Bible Magic!

Dan McClellan Throughout the ancient world, everybody just seemed to presuppose that, "Yeah, there's magic out there. Witchcraft works." It's just a matter of trying to suggest that when we do it, the person on the other end of the line is righteous. When they do it, it's demons. Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

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

Dan Beecher Things are good. It's my birthday.

Dan McClellan Oh.

Dan Beecher I'm just chilling here. I just stepped foot into my 50th year. Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan That's a big one.

Dan Beecher I'm not 50, to be clear.

Dan McClellan Oh.

Dan Beecher I am 49.

Dan McClellan 49.

Dan Beecher Okay. Thus begins- Yes ... you start at zero, and you don't get that one- Right ... until that first whole year has gone by. So, this means of counting is backwards-looking.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yes. Well, congratulations. Happy birthday.

Dan Beecher Thank you.

Dan McClellan By the time this goes out, you will have been a couple of weeks into that 50th year.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan You will be gaining all kinds of experience.

Dan Beecher I'll be a wise old man by then.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Right now, I'm just a young, spry doofus, but soon- ... the wisdom's going to hit. It hits at 50, right? That's when it kicks in? That's what I heard.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It comes flooding in.

Dan Beecher Good.

Dan McClellan The floodgates are open. You get the key to unlock all those doors.

Dan Beecher Thank goodness. So speaking of wisdom- Mm-hmm ... today we're going to be talking about, and also speaking of magical things happening- Mm-hmm ... like wisdom just magically occurring at 50. Magic's the theme of the show, man.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher We're going to be talking about some awesome... We've had people on Patreon and other places ask us about various sort of magic that appears in the Hebrew Bible, including magical implements and various things.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher So we're going to dive into that- Mm-hmm ... to begin with, and then we're going to zero in on some things very specific that's sort of that realm.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher An archeological find, if I'm not mistaken.

Dan McClellan An archeological find.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan We're actually going to talk about the single earliest witness to any text in the Hebrew Bible, and it is a magical text.

Dan Beecher So- Interesting.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher I like it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher All right. Well, let's start with some magical thinking.

Dan McClellan Yeah. I think it would be helpful first to talk a little bit about the concept of magic as we understand it, and as we use it, particularly in relation to the Bible, because there are an awful lot of people who understand magic to be something that other people do.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Basically, it's religious stuff that I don't like- Right ... is magic. Just like a cult is a religion I don't like, magic is the bibbidi-bobbidi-boo that I don't like.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Because when I go bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, well, that's just priesthood, or that's just God, or that's just a miracle or something like that.

Dan Beecher Right. But it's not magic.

Dan McClellan And so the distinction between what might be called priesthood authority or God's authority or something like that, and magic, is an arbitrary one. It is one that is drawn by the folks who are involved in it or against it.

Dan Beecher And I can see why the word magic would end up feeling maybe disrespectful or somehow dismissive.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher But I don't think that's how we want to use that word now. I don't feel like we want to be dismissive or disrespectful of what we're going to talk about.

Dan McClellan No, not at all.

Dan Beecher But yeah, I think that these practices and sort of implements, objects that are imbued with God's power or imbued with some sort of power, these are all things that are certainly not exclusive to Judaism, Christianity, et cetera, but they are present there.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And present in the Bible.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And how do you talk about them? I suppose we could find other words, but magic is the right word.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's what's happening. So let's- Yeah ... let's get into where we're at. What kinds of things are we talking about?

Dan McClellan Well, I identify, someone might be able to identify more, but just off the top of my head since we started the show, I've thought I can identify three different kind of brands of magical stuff going on in the Bible. One is magic associated with divination. How can we tell God's will, what God wants? There are a variety of different ways to do this. And even when people think about dark magic and the magic you might see in a TV show, frequently it has to do with telling the future- Mm ... or with trying to discern the will of some entity or another. So divination is a type of magic. And then we've got a type of magic that is called sympathetic magic, and this is where you're actually trying to control things in the world.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And we actually talked about a brand of that when we talked about Jacob working for Laban to get his wives.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan When he was ret to go, and he made a deal with Laban about him taking all the spotted and speckled sheep and goats and stuff. He went and took a bunch of sticks and peeled the bark off and ripped them to make them s- ... spotted and speckled, and then put them in watering troughs while certain animals were there, and then took them out while others were not there to influence their litters, to influence- Right ... the kinds of animals they would give birth to. So that's a kind of sympathetic magic where you create something that is supposed to have some kind of metaphysical connection to some kind of outcome.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then we have, well, now I've just thought of four.

Dan Beecher We have- ...

Dan McClellan imprecatory magic as well, and that's where you're trying to harm other folks. And so, if one thinks of, I think the first one that pops into my head is Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom- ... with the doll. And we have clay dolls from ancient Southwest Asia and Egypt where they write curses on them and then smash them.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And that's supposed to affect other folks.

Dan Beecher Sort of what we who grew up in the late 20th century were told was a voodoo thing, but- Yeah ... actually has nothing to do with voodoo, but there we go.

Dan McClellan Right. Well, far be it from us to miss an opportunity to demonize marginalized groups, so.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Absolutely.

Dan McClellan So we've got the sympathetic, we've got the divination, and then we've got the imprecatory, and then there's the apotropaic. And apotropaic is a $2 word that refers to warding off evil.

Dan Beecher So it's- I think we've talked about this in the context of our episode about Lilith. Did we not?

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Yeah. There was an apotropaic amulet- Yeah ... that was there to protect against... Was it to protect against Lilith coming and getting you?

Dan McClellan Yeah. So this was something that dates to between 700 and 1000 CE, so we're getting in on the medieval period. And this was this idea that this amulet, if it had these three angels' names on it, Senoy, Sansenoy, and Samanglaf, then Lilith would not be able to kill your newborn. And so that was probably an etiology, an origin story for the use of this amulet as an apotropaic or a protective amulet for the baby.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so we have all kinds of apotropaic magic going on as well. In fact, what we're going to talk about in the second part of the show is going to be apotropaism. It's going to be about warding off evil. But for the first part of the show, we're going to talk about divination, and particularly associated with two things. They can be separate or together, and usually English speakers know them by Urim and Thummim.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan In Hebrew, Urim v'Thummim. And these are tools of divin- it's not divinization, excuse me. That might be another type of magic. Tools of divination.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan In other words, a way to discern God's will.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so, when we did our episode on the Necromancer of Endor- Right ... the introduction to that story says that Saul was seeking the Lord's will related to whether or not he should go up to battle. And it says he could not find an answer from the prophets or through the Urim and Thummim. And so he had access to this tool of divination, and it just wasn't working. He gave it the bop, he gave it the Nintendo blow- ... he did all of that, and he still was not getting the answers he was looking for, so he was like- The moisture probably actually damaged the Urim and Thummim.

Dan Beecher Yeah. If you- They say don't do it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Don't do the blow.

Dan McClellan You don't want to get the Mountain Dew fumes in there.

Dan Beecher Yeah, I remember reading that Saul, matter of fact, I have it pulled up here in 1 Samuel 14- Okay ... verse 41, where Saul prayed to the Lord, "Why have you not answered your servant today? If the fault is in me or in my son Jonathan, respond with Urim, but if the men of Israel are at fault, respond with Thummim." So it was like- ... a binary system. He had a whole- Yeah ... if the blue light comes on, then we know that it's this- Yeah ... and if the red light comes on... Do we know what this looked like, what this Urim and Thummim was? Because it was part of a breastplate, right?

Dan McClellan We don't really have an idea what form it took, because it doesn't really describe it. It only ever refers to either Urim or Thummim, or Urim and Thummim together. Uh-huh. But it was something that went into the breastplate somewhere.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And sometimes it seems to overlap with the stones that were put in the breastplate or on the shoulders.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so it's not consistent. So we have in Numbers 27:21, 1 Samuel 28:6, and then there are like five other references to just the Urim all by itself- Hmm ... which was some kind of object that facilitated divination. And then you find Urim and Thummim together in Exodus 28:30, Leviticus 8:8, Deuteronomy 33:8, Ezra 2:63, Nehemiah 7:65.

Dan Beecher Interesting.

Dan McClellan And there were even scholars for a long time who thought that these were not actually physical objects, but that they were abstractions.

Dan Beecher I'm just forever now going to think of them as a red and a blue light right over the neck. That to me...

Dan McClellan Well, here's the thing. There is ancient Jewish tradition associated with the Urim and the Thummim, which by the way, these are two Hebrew words, they're both in the plural, that mean lights and perfections.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan However, in the plural, you can create abstractions by putting nouns in the plural. And so it could mean illumination and perfection in the abstract sense. But again, there are several passages that seem to reflect the idea that this is These are physical objects that were means of divination. And so, in Exodus, and even in a bunch of other places, the idea is that they go in the breastplate of judgment that was worn by Aaron, which has 12 different stones on it. It's to be woven together from linen and wool, wink wink- Oh ... and gold and other things. And then there's supposed to be a pocket in there. And there is ancient Jewish tradition that these stones actually illuminated.

Dan Beecher Wow.

Dan McClellan That there was some kind of way that they lit up to indicate the will of God, or that when they lit up, that indicated that the will of God was being communicated, if maybe by some other means. And there is some tradition that suggests the letters, it would spell stuff out.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan The lights would spell stuff out.

Dan Beecher So it's like an LED display.

Dan McClellan Yeah, something like that.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan We don't know if it projected. If it was like the bat signal- Oh, sure ... so you had the Adonai signal that would- ... that would light up the clouds.

Dan Beecher Or if it's just a chest-mounted jumbotron sort of situation.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And if it was a clear night and there were no clouds, then you were SOL.

Dan Beecher Yeah, exactly.

Dan McClellan But yeah, it is some kind of means of divination, and because it does not describe exactly what's going on in the Hebrew Bible, everybody is just kind of making stuff up.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But we have later rabbinic texts that talked about, for instance, one, the Babylonian Yoma 73a, which dates to between the third and the fifth centuries CE. When asked, "How were the Urim and Thummim inquired of?" And the answer comes, "The inquirer had his face directed to him who was consulted, and the latter directed himself to the Divine Presence." And so, there is linking with temple symbolism and imagery and stuff like that. And either some stuff would come into their mind, or it would light up. And then there's some Jewish tradition that suggests that the stones on the breastplate were the Urim and Thummim, or the two that went over the shoulder were the Urim and Thummim. And then Josephus actually talks about this. Says, "God declared..."

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan So Josephus is writing in the 90s CE.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And he's captured during the war when Rome destroys Jerusalem, and- Josephus was the, sorry, the Jewish historian who then...

Dan Beecher Oh, I'm sorry, you're telling the story.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah. But he came from- He was of Jewish descent.

Dan McClellan Right. And they capture him, and he's like, "I could be of use to you guys." Uh-huh. And he basically writes the stories, histories about Judaism in a way that's intended to kind of represent Judaism to the Roman Empire in a good light. But he says in one part, "God declared beforehand by those 12 stones, which the high priest bear on his breast, and which were inserted into his breastplate when Israel should be successful in battle. For so great a splendor shone forth from them before any army began to march that all the people were sensible of God's being present for their assistance."

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And so here the idea is that it's basically a binary thing. It's a yes or a no. Should we go out to battle? Womp, womp, womp, womp.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That's a yes. And then if you see the priest walking around and he's just beaming light, then they were like, "Oh man, we're going to win today. Got a good feeling."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "Got a good feeling about this match." "This is going to go great."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so in that sense, it's kind of woven into the idea of this war palladium- Mm ... the representation of God's presence, and approbation of going into battle.

Dan Beecher Little did they know that the Moabite priest's chest was also glowing, and- ... that didn't go great.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And then the Philistines brought out their fish god, right? Who actually has nothing to do with being a fish. Yeah, they would consult them before the war, and that's why Saul was going to the prophets, going to consult the Urim, and it was silent. So, if it doesn't light up means no, lights up means yes. If it's broken, how do you not- Right?

Dan Beecher ...

Dan McClellan be like, "That's a no? Are you answering no?"

Dan Beecher Blink twice for yes- Yeah ... and once for no.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And then we've got even- Well, that's why you need both. That's why you need the Urim and the Thummim, so that you can have- Yeah ... one of them is, the Urim is yes- The main, the primary ... and the Thummim is no.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Oh, except you just don't drop them and then be like, "Oh, shoot, which one was which?"

Dan Beecher Right. Hopefully they look different.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And then in the Dead Sea Scrolls, they're mentioned a handful of times, including in the Temple Scroll 11Q19, which says, "The king must not go to battle prior to coming to the high priest to inquire of him about the judgment of the Urim and Thummim."

Dan Beecher So we end there at- Let me just put on my rocks. I got to put on my rocks to know.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And within the Latter-day Saint tradition, the Urim and Thummim is picked up as basically a peep stone. Mm-hmm. That's what they're saying, "Oh, that's the Urim and Thummim." Which, to be honest, is not far off.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There's certainly an awful lot of overlap in the functioning of- Certainly a divination thing.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher And when you look- And divination was huge in the- Oh ... in the 1800s, and all through. We think of it as You know, we're talking about it in an ancient context, but it continued and continues.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I still see people dowsing to find water- Yeah ... and that sort of thing. It doesn't work, but people do it, and they swear by it. A lot of people swear by it.

Dan McClellan Well, and when you think about it, frequently when you hear stories about the efficacy of prayer, particularly within the Latter-day Saint tradition, you sometimes hear stories about, "Oh, I lost this thing, and I decided to kneel down and say a prayer, and then I was shown where it was in my mind, and then the next place I looked was it," or something like that, which is just divination- Yeah ... mediated by prayer.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's basically dematerializing the object, the facilitator of divination.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Saying, "No, we do it with our voice rather than with a rock- Right ... or with a particularly shiny rock." We're still doing the exact same thing, and- Yeah.

Dan Beecher You think of all the people who are very into the healing powers of crystals or whatever.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Again, you take an object that is a shiny, pretty rock- Yep ... and you imbue it with various power.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Whether having to do with frequencies or with- Uh-huh ... anything like that. You can imagine the high priest with the 12 different stones on his chest. People are like, "Oh, gosh, here he comes again with his crystals."

Dan Beecher He's like, "This one is rose quartz, and that's good for healing. And this one is smoky quartz, and that is for..."

Dan McClellan Yeah. doTERRA would've made a killing.

Dan Beecher Wait. But- We said we weren't going to be disrespectful. Let's keep going.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher We lied. We're going to be a little disrespectful sometimes for fun.

Dan McClellan But we distinguish what is good divination from bad divination basically on who we think is on the other end of the line.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so we have divination in the Hebrew Bible as well as in the New Testament. How did they choose the apostle that was going to take Judas' place? They rolled dice.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan They cast lots. But because it was Adonai on the other end of the line, it's like, "This is okay. It's okay when we do it."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And this raises interesting questions about the intercession of angels within early and even contemporary brands of Christianity, as well as within some brands of Judaism. You have a lot of attempts to appeal to other entities besides God, and Jesus was doing that as well. One of the criticisms of Christianity among some early Jewish folks was, "Hey, that's the wrong person on the other end of the divinatory line."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "We've got to have Adonai on the other end." And the Christians were just like, "Well, what if he is Adonai?"

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Did you ever think about that?

Dan Beecher Yeah. That is a time-honored tradition, people accusing... Even you look at Christians accusing different brands of Christians of, "Oh, your thing isn't working or isn't valid because it's not the right version of our- Right ... of our belief system," or whatever.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That happens a lot.

Dan McClellan And then witchcraft is just a variation on sympathetic magic and divination and things like that, although it's frequently aimed at kind of a generic, faceless, divine agency out there that is not named and personified and represented in most cases. In some cases it is, but in most cases it's not. So Christians and folks who are in the Bible trying to seek God's will are doing the same kinds of things that any other people engaged in divination are doing.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan They just feel like there's one object of our inquiry that's appropriate and anybody else's is inappropriate, which is just about exclusivity more than it is about any kind of innate, fundamental, ethical, or moral qualities associated with them.

Dan Beecher Well, and as you said, it seems like at least some of this... So Urim and Thummim seem to be direct lines to Adonai or whatever, but then there's a lot of gray area.

Dan McClellan You said the necromancer.

Dan Beecher I still like the Witch of Endor just because it sounds really fun. Yes, it's true. I am still picturing an Ewok.

Dan McClellan But- ...

Dan Beecher she was practicing this practice that worked, that was an effective magic.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And it had been banned by Saul. Was it Saul that banned it?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But that didn't mean that God had banned it, and it clearly worked. So one would think, God approved, question mark? God disapproved, question mark? It seems to be in gray area.

Dan McClellan Well, and this raises an interesting point about the conceptualization of magic and the disapproval of non-godly magic, let's say.

Dan Beecher Or unsanctioned.

Dan McClellan Unsanctioned, yeah. What is presupposed throughout all of it, whether you're talking about Pharaoh's magicians who successfully turn staffs into snakes- Right ... or you're talking about the necromancer of Endor, or you're talking about anything else, the presupposition is that the world is chock-full of invisible forces that we can access if you know the right words, if you have the right materials, if you have the right ingredients and recipes.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan In other words, it's all true. It's just a question of what you're allowed to go out and take advantage of.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And for the Bible, if it didn't work in their perception, they wouldn't have to ban it or prohibit it.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan They wouldn't have to say, "No, don't go consult with the deceased," if nobody ever got anything out of it. But the Bible represents consulting with the deceased as working.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan As doing exactly what they... So, throughout the ancient world, everybody just seemed to presuppose that, yeah, there's magic out there. Witchcraft works. It all works, it's just a matter of trying to suggest that when we do it, the person on the other end of the line is righteous. When they do it, it's demons.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Everybody is demons, rawr. And even when you get down into the New Testament, Paul is saying that an idol is nothing, but it represents or it's a conduit to demons.

Dan Beecher Ooh.

Dan McClellan So they're out there and they can do what they are sought after to do, but you're not allowed to do that.

Dan Beecher Don't, but don't.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I guess that has been the bugaboo of magic since time immemorial, is just what's okay magic and what's not magic.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I think we're in an interesting moment in history where I think we're believing less and less in magic as we get- Mm-hmm ... more and more good explanations for weird phenomena in the world or whatever.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher But I do think that seems to be the crux of it, is just who's doing it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher In whose name are they doing it?

Dan McClellan And it's not even like, are you trying to hurt somebody or help somebody? If that were the criterion, I could understand that a little bit more. But if it's like you're allowed to curse somebody in God's name, you're not allowed to bless somebody in Asherah's name- Right ... or something like that. Do we really need to be getting upset about that? Does that not just come down to the jealousy of God- Right ... and saying, "I'm the only one. You're not allowed to..."

Dan Beecher Yeah. That is an interesting distinction. You can't do good for others- Yeah ... if it's in the wrong name.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That hadn't really occurred to me, but yeah. It definitely seems it's about who's being glorified in the moment.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And I think this fundamentally comes down to an us versus them distinction. Whatever we do is good, whatever they do is bad, and our gods are good, whether we're rolling dice or looking at shiny rocks. If anybody else does it, even if it's to help someone, including helping us, it's wrong because they're not us, they're them.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Well, there you go. That is, I think, a good primer on the magic thing. Let's get specific now and dive into Ketef Hinnom.

Dan McClellan Ketef Hinnom, right. Ketef Hinnom is a part of the Valley of Hinnom. It's a ridge part that's mostly rock, and there are a bunch of graves that were carved into the rock there. And you can go visit it. It's a fairly small area, but you can go see how they carved little channels in the rock where you're supposed to lay bodies, and little circles up top where you put offerings and things like that.

Dan Beecher And then underneath- Do we have a sense of the time period that this happened?

Dan McClellan This is going on in the Iron Age, so pre-exilic period, all the way down to surely it would've been used afterwards as well. But we're talking eighth, seventh century BCE.

Dan Beecher Wow.

Dan McClellan So, this is where the Judahite rock-cut tomb is kind of diagnostic of this time and place, where you carve benches and repositories into the rock, and that's where you lay bodies and they decompose, and then you collect the bones and you throw them into the repository, which is where they all collect. And there's this idea of being gathered to the ancestors can be linked with the idea of when you're a single skeleton, with or without flesh, you're an individual. But then once your bones, they're not connected anymore and they just get tossed into a heap of bones, you are no longer a single individual. Your identity has disintegrated, and you have been gathered to the ancestors. You're now a generic ancestor.

Dan Beecher Interesting.

Dan McClellan And so there were phases of the afterlife based on the materiality of burial and then of mortuary interactions and things like that. But back in the '60s, somebody discovered in one of these tombs, associated with a burial. Now, a roof had collapsed in, and so it was difficult to distinguish some of the different layers. But they found two little scrolls of silver that were rolled up tight, and I'm talking little, little. One of them is only an inch wide, the other is just over half an inch wide.

Dan Beecher Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan And one of them is about four inches long, the other is about two inches long. But when they unrolled them, these little silver scrolls, they noticed scratches on the inside of them and discovered that they had writing on them. And so these became known as the Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls, and they're dated to about 600 BCE. So whoever was buried, they were probably buried around 600 BCE, right around the time of the Babylonian exile, or at least the beginning of it. And what they discovered written on these scrolls was a version of what's known as the priestly blessing from the Book of Numbers 6:24-26. And so this is the earliest known witness to any biblical text ever.

Dan Beecher Wow.

Dan McClellan And it comes from centuries before the Dead Sea Scrolls. And it's a version of the priestly blessing. It's not exactly the same as the priestly blessing, but a couple of interesting things about this, scholars are pretty sure that the purpose of writing this priestly blessing on these scrolls and then rolling them up tight would've been as magical amulets, basically. One of those four kinds of magic that we talked about in the first segment, this would've been the apotropaic sort, because it was, "May the Lord bless you and keep you." And that's basically promising protection. The word for keep can mean watch or guard.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And so it is a prayer for protection. But when you inscribe it on little silver scrolls and roll them up tight and put them in a little pouch, that's not designed to be read.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That is functioning as an artifact, not as a text. And I talk in my book about how, my book, "Adonai's Divine Image: A Cognitive Approach," totally open access, you can go find the PDF online, about how inscribing the divine name, which is written the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, which is written at least seven times on the two scrolls. Inscribing that materializes the divine name, and pronouncing or materializing the divine name was thought to invoke the deity's presence and agency. And so if you write it a bunch and then roll it up tight and keep it on you, it's kind of a constant reminder, "I've got the divine name with me, so I've got God's presence with me." And if that text that contains the divine name is saying, "Bless you, keep you, guard you, watch you, may His face shine upon you," kind of stuff. You're basically, every time you're walking and the thing bumps against your chest, it's like, "Ah, yes, I have Adonai's protection. Adonai is guarding me, keeping me, watching me. Adonai's face is shining on me." And so it is functioning in a kind of magical way to remind you and give you a sense that you're being watched over by God. But then the person was buried with it, which indicates that it was probably also understood to protect and guard them through the afterlife, because anciently they did think there was an afterlife, and they did think there were entities in the afterlife who could mess you up.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so Adonai could also grant protection in the afterlife as well. And so the Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls are, in addition to being the earliest version of any text from the Bible, they're a piece of material magic. They're a piece of apotropaic. They're an apotropaic amulet, in brief, and these are actually quite common around this time period. In fact, starting around 800 BCE, we begin to see apotropaic amulets spreading out from Egypt and they're found in Phoenicia, they're found in Israel, they're found as far away as Greece, and they usually involve some kind of inscription and frequently some kind of iconography, like a drawing of a deity or a symbol for a deity, or maybe an animal that is associated with a deity. And so the goal is the same. The goal is to invoke the presence, the agency of a deity who can protect and can guard and watch over you.

Dan Beecher The thing that popped into my mind when you... Sorry, I'm going off on a bit of a tangent here.

Dan McClellan No, that's fine.

Dan Beecher But when you described this was a mezuzah.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Which is the sort of the Jewish tradition that continues to this day of writing on a scroll, and I think it's just verses from the Torah.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And then you put it in a little thing, and you keep that on your doorframe or whatever.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There are a handful of texts that are inscribed, usually in very small lettering so that they can be rolled up tight, and that is put inside the vial or the cylinder that goes inside the container, and that is, yeah, put usually at an angle on the doorframe. And it's doing the same thing. The idea here is to provide protection to everybody inside that door, everybody in that household. But also usually when coming or going, there was some kind of interaction with the mezuzah, whether you kiss your fingers and touch it or something like that.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Which was a reflection of this hope that that protection would be with you while you're out in the world as well. And so this is doing the same thing that divine images, and particularly standing stones did in the ancient world, because sometimes people would have standing stones in their house, and many cities would have standing stones right outside the front gate. And this similarly was a way to signal to others, "This city is dedicated to this particular deity, and this particular deity is overlooking and guarding and watching out for this city." And so very, very similar stuff, but on a miniaturized scale.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And you have those same texts are put in boxes that are put on the forehead when you have the phylacteries, where the leather strap goes around the forehead and then around the left arm down to the hand. That kind of thing is doing the same kind of thing. We're invoking the divine presence, divine agency, whether it is for protection or to facilitate some other kind of blessing.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And I wrote about the mezuzah in my book as well, as an example of material media that used the inscription of the divine name as a catalyst for invoking divine presence. But this probably goes back to stamp seals. So a lot of people know that anciently you didn't have a signature, you had a little seal that had your name or some symbol or something like that. Big King Ranch with horns on it or something.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And you would press that into wax or something like that in order to signify your possession, your ownership, your approbation, something like that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But we find some stamp seals that invoke the protection of certain deities, usually with symbols associated with protection or with protective deities. And so they are functioning as apotropaic seals, so personal seals. There's an interesting example. The letter omega was used frequently in association with childbirth.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan So from Mesopotamia to Judah, we find the Greek omega symbol. It was associated with miscarriage, and the symbol was often put on the graves of children. And there's no explanation of what's going on, but some scholars think that it might invoke protection of this child, and they think the omega symbol may represent the womb. And so- Oh.

Dan Beecher Because it's two lines at the bottom, but basically a circle.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Just think of an O, but the bottom is open, and the two lines that come around, instead of meeting, just turn back and stick out on each side. And so it could be representative of- That'd be a reasonable symbol for a womb, I guess.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Sure. And so some people think that those symbols are there because they're trying to invoke blessings on a womb or protection for miscarried children- Hmm ... in the afterlife or something like that. But we have all kinds of iconography. Animals, scorpions, for instance, are associated with certain types of protection. There was an amulet that was discovered at Mount Arbel, and Arbel is this mountain cliff face that is on the west side of the Sea of Galilee. And if you ever get to go there, you got to go up to the top of Mount Arbel. It's the best view of the Northern Galilee. But don't fall off, please. And they found this little pendant, and on one side of it, it has a Greek inscription that says, "The one God who conquers evil." And then it shows somebody on horseback, and they have a halo behind their head, and with a spear, they are spearing a female figurine that's laying on the bottom. And then there's a variation on the Tetragrammaton written in Greek. And then on the backside, it says, "One God," and you've got this evil eye symbol. And this probably dates to the fifth or the sixth century CE. But it would've been understood as a protective amulet. It was a pendant, so it had a little thing with a hole in it for you to put your necklace through it or something like that. And you would wear that, and that would protect you from, if anyone were trying to give you the evil eye or put a curse on you or something like that- Right ... that would protect you from that. In fact, in magical Greek papyri, this is something that we find in the common era in ancient Greek as well as in late antique Greek. You find a lot of papyri with magic texts written all over them. And people think that abracadabra, which is supposed to be this magical phrase, is based on an ancient Aramaic curse, and it's not. But there were lots of magical papyri that would talk about different figures from the Bible. Even pagan texts, where they're not Christian, they're not Jewish, a lot of them had the Greek letters iota alpha omega, which would be a Greek transliteration of how some people would have pronounced the divine name, the Tetragrammaton. In fact, we find that precise spelling in the Dead Sea Scrolls in one of the Greek translations of Leviticus in place of the divine name.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And so that was used more than any other divine name. In Greek magical papyri, you had the Tetragrammaton used as a way of invoking protection and blessing and even curses and things like that. So the ancient world, beyond just Judaism and Christianity, into what we refer to as the pagan world, was just saturated with the notion that there are forces out there in the world. And like we talked about earlier, some of them you can appeal to for divination Or for cursing others, but overwhelmingly, you wanted to appeal to them to protect you from the other divine forces that were out there that someone else might try to throw at you.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It is fascinating, and again, I love that you started this conversation with ideas of what has come through to now, because there's still so much of this. I think a lot of people hearing this would want to poo-poo ancient stuff as being weird, or as being like, "Well, that was obviously not real." But there's so much of this stuff that still occurs now, and that every religion has variations of these.

Dan McClellan And I think it's interesting that you see among Christians today, you see a lot of concern for protecting yourself against the dark forces that are out there in the world. And it's baffling to me how many people out there are just like Bobby Boucher's mom and think everything's the devil.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Everything is demonic, and you've got to protect yourself. And usually, you see it all the time on social media, "Pray this prayer to protect yourself."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Or there are even folks who think that, and I think we have plans to talk about this in another show, that wearing certain kinds of fabrics will help heal you and will help protect you.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And frequently, prayer is the replacement media for the amulets and things like that that went before. But there are a lot of people who think you've got to pronounce Jesus's name correctly in order to adequately invoke God's attention, or God's protection, or God's blessing, and if you don't say the name correctly, then it doesn't work. And this is very closely related to the idea that we want to write God's name on these amulets. Even if we're going to draw a picture or something like that along with it, we need to have their name on it. And we found a very common way of doing this in the ancient world, from Carthage to Malta to Cyprus to all over, is to have little strips of gold or silver or something like that, and they would draw Egyptian deities, like a little parade of Egyptian deities, and then they would write on there, "Bless Dave." Somebody probably paid a pretty penny for that, and then they would carry that around with them, and that would make them feel like these Egyptian deities were protecting them. And one of my favorite artifacts of all time comes from a place called Kuntillet Ajrud, and this is an inscription along with a drawing. And the drawing is of a male and a female deity, and they are drawn using imagery associated with Egyptian deities, one named Bes, and the other named Beset. And these are protective deities. You wanted these deities around to protect you. And there's an inscription written, it's centered right over top of the headdress of the male deity, and it asks for blessings by Adonai and by his Asherah.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And I am among those scholars who think that this is intentionally either interpreting or reinterpreting these two figures as Adonai, the god of Israel, and Adonai's Asherah. But it's doing the exact same thing. You've got a little inscription. You've got a drawing of deities who are associated with protection, and you are invoking their blessings to protect you, to guide you along the way. The same thing that is going on in Numbers 6, that God will watch over you and protect you. And I think even Numbers 6:27 says, "They will put my name upon them, the children of Israel, and I will bless them." So, the link between having the name there and having the blessings is pretty explicit. So, this kind of apotropaic magic is found all over the ancient Mediterranean. It's found in the Bible. It's found in our artifacts. It is the way our earliest witness to the Biblical texts was used. That's what it was there for.

Dan Beecher Wow.

Dan McClellan And some people think that that probably predated the working of the priestly blessing into the Book of Numbers.

Dan Beecher That this- Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan So originally, that blessing may have just been a blessing that people wrote down and carried with them.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then somebody was like, "Hey, give me that thing over there. We need a blessing to write into the Book of Numbers."

Dan Beecher "Unroll your silver. I'm padding for space here on my book."

Dan McClellan "What was that blessing you said the other day? I liked that. Yeah, let's put that in here." So, that's a possibility.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan The other possibility is that the Book of Numbers was in place already, and somebody was like, "I like that blessing. Hey, man, can you write this blessing onto this silver scroll for me?"

Dan Beecher Right. "So I can wad it up, and I can carry it around in a little amulet, and one day I'll be buried with it." It works either way. It works either way.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's sixes. Tomato, tomato. And so while today we tend to think of this as parochial and hokey and something that good Christians or even good Jewish people don't do, or at least some people present it that way, this is very much in the air- Oh my gosh ... when the Bible was being written. Think about- This was just as natural as slavery was back then. This was not something you questioned.

Dan Beecher It's still just as natural. You have talked a lot about the The psychological aspects of religion.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher What do you call it? What's your thing?

Dan McClellan I've got a few things.

Dan Beecher Cognitive science of religion.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay. That's what I'm trying to get at. And when you think about it, you want something to protect you when you're in a scary moment. And a Christian who's wearing a cross or a crucifix around their neck, when they're in a scary moment, they grab for that.