having a you know, a one to one conversation,
[26:51] Speaker 3: but it is it's delightful the way that they've just
[26:54] Speaker 3: put it in the same chapter.
[26:57] Speaker 2: In our next segment, let's do a whole bunch prophecies
[27:01] Speaker 2: that failed. Oh, the apologists like to say that the
[27:05] Speaker 2: Old Testament writers spake it and it came true. Not
[27:09] Speaker 2: so much. We're going to find out more next. I'm
[27:18] Speaker 2: speaking here with Justin Dez of Deconstruction Zone. Did you
[27:23] Speaker 2: bring some greatest hits or greatest shits from the Bible?
[27:27] Speaker 2: Some stuff that you get to talk about that I
[27:30] Speaker 2: don't know that entertains you or frustrates you any specifics.
[27:35] Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what, there's a lot of stuff from
[27:37] Speaker 3: the Bible that I don't think a lot of people
[27:39] Speaker 3: know about, but is really interesting and I think it
[27:42] Speaker 3: for me, it kind of helped me or moved me
[27:45] Speaker 3: along in my deconstruction. I think the first thing is
[27:49] Speaker 3: probably like some of the textual criticism stuff. So there's
[27:52] Speaker 3: this really interesting thing that happened where like we have
[27:56] Speaker 3: a Bible, right Like I can hold up a Bible
[27:59] Speaker 3: and people are like, oh, yeah, it's a Bible, and
[28:02] Speaker 3: it's just, you know, it's always been the same. Like
[28:05] Speaker 3: I can open up a Hebrew Bible and it reads
[28:07] Speaker 3: something and then it said the same thing two thousand
[28:10] Speaker 3: years ago. Turns out that's not the case. In fact,
[28:14] Speaker 3: anyone who's bothered to take the New Testament quotations and
[28:17] Speaker 3: compare them with the Old Testament will find out the
[28:20] Speaker 3: Bible did, in fact change. And so like one of
[28:24] Speaker 3: one of my favorite goodies is the difference between the
[28:27] Speaker 3: Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek Old Testament. And most
[28:31] Speaker 3: people might know that typically, not always, but typically the
[28:34] Speaker 3: New Testament quotes from the Greek septuagen There's only like
[28:38] Speaker 3: two or three cases where it quotes from the Hebrew,
[28:40] Speaker 3: and we're going to touch on one of those. But
[28:43] Speaker 3: there's this fun stuff that happens both in Isaiah and Hoseiah.
[28:47] Speaker 3: So in the Book of Matthew, we find that chapter
[28:51] Speaker 3: seven of Isaiah is quoted in chapter one of Matthew,
[28:54] Speaker 3: verse twenty three talking about the virgin birth. And this
[28:58] Speaker 3: is a really common thing. No one knows that the
[29:01] Speaker 3: original Hebrew doesn't say virgin. This is hamahara, which means
[29:06] Speaker 3: a pregnant young woman. And then the Greek says parthenos,
[29:09] Speaker 3: which at the time of Matthew it really did mean
[29:12] Speaker 3: virgin at the time it was written in Isaiah though
[29:15] Speaker 3: it didn't. We've got lots of instances in this period
[29:18] Speaker 3: where it's used of people that are non virgins. Like
[29:20] Speaker 3: there's a woman who has a child with aries in
[29:26] Speaker 3: the Iliad, she's referred to as a Parthenosenis thirty four.
[29:30] Speaker 3: Dinah's referred to as a Parthenos after she's already been
[29:34] Speaker 3: assaulted by Schuchem. And there's lots of examples. So, but
[29:37] Speaker 3: the point is, you know, Matthew was relying on the
[29:40] Speaker 3: Greek sceptu agent. He couldn't read Hebrew most likely or
[29:43] Speaker 3: he didn't have access to the Hebrew, and he was like, oh,
[29:46] Speaker 3: this this is how we get this virgin birth nonsense. Now,
[29:51] Speaker 3: if you're a Christian, you might say to yourself, Okay, well,
[29:53] Speaker 3: if this is the case, then that mean that must
[29:55] Speaker 3: mean that the Greek sceptuagent is primary. Like if the
[30:00] Speaker 3: Greek septuagent has a rendering that's different from the Hebrew Bible,
[30:04] Speaker 3: we should take the Greek right, because our New Testament
[30:07] Speaker 3: treats the Greek as though that's the one that's the
[30:10] Speaker 3: one you need to read right, because otherwise you couldn't
[30:12] Speaker 3: get to Isaiah chapter seven, you'd never get it with Alma.
[30:16] Speaker 3: So nevertheless, this could be an acceptable proposition if you
[30:21] Speaker 3: don't read the rest of the Greek septuagent, because when
[30:24] Speaker 3: you get to other vital prophecies that they really want
[30:28] Speaker 3: to be true, they can't be true of the Greek subtuagen.
[30:30] Speaker 3: And so, for example, in Isaiah nine to six, we
[30:33] Speaker 3: get this passage about you know, a child has been
[30:37] Speaker 3: born to us, a son given to us. You know,
[30:41] Speaker 3: authority will be on his shoulders. He'll be a prince
[30:43] Speaker 3: of peace, YadA, YadA, YadA, everlasting father. And be like, ah,
[30:47] Speaker 3: this must be a prophecy about Jesus. Now like almost
[30:50] Speaker 3: no biblical scholar believes it. They think that this is
[30:53] Speaker 3: most likely an enthronement or a birth prophecy for Hezekiah.
[31:00] Speaker 3: We can worry about that later, but the reality is
[31:03] Speaker 3: none that's relevant. If you think that the Greek septuagent
[31:06] Speaker 3: must take primary focus over the actual Hebrew, then this
[31:10] Speaker 3: passage goes away. It's it's doesn't read remotely the same
[31:14] Speaker 3: in the Greek septuagen. You'll never make Isaiah nine six
[31:19] Speaker 3: be about Jesus. If you're reading it in the LEXX,
[31:23] Speaker 3: that's the shorthand for the septuagent. In fact, let me
[31:27] Speaker 3: let me grab it for you real quick. I'm going
[31:29] Speaker 3: to show you or read for you. Isaiah ninety six.
[31:33] Speaker 3: This is in the translation from the Greek. It says,
[31:37] Speaker 3: because a child was born for us, a son also
[31:40] Speaker 3: given to us, whose sovereignty was upon his shoulder, and
[31:43] Speaker 3: he is named messenger of great Council, for I will
[31:47] Speaker 3: bring peace upon the rulers, and peace and health to him.
[31:50] Speaker 3: Wait what, that's way different, not even close to the same,
[31:54] Speaker 3: And it's really funny, and people wonder, like, hey, how
[31:56] Speaker 3: come Isaiah ninety six was never quoted in the New Testament.
[32:00] Speaker 3: Don't you think that be a slam dunk for the
[32:03] Speaker 3: New Testament authors. Well, it wasn't a slam dunk because
[32:06] Speaker 3: they didn't read the Hebrew. They only read the Greek,
[32:09] Speaker 3: and the Greek didn't sound anything remotely like Jesus. And
[32:14] Speaker 3: then the other thing is if you throw out the
[32:17] Speaker 3: Hebrew Bible, you also lose Hoseiah eleven to one, which
[32:21] Speaker 3: Matthew quotes. This is one of the few times that
[32:24] Speaker 3: Matthew seems to be quoting or alluding to the Hebrew
[32:27] Speaker 3: text when they go in chapter two, it says they
[32:30] Speaker 3: go into Egypt and then they wait there until the
[32:33] Speaker 3: death of Aired in order to fulfill what was spoken
[32:35] Speaker 3: through the prophet out of Egypt, I I've brought my
[32:39] Speaker 3: son out of Egypt. And if you go to Hosea
[32:43] Speaker 3: eleven to one in the Greek. In fact, we'll pull
[32:46] Speaker 3: it up real quick. It's a really interesting passage because,
[32:51] Speaker 3: like the meaning is pretty pretty obvious. Right, So is
[32:54] Speaker 3: that out of Egypt I've called my son. That's the
[32:57] Speaker 3: Hebrew in the English, but if you read it in
[33:00] Speaker 3: the Greek, it actually says out of Egypt, I've called
[33:03] Speaker 3: my children. Wait a minute, what And there's a couple
[33:08] Speaker 3: of variants.
[33:09] Speaker 2: So this is what a matter of New Testament authors saying,
[33:13] Speaker 2: I need to make something come true to fit my narrative.
[33:16] Speaker 2: I mean, this is all probably speculation, but you know,
[33:19] Speaker 2: it's easy to fulfill prophecy if you've got a cheat
[33:22] Speaker 2: sheet in the back, and then you can alter it
[33:24] Speaker 2: at will, right.
[33:25] Speaker 3: Yeah, So what we find in the in the New
[33:29] Speaker 3: Testament is they're kind of bouncing back and forth between
[33:33] Speaker 3: the Hebrew Bible and the Greek septuagen at various times
[33:36] Speaker 3: trying to figure out what can I use to make
[33:38] Speaker 3: Jesus the Messiah? How can I justify Jesus as the Messiah?
[33:42] Speaker 3: And when the Hebrew Bible fits their fancy, like Hoseah
[33:45] Speaker 3: eleven one, they grab it, said, that's what I want.
[33:48] Speaker 3: When the Greek subtuigent fits their fancy, they're like, that's
[33:51] Speaker 3: what I want. But the reality is like if you
[33:53] Speaker 3: just think, like listen, if God gave you two different
[33:56] Speaker 3: texts and they disagree with each other, and that means
[34:00] Speaker 3: He put you in a position as a Christian to
[34:04] Speaker 3: have to look at both texts and ask yourself which
[34:08] Speaker 3: one of these is true? Why wouldn't He just give
[34:10] Speaker 3: you one of them that was accurate? And this is
[34:12] Speaker 3: why textual criticism is so important, because once you see
[34:15] Speaker 3: all the differences in the text, and you see how
[34:19] Speaker 3: the New Testament kind of exploited the differences to make
[34:22] Speaker 3: their case, well, then you're like, how do we know
[34:26] Speaker 3: what was really in the Hebrew Bible. There's so much
[34:29] Speaker 3: there that seemed to have changed that like, how could
[34:33] Speaker 3: we possibly know what was original? Especially given the fact
[34:35] Speaker 3: that our oldest Hebrew manuscripts and the Dead Sea scrolls
[34:39] Speaker 3: don't go anywhere near the time that the Torah was given.
[34:43] Speaker 2: Okay, I was going to go back to the early
[34:46] Speaker 2: Old Testament, but you said, Matthew says, and I'm not
[34:51] Speaker 2: trying to be pedantic, but Matthew being written in the
[34:53] Speaker 2: third person about Matthew. Matthew did not write Matthew, right.
[35:00] Speaker 3: That seems to be the case. The earliest manuscript is P. One,
[35:03] Speaker 3: he one of Matthew. We have the section where the
[35:07] Speaker 3: title Matthew would have been applied. We don't find it. Typically,
[35:14] Speaker 3: like in the Gospels, it'll say something like ew On Gellian,
[35:18] Speaker 3: you know, Kata Johannen or Katta Maton. We'll find that
[35:24] Speaker 3: in Greek, but we don't find it in P.
[35:26] Speaker 2: One.
[35:27] Speaker 3: That's the earliest one we've got. And to think that
[35:29] Speaker 3: Matthew wrote Matthew to me is kind of a huge leap,
[35:32] Speaker 3: because Matthew copies his own conversion story from Mark. So
[35:37] Speaker 3: in Mark we find the conversion story of the tax
[35:39] Speaker 3: collector Levi. That same story is ripped off in Matthew,
[35:43] Speaker 3: told from the third person, and then the name gets
[35:45] Speaker 3: changed from Levi to Matthew, which means either A he
[35:49] Speaker 3: had two names or B somebody got it wrong. Maybe
[35:53] Speaker 3: Mark got the wrong person and Matthew was correcting the record,
[35:56] Speaker 3: and Matthew does do that. Matthew corrects Mark chapter two
[35:59] Speaker 3: when Mark said that Jesus said that Abiathar was the
[36:03] Speaker 3: high priest when David ate the showbread out of for
[36:06] Speaker 3: Samuel twenty one to believe. So and that's wrong. So
[36:11] Speaker 3: Matthew cuts it up. Matthew's like, nope, we're just going
[36:13] Speaker 3: to remove Abiathar altogether, and we're going to fix it up.
[36:16] Speaker 3: And so it's weird to me that this guy named
[36:19] Speaker 3: Matthew would copy his own conversion story from somebody else
[36:23] Speaker 3: and then tell it in the third person. It's just
[36:26] Speaker 3: such a weird juxtaposition. Even if he wanted to tell
[36:30] Speaker 3: it in the third person, it seems like he would
[36:33] Speaker 3: have had some extra detail, he would have had some
[36:37] Speaker 3: more flourishes maybe, but no, it's basically the same.
[36:41] Speaker 2: Another example of the same problem being the claim by
[36:44] Speaker 2: many apologists that Moses wrote the Pentateuch right the Torah,
[36:48] Speaker 2: the help re Bible, the first five books of the
[36:50] Speaker 2: Old Testament. And I'm like, well, okay, first of all,
[36:53] Speaker 2: there's the issue of the first verses happening at the
[36:56] Speaker 2: beginning of space time before there were any humans. And
[37:00] Speaker 2: then you've got the chronicling of Moses's own death and
[37:03] Speaker 2: the third person in Deuteronomy blah blah blah. So when
[37:06] Speaker 2: apologist comes to you and they're like, Moses wrote the Pentateuch,
[37:10] Speaker 2: how would you respond?
[37:12] Speaker 3: I would take them to the many instances of something
[37:16] Speaker 3: in the text where Moses simply could not have written it. So,
[37:20] Speaker 3: for example, in Genesis eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, all those
[37:25] Speaker 3: chapters we've got references to like people groups that didn't
[37:32] Speaker 3: really exist. So in Genesis eleven, we've got reference to
[37:35] Speaker 3: the Chaldeans, but they didn't exist. I mean, the people
[37:38] Speaker 3: group existed, but they weren't called Chaldeans. Then that didn't
[37:42] Speaker 3: come until the period of the Greeks. This is this
[37:44] Speaker 3: is not what they would have been called. So why
[37:47] Speaker 3: in the world if Moses is writing Genesis eleven, why
[37:50] Speaker 3: would he put the word for Caaldeans when there's not
[37:52] Speaker 3: a word that was even used for another thousand years.
[37:55] Speaker 3: That would be preposterous. And then another thing, roughly the
[37:59] Speaker 3: same chapter Chances fourteen, we learned about this battle or
[38:02] Speaker 3: these multiple battles between Abraham and some of these we'll
[38:09] Speaker 3: call them marauders for lack of better words. But he
[38:12] Speaker 3: says he chases them as far as the land of Dan. Well,
[38:17] Speaker 3: that's the northern tip, and that's the right Dan. If
[38:20] Speaker 3: anyone knows their Bible really well, they know that there
[38:22] Speaker 3: was actually two Dans. There's one down by the land
[38:25] Speaker 3: of Philistine Felictia, and then they failed to take hold
[38:29] Speaker 3: of the land, so they moved up to the northern tip.
[38:32] Speaker 3: But here's the thing. The tribe of Dan didn't exist
[38:35] Speaker 3: when Abraham was around. He could not have chased the
[38:39] Speaker 3: enemies as far as the land of Dan because the
[38:42] Speaker 3: land of Dan didn't exist. And you might say, well, yeah,
[38:45] Speaker 3: but Moses was writing it, Well, it didn't exist when
[38:47] Speaker 3: Moses is around, right, Moses never entered the Promised Land.
[38:51] Speaker 3: There was no settlement of the Promised Land in Moses's lifetime.
[38:55] Speaker 3: It would have been preposterous for Moses to write as
[38:57] Speaker 3: far as the land of Dan. He would have no
[38:59] Speaker 3: idea where land of Dan is or whether whether or
[39:03] Speaker 3: not it was even settled by the Danites. So we've
[39:06] Speaker 3: got lots of like, really weird anachronisms like that. And
[39:09] Speaker 3: then there's even more so, like there's a passage where
[39:15] Speaker 3: there it's just thirty six we get kings. Let me
[39:18] Speaker 3: pull it up. These are the kings who reigned in
[39:22] Speaker 3: the land of Edom before any king reigned over the Israelites. Oh. Interesting,
[39:27] Speaker 3: So Moses is like, hey, prior to any king in Israel,
[39:31] Speaker 3: here were the kings of Edom. But he wouldn't have
[39:34] Speaker 3: known that. He died way before Israel ever got a king.
[39:38] Speaker 3: Moses theoretically died roughly in the fourteen hundreds, so you
[39:44] Speaker 3: know he was eighty when the excess happened. According to
[39:46] Speaker 3: the Bible, he died at one hundred and twenty and
[39:49] Speaker 3: he was in the desert wandering for forty years, So
[39:52] Speaker 3: he wandered for forty years, so he would know about
[39:55] Speaker 3: the Edomite kings most likely, but he wouldn't know about
[39:58] Speaker 3: any Edomite kings after his death. There are about maybe
[40:01] Speaker 3: three to four hundred years between him and the first
[40:04] Speaker 3: king of Israel, and he would have no idea that
[40:07] Speaker 3: there was ever a king in Israel. He has not
[40:10] Speaker 3: been told that there will be a king in Israel,
[40:13] Speaker 3: or when there was a king in Israel, or how
[40:16] Speaker 3: many Itamite kings will reign before there's a king in Israel.
[40:20] Speaker 3: This is all information that doesn't come until hundreds of
[40:23] Speaker 3: years later, which is why we see lots of references
[40:26] Speaker 3: in the Torah of saying when they were on the
[40:31] Speaker 3: east side of the river. Wait, what do you mean
[40:33] Speaker 3: if you're riding from the western side of the river
[40:36] Speaker 3: about a time earlier when they were on the eastern
[40:39] Speaker 3: side of the river. That can't be Moses. Moses never
[40:43] Speaker 3: crossed over. So this was obviously written by somebody hundreds
[40:46] Speaker 3: of years later that had already been living in the
[40:50] Speaker 3: land of Israel and is writing about an earlier time
[40:53] Speaker 3: before they had crossed over.
[40:56] Speaker 2: If you'll forgive a deedtour taken by my primitive primate brain.
[41:01] Speaker 2: I found myself smirking when you were talking about Dan's
[41:04] Speaker 2: northern tip, and I just want to apologize to everyone
[41:07] Speaker 2: for being so base, just a very bad person. I
[41:10] Speaker 2: have another prophecy question, but first I'm going to pinball
[41:13] Speaker 2: it back to you. Any other favorites apologetics that you
[41:18] Speaker 2: like to address in your work.
[41:19] Speaker 3: Since we're still talking about historical I'm going to call
[41:23] Speaker 3: them blunders. We've got a couple prophecies that simply don't
[41:27] Speaker 3: come true, and I'm going to go out on a
[41:30] Speaker 3: limb say that they're never going to come true for
[41:33] Speaker 3: reasons that we'll address here. So, for example, we've got
[41:37] Speaker 3: an interesting promise if you go to the book of Isaiah,
[41:40] Speaker 3: both in chapter twenty nine and also in chapter thirteen.
[41:44] Speaker 3: But we're going to go to Isaiah twenty nine. Isaiah
[41:47] Speaker 3: twenty nine, we hear about this battle that comes against Jerusalem,
[41:51] Speaker 3: but Jerusalem doesn't get taken, right, So this obviously is
[41:55] Speaker 3: going to be the siege that was done by the Assyrians,
[41:58] Speaker 3: not the Babylonians. Blonians overtook Jerusalem, the Assyrians did not.
[42:04] Speaker 3: The Assyrians only wiped out the ten northern tribes. Now,
[42:07] Speaker 3: the interesting thing is if you go to the vision
[42:12] Speaker 3: that we find in chapter thirteen, what we find is
[42:16] Speaker 3: that the people who do get exiled, the people who
[42:19] Speaker 3: do get taken away, it says that they're going to
[42:24] Speaker 3: be restored. And it talks about how this we got
[42:26] Speaker 3: this period of restoration right, says, shall not Lebanon in
[42:30] Speaker 3: a very little while become a fruit field that never happened,
[42:34] Speaker 3: and the fruit field be regarded as a forest. On
[42:36] Speaker 3: that day the death shall hear the words of a scroll,
[42:40] Speaker 3: and a freed from the gloom of darkness, and the
[42:43] Speaker 3: eyes of the blind shall see. The meek shall obtain
[42:45] Speaker 3: fresh joy in the Lord, and the neediest people shall
[42:49] Speaker 3: exalt the Holy One of Israel. For the tyrant shall
[42:51] Speaker 3: be no more, and a scoffer will cease to be,
[42:54] Speaker 3: and all those alert to evil shall be cut off.
[42:57] Speaker 3: So this is really interesting. We've got this idea of like, hey,
[43:00] Speaker 3: now that God has like exiled some of the people,
[43:05] Speaker 3: but not all the people, because Jerusalem and Judea survived,
[43:08] Speaker 3: God's gonna make it so that there's no more tyrants.
[43:11] Speaker 3: We're gonna have like this time of peace, there's gonna
[43:13] Speaker 3: be no scoffer, there'd be no more tyrants. But that's
[43:16] Speaker 3: just simply not true. Within uh, within his lifetime, we
[43:21] Speaker 3: already see the Babylonian army building up forces and getting
[43:25] Speaker 3: ready to go on a conquering spree, and then they
[43:28] Speaker 3: eventually go on and conquer all of the Levant and
[43:32] Speaker 3: then even Jerusalem. So this prophecy didn't come true. And
[43:35] Speaker 3: if this is referring to the restoration and the in
[43:39] Speaker 3: gathering of the northern tribes, which it certainly seems to be. Well,
[43:45] Speaker 3: then that never happened either, and I don't think it
[43:47] Speaker 3: will happen because a lot of the people that were
[43:50] Speaker 3: scattered never came back to the land. Their identity is
[43:54] Speaker 3: kind of lost to history. That's why we talk about
[43:55] Speaker 3: the lost Ten Tribes. So all of the prophecies in
[43:59] Speaker 3: the early proper, it's like Hoseiah Amos and the early
[44:02] Speaker 3: parts of Isaiah that talk about the restoration of the
[44:05] Speaker 3: ten northern tribes that God punished with the Assyrian captivity.
[44:09] Speaker 3: They're not coming back. They don't. Their ancestry is lost
[44:14] Speaker 3: to history, right, So the fact that God's going to
[44:17] Speaker 3: gather them again is kind of preposterous, as is chapter thirteen.
[44:22] Speaker 3: In chapter thirteen, we've got an out of place prophecy
[44:25] Speaker 3: that is much later than the earlier parts of Isaiah
[44:28] Speaker 3: because it's talking about the Babylonian exile. I don't know
[44:31] Speaker 3: how it ended up in this part. It should be
[44:34] Speaker 3: in Deutero Isaiah, but it talks about what God's going
[44:38] Speaker 3: to do to Babylon with the Israelites, which will never happen.
[44:42] Speaker 3: The punishment comes in chapter fourteen, says but the Lord
[44:45] Speaker 3: will have compassion on Jacob and will again choose Israel
[44:49] Speaker 3: and settle them in their own land. And aliens will
[44:52] Speaker 3: join them and attach themselves to the House of Jacob,
[44:55] Speaker 3: and the nations will take them and bring them to
[44:58] Speaker 3: their place, and the House of Israel will possessed the
[45:00] Speaker 3: nations as male and female slaves in the Lord's land.
[45:04] Speaker 3: So what's happening here? Says that they're going to take
[45:08] Speaker 3: the captives who took them captive and make them captives.
[45:11] Speaker 3: Did that happen with the Babylonians? Did Israel ever take
[45:14] Speaker 3: the Babylonian's captive? No, they never did. Could they still
[45:18] Speaker 3: do it? No? The Babylonians don't exist. So this whole
[45:22] Speaker 3: prophecy of God taking the Babylonian's captive for the Israelites
[45:26] Speaker 3: not only did it not come true, it will simply
[45:28] Speaker 3: never come true.
[45:30] Speaker 2: I saw a great line by an apologetics website that said,
[45:35] Speaker 2: prophecy is not prediction. They were trying to explain how
[45:39] Speaker 2: so many prophecies did not come true, and I still
[45:42] Speaker 2: didn't understand what I was reading. But we were getting
[45:44] Speaker 2: into the prophecy of tire in Ezekiel. Right, Navikanezer's army
[45:49] Speaker 2: is going to go in devastate the city. The entire
[45:51] Speaker 2: place is going to be raised and burned down and looted,
[45:54] Speaker 2: and then tire is not going to exist ever again.
[45:57] Speaker 2: It's going to be a barren place, so barren that
[45:59] Speaker 2: fish and are going to throw their nets out and
[46:01] Speaker 2: dry their nets on the rubble. And then, of course
[46:04] Speaker 2: in Zachariah is still talking about tire. What the hell justin.
[46:09] Speaker 3: Yeah, not only that, So in Ezekiel twenty six we
[46:12] Speaker 3: get this prophecy against tire, and there's a couple of them,
[46:14] Speaker 3: but like, it didn't come true, right, there was a
[46:18] Speaker 3: besieging of tire, but it wasn't fully taken. It didn't
[46:21] Speaker 3: get fully taken until Alexander. But like in Ezekiel twenty nine,
[46:26] Speaker 3: we actually get an excuse from God, like we get
[46:29] Speaker 3: an admission from God that the whole tire prophecy failed.
[46:33] Speaker 3: He says in verse seventeen, in the twentieth year, the
[46:38] Speaker 3: first month, on the first day of the month, the
[46:40] Speaker 3: word of Lord came to me. Mortal King Nebukanezzer of
[46:43] Speaker 3: Babylon made his army labor hard against tyre. Every head
[46:47] Speaker 3: was made bald, and every shoulder was rubbed bare. Yet
[46:50] Speaker 3: neither he nor his army he got anything from tire
[46:53] Speaker 3: to pay for the labor that he had expended against it. Therefore,
[46:57] Speaker 3: thus said the Lord God, I will give the land
[46:59] Speaker 3: of Egypt to King Nebukinezzer of Babyloni. He shall carry
[47:02] Speaker 3: off its wealth and just spoil it and plunder it.
[47:05] Speaker 3: So there's an admission. It's really funny in Ezekiel, like
[47:08] Speaker 3: Ezekiel's got to go do like propaganda work for like,
[47:12] Speaker 3: oh my gosh, the prophecy failed. So it's like, as
[47:15] Speaker 3: it turns out, God's got a new prophecy, right, But Ezekiel,
[47:19] Speaker 3: if you read the Book of Ezekiel like it really is,
[47:22] Speaker 3: it's a cope. Ezekiel really is coping with the reality
[47:27] Speaker 3: of his time period, and one of the biggest realities
[47:30] Speaker 3: that he was dealing with is that there were prophecies
[47:33] Speaker 3: not coming true, a bunch of them not coming true.
[47:37] Speaker 3: He's writing during the time of the Babylonians, which means
[47:40] Speaker 3: all of the Assyrian prophecies were they've all failed already.
[47:44] Speaker 3: So now we're getting our asses kicked by the Babylonians,
[47:48] Speaker 3: and the Israelites are like, eh, fuck this, I don't
[47:50] Speaker 3: think this Yahweh stuff is really real, right, So he
[47:54] Speaker 3: says something that is super interesting and gets overlooked. Almost
[47:58] Speaker 3: everybody overlooks Ezekiel twelve, except for people that are in
[48:02] Speaker 3: the like full prederist camp. There's a note here in
[48:06] Speaker 3: twelve that to me, I think, basically debunks the entire
[48:11] Speaker 3: Hebrew Bible. Says, the word of the Lord came to me, mortal.
[48:14] Speaker 3: What is this proverb of yours about the land of
[48:17] Speaker 3: Israel that says the days are prolonged and every vision
[48:20] Speaker 3: comes to nothing. Tell them, therefore, thus say it the
[48:24] Speaker 3: Lord God. I will put an end to this proverb,
[48:26] Speaker 3: and they shall use it no more as a proverb
[48:28] Speaker 3: in Israel. But say to them, the days are near
[48:31] Speaker 3: and the fulfillment of every vision, For there shall no
[48:35] Speaker 3: longer be any false vision or flattering divination, which there
[48:38] Speaker 3: are false visions later in the Hebrew Bible. But the
[48:42] Speaker 3: Lord will speak a word that I shall speak, and
[48:45] Speaker 3: it will be fulfilled. No longer will it be delayed.
[48:48] Speaker 3: But in your days, o rebellious house, I will speak
[48:52] Speaker 3: the word and fulfill it, says the Lord. The word
[48:54] Speaker 3: of the Lord came to me a second time, it
[48:55] Speaker 3: says Mortal, the House of Israel is saying that the
[48:59] Speaker 3: vision he hees is for many years ahead. He prophesied
[49:03] Speaker 3: for distant times. Therefore say to them, thus say it
[49:06] Speaker 3: the Lord God. None of my words will be delayed
[49:08] Speaker 3: any longer. But the word that I speak will be fulfilled,
[49:12] Speaker 3: does the Lord God. So we've got this interesting prophecy
[49:15] Speaker 3: in Ezekiel twelve that would lead us to believe all
[49:19] Speaker 3: the rest of that book, all the prophecies that came
[49:21] Speaker 3: after that, should have been fulfilled in his lifetime, and
[49:25] Speaker 3: they just simply weren't coming up.
[49:28] Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about the Dead Sea scrolls. These
[49:31] Speaker 2: were supposedly proofs of the authenticity and holiness of scripture.
[49:38] Speaker 2: I don't know about that. Let's ask Justin d Z
[49:41] Speaker 2: after this, continuing with part one of a two part
[49:53] Speaker 2: series on the Bible, Part two is going to release
[49:56] Speaker 2: in just a few days, and then I will go
[49:58] Speaker 2: back and put that link in the description box for
[50:01] Speaker 2: both shows in case you're catching this in archive. Justin
[50:05] Speaker 2: DZ of Deconstruction Zone he is a seminary graduate, he
[50:10] Speaker 2: has a master's in divinity, and he knows a lot
[50:14] Speaker 2: about the Bible. I want to get into the Dead
[50:18] Speaker 2: Sea Scrolls in Justice. Second, I have to ask do
[50:22] Speaker 2: you have a favorite translation that you use for reference?
[50:25] Speaker 2: You know, the apologist are always arguing. Put fifty in
[50:28] Speaker 2: a room and say, okay, do you use the KJV,
[50:30] Speaker 2: the NKJV, the New American, the Revised New American, the
[50:35] Speaker 2: you know, the NASB, the NIV, the Message Bible, the
[50:38] Speaker 2: Living Bible. God. I mean, it's crazy. Do you have
[50:41] Speaker 2: a favorite?
[50:42] Speaker 3: Justin I do have a favorite. So my favorite Bible
[50:47] Speaker 3: is the New Oxford Annotated Study Bible. In fact, I've
[50:51] Speaker 3: got a copyright here.
[50:53] Speaker 2: Now I see two cats. Now, oh, I said both
[50:56] Speaker 2: of them?
[50:56] Speaker 3: There, Yeah, both of them here. This is the fifth
[51:01] Speaker 3: it's the NRSV edition, the new one. It's coming out
[51:05] Speaker 3: this spring, is going to be NRSV updated. And this
[51:09] Speaker 3: is a good scholarly Bible. And the reason why most
[51:12] Speaker 3: scholars prefer the NRSV. Almost all the new Bibles that
[51:16] Speaker 3: are study Bibles are in the NRSV Updated Edition, including
[51:19] Speaker 3: the Westminster Bible, and you know a bunch of other
[51:24] Speaker 3: Bibles that are kind of coming out in that vein
[51:27] Speaker 3: of study Bible is because it was done by scholars
[51:31] Speaker 3: to be a scholarly translation. Most translations are trying to
[51:35] Speaker 3: like be scholarly but also not deconvert people. Like they're
[51:41] Speaker 3: keenly aware that if they translate something in a particular way,
[51:45] Speaker 3: it could cause people to no longer hold the same doctrine.
[51:49] Speaker 3: So they kind of toe the line with that, and
[51:52] Speaker 3: you'll find that in the ESV. The SV does that.
[51:55] Speaker 3: There's parts of the NIV where they purposely try to
[51:57] Speaker 3: be Christological where there's no need for for it. And
[52:01] Speaker 3: we have like these Messianic helpers in the Hebrew Bible
[52:04] Speaker 3: and these other translations where it'll say, like where it
[52:07] Speaker 3: says like an anointed One, it'll say the Messiah in
[52:11] Speaker 3: capital letters, even though that's not in the text. So
[52:15] Speaker 3: the NRSP doesn't do all that nonsense. It's like, listen,
[52:18] Speaker 3: here's the translation. You worry about what it means. Like,
[52:22] Speaker 3: we're not doing theology for you. We're just translating the text.
[52:25] Speaker 3: Theology is your business. And so that's why the translation
[52:30] Speaker 3: is so well used by scholars and academics, because they're
[52:35] Speaker 3: not interested in reading a Bible that is telling them
[52:39] Speaker 3: what to think about the text. They're like, here's the text,
[52:42] Speaker 3: here's what it says. You guys can do the theology
[52:45] Speaker 3: on your own time.
[52:47] Speaker 2: When you see pastors get together with their various translations
[52:51] Speaker 2: and ask them to agree on the basics. Right, literal
[52:54] Speaker 2: six day creation where Adam and Eve the literal parents?
[52:58] Speaker 2: Was it an actual flow, global flood, regional floods? Was
[53:03] Speaker 2: it a metaphor slavery and dentured servitude? The role of
[53:07] Speaker 2: women speaking in tongues? How do you baptize? Is there
[53:10] Speaker 2: a literal hell or is it just a grave or separation?
[53:14] Speaker 2: The Book of Revelation? Right? The experts can't agree on
[53:17] Speaker 2: the basics, which I think is I find it a
[53:20] Speaker 2: useful way to help debunk the bunk. Do you go
[53:24] Speaker 2: there at all? Justin Yeah?
[53:26] Speaker 3: I think that's important. So one thing you'll find in
[53:29] Speaker 3: apologetics is there's a lot of people that they'll find
[53:32] Speaker 3: like their favorite conservative scholar, and they'll be like, well,
[53:37] Speaker 3: this guy over here says right, and then they just
[53:39] Speaker 3: run away with that. Right. They think, if I find
[53:42] Speaker 3: one scholar that believes what I believe, I'm justified in
[53:45] Speaker 3: my belief. But in reality, like for every position that's
[53:49] Speaker 3: out there, I'm sure there's ten scholars that will vouch
[53:53] Speaker 3: for that position. Now, that's why we look at what
[53:56] Speaker 3: is like the scholarly consensus, Like, so we look at
[53:58] Speaker 3: an issue and we're like, okay, what are most scholars
[54:01] Speaker 3: saying about this? Because what you don't want to do
[54:03] Speaker 3: is base your beliefs on outliers, right, But that's really
[54:07] Speaker 3: the goal of apologetics is to find an outlier that
[54:11] Speaker 3: tells the Christian like, hey, it's okay, you're justified in
[54:14] Speaker 3: believing this because of this outlier over here. But if
[54:17] Speaker 3: you actually look at like the bulk of doctrine and
[54:21] Speaker 3: the bulk of like the academic work that's done on
[54:24] Speaker 3: the Hebrew Bible, you'll find that typically they don't agree
[54:27] Speaker 3: with the apologist's position hardly ever. But to be fair,
[54:31] Speaker 3: you know, the goal of the apologist is not to
[54:36] Speaker 3: it's not to make this stuff necessarily like true. The
[54:41] Speaker 3: goal of the apologist is to say, well, it could
[54:43] Speaker 3: be true because of this.
[54:45] Speaker 2: Right.
[54:45] Speaker 3: As soon as you give it like the air of possibility,
[54:48] Speaker 3: you've kind of done your job. You've soothed the person
[54:53] Speaker 3: who had doubts, like you've said, listen, no, no, no, no,
[54:56] Speaker 3: we'll put this band aid down your doubts. It'll be okay,
[54:58] Speaker 3: and then hopefully it goes away.
[55:01] Speaker 2: The word apologetics, of course, translating speaking in defense, which
[55:05] Speaker 2: brings us to the question of why God would need
[55:08] Speaker 2: pithy humans who got everything else wrong to explain and
[55:11] Speaker 2: or defend him. Let's talk about this major, perhaps arguably
[55:16] Speaker 2: one of the biggest Biblical discoveries, mid twentieth century discovery
[55:21] Speaker 2: near the Dead Sea of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Hey,
[55:24] Speaker 2: wait a minute, this proves the Bible. Let's talk about that.
[55:30] Speaker 3: Certainly not now, there are some people who've done a
[55:33] Speaker 3: good job of trying to integrate what we find in
[55:38] Speaker 3: the Dead Sea Scrolls with what we find in the
[55:41] Speaker 3: Christian tradition. Like we see lots of crossover between John
[55:44] Speaker 3: the Baptist and these scenes. We see lots of we'll
[55:49] Speaker 3: call them parallels between the two Messiah theory and what
[55:53] Speaker 3: we find in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And we even
[55:56] Speaker 3: find the interpretive method that we find in the New Testament,
[56:01] Speaker 3: where it basically says, but here's a prophecy from the
[56:04] Speaker 3: Old Testament, and we're going to spiritualize it. Right, We're
[56:07] Speaker 3: going to give you an interpretation that's spiritualized, not literal.
[56:11] Speaker 3: We find that in the Dead Sea Scrolls as well.
[56:13] Speaker 3: We've got like the pressure of Habit Kook and the
[56:15] Speaker 3: pressure of Nahum, where it says like here's this passage,
[56:20] Speaker 3: but here's what it really means. Right, So there's a
[56:22] Speaker 3: lot of crossover with Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls,
[56:25] Speaker 3: But what we also find is a lot of failed predictions.
[56:28] Speaker 3: Like at one point there were two leaders at least
[56:32] Speaker 3: within the community that believed that they were in the Messiah.
[56:35] Speaker 3: And it's also kind of silly because like the entire
[56:40] Speaker 3: the entire group wasn't like homogeneous. It seemed like there
[56:43] Speaker 3: was some infighting, right, So it's it's an interesting thing,
[56:48] Speaker 3: but it's also causing the question, like in the Dead
[56:51] Speaker 3: Sea Scrolls, like if they literally believed in the two
[56:55] Speaker 3: Messiah theory, and James Tabor talks about this a bit,
[56:59] Speaker 3: Doctor James Tabor, if they really bleed into two Messiah theory,
[57:03] Speaker 3: then that means the other Messiah would have been John
[57:07] Speaker 3: the Baptist. But like according to the Bible, John the
[57:10] Speaker 3: Baptist wasn't the Messiah. In fact, he explicitly denied being
[57:14] Speaker 3: the Messiah. He even explicitly denied being Elijah. I'm Elijah
[57:19] Speaker 3: or the Messiah's a I'm you know, I'm the one
[57:23] Speaker 3: in the wilderness, so like it's really interesting there. It
[57:27] Speaker 3: feels like there's crossover with Christianity, but when you actually
[57:30] Speaker 3: read the New Testament, it weeds out some of those options.
[57:35] Speaker 3: That being said, the other problem we have with the
[57:38] Speaker 3: Dead Sea scrolls is like it doesn't really it doesn't
[57:45] Speaker 3: really know what to do with the Greek. So we
[57:50] Speaker 3: talked previously about the textual criticism standpoint of like the
[57:54] Speaker 3: Greek and the Hebrew not always agreeing with each other.
[57:56] Speaker 3: But we find the same thing in the Dead Sea scrolls.
[57:58] Speaker 3: About sixty to sixty five percent of our Dead Sea
[58:02] Speaker 3: scrolls match what's in our Massoretic text, meaning it's somewhat comparable.
[58:07] Speaker 3: About six percent match the Greek, which is interesting. So
[58:13] Speaker 3: like if you if you're looking at the whole of
[58:15] Speaker 3: the documents from the Dead Sea, we've got a bunch
[58:19] Speaker 3: about five to six percent that match what we find
[58:22] Speaker 3: in the Greek manuscripts, and then we've got a whole
[58:24] Speaker 3: host of other manuscripts that don't really match. They don't
[58:27] Speaker 3: line up with the Greek scept two agent, they don't
[58:29] Speaker 3: really line up with the Massoretic text, and you're just like,
[58:32] Speaker 3: we don't know what family of texts they even belong to.
[58:35] Speaker 3: And then we find huge issues like if you compare
[58:38] Speaker 3: Jeremiah in the in the Greek to Jeremiah in the Hebrew,
[58:44] Speaker 3: there's all kinds of problems, like the entire chapters are mithing.
[58:47] Speaker 3: Sometimes they're moved around into different locations. In fact, I
[58:50] Speaker 3: recently did a deep dive on this with doctor Kip Davis.
[58:54] Speaker 3: That was his area of expertise for his PhD. So, like,
[58:59] Speaker 3: we just find so many problems when you introduce the
[59:02] Speaker 3: Dead Sea scrolls, all it really tells you is that
[59:05] Speaker 3: a lot of these texts still were not stable. They
[59:09] Speaker 3: were still changing even in the time period of the
[59:12] Speaker 3: Dead Sea.
[59:13] Speaker 2: Once again, I put the cart before the horse. We
[59:16] Speaker 2: have to I'd like to explain what they are. So
[59:18] Speaker 2: are these treated as kind of an uncanonized scripture, are
[59:23] Speaker 2: they corroborating documents? Are they something else? What are they?
[59:28] Speaker 3: It's actually a really cool mixture of all of the above.
[59:31] Speaker 3: So we've got some documents that were being copied and
[59:36] Speaker 3: edited we'll say two to three hundred years prior to Jesus,
[59:43] Speaker 3: and this copyist's work was being done at different locations
[59:47] Speaker 3: by different people. In fact, there are a lot of
[59:49] Speaker 3: people who do textual criticism, but just on the Dead
[59:52] Speaker 3: Sea Scrolls, and they believe that they've identified particular scribes
[59:57] Speaker 3: based on their handwriting and based on the language they use.
[1:00:00] Speaker 3: They can say, oh, this document was done by you
[1:00:02] Speaker 3: know scribe one point b. You know. The other thing
[1:00:07] Speaker 3: is that we find it spans a good range of
[1:00:11] Speaker 3: time though. We've got you know, two to two and
[1:00:14] Speaker 3: a half, maybe even three centuries worth of texts, which
[1:00:16] Speaker 3: means some of the latest texts that are in the
[1:00:20] Speaker 3: Dead Sea Scrolls actually post state Jesus, because remember those
[1:00:24] Speaker 3: scrolls weren't stashed until probably the time of Hadrian, after
[1:00:28] Speaker 3: the Second Revolt or the second major revolts. So we've
[1:00:31] Speaker 3: got the Barkochlo revolt in the early second century that
[1:00:35] Speaker 3: came to a culmination about one thirty six, and they
[1:00:39] Speaker 3: outlawed all Jewish Hebrew texts. If you were found with them,
[1:00:43] Speaker 3: you're in a huge heap of trouble. And so what
[1:00:47] Speaker 3: we found, and this is what scholars typically think, how
[1:00:50] Speaker 3: the Dead Sea scrolls, a lot of them got there
[1:00:52] Speaker 3: was they in order to preserve their texts, they hid
[1:00:56] Speaker 3: these out in the caves during the diaspora. And so
[1:01:00] Speaker 3: what we have While they were all probably hidden out
[1:01:04] Speaker 3: there roughly the same time period, what was hidden was
[1:01:08] Speaker 3: a collection of texts that did span a good amount
[1:01:11] Speaker 3: of time. And not only that, they weren't just Biblical texts.
[1:01:15] Speaker 3: We also got rules for the community. We've got psalms
[1:01:20] Speaker 3: that aren't from the Bible. We've got prophecies that don't
[1:01:23] Speaker 3: show up in the Bible. We've got apocalyptic messages that
[1:01:27] Speaker 3: don't show up in the Bible, like the Apocalypse of Milkisa,
[1:01:32] Speaker 3: dec So it's kind of a cool collection of different manuscripts.
[1:01:37] Speaker 3: You can section them off and just read the biblical manuscripts,
[1:01:40] Speaker 3: or you can section them off and just read kind
[1:01:43] Speaker 3: of their community manuscripts, because they had lots of rules
[1:01:46] Speaker 3: for how to behave in the community and what happens
[1:01:49] Speaker 3: when you break the rules.
[1:01:54] Speaker 2: Later this week, Part two of this two part series
[1:01:57] Speaker 2: with Justin de Z, will Conte and I'll see you then.
[1:02:02] Speaker 1: Follow The Thinking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter for a
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[1:02:09] Speaker 1: t shirts featuring the Thinking Atheist logo, links to atheist
[1:02:13] Speaker 1: pages and resources, and details on upcoming free thought events
[1:02:16] Speaker 1: and conventions. Log onto our website. The Thinkingatheist dot com

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