Hear, O Israel!

Dan McClellan What's the Song of Songs all about?

Dan Beecher Songs. No, sex.

Dan McClellan No. There you go, the hibbity-dibbity. So, we're going to go to Song of Songs 6:9.

Dan Beecher Thank you for that. That was a gift to me.

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

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation in a couple of pleasing baritone voices. Isn't that correct, Dan?

Dan Beecher It's all good over here, baby. Yeah, baby.

Dan McClellan I'm thinking of lines from "I'm Gonna Get You Sucka" now.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan With Isaac Hayes.

Dan Beecher Neither of us have an Isaac Hayes voice.

Dan McClellan No, I'm not even going to try.

Dan Beecher Well, today we got some fun show coming up.

Dan McClellan We have- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher our first segment, our chapter and verse, is maybe- It's a big one ... should just be called a verse, not chapter and verse, because it is literally a verse, which you have assured me we have enough to talk about just with a single verse.

Dan McClellan We could be talking about this for the rest of the existence of our podcast. This is the verse when it comes to the Hebrew Bible, and- Okay ... this is something that everybody knows about, but yeah, this is Deuteronomy 6:4.

Dan Beecher All right.

Dan McClellan Also, the main part of the Shema.

Dan Beecher Shema.

Dan McClellan Yes. We're going to get super Shema on this.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan You're going to Shema me now and believe me later.

Dan Beecher And then, we're going to do a segment that we're now calling, even though that we've done other parts that should've been in this segment, but we're going to call it, Is It Canon? And we're going to be discussing, what is it? The Letter of Jeremiah.

Dan McClellan The Letter of Jeremiah, yes.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan This quirky little letter that just seems like- Why isn't it an epistle?

Dan Beecher Why does Jeremiah have letters and not an epistle? I don't- Well, you know what?

Dan McClellan I bet if you went back into the King James Version, in fact, while we're chatting, I'm going to pull it up. I bet you it says the Epistle of Jeremiah in- Okay ... the table of contents. No, I'm not looking for a document that- Wait ... dates to 1611. Damn it.

Dan Beecher Wait, are you saying that the King James had this? Because I thought this is apocryphal. Did this make it into the King James?

Dan McClellan The King James Version had the Apocrypha- Okay ... for over 200 years.

Dan Beecher Oh, that's right. I remember now.

Dan McClellan We need to-- I was about to be like, "Do we need to do a show on this?"

Dan Beecher No, we've done... Look, I can't be held responsible for knowing all of the things that we've talked about on this show.

Dan McClellan Fair.

Dan Beecher Yes. I don't listen to the show.

Dan McClellan I don't either. But a little behind-the-scenes BTS.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Every week, not every week, most weeks, what happens is either the day before or the morning of recording the show, we text each other and go, "Oh, what are we going to talk about?" And frequently, the next response is, "Have we talked about this?"

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And we're like, "I don't know. Let's go look." And- Will somebody- And most of the time, we have ...

Dan Beecher please make a database for us? Because I started a database when we started this, and then I did not keep it up. And now, we have no way of searching. We have no way of knowing what we've talked about. It's a mess. We have no way.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher We can search on our YouTube channel.

Dan McClellan Point of order.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan The book's called Apocrypha in the table of contents of the 1611 King James Version, Baruch with the Epistle of Jeremiahu.

Dan Beecher Okay. All right.

Dan McClellan Yes. And that was back before the J as well.

Dan Beecher That's right. And we'll talk about that because yeah, in some things, I read that it is the last- Included with Baruch ... chapter of Baruch.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Yep, chapter 6.

Dan Beecher All right.

Dan McClellan Boom.

Dan Beecher All right. Well, let's start our show instead of- Let's do a show, yeah. Let's do the first thing first, and then we'll do the second thing second. I think that's a great idea.

Dan McClellan Awesome. Yeah, I'm just nodding, but you can't see that on the radio if you listen to the- Yes. Verbal responses- You can tell ...

Dan Beecher are required for an audio medium.

Dan McClellan Yeah. I took to this like a fish to a bicycle. This medium just comes so naturally to me.

Dan Beecher Yeah. No, I think you're a natural. I think you're a pro at this point. We've done 100 and some, who knows how many of these we've done. Anyway, I think this is 126.

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher Anywho, let's do a chapter and verse. And the chapter is Deuteronomy 6, the verse is 4. The verse is joyous. Should I just read it?

Dan McClellan Five is right out.

Dan Beecher Three shalt thou count. Actually, before we read it, why don't you give me a little bit of, sort of, situate me in- Yeah, the 30,000-foot view of Deuteronomy ...

Dan McClellan yeah, in Deuteronomy.

Dan Beecher What are we looking at here? What is this? Where are we? Who's talking?

Dan McClellan Who's the dude?

Dan Beecher Who's Deuteronomy-ing? Yeah, exactly.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So, Deuteronomy, second law is what this means. This is basically a capitulation of everything that has gone on with Moses. He's like, "Gather round, children, and I'll tell you a tale of how you all kept screwing up, and God kept punishing you, and I was there the whole time." But Deuteronomy is the recapitulation of the law. That adds a bunch of stuff. It is very different from the laws that we have in Exodus and Leviticus, and scattered around Numbers and things like that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And Deuteronomy 6 is important Particularly verse four. The Book of Deuteronomy came together over the course of a long time, centuries. It probably began, as we've talked before, during the reign of Josiah, toward the latter portion of the 7th century BCE, because we have this discussion, 2 Kings 22. Somebody shows up and says, "King Josiah, we were doing our spring cleaning in the temple. We're renovating, and we found the book of the law." And Josiah says, " Bring it here, and we'll take it to the prophet Huldah, and we'll read it, and lo and behold, it does all this stuff that serves my interests.

Dan Beecher I will-" "... Who would've thought that the law that we just found, that no you can't see, happens to say a whole bunch of stuff that I really like."

Dan McClellan "Can we look at it?" "No, you may not." And Deuteronomy 6 is understood by an awful lot of scholars to probably have been the beginning of the earliest layer.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And then you have laws in chapter 12 and elsewhere that were other central chunks of the probably first layer of Deuteronomy. And so, this is probably how the first version, more or less, of Deuteronomy would have started out. And then we also have the Deuteronomistic history as another part of this project, which is kind of rewriting the history of Israel and Judah in order to give the Book of Deuteronomy a softer landing- Okay ... in the literary milieu. For the elites, this is all going on on a very high level.

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan It's not like the people on the street are like, "Did you hear about the new edition of the law that was just published?"

Dan Beecher "Oh, man. The new history just dropped, and it's fire."

Dan McClellan "They're locking the representatives in the chamber. They're not letting them out until they get this written."

Dan Beecher Oh, that joke is not going to make any sense when somebody listens to this in a year and a half, but that's okay.

Dan McClellan Nobody's going to listen to this in a year and a half. So, this is going on on a high level. This is propaganda. Scholars are moving in the direction of the conclusion that these texts were not widely known, and certainly not widely enforced, until starting probably in the Hasmonean dynasty, around the middle of the 2nd century BCE. So, Deuteronomy 6:1 starts, "Now, this is the commandment, the statutes and the ordinances, that Adonai your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy." And you have all these little kind of tongue-in-cheek, "When you get to the place that Adonai will choose to place his name, wherever that might be, we don't know for sure, but wherever that might be, rhymes with Gerusalem." You have all these references to the temple, and it's basically saying, "Don't worship Adonai anywhere but the Jerusalem Temple. Don't use any priesthood other than the Levitical priesthood. It's one nation, one God, one king, one law, one man, one vote," all that kind of stuff. And then Deuteronomy 6:4 is probably the most famous, within Jewish traditions, Deuteronomy 6:4 is probably the most famous passage in the entire Hebrew Bible.

Dan Beecher One thing I want to get to is this whole chapter, it starts not with a word, but with a punctuation, which is a quotation mark. The whole thing is a quote, at least in NRSVue that I'm looking at.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher I assume that that means that we're trying to put this into Moses' mouth?

Dan McClellan Yes, this is Moses speaking.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So, verse four is also in quotes, because the whole darn thing's in quote.

Dan McClellan But it says...

Dan Beecher Should I just read it?

Dan McClellan Well, hang on.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Just to further contextualize that, in Latin-influenced cultures, we call this Deuteronomy, or in Greek as well. In Hebrew, it's Devarim- Okay ... which means words. And the book begins, "Eleh ha-devarim asher dibber Moshe." These are the words that Moses spoke.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And so, yes. That's the narrative framework that then leads into quotation mark, and then you get Moses speaking in his best... Now I forget the actor who did The Ten Commandments. Are you thinking of Charlton Heston? Charlton Heston, yes. In your best Charlton Heston.

Dan Beecher "Hear, O Israel."

Dan McClellan Yeah. So, tell you what I'll do, and I mentioned earlier, Deuteronomy 6:4, six words in Hebrew. Very short.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And we're going to cruise on past the first two. In Hebrew, it's Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad.

Dan Beecher Boom.

Dan McClellan That's it. And then what is the translation from our beloved NRSVue?

Dan Beecher NRSVue has it, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone."

Dan McClellan Ooh.

Dan Beecher But they do have a- I'm going to- They do have a- No. You've thrown a flag already.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Flag on the play.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher There is a footnote that says, "Or the Lord our God is one, or the Lord our God, the Lord is one, or the Lord is our God, the Lord is one."

Dan McClellan Wow.

Dan Beecher It sounds like it's not definitive in the Hebrew.

Dan McClellan Yeah, I'm going to quibble with this translation, but this is a hotly debated, or it has a history of being hotly debated. I think the scholars, for the most part, have more or less settled on a way to understand this. But yeah, if we move past "Shama Yisrael," which is just the imperative, "Here, listen."

Dan Beecher Just listen to me.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And "O Israel" is supposed to indicate the vocative.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan The O means you.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so, "Hey, you, Israel, listen. Look up here.

Dan Beecher Listen."

Dan McClellan And then we've got "Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad." And it is using Adonai, the Tetragrammaton, the divine name, YHWH- Right ... twice, and then we have these words that follow after, "Eloheinu" and "Echad." And the question is, are we to understand these as verbless clauses, the null copula, where it is- You just said a whole bunch of words and I have no idea. I'm going to explain.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan I'm going to explain. Is it an X is Y sentence? Because in Hebrew, you don't need the to be verb all the time. In fact, you very rarely ever need it. So, you can just put two things together, and it can be understood as X is Y, or is one thing just qualifying the Adonai? And this phrase, "Adonai Eloheinu," those exact words occur multiple times in the Book of Deuteronomy, I think 20-ish times, something like that. And every single time, it is used the exact same way, where "Eloheinu" is in apposition to "Adonai." So, it is not a verbless clause, it is just saying, "Adonai," that is to say, "Our God."

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, just our God.

Dan Beecher "Eloheinu" means our God. It is the- Correct ... possessive plural first person of Elohim.

Dan McClellan Elohim, exactly.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And this occurs a bunch of times, and it always means, "The Lord our God." So, it never is used in Deuteronomy, as near as we can tell, to mean, "Adonai is our God." So, that translation, I'm going to argue, not likely. Not likely at all.

Dan Beecher So, you like the translation to be, "Adonai our God."

Dan McClellan Correct.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Comma. But it's also kind of a casus pendens or left dislocation, which is where you would- I had one of those.

Dan Beecher I had to go see a- ... my shoulder. I had to go see a PT for a while.

Dan McClellan And that's where you state the subject, but then you kind of start the sentence over.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, if I go, "Dave, he went and did this," what I've done is I've taken the subject of the sentence, and I've just removed it and stuck it at the beginning of the sentence, and then I've restated it in the sentence. So, it would kind of be like saying, "Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. Adonai, our God, he is such and such." You're punctuating, "This is the subject- Right ... and now I'm going to carry on." And then we have "Adonai Echad," and that could be, "Adonai alone." It could be, "Adonai is one." So, the NRSVUE goes with, "Adonai alone," or it is, "Adonai is one." I think most scholars these days are on the side of understanding this to mean, "Adonai is one." Because to say, "The Lord our God, the Lord alone," doesn't really make much sense. You would need to interpret the first phrase as a sentence, "The Lord is our God," in order for it to be, "The Lord alone."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, I think most scholars would say, "The Lord our God, M dash, the Lord is one," or, "Adonai is one."

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so this raises the question of, what the hell does that mean?

Dan Beecher What does that mean?

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Yeah. You haven't gotten me closer to understanding this.

Dan McClellan Yes. I'm still- Yes, because a lot of people understand this as the quintessential declaration of monotheism. But it's not a question of how many gods there are. It appears to be a question of how many Adonais there are.

Dan Beecher Right. Because when we're saying, "Adonai" or "The Lord," we're not just saying a god. It is the Tetragrammaton. It is his name.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher So, we're naming a very specific being, a very specific entity.

Dan McClellan Right. And then using "Eloheinu" is interesting. A lot of people don't look hard at this, but "Eloheinu," as you pointed out, is the noun Elohim with a first common plural pronominal suffix or possessive suffix. So, that presupposes the existence of other gods because it's saying, "God." Well, which one?

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan Our God.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan The one that pertains to us. Not that one over there, not those over there, our God. So, it's already presupposing the existence of other gods, and this is much like the First Commandment, "You shall have no other gods before me." The First Commandment is not, "Everything's cool because there are no other gods." First Commandment is, "You shall have no other gods before me," which- Right ... from the beginning, presupposes there are other gods, and the same is true of Deuteronomy 6:4. So, I don't think there's a good case to make for a monotheistic reading of this, and that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has ever heard me speak before because I'm kind of big on that one, about no monotheism in the Bible.

Dan Beecher Yeah, you should get in and edit the Wikipedia page about the Shema- ... because literally, the first paragraph says that it encapsulates the monotheistic essence of Judaism.

Dan McClellan Oh. Well, and it gets taken up in early Judaism, in rabbinical Judaism, in late antique and later Judaism, and that's how it has traditionally been interpreted, as that quintessence of the one God-ness or the oneness of God. I'm talking about what it would've meant for the authors who- Right ... originally wrote this out for- Right ... the first edition of the Book of Deuteronomy, and signed edition. So, and there's a wonderful book by a friend of mine, you met him too when we were coming home from SBL last year in the airport in San Diego.

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan You'll recall the tall British guy stopped me- Yeah, yeah ... and chatted a bit. That's Nathan MacDonald. He wrote a wonderful book called "Deuteronomy and the Meaning of Monotheism," and he's got a whole chapter reviewing where scholarship has been, the critical scholarship, where it's been on Deuteronomy 6:4, and reviewing what it most likely means, and I think he makes a compelling case. And one of the interesting things that he talks about is how, throughout Deuteronomy, the way the law is set out, the covenant that God makes with Israel, where Moses is like, "So this happened, and this happened, and this happened," and this is all trying to show that God has made a covenant with you, Israel. And this covenant is patterned after the vassal treaties of Neo-Assyrian emperors, folks like Ashurbanipal, Esarhaddon. These were folks who were writing vassal treaties, and a vassal treaty is basically where a larger empire or nation-state, a sovereign, is beating up on a smaller one and says, "We're going to enter into an agreement."

Dan Beecher Of course.

Dan McClellan And here's where you have to imagine some henchmen walking into a mom-and-pop shop in- Right ... New York City going, "It would be such a shame for something to happen to such a lovely little establishment- Right ... and demanding payment in exchange for protection from me- Right ... and what I would do to you if you did not give me the payment." The money.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That's a running joke with my wife and me.

Dan Beecher Well, I'm glad that you shared it with all of us.

Dan McClellan My wife is always asking about...

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan And so the Assyrians were kind of the ones who invented, or at least they might not have invented it, but they perfected the vassalage, and they wrote out these treaties, which was basically like, "Here's the agreement." And they framed it as love- Mm ... and fidelity, and commitment, and you're going to love me, and only me, and no one else, and I'm going to make sure that I don't do anything horrible to you.

Dan Beecher Right. And so- And every now and then, I might stop somebody else from doing something bad to you.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And then you've also got to provide soldiers when I go out in conquest- Right ... and when I go beat up on your little brother state, you're going to send soldiers.

Dan Beecher Someday, and this day may never come- Yeah.

Dan McClellan ...

Dan Beecher I may call on you to do a favor for me.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And so, Deuteronomy is framed according to this idea of covenantal love.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And the apologists don't like that because that means Deuteronomy is coming from the seventh century at the earliest- Right ... and it's supposed to be 14th or 12th century. And so they'll say, "Well, it shares some similarities with some Hittite treaties from the second millennium BCE- ... so we're going to focus on those- Right ... and not on the Neo-Assyrian stuff." So they're not big fans of that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But one of the things that Nate points out is there's one other occurrence of this use of one where somebody is identified as one, so-and-so is one.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And it's such a fascinating example. It's in the Song of Songs, and it's an easy one to remember. What's the Song of Songs all about?

Dan Beecher Songs.

Dan McClellan Oh, sex.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan No. There you go, the hibbity-dibbity. So we're going to go to Song of Songs 6:9.

Dan Beecher And- Thank you for that. This isn't- That was a gift to me.

Dan McClellan This is not my joke. This is real.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So Song 6:9, and it says, "My dove, my perfect one is one," achat, and that's the feminine form of what we see in Deuteronomy 6:4, which is the masculine form, echad. And then it says, the NRSVUE says, "The darling of her mother, flawless to her who bore her." And I'm not a big fan of that, but it says, "She is one to her mother, the favorite she is to the one who bore her." And so we have two occurrences of this identification of the lover's dove and perfect one as one.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And it does not mean this is the only woman out there.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan No other women exist, and we know this because the previous verse says, "There are 60 queens, and eight concubines, and maidens without number." And then they go, "But my dove, my perfect one, is one."

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And so the idea here is not this is the only one that exists. The idea here is that this is the only one for me.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan This is the only one that matters. And then we go to the next part, "She is one to her mother," and so people will think, "Oh, well, that means she's an only child." But then it calls her the favorite- Right ... to the one who bore her, which a lot of scholars have pointed out doesn't support the idea of an only child. Rather, this is the mother's favorite child. In other words, again, the only one for me. Of all the ones that are available, this is the one that matters to me. And so this would suggest, in accordance with the context of Deuteronomy, that is all about a covenant where God is saying, "Me and you, me and you. Just me and you." And now, you have to acknowledge that Adonai is one, meaning, "I'm the only God for you."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "And you shall have no other gods," the first commandment. So, I think Nate makes a wonderful case that the idea here is not that Adonai is the only God that exists. The verse actually presupposes the opposite, that Adonai is one of many other gods, but Adonai is our God, and Adonai is one to us.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Which is exactly what we have in, like, 1 Corinthians when Paul says, "There are many gods and many lords, but for us, there is one God."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so I think this is all interrelated. It is about an exclusive relationship, not some kind of exclusive existence. And this would fit with a lot of the rhetoric elsewhere in Deuteronomy and elsewhere in Deutero-Isaiah and the other literature from around this time period that frequently insists, "There is no other God beside me," not in the sense that no other gods exist, but in the sense that no other gods matter to you.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan This is, again, when you look at all the rhetoric that has been identified as monotheistic, when you situate it within its setting and its context, it all makes the most sense by far as rhetoric about how this is the only God that matters. All the other gods are meaningless in light of what we have. And especially- This thing that we have is special.

Dan Beecher Right. Especially in a time and place where, I assume, nearby cultures have multiple gods.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It becomes important to be very clear, "You don't have multiple gods. You don't get multiple gods. Don't go straying your eye to other gods."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher "You get one, and this is it."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Is that basically what we're talking about here?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You get one.

Dan McClellan And this is really the whole, this is the emphasis in the Bible that for so long people have suggested is monotheism. It's not, "There's only one that exists." It's, "You get one."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "I'm the one." This is- And that's how God is a jealous God.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan What the heck does it mean to say God is a jealous God if there aren't any other possibilities?

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's only meaningful if there are other possibilities, if- You could cheat on him.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so, worshiping other gods is frequently represented as cheating on God- Right ... in Hosea, in Isaiah, in Jeremiah, and everywhere. So, yeah, Deuteronomy 6:4 is really about an exclusive relationship with God. I think that's the best argument out there. I think it fits the situation. It fits this first layer of Deuteronomy. It fits what Josiah was trying to do. Now, there is an interesting other reading that is my number two. This is my backup reading.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And because this is the first layer of Deuteronomy, this is going on when there were other cult sites besides the Temple of Jerusalem. Now, Sennacherib had destroyed them a century before. The kings before Josiah were probably rebuilding them, trying to reestablish- Mm ... this worship of Adonai, and Asherah, and things like that at these other cult sites. Another interpretation is monoyahwism, which would be, there is no Adonai of Teman, and Adonai of Shomron, and Adonai of Jerusalem. There is only one Adonai. That is the Adonai of Jerusalem. In other words, it would be an attack against the worshiping manifestations of Adonai at other locations.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan Because you're only allowed to worship in the one location where Adonai will choose to place his name, which would be Jerusalem. So, there's another interpretation that understands this to be saying, "You can't go to other temples to worship Adonai. Adonai is one, and that one is in Jerusalem."

Dan Beecher Meaning- And so- ... the one is actually the address. It's 1 Jerusalem Street. Yeah, 1 Jerusalem Street.

Dan McClellan In Jerusalem.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Don't go anywhere else.

Dan McClellan A1, A1, A1.

Dan Beecher Well- Um ... I think that that is fascinating.

Dan McClellan I think- We got to cut it off. We could go on for weeks.

Dan Beecher We could go on- I know ...

Dan McClellan for weeks.

Dan Beecher But- I want to ask you why Jews who do the Shema prayer now cover their eyes, but we got to go on.

Dan McClellan We got to move on. We got to go on.

Dan Beecher So, we're going to do that, and someone can explain the covering eyes thing in the comments of the YouTube channel or something. Anyway, I do think that this is actually a great transition point- Mm-hmm ... talking about physical locations of temples and/or gods. So, let's move on to, Is It Canon? And the canon, the quasi-canonical, the possibly canonical- Questionably canonical ... book that we're going to be talking about is the Letter of Jeremiah.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher And as we said before, this sometimes is the last book of the other questionably canonical book of Baruch.

Dan McClellan Of Baruch.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So, it's usually chapter six of Baruch in certain Latin traditions and manuscripts.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah. But it's a one-chapter deal. Mm-hmm. But it's a longish chapter, as biblical chapters go.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan 72 verses. Ironically, that's 6 times 12. That's the number of elders that were supposed to have gone to Alexandria to go translate the Septuagint.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Certainly, the versification is modern though.

Dan Beecher The versification has me baffled frequently. In this book specifically, the verse just starts in the middle of a sentence.

Dan McClellan Yeah. You have an awful lot of that.

Dan Beecher Just frequently.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Were they just counting a certain number of words and then just chunking a number there?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Verse five starts in the mid-- Literally, verse four says, "So beware of becoming at all like the foreigners or of letting fear of these gods possess you." There is no punctuation. Verse five starts, "When you see the multitude before--" Come on, man. Just put in an end stop.

Dan McClellan I was actually getting confused between the verse numbers and the footnote markers.

Dan Beecher Oh, right.

Dan McClellan Because sometimes they occur in pretty close succession.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so I was like, "Okay, one's a number, one's a letter. One's a number, one's-- I can tell the difference between these two." But this is a letter. It's in the form of a letter or an epistle, if you're nasty.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And this purports to be a letter from Jeremiah sent to those who were to be taken to Babylon as exiles by the king of the Babylonians. That would be Nebuchadnezzar.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan To give them the message that God had commanded him. So, thematically, this is connected with Jeremiah. Obviously, it was not written by Jeremiah.

Dan Beecher This- How dare you.

Dan McClellan Scholars these days are coming around to the idea that this was probably originally composed in Greek.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And that it was probably composed, perhaps in the late second, early first century BCE.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, still before the New Testament.

Dan Beecher And just to remind me, the exile happened when?

Dan McClellan So, the Babylonians, there are two main waves. 597 BCE and then 586 BCE.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And it's the 586 invasion that results in the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. I think some folks think this is probably the 597 wave that this letter is supposed to be associated with.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan But yeah, this is purportedly Jeremiah writing to the exiles. And as you mentioned, this is sometimes connected to the end of the Book of Baruch, which itself is sometimes connected to the end of Jeremiah.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan But it also sometimes will be separated from Baruch by the Book of Lamentations.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan So, Jeremiah's got a lot of books attributed to him.

Dan Beecher He's got some reach- Yes ... that guy.

Dan McClellan Some of more and less dubiousness in terms of canonicity. But it starts off, as you would expect a letter to start off, "Because of the sins that you have committed before God, you will be taken to Babylon as exiles by Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Babylonians. Therefore, when you have come to Babylon, you will remain there for many years, for a long time, up to seven generations. After that, I will bring you away from there in peace."

Dan Beecher Wow. What an amazing prediction that ended up being.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's like- It's so easy ...

Dan McClellan seven generations from now, won't matter to you, but- Right ... seven generations from now.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And is that about the length of the exile, seven generations?

Dan McClellan That's a traditional way to measure it.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, yeah, this is definitely written by someone much later on down the road.

Dan Beecher Just after the fact, just- Yeah ... working that in. I do want to say, when I first read that opening line, "Because of the sins that you have committed before God," explaining that the reason for the exile is the sins of these people.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher I was like, "Why is that the setup here?"

Dan McClellan "Was that really necessary?"

Dan Beecher Why is it, "You guys suck, and so you have to put up with this"? But it becomes clearer as we move into the rest of the book.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Because there's the danger that if it's not because of our sins, then that means that our God couldn't have protected us from this.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher So, somehow, this is a punishment rather than our God not protecting us.

Dan McClellan This is the classic rationalization for being conquered- Right ... or being invaded. And you see it in the Mesha Inscription. The oldest alphabetic narrative text that we have ever found has Mesha explaining that the Omride dynasty was able to basically subjugate Moab because Chemosh was angry with his land.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And so within your nation's worldview, you've got to protect that worldview if your identity is going to carry on. And so if you get defeated, you got to come up with a reason why God allowed you to be defeated.

Dan Beecher Right. Because- Why God stepped out of the way and went, "Go for it."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Adelante.

Dan McClellan Yeah, we got smoked by the god next door. Doesn't do good things for- Right ... the power structures, and so you've got to come up with a reason that God allowed it to happen. And this is all over the rationalizations for the exile.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so it's, "Oh, you sinned, God was angry." And it happens when temples are destroyed, and when invading forces carry off your divine image. They'll be like, "The god abandoned the image, and- Yeah ... didn't care what happened to it, and so he allowed it to be carried off." Everybody's got an excuse, and- Right. And the excuse never hurts the person who has failed.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Just like right now, the excuses always protect the one responsible for all the trouble- Right ... and all the problems because he is monumentally incompetent.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's always like, "Well, it's not his fault." "It's everybody else for not recognizing how awesome he is." But yeah, this is a meeting that could've been an email, and you know what? I think the email could've been verses three through five, because that is the thesis statement- Yeah ... that is just unpacked in a redundant way over- ... the next 67 verses.

Dan Beecher You ain't kidding, man. It retreads the same ground a lot.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So, three through five is just, "Now in Babylon, you will see gods made of silver and gold and wood that people carry on their shoulders and that cause the nations to fear. So beware of becoming at all like the foreigners or of letting fear of these gods possess you when you see the multitude before and behind them worshiping them. But say in your heart, 'It is you, O Lord, whom we must worship, for my angel is with you, and he is watching over your lives.'"

Dan Beecher Fin.

Dan McClellan Yeah. That could've been the end of the letter.

Dan Beecher That's the whole thing.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Because literally, it gets infuriating, I'll be honest with you.

Dan McClellan It's painting a picture, and it is getting a little muddy.

Dan Beecher Well, it's painting a picture, and then repainting the same picture over that picture- Yes, yes ... and then doing it again and again. And the thrust of it really is just, "Hey, you guys are going to see a bunch of other gods. Don't worry, they're not real."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And that is the entirety of the thing over and over and over again.

Dan McClellan Yeah. You're going to hear about wood, silver, and gold like 30 times.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It is always repeated that these are the works of human hands, wood plated with silver and gold. There's a note in the SBL study bible that points out there are a lot of references to women- Mm-hmm ... associated with ritual work, and it may be highlighting just how involved in ritual and worship and cults women were in the ancient world. And I think there's a debate to be had about to the degree to which this is intended to be a contrast- Mm-hmm ... with Judahite worship practices, versus perhaps this reflects the fact that women were integrated into Judahite worship practices as well prior to everything becoming patriarchalized.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But there are some interesting things in here, and they love to make fun of the other priests. Because they're like- Yeah ... they sell this stuff, and they use the money to go visit sex workers.

Dan Beecher Oh my gosh. It is just nonstop complete slander of the other priests.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher They cut their hair. They shave their beards. They steal the clothes off of their gods and give them to their kids.

Dan McClellan Yes. "Likewise, their wives preserve some of the meat with salt but give none to the poor or helpless. Sacrifices to them may even be touched by women during their periods or after giving birth."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, yes, the horror. They don't like the gods. They obviously don't like the priests, the cult personnel, the officials who are involved in- Right ... in curating them and their worship. And so, yes, they are adulterers. Their wives are gross. They're visiting the sex workers. They're doing all the bad stuff. They're not giving anything to the poor or the needy, and because it's all wood plated with silver and gold.

Dan Beecher Can I ask you a question? So, one of the things that this brought up for me- Mm-hmm ... just earlier as we were talking about this segment, you mentioned the idea of, "Oh, they took our divine image, our whatever statue or whatever and carted it away. Well, it's okay- Mm-hmm ... because God left that." Did the Judahites, or whoever it was that wrote this, did they have imagery that was meant to contain their god? Because it doesn't- 100%. Because here's why that's crazy-making. Because he keeps making all of these arguments about why the Babylonian gods, you don't have to worry about them at all. They're just made out of wood. If they fall down, somebody has to pick them up.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher If they do this, if they get dust on them from the temple- Yeah.

Dan McClellan ...

Dan Beecher what are we even talking about here?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Well, they're gold, but somebody- What kind of god would allow that?

Dan McClellan Somebody has to wipe the dirt off of the gold so that you can see that it's gold.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, this is coming in a period when, because the exile was when they really chose to use idols, divine images, as the wedge issue.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And, in my book, "Adonai's Divine Images," I talk about this, how there seems to be a renegotiation of divine presencing. What kind of material media are we going to use in order to manifest God's presence? And because the temple in Jerusalem would've had divine images. We have a Judahite temple preserved at Arad that had a divine image in it. It's still there. You can go look at it. It's a standing stone. It looks like a headstone from a cemetery, and that would have been the thing that housed the divine presence, the divine agency.

Dan Beecher Was all of this just jealousy because they had better-looking gods?

Dan McClellan Well, the larger empires around them definitely had more goods, more money, more experts, a bigger market.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So they had a lot more anthropomorphic statuary and things like that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And there was a lot more silver and gold, where we think that the ancient Israelites and Judahites were mainly working in clay and stone.

Dan Beecher Right. So they didn't have- And these Babylonian gods were definitely anthropomorphic because it describes they have a tongue, but that was blah, blah, blah. They have eyes, but they can't see. This is definitely a human figure.

Dan McClellan Frequently, not exclusively. There were divine images that were not anthropomorphic, and there's a wonderful book that was edited by Barbara Porter, called "What is a God?" That was all about Mesopotamian divine imagery.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And deity, and what it meant to be a god. It seems like in ancient Israel, it was primarily standing stones or miniature statuary- Okay ... that was in the shape of a bull, or maybe a horse, or maybe a human, or something like that. In fact, one of the other temples that was more recently discovered at Tel Motza, they found incorporated into one of the walls, a broken, probably standing stone that has two little legs in a- Oh ... smiting pose- Oh ... that were probably... So probably, there was a standing stone that was an image that depicted either Baal or Adonai, the storm deity, in a smiting pose, and at some point it was broken and the stones were just reused- Oh ...

Dan Beecher architecturally. Why not?

Dan McClellan Yeah. But what I argue in the book is that the realization that the divine images are vulnerable, that they can be destroyed, and the fact of that happening in 586 BCE led to a renegotiation where they're like, "We need to find a better way to do this." And my thesis is that it moves to text, and this is why you have texts in Deuteronomy and in Joshua where they're supposed to set up standing stones and write the text of the law on the standing stone, which is the divine image.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And then they worship because the standing stone with the law on it has facilitated the presence of the deity, and so the law then becomes kind of the locus of divine agency.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But we can also look in what's called the Ark narrative in Samuel. What happens when the Philistines come up to battle against the Israelites, and the Israelites go, "We got our Ark." The Philistines take the Ark. They abscond with the divine image, and what do they do? They go put it in their temple right next to their divine image of Dagon. Now, the Philistines wouldn't have been worshiping Dagon anywhere near this period, but then they get in a divine image battle. And the Ark of the Covenant wins. The first morning they come in, and they see that Dagon has fallen over. The second morning they come in, and Dagon's head and hands are cut off.

Dan Beecher Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan And so, the Ark of the Covenant is the Yahwistic divine image that just dominates the other divine images. It's kind of your celebrity death match- ... going on in the temple at night when nobody can see.

Dan Beecher Between two inanimate objects.

Dan McClellan Right. But that's the exact same thing. That is what divine images do. And so, when you ask that question, did they have divine images that might've gotten carted off? We have stories about their divine image being carted off by the Philistines.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then it has to make its way back to Israel. And it gives them all hemorrhoids.

Dan Beecher The Philistines are- I'm pretty sure it actually melts their faces if they try to open it.

Dan McClellan I saw a whole documentary called something- "Raiders of the Lost Ark," with a very handsome leading man, right?

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan So that's actually based on an interpretation of the Ark narrative because the Ark gets... The Philistines are like, "This is too much for us. We're putting it on a cart with some cows. We're slapping them on the rump, and we're just sending the Ark packing." And it makes its way, and the cows just march the Ark right up to Beth Shemesh, a city, and they just stop And they're like, "Oh, it's the Ark of the Covenant."

Dan Beecher And it says that they- Did somebody order these cows with an ark?

Dan McClellan And it says they look... The text is corrupt. We don't know exactly what it originally said, but how it's traditionally interpreted, the people of that community looked into the ark, and either 50 or 70 of them, or like 50,000 of them were killed.