Did Ancient Israelites Use Magic for Legal Disputes?

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

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

Dan Beecher We're out here just doing our best.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Everybody's just doing our best. Trying to get through this wacky life that we've got.

Dan McClellan But- Yep ...

Dan Beecher we got some wacky fun coming up for the show. And- That's what I love to call it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And this time, we're doing a chapter and verse. We're going to hit Exodus 22. Not the whole thing.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher Actually, we're just going to confine it to just a few little things. But I think we've got something pretty interesting coming up.

Dan McClellan I think so.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Well, let's just dive into it with chapter and verse. And like I say, this week's chapter and verse, it's Exodus 22. Is this part of the covenant code?

Dan McClellan Is that- It is part of the covenant code.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan You are correct, sir. We're going to start in, in English, it's verses seven, eight, and nine. Although, in the Hebrew, it's verses six, seven, and eight. This is one of the chapters where there is a distinction- Ah ... in the versification.

Dan Beecher So- Just getting all wacky-doo.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Little bit, little bit.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And this is a fun little prescription of what to do. I'm going to read from the updated edition of the NRSVUE. I'm just going to go through verses seven, eight, and nine.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And then I think I'll read another translation, and we'll see if you can see what's different. See if you can spot a difference.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan Okay, so from the NRSVUE, "When someone delivers to a neighbor money or goods for safekeeping and they are stolen from the neighbor's house, then the thief, if caught, shall pay double. If the thief is not caught, the owner of the house shall be brought before God to determine whether or not the owner had laid hands on the neighbor's good. In any case of disputed ownership involving ox, donkey, sheep, clothing, or any other loss of which one party says, 'This is mine,' the case of both parties shall come before God. The one whom God condemns shall pay double to the other." So- So, it sounds an awful lot like a bit of an ordeal- Well, it sounds- ...

Dan Beecher situation ... tricky because- Yes ... traditionally, when you come before God, God is not explicit, "He done it."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher We generally, at least in my experience, when I was a religious person, I never saw that happen.

Dan McClellan So- Right ...

Dan Beecher it does seem like, what the heck is happening? What are we even talking about?

Dan McClellan Yeah. But the idea of most ordeals is you come before God, and you swear an oath, and the idea seems to be, hopefully, the threat of divine punishment is such that the person who knows they're guilty will shrink from the challenge.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Will be unable to actually swear the oath.

Dan Beecher And we've seen this kind of thing before, and it always tickles me because it's like, have you ever met a human?

Dan McClellan Yeah. Because- Do you know people?

Dan Beecher ... they are very happy to swear an oath, even to God, that is not true.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher If they're willing to steal from their neighbor, they're willing to swear an oath that they didn't. Trust me.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So, if this law was ever put into practice, I got to imagine that the overwhelming majority of the times, God didn't condemn either party because both of them were like, "Yeah, that's mine. I swear."

Dan Beecher Well, also, what does that even mean? I'm hoping that we are going to get to what it means to say God condemns- Yeah.

Dan McClellan Well- ...

Dan Beecher one or the other.

Dan McClellan Well, that brings up what we're...

Dan Beecher Let's take a look at- I'm hoping it's a Ouija board. My main hope is that there's like- You're moving it.

Dan McClellan You're moving. Shut up. There's no, no I'm not. Okay, so I'm going to read from the NET. This is the New English Translation.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan "If a man gives his neighbor money or articles for safekeeping and it is stolen from the man's house, if the thief is caught, he must repay double. If the thief is not caught, then the owner of the house will be brought before the judges to see whether he has laid his hand on his neighbor's goods. In all cases of illegal possessions, whether for an ox, a donkey, a sheep, a garment, or any kind of lost item about which someone says, 'This belongs to me,' the matter of the two of them will come before the judges, and the one whom the judges declare guilty must repay double to his neighbor." Well, that's- So, there are a lot of little differences here, and then there are a couple of big differences.

Dan Beecher That's a very different idea.

Dan McClellan Yeah, this- Yes ...

Dan Beecher introducing this judge's idea, A, makes way more sense in terms of practically what we're talking about. That I can understand. That makes total sense to me. That's what we do now.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher When there is a dispute, we bring them before a judge.

Dan McClellan I think the issue, or, well, I'll explain an issue with why I think judges is problematic, and then we'll get into why there's a difference in the translation.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan The thing is, the judge isn't going to have any evidence that's going to allow him to make a logical determination about who's guilty and who's not.

Dan Beecher Yeah. The idea is basically- We're specifically talking about one person's word against another.

Dan McClellan Exactly. And so, elsewhere in the Bible You need God to be able to decide between two parties.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan When it's just one person's word against another. You have no witnesses, you have no material evidence. But the reason that we have judges here is because the word that is rendered God in the NRSVUE and is rendered judges in NET is Elohim. Now, Elohim can be plural or it can be singular.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Now, the reason that it's rendered judges in the NET, and I think even the King James Version renders judges as well.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Is because the verb about whom the Elohim condemn is conjugated in the plural.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan So, if you want to say God, then you are ignoring that the verb is plural.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, bring them before God, whomever God condemns. Well, it can't be that because condemn is in the plural, not the singular.

Dan Beecher And so- Okay. So, we've brought up the word Elohim plenty of times on this.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And you've mentioned that it can be plural or it can be singular.

Dan McClellan Singular, yep.

Dan Beecher But what you haven't ever mentioned is that it could mean judges.

Dan McClellan It can't.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So, the notion that it can mean judges is just not there. That's not what it means- Oh, wow ... in Hebrew. But you had some early Jewish literature that did translate it as judges.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Because they didn't like the fact that this was plural. So, it wouldn't mean God, it would mean be brought before the gods.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And whomever the gods condemn. And that made a lot of folks uncomfortable. Which is, that's not difficult to understand.

Dan Beecher Understandable.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That's understandable. And so there was kind of this time period, around the time when the New Testament was being written, where there was a lot of hand-wringing over what was going on here. And we see this in early rabbinic literature, where they're trying a bunch of different ways to figure out what's going on here. And it actually goes back to Genesis 6 with the bene Elohim, the children of God, who had sex with the human women. And the children of God in Job 1 and Job 2. And there are a bunch of places where we have these weird references to gods and children of God. And a tradition developed that the word Elohim here could be referring to angels, or it could be referring to humans. And so the Genesis 6 idea is, well, maybe this was angels, and then people were like, "Angels can't have sex with humans. What's going on here? It wouldn't even fit." You struggle to figure out how that works. And this is what's going on with Jude, in relation to Sodom and Gomorrah, where they were like, "And in like manner, they pursued sarx heteras, the different flesh." Ew, those gross humans wanting to have sex with angels. And you have some Jewish literature where they were like, "No, angels just appeared when men were having sex with their wives." And they were kind of like ooh, and then they- Boogy, boogy, boogy.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And that made it so the women conceived these giant offspring and stuff like that. And then somebody else says, "No, the angels transformed into flames of fire and had sex with the women." And I just didn't burn the women.

Dan Beecher I don't know how flames having sex with women is any better than angels having sex with women.

Dan McClellan Have you read literature from the first century?

Dan Beecher No. No, I try not to.

Dan McClellan But another tradition developed that Genesis 6 was a reference to the line of Seth.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan That it was humans.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so a tradition developed that Elohim could refer to humans.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And it was supposed to refer to either particularly powerful or particularly important humans. And so one interpretation became that it referred to judges.

Dan Beecher And this is- That was a long and circuitous road that we got to that.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, and there's so much more to it because- I'm sure. Because you got Psalm 82, as well, which is bizarre. And, you've got John 10, where Jesus says, "Ain't you guys read Psalm 82?" Where it says, "You are gods." And that's probably appealing to a tradition that understands the Israelites at Sinai to be the ones who are referred to as gods upon reception of the law because they become immortal and blah, blah, blah. So, that's a post-biblical renegotiation of what's going on here. And a lot of people, even down to today, are kind of like, "That's our interpretation. That's what we like," because it makes the problem go away.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It doesn't make the problem go away. It is just a way to avoid the problem and deny it exists. Because Elohim just doesn't mean judges. It means God, gods, or divine in the adjectival sense. And something that I find fascinating, I read you the NET translation, the New English Translation.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And the New English Translation is actually, I think, a very interesting translation because it's translated from scratch, afresh. It's not just a revision of an existing translation. And so it has its own readings in a lot of places that it's off the beaten path in a lot of ways.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan But they also have tens of thousands of explanatory notes. So, if you want to know why there's controversy about a given translation, or what the logic is behind what's going on in these translations, it's a great place to look because they frequently will be able to explain, here's why some people think of it as this way, some people think of it the other way. However, I think sometimes the translators got sloppy.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Yes. And this is a passage where they got really sloppy. And here I'm trying to channel my best Steve Martin. "This one night, we got really small." In this one passage, they got really sloppy. Because I want to read the note that they have for where they translate judges.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan It says, "The word is ha'elohim.

Dan Beecher S.

Dan McClellan Driver," and Driver was a Semiticist, a biblical scholar from a long time ago, "says the phrase means to God, namely the nearest sanctuary, in order that the oath and the ritual might be made solemn, although he does say that it would be done by human judges." So basically, Driver's idea is, so you got to go to the sanctuary, you got to be in God's presence, but it's going to actually be supervised by human judges.

Dan Beecher So going before God just meant you got to go to church, you got to go to the synagogue- Yeah ... or the whatever it is, the tabernacle.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher The whatever.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher The place where God theoretically is- Right ...

Dan McClellan is the goddiest.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That the reference is to Adonai God is the view also of F.C. Fensham in a paper called "New Light on Exodus 21:7 and 22:7 from the Laws of Eshnunna." Compare also the ASV, the NAB, the NASB, the NCV, the NRSV, the NLT. Others have made a stronger case that it refers to judges who acted on behalf of God. See Cyrus Gordon, "Elohim and its Reputed Meaning of Rulers, Judges," and Ann Draffkorn, "Elahi Elohim." Both of those are Journal of Biblical Literature articles, one from 1935, the other from 1957. So, the editors are basically like, "We think it means judges. Here's why."

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan Here's the problem. Both of the articles that they cited pretty definitively conclude it does not mean judges.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Yeah, that is sloppy. That's a bit- It's incredibly sloppy.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So I'm going to start with Cyrus Gordon from 1935. The article is entitled "Elohim and its Reputed Meaning of Rulers, Judges." And it starts, "The very first definition under Elohim in Brown-Driver-Briggs," that's an old lexicon, "is rulers, judges." And then it goes on from there. The next page, you've got a paragraph that says, "It is my contention that here Elohim does not mean God, as the Septuagint translates, nor judges-" Okay.

Dan Beecher "...

Dan McClellan which is the interpretation of the Peshitta and Targum Onkelos, followed by Rashi and Ibn Ezra, by several of the English versions, and by the lexicon. The literal translation, gods, plural, found in the Vulgate and Luther's version, is better suited to what appears to be the real meaning of the passage in the light of newly discovered material." And then he goes on to talk about the Nuzi tablets, and how there is this ritual where when you don't have evidence of something, you swear to the gods, which are supposed to be divine images, like teraphim. You basically go in front of the court's little shrine, and you go, "It wasn't me, I swear it." Uh-huh. And then you pay your fine or whatever, and you go. So Cyrus Gordon is black and white. It does not mean- Right ... rulers or judges.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then Ann Draffkorn, from 22 years later, publishes her paper, "Elahi Elohim," and starts off talking about, oh, it means god or gods, could be idols. There's a small group of such marginal occurrences in which the noun had been traditionally interpreted as judges, and then goes on to cite Cyrus Gordon, and basically her paper is saying, "Cyrus Gordon was right, and here's more information on this." So, in the concluding paragraph, the penultimate paragraph, she says, "The choice to become..." And she says it definitely means gods, and it's because of all these reasons.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And explains that, and she's actually talking about the choice to, in Exodus 21. I just realized, I'm looking at Exodus 21. The footnote from the NET is actually about a parallel verse that uses Elohim that's translated judges in Exodus 21.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan I apologize. I've overlooked that, but it's the exact same argument, and the footnote in Exodus 22 says, "See footnote here."

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, sorry. And so Ann Draffkorn says, "All in all, the explicit statement that the master shall bring him to the gods may now be seen against a valid social and legal background." In other words, Ann Draffkorn is just doubling down on Cyrus Gordon being right. So whoever wrote that footnote said, "Check it out. These scholars make a stronger case that it refers to judges." They very clearly didn't read either of these papers.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Or they read them and were just like, "Meh, let's just quote them because nobody will actually go look it up."

Dan Beecher Nobody's going to fact check me. What are we doing here?

Dan McClellan Yeah. And this happens from time to time in the NET. There are other places where this happens as well. Sometimes the representation of the debate and the evidence that they provide is pretty good. Sometimes it's terrible.

Dan Beecher Wow.

Dan McClellan Like here, where they just wanted to translate it according to The conservative Christian tradition.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan And they needed a reason to defend that translation, and they were like, "Well, we'll just say, some people think it's this, some people think it's that. We've decided it's this. Here are a couple of papers why."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And they fumbled the bag here big time.

Dan Beecher Wow.

Dan McClellan Because those two papers argued directly against the conclusion that they cited them for. So, I'll just read real quick what's in Exodus 21. And this is about enslavement. This is that wonderful part of Exodus 21 that gets read at Christmas time every year. Where, "If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years, but in the seventh year, he will go out free without paying anything," blah, blah, blah. And then we get to verse five, "But if the servant should declare, 'I love my master, my wife, and my children'" Because remember, if he goes free, the kids stay with the master.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan You know that old children's tale from Christmas time.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher It's delightful.

Dan McClellan "If he declares, 'I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go out free,' then his master must bring him to the judges. And he will bring him to the door or the doorpost, and his master will pierce his ear with an awl, and he shall serve him forever." So we've got Elohim there underlying the judges.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So we got Exodus 21:6, where we have Elohim. And this is more ambiguous because there's no verb here that is in the plural or the singular. So Elohim could mean God, could mean gods, could mean judges. And the NET is just saying, "We're going to go with judges because screw you, that's why." "Here's a couple of papers we know you're not going to read. We didn't read them."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then this is pretty parallel to what we have in Exodus 22, where again, you're bringing people before Elohim.

Dan Beecher Yeah. So, okay. Basically, all of the translations either say God or judges. You're saying it should say gods.

Dan McClellan Uh-huh.

Dan Beecher So what are we doing here then? If we're taking them before the gods, before gods- Yes ... is it just the same?

Dan McClellan The gods.

Dan Beecher Is it just the same? Are we just doing the same thing, but there's more gods that live there now?

Dan McClellan So this is probably it. The Covenant Code is the earliest legislative layer in the entire Hebrew Bible. And it's prior to Josiah, so it's prior, then, to the Adonai alone movement. So we've got sanctuaries everywhere. This is prior to Sennacherib's destruction of all the cult sites everywhere except for Jerusalem.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So the Jerusalem Temple is not the only place where you can go to worship God or the gods.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And this is probably a time when-- In fact, I think if you go down to 22:27, yeah, 22:28 in the English. It's 27 in the Hebrew. The King James Version says, "Thou shalt not revile the gods, nor curse the ruler of thy people." And other translations will say, "You shall not revile God."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But you've already got laws about that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So why would you be saying, "Don't revile God, and don't revile one of your rulers either"? So this is a time period when Asherah was probably being worshiped alongside Adonai. And you had teraphim, pennats, divine images. You basically had little statuettes in your house that were channels for divine agency and stuff like this. You see this in the story of, I don't know who all. We should cover this story.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan When David needs to escape, what does Michal use as a decoy for David sleeping in his bed? One of the teraphim.

Dan Beecher Oh, right.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Didn't we talk about this?

Dan McClellan You know what? I think we did, actually.

Dan Beecher We did.

Dan McClellan Where he puts goat hair on the- Right, yeah ... one of the teraphim.

Dan Beecher You just grab one of your gods and throw a wig on it, and then- Yeah ... you're good to go.

Dan McClellan And so these would've just been-- And this is what Rachel steals when she and Jacob are leaving Laban, and he comes chasing after them like, "You got my gods. What are you doing?" And Rachel sits on them and goes, "Sorry, my time of the month," to abscond with the household gods. These are basically representatives of deities, and so there would've been your city ones as well, and these were the ones who had authority over multiple different households. And so, the idea would've been for the slave who wants to, "I love being enslaved to this family." You go to the household gods, and you perform the ritual in front of the gods, and that gets their thumbs up. If it's a matter between two different households, you got to go to the city gods.

Dan Beecher Interesting.

Dan McClellan And you got to swear the-- I don't know, take the chalk and do one of your LeBron James, throw it up in the air, and you say, "I didn't steal the thing," or, "The thing belonged to me," or something like that. "That's my weed whacker, always has been." So yeah, I think that's the idea, that these are material media that represented these divine agents. And so you had to swear before them, and the hope was that you believed in this stuff enough- Right ... that you would be too scared not to. So, I think that's probably what's going on here. And so yeah, I think a literal translation here would be, "Bring him before the gods."

Dan Beecher Boom.

Dan McClellan Unfortunately, most of the people who are translating Bibles these days want to sell the Bibles that they're translating. And so you've got the tyranny of the market.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan They are going to translate what is going to make their Bibles sellable.

Dan Beecher Well, as soon as someone points a billionaire in our direction who- ... who doesn't have an agenda, we'll make sure that the Dan McClellan version, the DMT comes out.

Dan McClellan The DMV.

Dan Beecher No, no. I'm going to make you translate it. You have to translate it.

Dan McClellan Well, yeah. It would be my translation.

Dan Beecher I don't just want to do a version. I want a translation, baby.

Dan McClellan Well, I'm working on it. But yeah, it's... Well, maybe I'll do a Kickstarter or something like that.

Dan Beecher Well, we'll put together a team. You don't have to do all the work. We'll get a whole team.

Dan McClellan I have talked to people at SBL. I've got a number of folks who are interested- Yeah ... in working on something.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, yeah.

Dan Beecher The text critical version. Anyway, fascinating stuff.

Dan McClellan Really fun.

Dan Beecher I like the idea of little gods around. Just stack them. Have them in your home. Fill your- I was- ... home with little gods.

Dan McClellan Look, I'm going to share one last little story.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan I was working on my doctoral dissertation, which has a lot to do with this, divine agency, material media, stuff like that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan I was sitting in a recliner in my living room in the house I'm currently sitting in right now, contemplating this idea of people using these images to kind of transmit agency to ward off evil and all this stuff, and my daughter, and this literally happened, I'm not making this up. My daughter at the time was six or seven, comes downstairs and says, "I just arranged all my dolls around my bed to protect me tonight from bad dreams." And I was like, "Ah." There's nothing new under the sun.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan This has been going on for millennia.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's the exact same idea. So yeah, why wouldn't we be... The only difference is anciently it was like, "Off to the Barbie dolls to swear your oath- Yeah ... that it was your weed whacker all along."

Dan Beecher So- Or you'll be in trouble.

Dan McClellan All right. Or, yes. Whom the Barbie dolls condemn must pay double.

Dan Beecher I still think it's a Ouija board. You have not convinced me otherwise.

Dan McClellan All right. That's it for today.

Dan Beecher Thank you all so much for joining us. If you would like to become a part of making the show happen and get access to the early ad-free version of every episode, as well as the after party, which is cool stuff that we talk about, we answer your questions, and you'll get previews of what's to come for the show, all sorts of fun stuff over there. Please go over to patreon.com/dataoverdogma and sign up. Become one of our favorite people. Thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing the show, and we will talk to you again next week.

Dan McClellan Bye everybody.