Shrouded in Mystery
Oooh! We're going to poke the gauzy fabric-covered bear with this one! Well first we're going to have a delightful chat about plagues. No, not Covid 19 or the black death, we're talking frogs! If you thought the Spanish Flu was bad, wait until you hear about the great Egyptian livestock massacre. But did the great plagues visited upon Egypt by Moses and his very powerful tetragrammatonically-named accomplice really happen? Is it even logically possible that they could have happened? Then we're going to make some very certain people very sad. Hold on to your long pieces of stained fabric, because we're going to "cover" (get it?) the shroud of Turin. Have you heard that a new scientific paper has come out that proves that this was actually the sheet that was draped over Jesus as he lay in the tomb? A lot of people have heard that. Well great news! We've read that paper, and we're going to discuss it! For early access to an ad-free version of every episode of Data Over Dogma, exclusive content, and the opportunity to support our work, please consider becoming a monthly patron at:
Bonus Episode Recorded with this episode: read the full transcript $10 patrons · log in with Patreon
Watch on YouTube
Apple Podcasts
SpotifyTranscript — tap any word to jump the video there
Dan McClellan I can imagine Egyptians being like, "This is an unusual number of frogs."
Dan Beecher "This feels excessive."
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher "This feels excessive."
Dan McClellan "Did you leave the fridge open?
Dan Beecher Because we have-" "Honey, what are you making? Because there's frogs."
Dan McClellan Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan.
Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.
Dan McClellan And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How go things today, Dan?
Dan Beecher Things go great. It's a beautiful day, and I just got back from a trip. I went and saw my mom in Canada. So that was- Nice ... that was nice. Hi, Mom.
Dan McClellan And swung by our nation's capital, or at least adjacent to our nation's capital- ... to attend a podcast convention.
Dan Beecher Yeah, I took pictures of the capital, but I was in Virginia, I was in Maryland, I was never in DC. I don't think I was ever officially in DC. Is Reagan in DC?
Dan McClellan I don't know. No, I think it's in Virginia. I think it's in Virginia.
Dan Beecher Yeah. So, I don't think I quite ever made it into DC. I flew over, though.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Good views. You fly out into and out of Reagan, you get good views.
Dan McClellan Oh, it's such a gorgeous area. I love the East Coast.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And particularly around the DC area. I grew up just on the other side of DC from where you were.
Dan Beecher Oh, right.
Dan McClellan A place called Gaithersburg, or North Potomac.
Dan Beecher Hmm.
Dan McClellan I think the name changed while I was living there, but- ... I haven't been back there since. So, we left in July of 1993.
Dan Beecher Whoa. And, yeah.
Dan McClellan So, it's been 30 years since I've been back to the old stomping grounds. At some point, I'm going to get out there.
Dan Beecher Yeah. You should.
Dan McClellan All right.
Dan Beecher Well, we got a show to do.
Dan McClellan So, let's- Oh, dang it ...
Dan Beecher do that show. We've got a couple things we're going to do. We're going to do a chapter and verse, and I'm kind of excited about it because today is plague day.
Dan McClellan Plague day.
Dan Beecher We're going to do the Exodus plagues, and then we're going- Don't skip plague day. That's right. That's important. You don't want skinny plagues.
Dan McClellan Nope.
Dan Beecher And then we're going to talk about the Shroud of Turin. That's also very exciting and topical. It shouldn't be topical- No ... but it has reared its head again.
Dan McClellan Yes.
Dan Beecher And has suddenly started to come back with a vengeance.
Dan McClellan In an untimely way, and I'll explain why. It doesn't make any sense. But yeah.
Dan Beecher Fair enough.
Dan McClellan You reminded me, my wife and I try to go to a gym nearby whenever we can, which turns into twice a month some months, and then we go twice a week other months. And we brought my 12-year-old daughter a couple of times last month, and it was so funny. After the first day, we get back in the car, and my 12-year-old daughter knows nothing about gym culture, knows nothing about all this stuff. It's like, "How come there are so many guys that are just gigantic with tiny little skinny legs?" And I laughed for hours. It was so funny to me.
Dan Beecher Yeah. Next, take her to a cycling event, and she'll be able to comment on all the guys with enormous legs and tiny little upper bodies. Tiny little upper bodies.
Dan McClellan Yep. It be like that. It do sometimes.
Dan Beecher Yes, indeed.
Dan McClellan Our chapter and verse plague day.
Dan Beecher Yeah. Let's launch in.
Dan McClellan Let's do it.
Dan Beecher Chapter and verse.
Dan McClellan All right.
Dan Beecher So, our first thing, we're in Exodus, and we are going to talk about the plagues.
Dan McClellan Is it 10? Well, that's a question.
Dan Beecher Plagues of Egypt.
Dan McClellan Dun, dun, dun.
Dan Beecher All of you who are like me, were raised watching the Cecil B. DeMille "Ten Commandments" movie every year, you have one idea of the plagues. But if you haven't read through them kind of carefully, it's different. It hits a little different. And so, we're going to talk a little bit about what is so different about these plagues, about the experience of reading it. And Dan, I do need some explanation because there's some stuff that doesn't make any sense to me or is weird or is whatever.
Dan McClellan We'll talk about it.
Dan Beecher So, what we got, the background is, apparently, at least according to this, Egypt has taken all of the Israelites into slavery and is holding them in bondage, or in bondage, as Charlton Heston would say. And so, it's time. The Lord has decided that Moses and his brother Aaron are going to be freeing them.
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.
Dan Beecher Are going to make them free. And so, it's time to do that. There's been a bunch of build-up to this.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher But now, Moses goes to Pharaoh, and he's been prepped for this by the Lord. The Lord has told him what to do.
Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, and oddly, if you go to the beginning of Exodus 7, God is talking to Moses and says, "Look, I've made you a god to Pharaoh."
Dan Beecher Hmm.
Dan McClellan Which is an interesting verse to start off with. "And your brother will be your prophet. You're going to tell Pharaoh everything that I tell you." And then in verse three says, "But I will harden Pharaoh's heart."
Dan Beecher Yeah. That messed me up.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher It's not Pharaoh doing it, it's the Lord playing a trick on everybody.
Dan McClellan Yeah. And the point is basically, "I am going to create drama- ... so that I can manifest my signs and wonders. It's like, "You're going to go tell him to do all this stuff. He's not going to listen to you. It's going to be so aggravating. Just you wait and see, and then I'm going to come and do my light show, and then everybody's going to be like, 'Wow, that Adonai. That was something.'"
Dan Beecher And it's not just a light show. People are going to die.
Dan McClellan Yes.
Dan Beecher And we're going to find out that it's not a small number of people- No ... that are going to die. So it's rough.
Dan McClellan But- Yeah ...
Dan Beecher the Lord says multiple times throughout the story, "This is so that everybody in the world will know how big and powerful I am."
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher So, okay.
Dan McClellan We're going to- So, Moses is like, "Okay, so I'm basically just doing repetitions here for no reason."
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan "This isn't going anywhere, but I got to do it anyway.
Dan Beecher All right."
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher And it does feel like it's going through the motions, and we'll get to why.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher The first plague, we can skip the whole Aaron turns his staff into a snake- Yeah ...
Dan McClellan and then the...
Dan Beecher But what's important about that part of the story is that Pharaoh has his own magicians, presumably who pray to their own gods.
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.
Dan Beecher And so when Aaron throws his staff down and it turns into a snake, they do the same thing, and their staffs turn into snakes- Right ...
Dan McClellan also. Well, there are two things to say here. One is that Aaron's serpent then consumes the- Right ...
Dan Beecher other magicians' serpent.
Dan McClellan It's basically saying, "Our god's more powerful than your god."
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan But there is an acknowledgement in there that those gods are real.
Dan Beecher Exactly.
Dan McClellan And we talked about this in the previous episode we did on magic, that they just presumed there was magic all over the place. These people were getting away with it. It was real. And here the idea is, yeah, these gods are real. They have power, but their power doesn't compare. And then the other thing I was going to say is we don't have the prototypical Hebrew word for snake here.
Dan Beecher Oh.
Dan McClellan This isn't a sneck. Clearly anyway, it's tannîn, is the Hebrew word, which is the same word that is used for sea creatures or serpents- Oh ... or perhaps crocodile. So it's not clear exactly what the staff is turning into.
Dan Beecher Oh, okay.
Dan McClellan It certainly could be a way to refer to a serpent like a snake, but it could be something else as well. But whatever it is, yeah, the point is, "Okay, Egypt, you got your gods, but they're no match for our gods." This is the Harlem Globetrotters playing against the, what was it, the Generals that they used to play? The Washington Generals or something like that, yeah. The Washington Generals. And it's just for show- Right ... because they're going to get stomped.
Dan Beecher And- But the thing is that they don't get entirely stomped. The reason we bring this up is because they kind of match trick for trick for a while.
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.
Dan Beecher They keep trying to replicate the thing, which I think becomes very weird very quickly, and we'll get to that.
Dan McClellan Well, in Exodus 12:12, we have this statement that God is executing judgment on all the gods of Egypt.
Dan Beecher Hmm.
Dan McClellan And so the idea is that they're in Egypt. That's not Adonai's territory. Adonai's territory is Canaan, and so Adonai is away from home court.
Dan Beecher There's no- Hmm ...
Dan McClellan home court advantage for Adonai here, but Adonai is acting as judge, jury, and executioner for the iniquities that are abounding in Egypt, which are attributed to their gods. And so part of the point of this is to say, "Your gods have been naughty, and I'm executing judgment on them."
Dan Beecher Yeah. So now we come to plague the first, water into blood.
Dan McClellan Water into blood.
Dan Beecher Now, in the Cecil B. DeMille thing, he touches the water with his staff, and it- Mm-hmm ... sort of water- The Kool-Aid spreads ... the red spreads out and whatever.
Dan McClellan Is it a practical or special effect in the DeMille film? Because I never saw it.
Dan Beecher I think it's practical.
Dan McClellan Okay.
Dan Beecher I don't know how, but, well, it's some sort of weird effect. I don't know- Okay ...
Dan McClellan exactly.
Dan Beecher I think they probably did a... No, it was an effect of some sort.
Dan McClellan Anyway.
Dan Beecher Okay. In the book, they first do the Nile.
Dan McClellan They smack the- You got the film version and the book version.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Exactly.
Dan Beecher Yeah. They first smack that crocodile's cane- Right ... onto the water, and the entire Nile turns into blood, but that's not it. That's not all. All the waters of Egypt, rivers, canals, ponds, pools, even the stuff in their water jugs, their vessels. It says the wood vessels and the stone vessels.
Dan McClellan Yeah. All of their water turns- Ceramic vessels, they were cool, but- Yeah ...
Dan Beecher wood and stone- If you were lucky enough to have one of those.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Which is horrifying.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher And apparently it was stinky. It smelled bad, so that's no good.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher And then it says, and this is the first time it says this, but I'm very confused by it. It says, "Pharaoh's magicians then did the same thing." They managed to pull the same trick off.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Which is like, after- With what water? Yeah, exactly. You just said all the water was already blood, so.
Dan McClellan Oh, and this is something that's going to come up again later when the livestock is- Yeah ... like the hail destroys the livestock.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan It's emphatic. Every last one, all of it, it's all gone. There's none left.
Dan Beecher Everything.
Dan McClellan And then two verses later, it's like, so there were still some animals left.
Dan Beecher Right, exactly.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher That keeps happening.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher So that's tricky.
Dan McClellan Well, here's an interesting thing about the plagues, which by the way, the word plague is used a few times in the story, but they're not as a group referred to as plagues.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan The words that are used to refer to this set of events is signs and wonders.
Dan Beecher Oh.
Dan McClellan "I'm going to show my signs and wonders with these signs and wonders." And so, we have come to know them as the plagues, but only a couple of them are actually referred to explicitly as plagues. The rest are signs and wonders.
Dan Beecher Point of order.
Dan McClellan Point of order.
Dan Beecher In the NRSVUE- Uh-huh ... it refers to them as plagues plenty, but just in the chapter headings that aren't actually- Right ... part of the text.
Dan McClellan Yeah, because that's how we traditionally understand them.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan But when we look at the first nine, we're going to call the 10. Now, and this is not like the Ten Commandments where there's a place where it says, "The 10 plagues"- Right ... or the 10 signs and wonders. It just says, "These are the signs and wonders." The first nine of them, they're divided into three groups, and in each group, there's a pattern to this. The first three, the first one, there's a warning. Moses offers a warning outside as Pharaoh is on the way to the river in the morning. The second of each group, there is a warning, but it happens in the palace.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan And it doesn't tell us when it happens. The third of each group, there's no warning.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And so then you get to the fourth plague, and it starts over. There is a warning. It happens outside. It happens in the morning. Second group, or second plague of the second group, there is a warning, but it's in the palace. Third, there's no warning at all. And so that happens for each of the three groupings of plagues. So there's a literary structure to this- Mm ... that is grouping the three, and the first three have to do with things coming from the ground. Got water, we got frogs, we got gnats. Second three happen to do with things that affect humans, things that affect livestock, and then things that are affecting both humans and livestock. And then the third group are all things that are coming from the sky.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan So there's an interesting literary structure to this that indicates this is a literary creation. And there are attempts to historicize this, to try to say, "Oh, well, the inundation, the annual inundation of the Nile causes it to be filled up with all of this dirt, the red dirt, and that makes the water look red like blood."
Dan Beecher And then- I remember hearing that.
Dan McClellan Right. And then the fish die because there's too much silt in the water, and then the frogs try to escape, and then everything dies, and then the gnats come, and then the flies come to eat the corpses of everything, and that causes pestilence for the animals. And so, there's this attempt to try to historicize everything, but the overwhelming consensus among scholars is that this is purely a literary creation.
Dan Beecher But the other thing about that attempt to historicize is that it actually detracts from the point of the story.
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.
Dan Beecher Because the point of the story is that it isn't a natural occurrence.
Dan McClellan Right. It's a sign and a wonder.
Dan Beecher The entire point of the story is that it's God making himself... If this was a thing that just sort of happened every now and then- Yeah ... it totally ruins the story.
Dan McClellan Yeah, because then the Egyptians are going to be like, "Oh yeah, that was totally natural."
Dan Beecher But- Right.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Oh yeah, we have records of this happening before.
Dan McClellan Yeah, but the whole point is for God to show their signs and wonders- Yes ... so that everyone will be in awe of all this that happened.
Dan Beecher Right. So- So, we'll keep moving through these.
Dan McClellan Okay.
Dan Beecher You already referenced the next thing is frogs. The frogs come out.
Dan McClellan Frogs.
Dan Beecher And apparently it's so many that it's in everybody's bedrooms, and it's in their mixing bowls, and it's in their- Yeah ...
Dan McClellan whatever. I don't know if you've ever lived in a place with lots of frogs.
Dan Beecher No, I have not.
Dan McClellan When I lived in Bellingham in Washington, I don't know if it was just our apartment complex. We were right by a gigantic field.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan We were right by the wilderness, basically. But we heard frogs croaking all night long. I loved it. But I can imagine Egyptians being like, "This is an unusual number of frogs."
Dan Beecher "This feels excessive."
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher "This feels excessive."
Dan McClellan "Did you leave the fridge open?
Dan Beecher Because we have..." Well, and an interesting thing to- "Honey, what are you making? Because there's frogs."
Dan McClellan In the Hebrew, the noun is in the singular.
Dan Beecher Frog.
Dan McClellan Oh.
Dan Beecher Yeah. And so they're- Wait.
Dan McClellan It's a collective noun.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan It can be used to... And like the word in Hebrew for bird, birds, is just singular. And so when it talks about, "Oh, he created the birds" in Genesis 1- Mm-hmm ... it just says bird. So it's collective.
Dan Beecher But- You don't know. Maybe he only created one bird.
Dan McClellan Well, which would mean that there was one gigantic frog that climbed out of the Nile, and there is an ancient Jewish tradition, an interpretive tradition that understands this as- As a single frog?
Dan Beecher ...
Dan McClellan one giant frog that wreaked havoc on the- Kind of a Godzilla-like creature stomping on- I like it ... pyramids and stuff, yeah.
Dan Beecher I am into it.
Dan McClellan All right.
Dan Beecher I'll go with that.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher So then, Pharaoh, and this happens every single time, the way that each of these pestilences, plagues, whatever, ends is Pharaoh's like, "Oh my gosh, I've been such a jerk." I apologize. Please make it stop. And then Moses goes, "Okay," and prays to God, and God makes it stop. The way that he makes the frogs thing stop, by the way, is that they all just instantly die.
Dan McClellan Yeah. It's like, "This is a step backwards."
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Right?
Dan Beecher Now we have dead frogs. I don't see how that's better. And apparently, I was like, "That's going to stink." And then it says- Yeah ... and then it says in the Bible, "And everything stinks." You know what I mean?
Dan McClellan Yes.
Dan Beecher Ooh. So, there's that. Then there are gnats, and again, with the gnats, the magicians try to reproduce the trick. I'm not sure why, but they can't.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher So apparently gnats was- The eclipse ... a bridge too far for the Egyptian gods.
Dan McClellan I see Beetlejuice going, "I don't do gnats." "I won't do. I won't do."
Dan Beecher Won't do it. So next we got flies, and this is the first time that he's very clear that the Egyptian people will get flies.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher But the Israelite people in Goshen. Now, it mentions Goshen a bunch of times as the place where the Israelites live.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher How close is that to the Egyptians, et cetera?
Dan McClellan Well, the Egyptians are kind of spread out. But Goshen is a part of the eastern part of the Nile Delta. So if you look at a map, and you see it kind of fans out up toward the Mediterranean, Goshen is on the east side of that. Now, depending on where you date these events that didn't happen, you might have the Egyptians being located in different parts of the Nile. But yeah, this is Eastern Nile Delta area.
Dan Beecher Okay. All the way to- As opposed to, are we to imagine that Pharaoh and the Egyptians that keep getting referred to are in the Cairo area, or where are they?
Dan McClellan Again, it depends on where you date them, but we're supposed to be understanding them to be nearby. And so, during the reign of Ramesses, so it moved around a little bit. If you date it in the 1300s or the 1400s, it's going to be in different areas. Pi-Ramesses is a city that was built as the new capital for Ramesses, and that's in the Goshen area. So that's Eastern Nile Delta region.
Dan Beecher So- And that's a city that is mentioned in the book, in Exodus Yes, that they built this city when they were enslaved.
Dan McClellan And also, none of this is taking place during a period when they were building pyramids.
Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.
Dan McClellan Just in case anybody is trying to find a kind of chronological slot for all of this, pyramids, they stopped building pyramids centuries before any of this happened.
Dan Beecher Yeah. So in case you want to apply this fictional story to the pyramids and imagine- ... the Israelites building those, alas, no.
Dan McClellan Yes. Alas, indeed not.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Okay.
Dan Beecher And also, we have talked on this show about how the Exodus as a thing is presumed to either be based on a true story, but so loosely that none of this actually applies to it.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Or just made up from whole cloth.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Because there's no archeological evidence or records of any kind that support any of this, except this story in the Bible.
Dan McClellan Right. Some people sometimes will point to the Ipuwer Papyrus, because it talks about blood. It talks about the poor stealing from the rich. It talks about all this stuff that people try to squeeze into the round hole of the Exodus tradition. But in addition to the fact that most scholars think the story in the Ipuwer Papyrus dates to several hundred years prior, it doesn't fit. It's talking about societal collapse. It's talking about invasion from the outside to exploit the weakness of the society, and it's talking about the inversion of the social hierarchy.
Dan Beecher And so- Mm ...
Dan McClellan people will point to that, but yeah, for the most part, there's not a place to fit this.
Dan Beecher It does feel very much like the Egyptians might have written about all of these plagues happening to them. "Remember that time- Yeah ... when everything went horribly for us, and then we lost two million of our labor force?"
Dan McClellan And they would've attributed it, people are like, "Oh, they're not going to write about... They only wrote about their wins." It's like, no, they wrote about their Ls, but they just either said, "These people were mean to us," or they will spin it into a W.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Yeah. So yeah, there would've been something about all of this happening. Since this would've fundamentally overturned their entire social infrastructure and- Yeah ... way of life and everything.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan This could not have escaped some kind of indication in the material and in the literary record, and we find nothing.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan We find pretty smooth transition in literature, the material remains, the reigns, the succession of rulers. It's all pretty smooth, apart from your regular intermediary periods, which you have from time to time.
Dan Beecher Yeah. I could see them not recording things about gnats and flies. The next one is flies, or even frogs. But all of the water turning to blood, that seems like it'd get written about. And then after flies, it's the livestock one. And that one is hardcore.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher That one is all of the livestock. And like you said, it's very clear that it says all of the Egyptian livestock, including horses, donkeys, camels, herds, and flocks. This is what was funny. So, they all die. Only the Egyptian livestock dies, not the Israelite livestock.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Which made me go, "Well, won't the Egyptians just go and take the Israelites' livestock?" They're the slave owners. They would be the ones who- Yeah ...
Dan McClellan anyway.
Dan Beecher But yes, all of their livestock dies. Then all the Egyptians get festering boils on their humans and their animals, which what animals? Their livestock is dead.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher And then what I wrote down is thunder hail.
Dan McClellan Thunder. Oh, I probably can't sing that.
Dan Beecher Not Thundercats, thunder hail. Thunder hail.
Dan McClellan Ho.
Dan Beecher I'm just going to quote, this is Exodus chapter 9. This is verses 15 and 16.
Dan McClellan Okay.
Dan Beecher It says, "Indeed, by now, I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would've been cut off from the earth. But this is why I have let you live, to show you my power and to make my name resound through all the earth."
Dan McClellan Which again, when we were talking about- Even though you're not supposed to say God's name.
Dan Beecher Okay, fair. That's a fair point.
Dan McClellan But also- Or this story came before that prohibition ...
Dan Beecher right. Yeah, okay, fair enough. But also, again, this story is contained in one place only.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher So, if the point of this was to make Adonai's name resound through all the earth, it didn't work. It resounded through their culture for a long time.
Dan McClellan But- Yeah ...
Dan Beecher yeah.
Dan McClellan Well, and you even have the practice of Passover, is explicitly intended to facilitate the remembrance of these events.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan But yeah, this is something that we see a lot. These signs and wonders are intended so that people will know that I am Adonai, or so that my name will be known. And we don't find much remembrance in the historical record beyond what is in the Hebrew Bible.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan In fact, when you look at the Jewish settlements at the Jewish garrison at Elephantine in Egypt, there are some passing references to the celebration of something that sounds like the Passover, but they never talk anything about this story. And then you've got the additional idea that when God sets their hand to recover all of the lost tribes and bring everybody back and affect this grand restoration, it's going to make the story of God leading the Israelites out of Egypt look pale in comparison.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan I can't think of a funny comparison to make. Oh, your- But yeah ...
Dan Beecher vast trove of pop culture references has failed you.
Dan McClellan Yep.
Dan Beecher All right. So, the thunder hail comes, and the thunder hail destroys... And this is where it says, "You better bring in all that livestock from the fields, or it's going to be killed by the hail," which is funny because you literally just killed the livestock.
Dan McClellan Yep.
Dan Beecher And this is where the hail destroys all the crops and, quote, "Shatters the trees."
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.
Dan Beecher So now there's literally no food sources for presumably millions of people. Am I right?
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher If there's no livestock, the fish are all dead, the crops are all dead.
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.
Dan Beecher That feels bad.
Dan McClellan That feels- Yeah, this is pretty scorched earth.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan There's nothing to keep the Egyptians alive at this point, except for all the stuff that is down the street in the land of Goshen- Right.
Dan Beecher ...
Dan McClellan where all the Israelites are hanging out.
Dan Beecher And Pharaoh, again, promises that he's going to let everybody go. He pinky swears, he double dog dares them to please get God to stop raining fire hail on them. By the way, there's fire in the hail. I don't know- Yeah ... how that's the case. And so Moses says, "Hey, God, let up." And then Pharaoh's heart gets hardened yet again because we still have more things we got to do. Now we got locusts, which by this point, who cares about locusts? You know what I mean? It feels like- Right ... after all of this stuff, it's like, "Oh, bugs again? Okay, fine."
Dan McClellan Oh, bugs we can eat this time?
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Oh, darn.
Dan Beecher Food? Thank you.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Yeah, but the bugs eat all of the remaining crops, which- Shouldn't have been there ... I guess the stalk's on the ground or whatever, so- Yeah ... and then a wind blows them all into the Red Sea, and you can help me with this one, a footnote that says, "or Sea of Reeds."
Dan McClellan Yeah, the Red Sea is a misnomer. And it probably comes from the fact that in ancient Greek, they referred to this as the Red Sea. That's not what it says in the Hebrew. Yam Suph means Sea of Reeds. And so in the Greek, some people think red, they use colors for cardinal directions, and so some people think that this was the sea to the south or something like that. But there's just this name Red Sea from Greek, and so we have taken to calling it the Red Sea after the Greek. But in Hebrew, in the Hebrew Bible here, it's Yam Suph.
Dan Beecher Okay. But we assume that's referring to the same sea.
Dan McClellan Yeah. Most people are pretty sure it's the same sea. There are some people who think, ah, it's a different sea. But yeah, most people agree it's the same one.
Dan Beecher Okay. And the Sea of Reeds was also what Moses ends up parting later on. Is that correct?
Dan McClellan Uh-huh.
Dan Beecher Okay. Ninth plague is three days of darkness, which would be annoying. That would be- ... a problem.
Dan McClellan Yeah, well, it's not like they're living in northern Alaska.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Yeah. It's like, "Six months of darkness."
Dan Beecher That's right.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher And then we get to the grand finale, which is, you referred to Passover before. This is the great plague. This is Israelites mark their doors with sheep's blood.
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.
Dan Beecher And everybody else, the firstborn of their household is killed.
Dan McClellan Yes.
Dan Beecher And not just people, the firstborn of their livestock, which there is no more livestock. But even then, if you happened to get a livestock back, now the firstborn of your livestock is also killed. Get a livestock back.
Dan McClellan You went into to the store and said, "Give me a livestock."
Dan Beecher "All of my livestock were killed. I need at least one. Give me a livestock."
Dan McClellan And there's an interesting thing. We haven't really talked about the Akedah on the show. Have we talked about the sacrifice of Isaac?
Dan Beecher Oh, we need to.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher I don't know if we have.
Dan McClellan Because there's an interesting thing going on here. One of the things that some scholars think the sacrifice of Isaac, that story is doing, is something that this story might be doing as well. It might be coming up with an explanation for why we seem to have this command to sacrifice a firstborn child.
Dan Beecher Hmm.
Dan McClellan Because after this story, there's going to be this idea that I killed all the firstborn children and the firstborn livestock of Egypt, and so now in remembrance of that, you're supposed to sacrifice your firstborn. But not really, you're actually supposed to redeem them, and then the firstborn of your livestock, you're also supposed to sacrifice, except for certain among them, you're supposed to redeem them as well. And so for some folks, this is an attempt to create kind of a narrative background, an ideology for this weird part of Exodus that says sacrifice your firstborn- Hmm ...
Dan Beecher children.
Dan McClellan So that might be going on in the background here. It's woven in pretty intricately, if that is the case. But yeah, the idea is that the death of this lamb, and in Genesis 21 and 22, there's a ram that gets sacrificed in place of Isaac. Here, the lamb gets sacrificed as a replacement for the firstborn. So in that sense, it's reflecting things from other parts of the Pentateuch.
Dan Beecher All right. Well, there you go. There's some plagues for you. A little bit of plague talk for anyone who wanted it.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher It's a crazy story. That would not be a fun time. And also, yeah, I don't feel like Adonai comes off great. In this whole story, in all of the Exodus story, Adonai, he's his own antagonist.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher He's the one that keeps hardening the heart of Pharaoh.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher He's the one that keeps making... Like you said, he's just causing drama.
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm. And you see this in a few different places, and even one of the other explanations for that commandment to sacrifice the firstborn child, what we see in Ezekiel, Ezekiel 20 verses 25 and 26. Ezekiel's like, "You guys were just so stubborn and hard-hearted, God was like, 'You want to sacrifice something? I'll give you something to sacrifice. Sacrifice your firstborn children.'" And Ezekiel represents the point as he just wants to show you who's boss, and he just wants to decimate you, basically, and punish you. And so there is kind of a vindictive streak in a lot of the traditions regarding Adonai and Adonai's desire to show off, to make sure everybody knows their name- Mm ... and by intentionally hardening somebody's heart. So a lot of the free will folks, when they get into this part of the Bible, are finding themselves having to engage in all kinds of mental gymnastics to make this fit the notion that God respects free will, because- Yeah ... here, God's like, "Ooh, you know what? I got an idea. I'm going to put on a show." "And to do it, I need to kill a bunch of people, and I need to ensure that Pharaoh does not undermine my drama."
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Yeah, because one plague could've been plenty.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher That first plague, the water into blood- Yeah. That should have been more than enough.
Dan McClellan Yeah. Pharaoh could have been like, "Oh, you're serious, serious.
Dan Beecher Okay."
Dan McClellan "Oh."
Dan Beecher "Yeah.
Dan McClellan Cool."
Dan Beecher "Damn."
Dan McClellan "Go. Do your thing."
Dan Beecher "I really liked that water, so- My bad ... off you go."
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher All right. Let's move on. We invented a new category of our segments for this one. We're going to call this one Artifacts and Fiction. So, there is an artifact. There is a thing. We know that it exists. It is a thing. And that is the Shroud of Turin.
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.
Dan Beecher Just as a description, I mean, most people probably know what it is.
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.
Dan Beecher But just quickly, we are talking about a long piece of fabric, sort of a burlappy sort of weave- Yeah ... I think, that has in it an image that looks like a bearded man with sort of a ruddy red color. It's got sort of- Yeah.
Dan McClellan So it's pretty faded. It's really, really long. And it's a really long rectangular piece of cloth with some holes in it. But if you folded it in half, then you have the front and the back of image of this person.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And it's supposed to be the shroud that was used to bury Jesus.
Dan Beecher Supposed to be? I think you mean- Supposed to be ... it was the shroud- ... in which Jesus was buried, because a whole bunch of TikTokers have been saying lately- Woo ... that that's exactly what it is, and we know it for a fact.
Dan McClellan Yes. It has been reported recently that scientists have confirmed the authenticity of the shroud. Now, by the time this episode comes out, I don't know how dead this story will be, but at the moment, there have been several days of prominent- Oh- ... social media personalities ... it's not going to be dead.
Dan Beecher It's going to be going strong. So refer people to this episode as needed.
Dan McClellan Yeah. So, there are a lot of reporting that scientists have confirmed this through new tests. But I just want to briefly cover the origins of the Shroud of Turin, because the first time it pops up in the historical record is in 1356 in a town in France- Okay ... where our first records of it are all rejections of its authenticity. People saying, "Hey, there's somebody going around with this fake relic, trying to pass it off as real." In fact, a bishop of this town in France in 1389 wrote to Pope Clement VII saying that this thing has been a part of a faith healing scam in which people were hired to pretend to be sick, and then once the shroud was brought to them or they were brought to the shroud, they would suddenly pop up and, "Hey, I can walk again."
Dan Beecher And- Ta-da ...
Dan McClellan they have been healed.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And according to this letter that was written to Pope Clement VII, after a thorough investigation, they found the artist who created it, and he admitted to having painted it.
Dan Beecher What?
Dan McClellan 1389.
Dan Beecher Oh, my gosh.
Dan McClellan So a mere 33 years after the first-ever- ... reference to the Shroud of Turin, we have people saying, "Yeah, it's a fake. We know who faked it. They admitted faking it."
Dan Beecher Oh, wow.
Dan McClellan Okay. However, it makes its way to Turin, where it has become cemented in the lore.
Dan Beecher Mm. So- Turin is Torino, Italy.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Yeah. So, there have been tests run on this thing for years. And in 2019, and then again in 2022, there were a team of Italian scientists who published a couple of papers in an open access journal called Heritage. And the 2019 paper was called "X-ray Dating of Ancient Linen Fabrics," and then the 2022 paper was called "X-ray Dating of a Turin Shroud's Linen Sample." And they're engaged in something called wide angle X-ray scattering- Mm ...
Dan Beecher which is a- That sounds very science-y.
Dan McClellan It is very science-y, but it is new science-y.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan These are the first actual publications of attempts to use this to date fabric, and so it is an innovative means of testing, and it has not been well-established.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan It's just these two papers, and what they're suggesting is, look, we got some fabric that was found at Masada, so we can date very securely this fabric to the first century CE.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And then we're doing this wide angle X-ray scattering analysis on that fabric, and then this fabric, and other pieces of fabric, and we're going to try to basically calibrate this way of testing it. And they claim that the results from the Shroud of Turin are consistent with 2,000-year-old fabric. Although, and here's the part that baffles me, they suggest that the results only work if the shroud has been kept in an environment with a temperature that averages between 68 and 72.5 degrees Fahrenheit.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan Which is not the Eastern Mediterranean.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan You get degrees much lower than that, particularly during the night, and during the day and during certain periods of the year, temperatures much, much higher than that.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And so- There are going to be criticisms of these papers, but it's these papers that people are suddenly, in the year of our Lord 2024, becoming aware of and saying, "New science just dropped that has proven that it is authentic," when it's really just this claim that, "Hey, this new kind of testing could suggest it's 2,000 years old."
Dan Beecher Even if that testing was 100% accurate, the most that it would be capable of doing is telling us a date for that fabric.
Dan McClellan Potentially.
Dan Beecher That still- Yeah ... doesn't get us anywhere near, "This was definitely the thing that Jesus himself was buried in."
Dan McClellan And there are a bunch of problems with even that because- Yeah ... this fabric is a particular kind of weave, a herringbone weave, that requires a specific kind of loom. Unless you're doing it by hand, running a little shuttle back and forth- Right ... by hand, which is not something that they did 2,000 years ago, for long pieces of fabric. This particular weave was not done.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And that particular type of loom was not existing 2,000 years ago. It was very common in the 14th century, though.
Dan Beecher And- Are you denying the miracle of the loomed weave fabric?
Dan McClellan I am suggesting that the data do not support the antiquity- Yeah ...
Dan Beecher of this.
Dan McClellan And there are a bunch of other things. I saw the Daily Mail posted a video, "Scientists have come to a chilling discovery." And then, two days later, they did another video. It was like, "Scientists have arrived at another chilling discovery."
Dan Beecher Oh.
Dan McClellan And then they said scientists looked at the blood stains that were evidently on the fabric, and they determined that the owner of that blood had suffered from severe trauma, had been tortured.
Dan Beecher And- How do you determine that from the blood?
Dan McClellan Well, they suggested there were certain chemicals and things like that, that the blood reacted a certain way that usually happens when there is some kind of torture going on.
Dan Beecher Just like a high amount of cortisol or something.
Dan McClellan Something like that. And what the Daily Mail piece forgot to go look up was the fact that this was the paper that was published in 2017 and was retracted by the journal that published it shortly thereafter. The editors commented, "Concerns have been raised that the data presented in this article are not sufficient to support the conclusions drawn. The provenance, integrity, and availability of the material used for the study have also been questioned." And then they go on to say that they are concerned that there are not sufficient controls to support conclusions referring to human blood or physical trauma, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. "Thus, we consider the main conclusions of the article are not sufficiently supported." So those scientists who published that study in 2017, most of those are the same scientists who published the studies in 2019 and 2022 as well.
Dan Beecher And here we are, shocked.
Dan McClellan Shocked- Yes ...
Dan Beecher I tell you.
Dan McClellan Indeed. So the chilling discovery is actually just a chilling misrepresentation of the science.
Dan Beecher Yeah. Now- It's so weird to me because even if all of the nonsense that has been presented about this turned out to be true, it's still not evidence of what they're claiming it's evidence of.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher I did a TikTok Live fairly recently and I was chatting with somebody and she was a very sweet person, but was like this, "They even tested the blood, and it was the same blood type as Jesus." And I said, "How do you know what Jesus' blood type is? Is that somewhere buried in Matthew and it's like, 'And lo, the Lord was O negative'? What are we talking about?"
Dan McClellan Yeah. There's an awful lot that is riding on faith, which is an interesting part of this because you have, oh, what do they call them? Oh, I don't think they call them authenticists, but some of the scientists who work on this kind of stuff, they have a label for the folks who are dogmatically committed to the authenticity of the shroud.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan And one of the people who worked on one of those studies from 2019, 2022, and 2017 claimed in an interview that they had personal revelation in the '90s- Mm ... while they were standing in front of the shroud, that it was authentic. And it's like you can't reason with that level of commitment to that dogma. You cannot- No ... reason with them.
Dan Beecher Nor should you. At that point, just admit that this is a faith belief.
Dan McClellan Right.
Dan Beecher And don't worry about proving it, just keep believing it.
Dan McClellan Yeah. And then, in 1988, there was radiocarbon testing done. They took a patch from the-- Or I don't want to say patch because people are, I'll get to the reason why, but they took a piece of the shroud, and they divided it up into a bunch of different pieces and sent it away to three different laboratories for radiocarbon dating, and this was all blind.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan None of the laboratories knew what the other laboratories were doing. They all come up with roughly the same result. This dates to the mid-1200s to the late 1300s CE.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan When was the first time that anyone ever mentioned the Shroud of Turin? In the mid-1300s CE. So medieval production.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And immediately afterwards, of course, you have a bunch of people crying foul that they did it all wrong and that-- There was one person who published a study suggesting that the radiocarbon dating had actually come from a patch that had been sewn into the shroud that was of medieval production.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan But if you go read the 1988 paper where they talk about the radiocarbon dating, they're like, "We took this piece from just this part of the shroud that was not near any patches."
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And the claim is that this was a patch that was so expertly woven into the shroud that it is impossible to detect with the naked eye.
Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.
Dan McClellan So it's an invisible patch.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan But it's of medieval production- Yeah ... unlike the rest of the shroud. But then there have been studies done more recently than that that have said, "No, we've re-looked at all of this stuff, and the argument that they're using for how this can be a patch, doesn't fit the data." You're going to have back and forth until the Earth crashes into the sun or the sun engulfs the Earth, whichever happens first. There's going to be back and forth about this because this is a matter of dogma.
Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.
Dan McClellan This is not a matter of critical thinking or rational thought for some folks.
Dan Beecher So- Which if-- The thing that miffs me, I guess, about things like this is that if they just leave it in the realm of this is a dogma that we believe, that's one thing. But when they themselves are like, "We are going to venture into the realm of scientific evidence. We're going to try to prove this to be true scientifically." And then they refuse to acknowledge what the science actually says, that's very frustrating.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Don't come into somebody else's garden and then claim that it's not what it is. If you're going to venture into that realm, you have to acknowledge what you discover.
Dan McClellan And that's where the cries of persecution ring hollow.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan If you're going to start talking about scientific data, and you're going to start trying to prove all of this stuff, you're going to be criticized for it because you are in another person. You're in the realm of scientific inquiry. There's another scientist, Luigi Garlaschelli, I think his name is pronounced. He and some other scientists have done a few different analyses on this. They looked at the blood, so there's supposed to be some bloodstains on the shroud. Tested how blood would drip and flow with the arms in various orientations and showed that whoever this was here, that blood could not have flowed the way it did with them laying down. They had to have been standing upright for that- Oh, wow ... blood to flow the way they did. And they also pointed out there is blood that is flowing on top of hair.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan And they're like, "Blood does not flow- Right ... over hair. If you have an injured scalp, the blood just mats the hair."
Dan Beecher Soaks in and yeah.
Dan McClellan But when you look at the shroud, you see curly little rivulets of blood flowing across the top of hair. So it is very clearly a product of the 14th century or maybe the late 13th century, an artistic work. We have that testimony- And that's so true ... of the folks from that time period.
Dan Beecher The thing that almost nobody is talking about, I never see anybody say this. Maybe they do, and I just haven't heard it. I just haven't come across it, is that it's not very well rendered. Proportionally, it doesn't look correct for a human face.
Dan McClellan Correct.
Dan Beecher Yeah. It's not the right proportions for a person.
Dan McClellan Right. And the head is too small for the body.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan It shows the feet laying flat.
Dan Beecher Oh.
Dan McClellan Not upright, laying flat, which you cannot do without at least a 90-degree bend in your knees- Mm ... which is not what happened. And there are so many other problems with it. The hands are covering up the genitals conveniently.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan But if you lay flat and cover yourself with your hands, and then you just go limp, your hands separate because your elbows fall to the floor.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan That is not a natural position. And the one of the hands is grotesquely longer than the others, or the other. And it also doesn't fit historically. According to the practices of the time period, a dead body, the first thing that would've happened to it as they prepared it for burial, before they wrapped it in any kind of shroud, would've been to clean the body.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Clean off all the blood, and then they would've applied all kinds of oils and things to it, and then they would've wrapped it in a few layers of a very thin fabric, and then they would've put a shroud over top of it. So it doesn't fit historically either. There are far too many problems with this for it to continue to be taken seriously. And some people have said, "Oh, well, no one has ever been able to reproduce it." Also false.
Dan Beecher Right?
Dan McClellan This guy, Garlaschelli, he was like, "Oh, I can do it." And showed that if you take-- Back in the '80s, one of the guys who was invited to be on the little team of shroud scientists, who was the pioneer of microscopic analysis, was like, "Oh, there's no blood anywhere on this shroud. This is all red ochre and vermilion, and things like that. It's paint."
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And it has deteriorated and what's left is just the chemical etching on the fabric of this chemical sitting on it for centuries. But this other guy was like, "Oh, so let's just take some red ochre, some vermilion, and some other stuff, and we're going to lay a piece of fabric over top of a bas relief showing this face, and I'm going to do kind of a rubbing- Yeah ... with this ink."
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And then he stuck it in an oven for a little while to try to simulate centuries of wear and tear and everything, and then washed the paint off and showed that just having the paint on there baked to simulate that aging actually created an image- Okay ... on the fabric. That the paint was gone, but that chemical etching remained and was like, "This is how it was done."
Dan Beecher I have a question. What blood type was the red ochre?
Dan McClellan I'm trying to think of paint brands and I can't think of any off the top of my head.
Dan Beecher Sherwin-Williams.
Dan McClellan Well- Negatives.
Dan Beecher I referenced it earlier, but I want to reiterate it. I don't know why. Our friend of the show, David Burnett, posted on Facebook a thing about enough with the Shroud of Turin already.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher And somebody piped in and was like... Because he's like, "There's no evidence for it." And somebody's like, "Do you mean no evidence, as in zero? Other than the fact it clearly displays the imprint of a man who suffered in a way consistent with the manner Jesus' death was described in the gospel?" And I just thought, "Yeah, okay. That's what we see there, but Jesus is not the only person that could possibly have suffered in that way."
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher People need to be better about understanding what something is evidence for.
Dan McClellan And if you were going to fake something like this, you would try to make it match- Yeah ... the story that you're trying to make.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher If I'm a guy who's walking around with an artifact trying to tell people that they can have faith healings because of it, I'm going to try to make it look a lot like Jesus's- Yeah ... shroud would look.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher I'm going to put holes in the hands. I'm going to put crown of thorn blood on the head. Yeah, that's exactly what you would do.
Dan McClellan And I don't know if you've seen this as well, but there's been, in response to the science has proven the authenticity of the shroud, somebody used AI to try to recreate what Jesus would've looked like based on the shroud, and it's white European Jesus.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan From- Yes ... the medieval European arts world. And it's no coincidence that the Jesus on the shroud happens to match the depiction of Jesus, including the artistic styles that were in vogue- Mm ... during the time period that the shroud suddenly popped up on the scene. That's what we would expect. But- Yeah ... as I am wont to say on my social media channels, learn to think critically and Google competently.
Dan Beecher That's right.
Dan McClellan And you can free yourself from the grips of these dogmas and you'll learn an awful lot of cool stuff along the way, too.
Dan Beecher I think that's a great place to close this out.
Dan McClellan Yep.
Dan Beecher A good final message. Get out there and critically think and competently Google, everybody. And that'll be it for the show. If you would like to help make our show go, and in so doing, get yourself access to an early and ad-free version of every episode, as well as the potential, if you're at the right level, to get the extra bonus content every single week, you can go to patreon.com/dataoverdogma. If you want to reach us, it's contact@dataoverdogmapod.com, and we'll talk to you again next week.
Dan McClellan Bye everybody.
