The Bet that Built a Temple

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

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

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

Dan Beecher They're going.

Dan McClellan They're going.

Dan Beecher They're going. Rocking and rolling, baby. How are you doing?

Dan McClellan I'm gearing up for a trip to Boston.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan To go do the Boston thing. We're going together. We're going to have a great time.

Dan Beecher Yeah. We're going to go speak at Harvard, which as I said, for those of you patrons who get the after party over on Patreon, I talked a little bit about how funny it is to see the faces of my friends when I tell them that I am going to be giving a keynote address at a symposium at Harvard, which blows their mind considering I, unlike Dan, do not have any fancy degrees or literacy or whatever. I do have those.

Dan McClellan A high school diploma.

Dan Beecher I don't have that. Well, I got a GED, so that's- Got the GED ... technically counts, I guess.

Dan McClellan I don't know. Anywho, but yes, that's going to be fun.

Dan Beecher But it is not pertinent to what we're doing right now, and what we're doing right now is a Data Over Dogma show, and it's going to be a fun one because it's a chapter and verse, but not a chapter and verse that you're going to find if you open... Most of us have a Bible laying around the house.

Dan McClellan I don't know. Or you go to a hotel room, open that drawer, you're not going to find- Move the Book of Mormon out of the way if you're in the Marriott.

Dan Beecher Yeah. If you're in a Marriott, that's right.

Dan McClellan You're not going to find 1 Esdras there.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan Probably not.

Dan Beecher So, let's dive in to our chapter and verse. Well, Dan, we said it.

Dan McClellan It's 1 Esdras. 1 Esdras.

Dan Beecher Apparently, there are multiple Esdrases.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But we're just doing the first one, and as we said, it's not in my Bible.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher So, what is this thing? Where did it come from? Why are we talking about it?

Dan McClellan So, we generally find it in the Greek and Slavonic Orthodox traditions.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan It derives from the Septuagint, from the ancient Greek translation, and it's basically a version of Ezra/Nehemiah that it's a Greek translation, and it's a little expansive. It has a little bit extra in it. But if you have Ezra/Nehemiah, then you have access to something close to the majority of 1 Esdras. And I think there's a lot of fascinating things associated with the fact that this comes from the Septuagint. One, there are a lot of scholars who think it's a translation from a Semitic language, from either Hebrew or Aramaic.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, it could have been originally composed in Hebrew or Aramaic before being translated into Greek. And it is only in the canons of those traditions that adhered more faithfully to the Septuagint, whereas the broader Catholic tradition kind of fell away from giving the Septuagint preferential treatment, and once we got to the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, then the Apocrypha kind of became secondary. It's not part of the Apocrypha. It is something distinct from that. But if we look in Josephus, Josephus is one of the earliest references that we have to the notion of a Jewish canon- Mm ... where he talks about there being a certain number of books. But Josephus also, when he talks about Ezra/Nehemiah, he seems to be quoting from 1 Esdras- Oh ... rather than from the Ezra/Nehemiah books, which suggests that maybe for Josephus, this was his canonical version of Ezra/Nehemiah.

Dan Beecher So, when you say Ezra/Nehemiah, you're saying the Book of Ezra, the Book of Nehemiah- Yes ... cover basically all the same ground, minus one little story, as 1 Esdras. Is that right?

Dan McClellan Yeah, more or less.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And there's a slight change in order. There are a handful of verses that are moved up a little earlier in 1 Esdras in order to create kind of this poetic, I think a lot of scholars say there's a chiasm, and chiasmus is this idea where you have theme A, theme B, theme C, and then you've got your central theme, and then you go theme D, theme C, theme B, C.

Dan Beecher This is the theory that they used to create the episodes of "Seinfeld." Is that right? You got an A story and a B story, and then a C.

Dan McClellan But then you go B and A.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And there's a parallelism.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So, it's inverse parallelism.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And this became a thing decades ago in scholarship where everybody's, "Ooh, chiasms all over the place." And even in Book of Mormon scholarship, there's a lot of focus on chiasms, but they're not very common anymore to talk about. But I think there are a lot of scholars who recognize the way that 1 Esdras is set up, there does seem to be an inverse parallelism, a basic inverse parallelism- Okay ... associated with the alterations, and a lot of that has to do with the stuff that's added.

Dan Beecher But yeah- Sorry. It seems a little too coincidental that Esdras is so close to the word Ezra. Are they the same?

Dan McClellan Well, yeah, it's just the Greek transliteration.

Dan Beecher Okay. So, basically, this is just Ezra And yeah.

Dan McClellan Was- It's better than Ezra. I'm kidding.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan It's not better than Ezra. That's the name of a band.

Dan Beecher Okay. So, are both these books in the Septuagint, Ezra and Esdras?

Dan McClellan There may be manuscripts where they are, but no. And one of the titles for 1 Esdras is Greek Ezra.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan Because it's the Greek translation.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan It was probably composed somewhere around the 2nd century BCE. So it's coming around the time that the Septuagint is being prepared anyway. But again, it's certainly plausible that it was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic. And then you do have a little bit, Ezra begins with the last two verses of 2 Chronicles, chapter 36.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan So the very end of 2 Chronicles, the last two verses are the first two verses of the Book of Ezra. But when we look at 1 Esdras, 1 Esdras. No, that's not right.

Dan Beecher First-- Whew.

Dan McClellan The dental trays are tripping me up. 1 Esdras, it's the last two chapters of 2 Chronicles- Okay ... are the first chapter of 1 Esdras.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan So, I've got to find a way around 1 Esdras, because I keep wanting to put a T on the end of it. So we've got a slightly larger inclusion of that introduction, and that has led to some people theorizing that maybe the Books of Chronicles were a part of Ezra and Nehemiah, that it was all kept on one scroll or something like that. And so maybe when this was translated into Greek, they took a larger chunk of 2 Chronicles than the people who transmitted it in Hebrew. So, that's a possibility. But basically, we're talking about, we begin with the end of the reign of King Josiah, and we get the last king of Judah and the fall of Jerusalem. And then we get to Cyrus the Great, who, and if you weren't aware of this, everybody out there, Cyrus the Great is called my Christ- Oh ... by God in Isaiah 45.

Dan Beecher I was not aware of that.

Dan McClellan At least it's my Messiah. The Hebrew of Isaiah 45:1 is, "My Messiah." Cyrus the Great, he's explicitly referred to by name, Cyrus, and explicitly called his anointed.

Dan Beecher Wow.

Dan McClellan The Hebrew is his anointed, I think. Is it the Greek that says my anointed?

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan The Greek has kyrios ho theos to christou, so that would be my Christ. God calls Cyrus my Christ. Persian king, this is the guy who- Yeah ... conquered Babylon, the Babylonian Empire, 539 BCE, took over- Famously not a Hebrew.

Dan Beecher Famously- Yes.

Dan McClellan Yeah, don't know if his identity as non-Hebrew is the famous part of it, but he was definitely very famous and was definitely not an Israelite. But yeah, this is kind of a, what is it? Ex eventu prophecy, basically. Someone writing after this time period is looking back and having God go, "Yeah, the guy who conquered things, because that ended up being good for us, he was working for me."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Is basically what we have there. And the 1 Esdras is trying to get us into the period when there's a return to Jerusalem, when they're rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem in Nehemiah, when Ezra is restoring knowledge of the law of the Lord. And then we also have some rather xenophobic, ethnocentric divorces that are forced upon- Mm ... the folks when they get back there. Everyone who married foreign-- All the men who married foreign women, they have to divorce them and then send those women and the kids packing. So, that's a problematic part of this. But, as we were mentioning before we started the show, there's this awesome story that gets added into 1 Esdras that is not a part- ... of Ezra and Nehemiah, and this story begins at chapter 3. 1 Esdras, chapter 3, where King Darius... Now, if we go look in the Book of Daniel, King Darius is the one. Darius I, or the Great, is the one who conquers Babylon, and Cyrus only comes later, which is not historical.

Dan Beecher But- ...

Dan McClellan Darius had a great banquet for all who were under him, all who were born in his house, and all the nobles of Media and Persia, and the satraps, and the generals, and the governors were under him in the 127 satrapies from India to Ethiopia. They ate and drank, and when they were satisfied, they went away, and King Darius went up to his bedroom. He went to sleep, but woke up again. Then three young men of the bodyguard, who kept guard over the person of the king, said to one another, "Let each of us state what one word is strongest, and to the one whose statement seems wisest, King Darius will give rich gifts and great honors of victory." Which is weird.

Dan Beecher It is weird. Like, "Hey, let's all three of us make a bet, and then- That other guy has to give us the thing that we demand- Yeah ... because of our bet.

Dan McClellan Meanwhile, from the room, you hear, "Shut up. I'm trying to sleep."

Dan Beecher Yeah. The fact that it has the king waking again, maybe.

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher It's a weirdly told story. That's all I'm going to say.

Dan McClellan Yeah. But all I could think of was Conan the Barbarian. "What is best in life?" Do you remember that scene from Conan the Barbarian?

Dan Beecher I'm not convinced I've seen that all the way through.

Dan McClellan You may have not have stayed through to the end of that one.

Dan Beecher Well, if I've seen it, it was bits and pieces when it was on TV, and I was a kid, and it was like- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan whatever.

Dan Beecher I don't know.

Dan McClellan It's kind of this trope where you have this bizarre, kind of very abstract open-ended question as part of a meeting, or a dinner party, or a feast, or something like that. And here, it's just three bodyguards standing outside of the king's chamber negotiating the king's good graces. But in Conan, somebody asks him, "What is best in life?" And he says, "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women." Only in that probably at least partially fake Austrian accent- Yeah ... that should have been gone a long time ago. But that's what I think of when somebody's like, "Let's debate what word is strongest."

Dan Beecher Yeah. It's a weird question, but boy, does it just take over the entire house of Darius by storm. Boy, everybody's into this question. So these three guys each write their word on a piece of paper- Yeah ... and stick it under the pillow of the king.

Dan McClellan Yeah, seal them up, and then- You haven't experienced this. Anybody with kids out there has experienced being asleep and then sensing a presence or hearing the shuffling of little feet- ... and opening your eyes and seeing a miniature human looming over you, and just being like, "Ah!"

Dan Beecher Staring at you.

Dan McClellan Yeah. But I can imagine them being like, "Shh. Just put it under the pillow.

Dan Beecher Just go." Just put it there.

Dan McClellan "Just slide it. Don't lift the pillow. Just slide it." Maybe- "Slide it under."

Dan Beecher I think what I was imagining is that Darius was still awake and getting his warm milk. And they just stuck it under there while he was gone, and then he came back. While he...

Dan McClellan Anywho. What are you doing in here?

Dan Beecher Oh, sorry. Nothing is under your pillow, so don't worry about that at all.

Dan McClellan It's called pillow talk, baby. And then they put it under the pillow and said, "When the king wakes, they will give him the writing, and to the one whose statement the king and the three nobles of Persia judge to be wisest, the victory shall be given according to what is written."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You're going to see what this is all an ideology for at the end. But this is a very silly story.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher These are three strong guys. This isn't the three wisest guys in the kingdom- Yeah.

Dan McClellan ...

Dan Beecher getting together to have this competition. It's just the three tough guys- Yeah ... who are bodyguards. The first guy writes that wine is the strongest.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher The second guy writes, "The king is his..." I like the second guy's approach because it is the brown-noser approach, and it seems- Yes ... like that is a smart way to go. You're never going to go wrong by flattering the king.

Dan McClellan Yeah, particularly in a situation where you have already dedicated the king's resources to a prize he never agreed to.

Dan Beecher Right, exactly.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So- Since we're doing this ...

Dan Beecher it makes sense to say that. And the third one, now here's what I was thinking. I thought we were building to a very obvious third thing. As I was reading this, I was pretty sure it was going to say God is the strongest.

Dan McClellan Yeah, it goes wine, king, God.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan You know that old children's tale from the sea?

Dan Beecher Everybody knows that one. Yeah, that old canard.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Anywho, no, it's not God. First of all, the second guy gets two answers, apparently. Don't know why he gets two. Or the third guy, rather. So the third guy writes, "Women are the strongest, but above all things, truth is the victor."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Which, why does he get two?

Dan McClellan Yeah. I'm thinking of Gollum in "The Hobbit" going, his last guess is, "String or nothing." It's like, wait a minute.

Dan Beecher Whoa.

Dan McClellan Do you know how last guess works?

Dan Beecher Because...

Dan McClellan But yeah, so- Yeah, and the women, I think it will be interesting to just look briefly at the women answer because you are kind of like, "Aw." But also- Yeah ... it's kind of pedestalizing- Yeah ... and also patronizing.

Dan Beecher You can say patronizing if you want to. They're the same thing too.

Dan McClellan I distinguish patronizing from patronizing, as patronizing is going into a business, and patronizing is the other thing.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Whether that is accurate or not, that's just how I keep them straight in my mind.

Dan Beecher I like it.

Dan McClellan Except when I mispeak like I just did.

Dan Beecher It's like how we separate want from won't. And I won't be hearing any problems with that.

Dan McClellan And I won't be dignifying that with a response.

Dan Beecher That's right.

Dan McClellan And, "Who is it, then, who rules them or has the mastery over them? Is it not women? Women gave birth to the king and to every people that rules over sea and land. From women they came." And women brought up the very men who plant the vineyards from which comes wine. Women make men's clothes. They bring men glory. Men cannot exist without women. If men gather gold and silver or any other beautiful thing, and then see a woman lovely in appearance and beauty, they let all those things go and gape at her and with open mouths stare at her and all prefer her to gold or silver or any other beautiful thing.

Dan Beecher A man- I call this the James Brown argument.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher "This is a man's world."

Dan McClellan A man leaves his own father who brought him up and his own region and clings to his wife. With his wife, he ends his days and no thought of his father or his mother or his region. Therefore, you must realize that women rule over you.

Dan Beecher We should be clear that this is later. This is in chapter four. What happens is that they tuck their answers under the pillow, and then the king wakes up and agrees to this whole endeavor and calls in the wisest people in the three wise men.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Not those three wise men. And so they are doing the contest. The contest is on, and each of them has to explain their answer.

Dan McClellan Now, funny enough, he calls these people in from across the entire empire.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Which would take months for everybody.

Dan Beecher Well, no, they were already there, right? They were already there for the- Oh, they were at the banquet?

Dan McClellan ...

Dan Beecher for the big feast.

Dan McClellan Oh.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah.

Dan Beecher They were already hanging out.

Dan McClellan They ate and drank and they...

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan You know what? I completely did not connect those two dots.

Dan Beecher Sometimes Dan gets it wrong, you guys.

Dan McClellan More than I'm happy to admit. But yeah, I definitely got that wrong there. So- go ahead.

Dan Beecher So as long as the wisest people in all of the lands- Yeah ... are going to be around, are hanging out, I might as well call them in for this- Yeah, so do you ...

Dan McClellan bodyguard contest. And yes, so yeah- They probably expected something different.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan The scholars, they're like, "Hey, we need you to judge this bodyguard contest." And they're probably like, "Uh, okay." And then they're like, "Oh, they're going to be reading us their responses to the question, 'What word is strongest?' I have much better things to do with my time."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And, oh, gosh.

Dan Beecher This- But apparently they don't.

Dan McClellan Now we're getting to the dregs.

Dan Beecher So each of them, the first guy explains why he thinks wine is so strong, because it makes everybody drunk and dumb.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And then the second guy explains why he thinks the king is stronger than everybody, blah, blah, blah. He does the brown-noser play.

Dan McClellan Yep.

Dan Beecher And then, yeah, the third guy starts with his James Brown, "This is a man's world, but it wouldn't be nothing without a woman or a girl." But then closes it out with his real answer, which is, truth. Is that it?

Dan McClellan Truth? The king and the nobles looked at one another, and he began to speak about truth.

Dan Beecher So then he does it, yeah. He says that truth is important.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher And everybody's just blown away- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan about truth. Now, if we go back to the beginning of the speech about women, the third bodyguard is identified as Zerubbabel.

Dan Beecher Now- Right. I saw that, and it does feel like it's a big reveal, but I don't know who Zerubbabel is.

Dan McClellan Who's Zerubbabel? Zerubbabel was governor in Jerusalem. Sometimes the Second Temple, which is rebuilt as a result of what's going on in this story, at least according to this narrative, it's referred to as Zerubbabel's Temple.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan So- Oh.

Dan Beecher And he started as a lowly bodyguard? That's so great. Good for him.

Dan McClellan He worked his way up. It was wine- Yeah ... king, women, Zerubbabel's Temple.

Dan Beecher It's that age-old thing where it's like, you start out as a waiter, and eventually you're CEO of the company or whatever.

Dan McClellan Or, well, I think most of the time you just get stuck as the manager of the restaurant- Well, there's that ... and then spend the rest of your life trying to get out of that job.

Dan Beecher Yeah, exactly.

Dan McClellan But now, it says that they're going to give, the reward is that they will give rich gifts and great honors of victory. But then, Zerubbabel's reward in verse 22 of chapter 4, the king says what he wants. And, he does not seem to say, "Up to half of my kingdom," which usually- No, he said- ... he'd have these stories go ...

Dan Beecher he says more than that. He says, "Ask what you wish, even beyond what is written- What is written.

Dan McClellan Yeah ...

Dan Beecher and we will give it to you." Yeah, so it's- So it is kind of that even half of my kingdom vibe.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's the same idea. It's like they're offering what no king has ever offered anyone.

Dan Beecher Right. Yeah, exactly.

Dan McClellan And then we get to the part that kind of throws you off a little bit. Then he said to the king, "Remember the vow that you made on the day when you became king to build Jerusalem and to send back all the vessels that were taken from Jerusalem, which Cyrus set apart when he began to destroy Babylon and vowed to send them back. You also vowed to build the temple. And now, O Lord, the king, this is what I ask and request of you, and this befits your greatness. I pray, therefore, that you fulfill the vow whose fulfillment you vowed- ... to the king of heaven with your own lips."

Dan Beecher It's the worst written sentence ever. "Remember how you vowed a thing that you vowed to fulfill the vow- You vowed to fulfill the vow ... and then you fulfilled. I want you to fulfill the vow that you vowed to fulfill."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Anyway, there you go.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Now, it wasn't Darius who would've sent people back and authorized the rebuilding of the temple. It's supposed to be Cyrus. There's a little bit of a- A little bit of historical how's your father going on here.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So at least as far as we know. But it says then King Darius got up and kissed him.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Probably closed mouth. We're not sure, but- Yeah, we can't tell.

Dan Beecher And- Look- Yeah ... we don't know what the customs of the time were.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And he is the king. It's good to be the king.

Dan McClellan Yeah. "And wrote letters for him to all the treasurers and governors and generals and satraps, that they should give safe conduct to him and to all who were going up with him to build Jerusalem." And then we get Zerubbabel offers up a prayer, lifted up his face to heaven toward Jerusalem.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And this is something you see in Daniel as well. In what direction does Daniel pray? Daniel prays toward Jerusalem.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And during the whole nobody's allowed to pray thing, which is indicative of this understanding that God is in Jerusalem or the Jerusalem Temple, or at least God is, if not confined, at least home base is the Jerusalem Temple and the land of Israel.

Dan Beecher Yeah, I guess we have talked about that being a feature, a function of that time, of how they thought of their god in that time, which was- Yeah ... it was a regional god. It was a god of that area- Mm-hmm ... of that place. And other gods were the gods of other places. So yeah, it makes sense that you would aim your prayer at your god and- ... yeah, and just sort of shoot it back at the... I wonder if that's what the Muslim tradition of praying- Oh, toward Mecca?

Dan McClellan ...

Dan Beecher toward Mecca is.

Dan McClellan It's definitely related.

Dan Beecher Related to, yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. The intuition is definitely there, but it obviously conflicts with notions that God is everywhere- Right ... and is not confined to a point in space and time. And so you have to kind of re-rationalize things- Right ... when the original rationale becomes obsolete.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But he praises God, "From you comes the victory, from you comes wisdom, and yours is the glory. I am your servant, blessed are you who have given me wisdom. I give you thanks, O Lord of our ancestors." So took the letters, went to Babylon, told this to all his kindred, and they praised the God of their ancestors because he had given them freedom and permission to go up and build Jerusalem and the temple that is called by his name, and they feasted with music and rejoicing for seven days. And seven days, we should probably do an episode at some point where we talk about the number seven.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And I will have to be prohibited from quoting There's Something About Mary in that episode, but- Okay ... because the seven-day week is almost certainly a result of the time spent as exiles in- Okay ... exiles in Babylon.

Dan Beecher Oh, interesting.

Dan McClellan So yeah, I think I'd have to do a little prep to get a little more of the background of that, but I think that would be an interesting episode.

Dan Beecher Yeah, that would be interesting, and it ties into other sort of what people would say is numerology- Hmm ... in and amongst the various writings of- Yeah.

Dan McClellan You got three, you got seven, you got 12, you got 40.

Dan Beecher You got 40.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You got 70.

Dan McClellan There are a lot of significant numbers, and once we get to chapter five, the first six verses of chapter five are supposed to be unique to 1 Esdras.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan And it talks about the ancestral houses, the priests and descendants of Phinehas, son of Aaron, and Joshua, and the house of David, and so on. And then I think verse seven is where it starts back up with the genealogical list that we find- Mm-hmm ... in Ezra-Nehemiah, which it just goes on with so and so, and so and so, the descendants of such and such's servants, and the descendants of such and such. So most of the rest of 1 Esdras is parallel to what we find in Ezra-Nehemiah. Ezra-Nehemiah, if I recall, I could be wrong, but I think it's the only historical narrative in the Bible that actually addresses what's going on in the Persian time period. Esther is set in that time period, but I think this is the only one that discusses kind of broader events that are going on, particularly related to the return to Jerusalem and the building of the temple. So 1 Esdras is a retelling or a paraphrase or some kind of parallel account of this to 1, or excuse me, Ezra-Nehemiah.

Dan Beecher All right.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's- There you go.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan If you're Orthodox or if you're part of one of the Slavonic traditions, then you're probably more familiar with this than either of us is, but if you- Well, I just think it's interesting that, I guess if you're part of one of those traditions, you have to read a lot of the stories multiple times.

Dan Beecher If you're going to read the same thing, if you're going to read the whole book, other than the story that we just told of the bet between the three bodyguards, you're just going to have to read Ezra and Nehemiah twice, apparently. So there you go. There's a lot of that in the Bible.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher A lot of retreading of ground.

Dan McClellan But I think it's interesting when you get into some of the stories that are written in this time period, there are so many parallels.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan Like the court tale motif- Yeah ... is so much of the apocryphal texts and 1 Esdras, but also Esther and Dan, Daniel, excuse me, I called him Dan.

Dan Beecher Daniel.

Dan McClellan We're close, so we can use nicknames like that.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But yeah, the whole court tale is such a standardized motif from the- Yeah ... stories of this time period that you basically know what's happening- Uh-huh ... before it happens.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But yeah, it's a fascinating little story, an interesting piece of the Bible that a lot of people aren't aware of.

Dan Beecher Great.

Dan McClellan There you go.

Dan Beecher Having some fun. If you have appreciated this little bit of education and would like to become a part...

Dan McClellan Education.

Dan Beecher Hopefully, it's entertaining.

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher I don't want it to sound like this is just that. Anyway, please consider becoming one of our patrons over on patreon.com/dataoverdogma. We really appreciate that, and you can get access to the after party, which is bonus content that we do every week, if you can join us at that level. If you can't, we still appreciate whatever you can give. Hell, you can give more than $10 a month if you want to. We're not stopping you. Anyway, thanks to Roger Gowdy for editing the show, thanks to JJ for being our producer, and thanks to all y'all for tuning in. We'll talk to you again next time.

Dan McClellan Bye, everybody.