Save Me!

Dan McClellan So, God was like, "I need you to be naked for the next three years." And he's like, "Oh, my gosh."

Dan Beecher "I need three years of nudity for a metaphor that I'm working on."

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's going to pay off. Don't worry, it'll pay off. Trust me, you're going to love this.

Dan Beecher Everybody's going to be thrilled about this.

Dan McClellan Yeah. 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 we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How go things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. A little too hot, but that's to be expected in June.

Dan McClellan It is in the 90s. It is July, however.

Dan Beecher But July, that's fine. They both start with J-U, so- Yeah ... it's also to be expected in June, but July is even worse.

Dan McClellan It's the summer months.

Dan Beecher Yeah. How are you doing?

Dan McClellan It's cooler here than I was in Italy, though.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan And I just got a text from a friend who is in Italy right now, and I was like, "It was in the high 90s when I was there. What's it like now?" And he's like, "Oh, it's low 80s. It's cooled off quite a bit."

Dan Beecher Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan Yeah. He got lucky.

Dan Beecher It was a joke on you.

Dan McClellan Yeah, I was there for the heat wave, and it was brutal. But came back to Utah, and now, yeah, it's still in the 90s.

Dan Beecher And now just more brutality.

Dan McClellan Yeah. The sun feels closer in Utah than in many other places.

Dan Beecher It's true.

Dan McClellan Even though it is drier here- Mm-hmm ... it just feels like the sun is more punishing- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher here.

Dan McClellan I don't know what it is.

Dan Beecher But that drier makes a lot of difference, because when I was- It does ... in Montreal recently, and Eastern Canada- Yeah ... it was quite moist there, and so even lower heat felt just so oppressive.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Anyway, it's nothing compared to the fires of hell that we're all going to be burning in, so- Some of us sooner than others. Let's get to our show, which involves the fires of hell, I guess, or rather the avoiding thereof.

Dan McClellan Perhaps.

Dan Beecher Because our first segment is going to be about salvation.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Which sounds great. And then in the second section, I'm kind of looking forward to this. You guys are going to want to stick around for it. We're going into Isaiah, and we're going to be talking about six-winged angels and just- Not angels.

Dan McClellan Not angels. We'll get to that.

Dan Beecher Hey, tradition says they are angels. The Bible itself doesn't. Anyway, seraphim are going to make an appearance and also a bunch of other stuff, and Dan is going to explain to me what the heck I just read, because I read that chapter and I was like .

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That'll be fun. But first, What's That? And this week's What's That? is being saved, the concept of being saved.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher We talked a little bit about this when April Ajoy was on the show, and we talked about how she and her family used to go and ask their poor servers at restaurants- Yeah ... if they would pray with them. And none of my religious background, none of the theology that I was raised with, ever had a concept where one prayer with a family at a restaurant was enough for salvation, period- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan forever.

Dan Beecher But that seemed to be their contention. Their contention was that if this waiter just humors us and prays with us, boom, they're saved.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So let's talk about salvation. Let's talk about the concept of being saved.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and I don't even know if they use the acronym, but OSAS, once saved, always saved, goes along with that. But I wanted to go back to the beginning, a very good place to start- ... with the fact that in the Hebrew Bible, being saved was an entirely different concept from what it is in the New Testament- Right ... but then particularly after the New Testament.

Dan Beecher Ooh.

Dan McClellan Because you've got the name Yeshua- Mm-hmm ... which is Jesus, which is supposed to be related to salvation, and it's Aramaic, and it is either the clause Adonai is salvation, or it's just the regular old Aramaic word for salvation.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan I happen to think it's just the word for salvation, but it derives from the Hebrew Yehoshua, which I think would better be interpreted as Adonai is salvation- Interesting ... or Adonai saves. But the verbal root here, yasha, yod, shin, ayin, is the verbal root that underlies the names, whether it's Hebrew or Aramaic or your Greek transliteration, Iesous. And this just means to help. It can be in the niphal, which is the passive sense, means to receive help or to accept help. In the hifil or the causative sense, it means to help with the work- Mm ... or to help or to save. But it's overwhelmingly used in the Hebrew Bible to refer to saving someone from some kind of temporal distress.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And by temporal, I don't mean having to do with time.

Dan Beecher I was going to say, yeah. I mean- "Oh, no, I'm worried about, I'm going to be late."

Dan McClellan Yes, for a very important date.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan It means not having to do with spiritual.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It means the real material world. So, the first time the verb occurs- It means I'm stuck in quicksand.

Dan Beecher Please help me get out.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And it usually has to do with some kind of enemy or some kind of threat of violence. So, the very first occurrence of the verbal root yaša in the Hebrew Bible comes in Exodus 2:17. So, it doesn't even really occur in Genesis.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan But in Exodus 2:17, you have when Moses, he's run off, and he sees the people who are harassing the folks at the well. It says, "Moses got up and came to their defense or saved them and watered their flock." So, Moses chased off some people who were harassing them.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And that is the verbal root that underlies the name Jesus. And then you've got a lot of stories in Exodus of Adonai saving Israel. And elsewhere, it's always God has saved them from their enemies. And so the sense is very much deliverance from some kind of threat of danger.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Usually having to do with an enemy, an illness, some kind of accident, something like that. So, it's deliverance in a temporal sense, not in a spiritual sense.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And that is what we have throughout the Hebrew Bible. And I think one of the reasons is that the notion of a spiritual salvation has mostly to do with the afterlife.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And particularly, avoiding enemies or threats in the afterlife. But in the Hebrew Bible, everybody had the same afterlife. Everybody went to the same place. Everybody went to Sheol, which was just the abode of the dead, this murky existence that we didn't know a lot about, but there was no other afterlife existence other than- Right ...

Dan Beecher Sheol. And so- Yeah, we've talked a bit about the sort of evolving idea of what happens after death.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And so you do have some references to being saved from Sheol in the Hebrew Bible.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan But I think the idea there is not that you're going to be resurrected, or you're going to have eternal life or anything like that. I think the idea is just you're being saved from an early death. So, if you're sick and you're on your deathbed and somebody cures you, you have been saved from Sheol, not in the sense that you go to heaven- Right ... but in the sense that you narrowly avoided death.

Dan Beecher Because- Right. You were saved from Sheol for now.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Because Sheol also just means the grave or death.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so the idea isn't some kind of eternal spiritual salvation. It just means deliverance from death.

Dan Beecher It's the idea that you saved my life doesn't mean you saved my life forever.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It means you saved my life this time.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And I am in your debt, but again, not forever.

Dan Beecher Right. Well, try to come and collect after I die. See what happens.

Dan McClellan Yeah. I love those movies from the '80s and '90s where somebody would always be in someone else's debt for- Right ... something in their life, and then they would do something and then be like, "My debt is paid.

Dan Beecher Goodbye."

Dan McClellan Which is always fun. That was a movie trope- ... that I don't think you see very frequently anymore.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then once we get into the Greco-Roman period, then you begin to develop concepts of postmortem divine punishment and postmortem divine reward. And this is where now suddenly, your afterlife can go in one of two directions. And I think this is where we begin to lean into the notion that salvation has an eternal implication.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That salvation means taking the correct turn once we have shuffled off this mortal coil.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That we are going to be on the good side of the smooth places that are described in 1 Enoch, as we've talked about in episodes past.

Dan Beecher One doesn't want a non-smooth afterlife. The bumpy afterlife is the less pleasant one.

Dan McClellan Yeah. You don't want that turbulence going on in your afterlife. And so by the time you get to the New Testament, you've got, one, the New Testament is written in Greek.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And so you've got an entirely different word that means to save. Sōzō is the word in Greek, and it can mean to preserve or rescue from natural dangers and afflictions, to keep from harm, to preserve, to rescue. Again, to save from death. So, there's a lot of conceptual overlap with what we are finding in the Hebrew Bible. And so, for instance, the first time it occurs in the New Testament is Matthew 1:21, where the idea is, "You will name him Jesus.

Dan Beecher Why?

Dan McClellan He will save people from their sins." And so here's where it's no longer enemies, it's no longer some kind of immediate danger. It's no longer an illness or something like that. It's sin.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And sin kind of metaphorically becomes the enemy.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so you have this, I think, slow transition from the enemy being temporal threats- Right ... to the enemy being these spiritual threats, that is sins. But it can also mean to be healed or to be made whole.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan You have some uses like that. So, for instance, the woman with the issue of blood She says, "If I only touch his cloak, sōthēsomai," which would mean, "I will be saved, made whole, healed," something like that. So you still have the sense of salvation as something temporal, but I think you're also adding onto it the idea of sins. And there's another interesting development going on, and this is the origins of evil. And I think this has a lot to do with how Christians understand salvation today, because we've talked about First Enoch, this very, very influential Greco-Roman period Jewish text, which is responsible for an awful lot related to ideas of postmortem divine punishment and reward, ideas about Satan, ideas about demons, all this kind of stuff. And one of the points of the Enochic literature is to account for the origins of evil. And so according to the Enochic literature, evil is introduced to humanity into the world when the angels decide to rebel, to come down onto Mount Hermon, to share all this knowledge about weaponry, about war, about how to cause abortions, about makeup. That is what introduces evil to humanity. But you've got another account that takes over for early Christianity, and that is Genesis 3.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan That is the story that becomes the fall.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan See, in the Hebrew Bible, there's no such thing as the fall. The story of Adam and Eve is just a story of, basically, it's an etiology for how humanity spread out and populated the Earth.

Dan Beecher Yeah, not much is made of it other than, "Oh, you ate the fruit. Looks like you're going to have pain bearing children for the rest of eternity or whatever."

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And then it doesn't make a big deal about, "This has implications forever," or whatever. It's just kind of, "This is what happened to you."

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's like an Aesop's fable.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan It's like, why is it that pregnancy, which seems like it's such a good thing, hurts so much? Well, there was this lady.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And why is it- You wouldn't believe what she ate.

Dan McClellan And then there's the, "He will bruise your..." No, what is it? "You will bruise his heel and he will crush your head." This is the protevangelium. This is the proto-gospel- Mm ... which is understood as this grand significant prophecy about how Jesus will destroy Satan. In reality, it's why do snakes hate us so much and why do we hate snakes?

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Well, see, there was this lady.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And it's the same thing. It's an etiology for why we hate snakes.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And you look throughout the rest of the Hebrew Bible, the name Adam is mentioned once in a genealogy in 1 Chronicles somewhere. The reference to Eden, I think Eden is mentioned in Ezekiel 28, and the story is completely different from what we have- Oh, wow ... in Genesis 2 and 3. It's like, "You were the covered angel, and you walked among the onyx stone, and you had the covering in the mountain of God." And Genesis 2 and 3 never mention a mountain anywhere.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan The story, as understood by the author of Ezekiel 28, does not seem to come directly from what we have in Genesis 2 and 3. It's some other tradition. But you never have anybody else referring to, "Oh, you know, when I shake my fist at Adam for eating the fruit and causing all of this trouble." None of that happens till the New Testament.

Dan Beecher Right. But then- We should do that Ezekiel story, by the way, at some point.

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah. We definitely have to do that because it is- Somebody remind us to do that.

Dan Beecher That'd be a good one.

Dan McClellan Because there are textual issues, there are interpretive issues. A lot of people think it's Lucifer that it's talking about, and it's not.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan So yeah, that's a fun one. But that is just not a salient story about the origin of evil until the New Testament. So you really had two competing accounts from where evil came from. And in Greco-Roman period Judaism, the rebellious angels introducing evil is kind of the leading account, and it's not until you get into Paul and you get to Augustine that the thing changes, and it's no longer about the angels introducing evil to humanity. It's about humanity shooting itself in the foot or stepping itself on the head, as it were, with the fall.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And that is a way to account for how we get from everything is good and perfect to where we are now, where everything sucks, and Epstein didn't kill himself. Until it became expedient to say, "It turns out he did kill himself."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So you have this interesting conflict, this interesting competition between these two accounts of where evil comes from, and Christianity ends up picking and choosing what it's going to do. It's going to take the ideas of heaven and hell and things like that from the Enochic tradition in Greco-Roman period Judaism, but it's then going to reject the authenticity, the inspired nature of First Enoch, and the third century CE is when they begin to go, "You know what? I don't think this is real," and give preference to the account in the Book of Genesis for the origin of evil. So it's kind of a mishmash of these Jewish influences. But we get down to Christianity, and suddenly salvation is not just about temporal salvation. It's now about eternal spiritual salvation. And we go from the idea of the Messiah as the one who's supposed to show up and deliver us from our oppressors and reestablish the independent kingdom of Israel to, oh, it turns out we're just going to have crappy lives forever, but then once we die, then we'll go to heaven. That's how we enter into the kingdom of God. And I think you see some conflict in the gospels where the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven is something initially kind of perceived to be an earthly kingdom, but also represented as not of this world and something that's going to be located somewhere else. I think you probably have a little bit of conflict there because I imagine that Jesus followers initially understood Jesus according to a traditional understanding of the Messiah as someone who was going to come deliver them from their yoke, deliver them from subjugation to Rome, and lead to an independent Judean kingdom.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And when that didn't happen, when they're all looking up at him hanging on the cross going, "Oh, crap. What now?"

Dan Beecher Excuse me, we weren't done.

Dan McClellan I think that's when you had a bunch of people returning to the drawing board- Right ... in a quite literal way to figure out how to renegotiate their understanding, not only of the identity and the mission of the Messiah, but the nature of salvation.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So I think Jesus is where salvation pivots, and particularly the death of Jesus is where salvation pivots, and they're like, "Now we got to adopt the thousand-yard stare, the eternal perspective. It's not just about Rome, now it's about the afterlife."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "And that is where we're going to be placing all our eggs. That's the basket that is going to hold all our eggs from now on." And so I think that really gets firmed up in the early Christian literature and Tertullian and Irenaeus and Augustine and these others develop concepts of original sin, develop this notion that sin is the big baddie. That's the enemy. It's no longer temporal enemies. It's no longer human enemies. It's no longer illness. It is now sin because that is what causes death, that is what separates us from God, and so salvation is ultimately overcoming of that particular enemy that returns us to communion with God and returns us to that happy, blessed state that we were in when it was just Adam and Eve in the garden.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And yeah. Now, when it comes to salvation as it's represented in Paul, and particularly among the Sola Gratia, the grace alone folks- Mm ... this is something that I'm contemplating doing a video on this because I just saw last night, I was poking around on, I think, Instagram or TikTok, and saw a video where somebody was talking about how you don't have to do anything to be saved except all this stuff.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But you don't have to do anything to be saved because somebody-- What is it? Oh, yeah, they were watching a Sarah Silverman stand-up special where she- Uh-huh ... was telling a joke about how there's all this, Christianity says there's all this stuff, but as long as you say you're sorry, then it all goes away. And the person was like, "How dare you? It's not just a matter of doing. You also have to repent of everything and change your life," and all that. And then just kind of is like, "But wait a minute, you don't actually have to do all of that."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "You really just have to have faith, but you have to do all of that because that's the fruit of your faith."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And the argument was basically that the good works, they're not a requirement. You don't have to do the good works. But if you're not saved, then you won't do the good works. And if you're saved, then you will do the good works. And so they said it's the evidence of your faith. And my thought was, evidence for whom?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Like, for God? God's the one who saved you.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan God doesn't need evidence that they have saved you. Even if they weren't the one who did it, they were like, "I was on vacation. This is a subordinate who did this," they ostensibly have all knowledge, so they already know you're saved. They don't need to be given evidence of this. So for whom is the evidence? It can only be for other Christians.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan In other words- Or other non-Christians ... or other non-Christians. But I think the main, the primary target audience is other Christians.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Because what is evidence of faith for if not to demonstrate to other Christians that you're one of the good ones, that you are saved?

Dan Beecher That you belong, that you're one of the- That- Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's costly signaling. It's a way to show you're a faithful member of the in-group, which kind of makes the whole project sound an awful lot like just a social club.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And this is something that baffles me because I think even Paul was kind of struggling with this. In the New Testament, Paul is like, "We're not under the law. We're not under the law. We don't have to do anything. But does that mean we let sin abound? Of course not. You still got to do the stuff, but not because we have to do the stuff."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And trying to square that circle- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher is- It's always baffled me. This has always been a really difficult theology for me to wrap my head around because The logical conclusion, if you follow any of the trails to their logical conclusion, they don't lead where the people that I've talked to say they lead.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Like for instance, I, as an atheist, I'm not saved. But if you get saved and then you become an atheist, there's the whole once saved, always saved. You can't unsave yourself.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher So then if you stop believing after you were saved, do you lose your salvation? Well, most people say no, you don't lose your salvation. So if I was never saved, but I'm still believing exactly the same way as someone who was saved, why don't I get to go? What's happening there?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Why am I excluded from this?

Dan McClellan And if good works are just evidence of faith or salvation, if there are atheists out there who are better people just- Who do good works. Who do good works.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Who just do better than people who claim to be saved, what does that mean? It's like your salvation ends up being inferior to someone's non-salvation?

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And again and I'm going to come back to this endlessly because this is the part that I think people don't think critically about. If you tell someone, "Once you're saved, that's it, you're good. It doesn't matter what you do, but we still demand you do the right thing-" Right.

Dan Beecher "...

Dan McClellan because that is how you put on display the reality of your salvation," all you're doing is incentivizing people to try to do good works, which is really just saying you need to earn your salvation.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan At least in the most relevant sense, in the sense that we all believe you are saved.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan The focus of it all is putting on display to other members of the in-group that you have passed the test. And so for people to talk about how it's a free gift, but once you're given the gift, you will pay for it.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Not because you have to, but because you will just be compelled to buy the free gift. That's nonsensical. And it all comes down to the costly signaling. They're hard-to-fake signals to others that you are towing the line, that you will honor the standards and the mores and the expectations of the social group. And so if dancing is a sin according to your tradition, that's how you incur the costs of showing everybody that you're saved. You don't dance. And it's not going to be because you have suddenly been divested of any urge or desire to dance. It's because you're going to go through the effort of preventing yourself from dancing.

Dan Beecher And I think everybody understands that. In sort of researching for this segment, I went on some forums of people asking about, "I'm new. I just got saved, but I don't fully understand how this works. I still feel the impulse to sin. I still do sin sometimes. Am I not saved? Am I still saved?" And everybody understands. The whole comment section is just like, "No, don't worry. We're all sinners. You can't avoid it."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher "Just try to be better, try to be a good person." And it's like, well, if we all- But you're not supposed to try. But if we all understand that, then what...

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It feels very circular to me. It feels like- Yeah ... it keeps rolling back on itself.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And it's because the ideology, the expectation does not align with reality.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so I think it's one of the things that everybody just kind of winks at. When it comes to how we represent things to the public and how we engage in online discourse and all that kind of stuff, we're going to say this, "Oh, yeah, no, it's a free gift. You don't earn it at all." But what about the fact that you have to do all this stuff? "Well, you'll just do it anyway because-" Don't you just want to now that- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher now that you're filled with the spirit or whatever?

Dan McClellan And then they can turn around to their own group and be like, "Hey, I do struggle with stuff still." And according to the rules as they're represented, that would mean you're not actually saved.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But when it comes to internally, they're going to be like, "No, we're a support group. We're here to help you through this. Everybody struggles with this." And they recognize that no, you have to earn this.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan You have to work hard in order to put on display that you are saved. Yeah, I need to come up with a way to kind of... I need to distill this down so I can put it in a three-minute video- Right ... and point this out because I see more and more like this person mocking Sarah Silverman for saying all the bad stuff that you're doing that condemns you to an eternity of punishment, as long as you say "I'm sorry" and believe it, it all goes away. And they're like, "But, that's not how it works." Well, yeah, it is how it works.

Dan Beecher Isn't it?

Dan McClellan Yeah. You're saying it's how it works, but then you're also saying out the other side of your mouth, that's not how it works.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Which one is it? Is it once I have faith, that's it, I'm saved, I cannot be unsaved? Or is it my salvation is something that I have to work out?

Dan Beecher And- To be clear, I am very much in support of any theology or any sort of social construct that gets people to be better to each other, and that gets people to do good and kind things in the world.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher So great. If you have found a way to motivate yourself to be a better person, if you're really being a better person, not just talking about it- Yeah ... that's awesome.

Dan McClellan Must be it.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan I think that that makes for a better world, and this raises another point. What it means to be a better person- Well, that's the trick ... is relative, is subjective.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Because for Paul, a better person was somebody who didn't beat their slaves arbitrarily.

Dan Beecher You beat them with a reason.

Dan McClellan Yeah. You don't discipline them unless you have a good reason to.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And you can go to Augustine, somebody who's widely considered one of the most influential and best Christians around, who said, "Hey, you need to whip your slaves. God is mad at you if you do not whip your slaves, but you have to whip them with a heart full of love, not hate." That good loving whooping that- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher you need to divvy out.

Dan McClellan So in 400 CE, that was the good work.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan To whip your slaves with a heart full of love. That is no longer a good work.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan Not because something changed about the actual inherent morality or immorality of whipping your slaves with a smile on your face, but because we decided that that was no longer a good thing.

Dan Beecher Because we have outgrown the idea- Yeah ... of both slavery and whipping, hopefully- Hope, yeah ... in general, yeah.

Dan McClellan Although according to Grok, maybe it sounds like that might be backsliding a little bit.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Grok is a terrifying sort of bellwether of humanity's- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan backsliding. We don't know exactly what the situation's going to be when this episode comes out, but as of recording, yesterday Grok started claiming to be Hitler.

Dan Beecher Literally.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And cheering on Hitler, because somebody evidently took the governor off of Grok and was like, "Hey, stop being woke." And they were like, "All right, well this is the alternative."

Dan Beecher Yeah. Welcome to non-woke Grok.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And now I just totally lost my train.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan What we think is righteous today is entirely different. And even among Christians today, one Christian might be like, "Hey, going and picketing outside an abortion clinic or bombing an abortion clinic, that might be a way to put your faith on display."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Or someone else might be like, "Well, I actually think that maybe protecting women's rights would be a better way to put my faith on display." Which demonstrates that ultimately it all goes back to whatever your particular social in-group determines is good for it.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so, having faith is not where God suddenly takes over as the puppet master and manipulates you like a marionette to go and do this, that, or the other, or not do this, that, or the other. It's just you learning what your social group expects of you, and then you going out and incurring the cost to do that.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Which, yeah, I think puts the lie to a lot of the rhetoric that we see these days about faith on social media.

Dan Beecher Yep. Well, there you go.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher I don't know that we've cracked anything, that we've solved anything here. But I just find it such a fascinating discussion. Maybe we'll get deeper into it at some point.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Because I found so many different scriptures that say things that I don't understand why this scripture says this and that scripture says that, but we didn't even get to that. That's fine. We did the overview, and I think that will suffice. So, let's move on to our chapter and verse. And this week's chapter and verse is Isaiah 6. And boy, let me tell you something. If you want to read something- ... that you will not immediately understand what the heck is going on, that's a great place to start. Just to lock everybody into our setting- Mm-hmm ... this is the year that King Uzziah died, so- Yes ... everybody understands that. We all know who that dude is.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Now that we've got our bearings.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I have no idea who King Uzziah is or when that places us, but tell me about Isaiah and like, what?

Dan McClellan Yeah. So Isaiah was an eighth century prophet.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan He was mainly probably a court prophet, probably one of the prophets that was under the employ of the king in Judah. And Uzziah was one of the kings. So the eighth century was a big century for both Judah and Israel, mainly because they had two kings. Judah had Uzziah and Israel had another king that reigned for like 40 to 50 years each, which allowed them to gain a lot of traction. They established a lot of treaties, they did a lot of trade, and this is the period of the most significant growth in the history of not just the northern kingdom of Israel, but also the southern kingdom of Judah.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, Uzziah reigned for 52 years according to the biblical text. And you have different estimates about when exactly that was, but it puts Uzziah's reign from somewhere around 790 to 780 BCE down to somewhere around 750 or 740 BCE.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So the year of King Uzziah's death is somewhere around 740 to 750 BCE.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So the very beginning of the second half of the eighth century BCE. And this puts us 20-ish to 30-ish years away from the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. So that's going to happen in 722 BCE.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And Judah is going to be safe, however.

Dan Beecher So yeah, at first- And so at this point, that has not yet happened, that is not yet indicated here.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan But in that year, Isaiah has something funky happen to him.

Dan Beecher Right. How do we get through this? What do we do? First of all, there's a dream. Or is it a dream, or maybe it's just a vision?

Dan McClellan Yeah, let's just say it's a vision.

Dan Beecher It just says, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty, and the hem of his robe filled the temple." You want to talk about that?

Dan McClellan Yeah. So, the vision is, it's a throne theophany. That's the $2 word for what's going on here, where you have a vision of God sitting upon a throne, and Isaiah's not the only one who has this.

Dan Beecher No. Matter of fact, the main character in the new Wes Anderson movie, The Phoenician Prophecy, has one of these.

Dan McClellan Oh, really?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Is that movie out- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher already?

Dan McClellan Have you seen it?

Dan Beecher The Phoenician Scheme is what it's called.

Dan McClellan Yeah. I saw the ads for that.

Dan Beecher It looks pretty- I went and saw it just the other day.

Dan McClellan Oh, very cool. It looks like an interesting movie. I like- It looks- ... many of the actors in it ...

Dan Beecher exactly like a Wes Anderson movie.

Dan McClellan Well, yeah.

Dan Beecher That's exactly what it is.

Dan McClellan Yeah. You know what you're getting. So he sees the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty, and then the traditional understanding is that the hem of his robe, or his train, filled the temple. And the Hebrew there is shul, which for lack of a better way to define it, it means hanger downs. It is something that hangs down from something. And so you have two different main uses. There is a sense that we find primarily in Exodus, where it is the seams of the garment of the priest.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan And the other use is genitals. And so you have that in places like Jeremiah and Nahum and Lamentations and things like that, where it's primarily talking about shame associated with the exposure of these parts of the body. So there have been scholars who have argued that, no, this just means the hem of the robe. There are other scholars who argue, no, this means Isaiah is hanging dong in this vision. There are others who say the author might be toying with the ambiguity of this term and might be intentionally being unclear about it. Is it his robe or is it his junk?

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That's up for you to decide. But- The NRSVUE does not have a- It doesn't have a note there?

Dan Beecher ... a note about this particular thing. So just for the sake of argument, imagine that the Lord's garment or the Lord's something is filling the temple.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher It's full. The temple's full. We'll just say that.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher This is where the seraphs come in. This is verse two, "Seraphs were in attendance above him. Each had six wings. With two, they covered their faces, and with two, they covered their feet, and with two, they flew."

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Why do their faces and feet need to be covered? That's nobody's business but the Turks.

Dan McClellan Well, and at the beginning of the verse, the first two words are seraphim omdim, which the NRSVUE has rendered "were in attendance above him," but that's the verbal root for to stand.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan So it would better be translated, "The seraphim were standing above him."

Dan Beecher It just said that they were flying, so.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and then by the end of the verse, it says, "covered their faces, and with two covered their feet," and feet here could be a euphemism. This is an argument made by the folks who think that shul is referring to genitals. The seraphim are embarrassed. They are put to shame by the divine junk. And so they are covering their own wedding tackle, and then also covering their faces because they are- Genitals all the way down.

Dan Beecher All right.

Dan McClellan Yes, because of how bashful they are. And so that's one way to read this.

Dan Beecher Don't look at me. Don't look.

Dan McClellan And the notion that these are angels is not biblical. That is a post-biblical kind of systematization of the characters that inhabit the heavens.

Dan Beecher The heavenly host, as it were.

Dan McClellan Yeah. They all get reduced to angelic status, even though the word angel is never used to refer to seraphim or ophanim or cherubim or anything like that anywhere in the Hebrew Bible.

Dan Beecher All right.

Dan McClellan And so we've got these winged creatures, and there's an argument to make that the idea here is not to literally represent something, but to just symbolically talk about what's intended here. These are entities who have a bunch of wings, which means they are mobile. They can fly anywhere they want. They can do what they need to do. But here they are being reserved, and they are covering things up. But they're going to act in just a moment here.

Dan Beecher Okay. First one of them says to the other, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory, and the whole temple is full of his..." Never mind. There is a note here that I neglected to check it out. Oh, okay. I'm moving on to verse four. "The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called." Does that mean the pivots, does that mean the hinges or I don't know what that means?

Dan McClellan What is the word here?

Dan Beecher mot. It says, "The meaning of heb is uncertain."

Dan McClellan Of heb?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Ama is probably what they're... That's the- I don't see heb anywhere. Oh, Hebrew. The meaning of the Hebrew.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan I thought that's...

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, it looks like it can mean forearm, it can mean cubit. So it's some kind of, I think, probably frame or post or something like that.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Something's rattling, something's shaking- Yeah ... as these voices are... They're powerful voices, I think is what we're meant to understand.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And the house filled with smoke, so here we have the smoke from the incense, which is supposed to obscure the vision of the Ark of the Covenant when the high priest goes in on the Day of Atonement and all this kind of stuff.

Dan Beecher Oh, I've never heard that.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher That's what the smoke is for? That's what the incense is meant to do?

Dan McClellan Yes. Half reveal, half discloses- Oh ... according to the great poet. So the idea is to mask the divine a little bit.

Dan Beecher All right.

Dan McClellan But also represent the presence of the divine.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And then we have Isaiah, who is just seeing all this stuff. Things are shaking around him. There's dong everywhere. And he goes, "Woe is me. I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, yet mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts." And here this is a throwback to the idea that no one can see God and live. What we find in Exodus 33, where Moses says, "Show me your glory," and God says, "I'm going to walk by you. I'm going to put my hand in front of your face and go by and then take my hand away and you'll see my I'm going to die.

Dan Beecher I'm going to die. Do you care to talk a little bit about what unclean lips might be referencing? I think it- Is that just I've spoken bad things, or I don't know what unclean lips might be.

Dan McClellan "Temei sh'phatayim." Yeah, it's pretty literal, just unclean or impure lips.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And I think the idea is just that the mouth is one of the sources of sin- Mm ... and so a sinful people will be a people that have spoken sin, so are of unclean lips. He's just saying, "I'm a sinful man."

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan "I live among a sinful people." Yes, which is not to be confused with "A Simple Man," the Leonard Skynyrd song.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan "Then one of the seraphs flew to me holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said, 'Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.'" So we've got fire as a cleansing agent.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan This is a coal from the altar in the Holy of Holies. It would have been an incense altar, and this allows the uncleanness of Isaiah's lips to be purged, and that allows him to then be commissioned by the Divine Council because what we're looking at here is a Divine Council scene.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And the seraphs are the attendants in the Divine Council, and Isaiah is about to be given an assignment by the Divine Council.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yes. "Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send and who will go for us?' And I said, 'Here am I. Send me.'" And this is somewhat reminiscent of a vision that Micaiah has in, I believe it is 1 Kings 22, where Ahaz is deciding whether or not he's going to go up to Ramoth-Gilead to fight against the Philistines, and he calls in his prophets and he's like, "What does the Lord say?" And they all say, "Oh, yes, you should go up. God will deliver them into your hands." And then Ahaz says, "You are a bunch of yes-men. Why don't you bring me..." Or somebody says, "Let's get Micaiah in here." And he's like, "Micaiah always says bad things about me. I hate Micaiah. Micaiah sucks." And Micaiah's like, "What do you want?" And then he's, "Should I go up?" And he goes, "Yeah, sure, you go up. God will deliver him into your hands." And the king's like, "You're lying to me." And he's like, "Yeah, I am." And proceeds to prophesy that if he goes up, he will die. But then says, "I saw the Lord sitting on the throne surrounded by all of the host of heaven, and the Lord calls out for a volunteer who will go entice the king to go up so he can be killed." And then he says, "The Spirit came forth and said, 'I will be a lying spirit in the mouths of his prophets, and I will get him to go up.'" And God says, "Ooh, I like it. Yeah, let's make that happen." And then he does go up and he does get killed. So that's where God lies to a king through his prophets in order to get him killed. But we have something similar going on here, where we're asking for a volunteer, only here, instead of a member of the divine council, another deity being the one who's commissioned it, is Isaiah who volunteers. And I wanted to bring this up. This is not the reason I wanted to do this chapter, but just yesterday, the Department of Homeland Services put a video on X, or Twitter, or whatever. Did you happen to see this video?