The Neighborhood of Make-Believe

Dan Beecher Is it me or is this bush not really burning, man? I can't tell. It looks like it's just on fire, but never burns.

Dan McClellan You got any more of that manna, man? Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and combat the spread of misinformation about the same, and we're going to be doing a little of both today, aren't we, Dan?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan A lot. A lot of both. A lot of both of the two.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Absolutely. Looking forward to today. These are topics that come up all the time, and a little topical, when it comes to what's in the news.

Dan Beecher Oh, sure. Some of it. At least- I don't know that our first thing might- No ... not be too topical, but the second thing will be.

Dan McClellan It's talkable. It's not necessarily topical, but- ... the second one, yeah, at least at time of recording, the second one is on the minds of an awful lot of people.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And we'll talk about that.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Our first segment is going to be an Artifacts and Fiction segment.

Dan McClellan Mm.

Dan Beecher We're going to be diving into the Red Sea, and won't it be nice?

Dan McClellan It'll be very shallow.

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan Very walkable.

Dan Beecher Oh, easy.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So- Apparently, you can just sort of wave your arms and just walk straight through, so that's going to be great.

Dan McClellan It's going to be a talkable, a topical, a walkable- ... day today.

Dan Beecher All right. Yeah, exactly. And then later on in the show, we're going to do- Later on, yeah ... we're going to do a chapter and verse about a good Samaritan. We'll see what happens with that.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But to start us off, Artifacts and Fiction. And today's topic, I'll give a brief introduction. I know that- Okay ... you were prepped to talk about it more in depth. But, I love that the main guy... You've got to love it when Google trolls a dude. Because when you Google Ron Wyatt- Mm-hmm ... Google comes up and it says, "Ron Wyatt, American nurse aesthetist."

Dan McClellan Yes. That was his day job.

Dan Beecher So, that is not at all what he is known for- No ... and not remotely- Well, I don't know.

Dan McClellan In the community of nurse aesthetists, and we're not in any way, shape, or form whatsoever mocking or deriding that- No ... community or that job. Those are a very important people, as I and my wife can both attest. And that is very important work. However, yes, he's more widely known for other stuff.

Dan Beecher He kind of abandoned his field of expertise for a field in which he had no expertise.

Dan McClellan Zero expertise.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And apparently it got started, I was just reading about this guy, and apparently it got started because he saw a picture in Life Magazine of a hill in Turkey- Mm-hmm ... and said, "That looks like a boat shape," and decided it was where Noah's Ark landed, and that sent him on the amateur archaeology path forever.

Dan McClellan That is hilarious. I have not heard that story. However, obviously he's talking about the Durupinar site.

Dan Beecher Correct.

Dan McClellan So, this is a hillside in Turkey. So, when you looked into this, had someone already said, "We think this is Noah's Ark"? Or he just saw a picture in a magazine that somebody was like, "Look at the lush green hillside," and he was like, "There's a boat."

Dan Beecher I think it was maybe a little bit of both. I think people were- Okay ... already buzzing that there was a possibility- Oh, okay ... that it was boat-shaped, and what if- Yeah ... and he just took it way too far.

Dan McClellan He got the tingle and- Yeah ... and just decided this is how he was going to be remembered, for all time and in all places- That's right ... as someone who was not an archaeologist, but...

Dan Beecher But was determined to be one anyway.

Dan McClellan And do a lot of harm to the field of archaeology.

Dan Beecher Oh, my gosh.

Dan McClellan Which he has done.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Well, in his life, he made over 100 trips to the Middle East from 1977 until his death in 1999, so- Wow ... he knows what he's talking about. A hundred times 100.

Dan McClellan He knows the area at least.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. But today we're going to be talking...

Dan Beecher Look, he has claims about Noah's Ark, and timbers on Noah's Ark, and all- I think he claimed that he found a pillar from Noah that had inscriptions on it and whatever. He claimed he'd found Goliath's sword.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That's amazing.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But today we're going to discuss a scuba diving trip that he took- ... as well as some other things that he did.

Dan McClellan Yeah. He was hunting for seashells and- ... went, "What's this?" But just for those who might be curious about the Durupinar site, this is a geologic formation on a hillside in Turkey, and you can tell it's a geologic formation because it's a little teardrop shape thing that is surrounded by, and it looks kind of like rock outcroppings coming up that create this little teardrop shape. And there are other identical rocky outcroppings around it. I think- There are a bunch of rocky outcroppings in the area.

Dan Beecher You said teardrop shape. I think you mean ark shape. I think it was very ark shaped. It looks kind of almost like a football sort of thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And there's been, and- So actual scientists have gone there to study it, and there's a paper from a journal called, "Journal of Geoscience Education." There's a paper from 1996. This is volume 44, if you're curious. Lawrence Collins and David Fasold wrote this paper called Bogus Noah's Ark from Turkey Exposed as a Common Geologic Structure. And so all the stuff, they're like, "We found the rooms. We found the beams. We found the walls and everything." And they're like, oh, what did they say? They said they found rivets, metal rivets.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan They said they found anchor stones and all this stuff nearby.

Dan Beecher Oh, that's right. I remember the anchor stones.

Dan McClellan I don't- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher metal rivets. Did they even have metallurgy to do riveting in Noah's time? Like, would they have even had that?

Dan McClellan Depends on when you date it. They had-- Yeah, it depends on when you date it really.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But what this paper goes through, it addresses all of the claims one by one and points out that no, these are all entirely natural geologic formations. And also the, what they call drogue stones or the anchor stones, they're large standing stones stele that have little holes near the top of them, and they're like, "They tied them together and they hung from the side of the boat to help anchor them in stormy weather and everything." And like, no, if you tried to hang them from a boat with a rope, it would've snapped the top because the holes are drilled or cut so close to the top edge of the stone.

Dan Beecher Oh. Like there wasn't enough to secure the- Also, quite famously, that particular boat was not made to anchor. Well, yeah. It was made to just float sort of randomly until it set down gently.

Dan McClellan The idea was the weight hangs from the boat and kind of steadies it, so even if the water is rough, the boat is holding a little more still.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan But so totally nonsense, the claims about the Durupinar site.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher But let's move on to better claims, more fun claims.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Because Ron Wyatt was very interested in proving the Bible through finding stuff in the Middle East, AKA making stuff up.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Oh, I gave away the ending. Spoiler alert. He made up stuff.

Dan McClellan And just so you know, over 100 years before Ron Wyatt, actual professional archaeologists already tried to do that.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan And that's what resulted in critical scholarship and the field of biblical archaeology because they went there and developed their techniques, their methodologies, by trying to prove the Bible and failing over and over and over again. And so while there are certainly many parts of the Bible that are historical, they were there basically to prove the supernatural parts, and they never could. And so actual archaeologists morphed into critical scholarship as they were like, "Well, let's develop these methodologies. Let's just try to do the best we can, and we'll see what we find." And that turned into biblical archaeology, which would become critical scholarship. But if you don't have any training and you're just there to try to make money because you're not going to be a nurse anesthetist when you're spending all your time in Turkey and Syria and Palestine, you have to kind of pay the bills, and so you just make stuff up. Well- Which is what he did ...

Dan Beecher or another way of putting it is all those trained guys were so mired in their own secular thinking that they couldn't see the truth that was right in front of them. So let's talk about that.

Dan McClellan Let's talk about the truth that Wyatt uncovered. I want to talk about three main places. One is a valley that ends in a little beach on the side of what's called the Gulf of Aqaba, and the beach is called Nuweiba Beach. And then I want to talk about two mountaintops, Jabal Maqla and Jabal al-Lawz, both of which are, depending on who is talking about it, both are kind of conflated and asserted to be Mount Sinai, even though they are two entirely separate mountaintops.

Dan Beecher Can we just call them Mounts Sinai?

Dan McClellan Mounts Sinai. Yes, you got to make sure you get that glottal stop in there just to emphasize the S. And a lot of this is coming through representation of Wyatt's findings from Kent Hovind.

Dan Beecher Ah.

Dan McClellan So I just went and found a Kent Hovind video, and he was like, "And here's what we have." And then I just wrote down all the points to respond to them.

Dan Beecher Kent Hovind once challenged me to a debate. I think he was just going down the list of famous atheists or- Really?

Dan McClellan ...

Dan Beecher of quasi-prominent atheists, and he challenged me to a debate. He even offered to host me at his little very sad rural amusement park, like biblically themed theme park sort of thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And I Googled it and looked around and was like, "Oh, I'm not going there. Oh, no." Oh, no.

Dan McClellan So this is like the Righteous Gemstones, but without all the money?

Dan Beecher Yeah. It was very much that.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher It was the less righteous gemstones.

Dan McClellan Yeah. The tolerable gemstones. So one of the first things he talks about is that there is this valley with a dry riverbed that runs down to this beach, Nuweiba Beach.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan And I don't know how much Wyatt emphasized this, but Hovind made a big deal out of the fact that the rocks are all moved to the side- Oh ... so that it is flat enough and there are no obstructions so that you could wheel carts and things through there.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan Which is one of the most laughable things because It's a dry riverbed, and one of the things about dry riverbeds is that sometimes they have water in them, particularly when there's a flash flood or something like that. This is what a wadi is in this part of the world.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So it is not people who have moved the rocks and the debris out of the way so that they can get carts on through 4,000 years ago, and nothing has moved in the 4,000 years since then.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's the fact that there are flash floods in the area that move rocks and debris out of the way so the water can get through. But this leads to this beach.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's a little bit of a delta. When you get the flash floods, you're going to move a lot of silt, and it's going to get deposited once the water hits the Red Sea.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan And so Nuweiba Beach kind of sticks out a little bit. It's a little bit of a dry river delta. But Wyatt claimed that he found two pillars, a pillar on the Nuweiba Beach side and another pillar on the other side in Saudi Arabia, and these are eight-foot-tall cylindrical pillars- Hmm ... that he says were erected by King Solomon around 1000 BCE to commemorate the crossing of the Red Sea. And he says the pillar that was found on the Saudi Arabia side had an inscription that was written in old Hebrew- Wow ... that talked about it, and he has no photos or anything of the pillar that was on the Saudi Arabia side, as is his wont.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan He says that as soon as the Saudi government found out what was there, they came and absconded with it and are hiding it so that nobody can see it. But he does have pictures of the pillar that was on the Nuweiba Beach side, which is a Roman-era cylindrical architectural pillar that has a base and everything.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And when you look in the passage that he says talks about the standing stone that was erected, the standing stone is matzevah, which is not an architectural pillar, is not a cylindrical pillar. It's a standing stone that is a little taller than it is wide. It has a flat front and then a rounded back, and the idea is the flat front functions as a face, and you write things on it.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So if there were an inscription, it would've been written on the flat side of the pillar. But if you've just got a Roman-era architectural pillar, there's no inscription on there. So he has entirely misunderstood what this pillar is for, when it's dated. He doesn't even know the difference between an architectural pillar and a standing stone. But that doesn't stop him from making stuff up.

Dan Beecher Well, and surely he lacked the ability to translate the ancient Hebrew that he claimed was on the- Yeah ... other stone.

Dan McClellan Well, it's always experts in Hebrew who told him what it said.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And he never names them just because they're made up.

Dan Beecher Just experts.

Dan McClellan Why?

Dan Beecher Why do you need to know? Shut up. You don't have an expert. That's you.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And plenty of people around the world like that right now who have press conferences, and- Yeah ... people say, "Well, how do you know this?"

Dan Beecher Wait, what?

Dan McClellan And they say, "Because I have common sense, man.

Dan Beecher Don't you?" Yeah, exactly.

Dan McClellan It's just so obvious. And then something else that they noticed about this Nuweiba Beach was the sand appeared to them to be pretty glassy, like it had been melted and turned into glass.

Dan Beecher Oh, hey.

Dan McClellan Kinda, because it was still very grainy sand, and there were rocks embedded in it and everything, but the top, it looked like it was all concretized, like it had been melted.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan And then the claim is that it takes 3,000 degrees to melt sand. And so the idea was this is where the pillar of fire must have landed and melted Nuweiba Beach. And they have some photographs of that, and the people these days, you'll see videos all the time that talk about this, and then they always have this audio of some dude saying, "You can almost see footprints in the glass." And then for whatever reason, people always show photographs of White Sands National Park in New Mexico in the United States, which has footprints from 20,000-plus years ago.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But they always say that, and it's like, "Yes, because the Israelites were like, 'Look, the glass is bubbling and turning to sand. Walk around in it in your bare feet.'"

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's always a good idea.

Dan Beecher Man.

Dan McClellan But all this is, this is a perfectly natural occurrence. It's called beach rock, and it happens when certain things have to come together. You get a lot of calcite and other materials, and the seawater evaporates quickly, and you get something that basically concretizes all of this sand and dirt and rock and stuff. And so it looks like somehow this has all become a layer of concrete.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But beach rock occurs all over the world. It's perfectly natural.

Dan Beecher Now, I'm going to challenge you on something.

Dan McClellan Fine.

Dan Beecher Okay. I'm going to accept that the beach rock wasn't the sand melted. I'm going to accept that a dry riverbed looks like you moved all the rocks out of the way, blah, blah, blah.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher How do you explain, sir, how do you explain chariot wheels and human remains at the bottom? The man went into the water, and he found it.

Dan McClellan He did go into the water, and there are a bunch of claims associated with him going into the water, including, yes, two photographs that I know of that have been linked to Wyatt. One is of a coral formation. There's a pillar kind of formation and then a flat top, and in the photographs, you always see a chariot wheel superimposed upon it.

Dan Beecher And so- If they were good enough in Photoshop for that.

Dan McClellan Nobody ever pulled it out. Nobody ever found a chariot wheel. They just took a picture of a coral formation and said, "Doesn't that remind you of a chariot wheel?"

Dan Beecher And then- It's kind of got an image that looks like a circle, so.

Dan McClellan That's the thing superimposed on it. There's another one that I've seen, and I don't know if this came from Wyatt, but it's always included in the photos that are supposed to be Wyatt's. In very shallow water, there's some loose sand, and then there's a shiny four-spoke chariot wheel that's supposed to be sticking out of the water, and it's just a modern boat steering wheel- ... that has just fell in the water. And there's a little chunk of coral that somehow drifted on top of it, and people are like, "Yes, it's a 4,000-year-old gold-plated chariot wheel." And just because the middle of it has a big thread for screwing this thing onto a boat doesn't mean anything. So, nobody ever pulled up any chariot wheels at all. They're just some photographs. And then human remains, there's a femur or something like that, and it's never been dated. In fact, the site where it was discovered wasn't even documented. There's just a- Yeah ... a piece of bone on a table.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's a photograph of a piece of bone covered in some, and it's been calcified that's on a table.

Dan Beecher Well, and famously, this is saltwater that we're talking about. Famously, when they went and did research into the Titanic- Mm-hmm ... and went and searched that, there was no sign of any human remains anywhere.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Human remains don't last 70 years, let alone thousands of years.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher So, if you found a femur, Ron, you should probably call the police.

Dan McClellan They would take it away, and then you wouldn't be able to put it on a table- Well, that's a good point ... in your Righteous Gemstones amusement park.

Dan Beecher Right. No, that was Kent Hovind that had the amusement park. That was Kent Hovind.

Dan McClellan Okay, so.

Dan Beecher Ron Wyatt, just to be clear, there is, or at least there was, a little museum, the Wyatt Archaeological Museum, in Cornersville, Tennessee, which looks very much like, I don't know, a 1960s hi-fi shop or something from the outside. It doesn't look inviting nor confidence-inducing as a place where you would see actual artifacts. It doesn't read well from the outside anyway.

Dan McClellan Mm.

Dan Beecher Anyway, sorry. Move on. So, we don't have any chariot wheels or- No ... remains of people.

Dan McClellan There is, however, there's also the SS Thistlegorm.

Dan Beecher It's my new favorite name of a boat ever in my world.

Dan McClellan Yes, it is a great name. It's from the 19th century. It was sunk in 1941 in the Red Sea by German bombers, and it had railway equipment on it, which includes wheels.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so there are a bunch of people, and I don't think this is Ron Wyatt who said this, but there are people who will show you photographs of what look like very large metal wheels covered in coral that actually is from the bottom of the Red Sea, nowhere near Nuweiba. But it's actually from a 19th century shipwreck. The SS- Okay ...

Dan Beecher Thistlegorm.

Dan McClellan So just be aware that that's out there as well. And these days, there are a lot of AI-generated images.

Dan Beecher And to be clear, the place that we're talking about on the Red Sea isn't the middle of the Red Sea. It's one of the two little rabbit ears that come up from the top- Yes ... that are quite thin, quite narrow.

Dan McClellan Yes. Very narrow.

Dan Beecher But that's always where the crossing would've been, on one or the other of those rabbit ears.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Right?

Dan McClellan Because of where they're supposed to have left from, that's up in the delta region, and if they're crossing the Red Sea proper, they would've had to have traveled very far south before deciding to veer to the east to cross the Red Sea.

Dan Beecher Let's turn left. What do you think? There's a giant lake there, but yeah.

Dan McClellan Right around Kentuck-e- ... we're going to kind of real easy turn left. And so one of the other claims that Wyatt made, from my knowledge, he revised this claim.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan But he originally claimed that there was a natural land bridge at Nuweiba, that the water only got to a couple hundred feet deep right at the Nuweiba part.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan So that it wouldn't have taken much, according to Wyatt, for the water to get out of the way so the Israelites could have scampered across, and made it to the other side.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And there is no such land bridge. It is a little shallower there than the deepest part of that particular gulf. It's about 200 feet shallower- Oh ... but it still gets down to 800 feet- Wow ... there, and it's still quite steep. And Wyatt originally made that claim, "Oh, it's a land bridge." And then was like, "Okay, we looked, and it's pretty deep there." But you still have people who will produce images of this area as if there was this natural land bridge.

Dan Beecher Yeah, I think I've seen that, where the claim is that, "Look, it's deep on this side, and it's deep on this side, and then whoop, it just goes right up to just basically at the surface right here."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's amazing anybody drowned at all. It only comes up to your knees.

Dan McClellan There's an old episode of "Quantum Leap" every time somebody brings up drowning, where- He leaps into some kid's body. They're doing a hazing ritual, and his buddy has to tell him, "It only takes two teaspoons of water to drown a person." And for whatever reason, that's always in my head whenever people mention that, and I thought now would be a good time to bring it up.

Dan Beecher Yeah. For you young people, Quantum Leap was a television program back in the- ... middle, in the late 1900s.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher Let's move on.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Let's just say that we've crossed our land bridge.

Dan McClellan We've crossed the land bridge. The nonexistent land bridge- Right ...

Dan Beecher in the chariots that aren't actually down there.

Dan McClellan Mm.

Dan Beecher We've made it to the other side, and of course, we know that the next step in the Israelites' journey was to a mountain. Yes, that's- Or, as you pointed out earlier, two mountains Multiple mountains.

Dan McClellan Yes. We've got two mountains that are vying for the title of Mount Sinai, and there are features of each that a lot of apologists would really love to be just the features of one individual mountain- ... because that would come together and just really ring that bell in their loins. And, the two mountaintops in Western Saudi Arabia, one of them's called Jabal Maqla, and the other one is, I think eight or 10 miles north of that, and it's called Jabal al-Lawz. And the thing that they like about Jabal Maqla is that if you're looking at it from the east, down in a little valley area, and there's stuff down in the valley area that we'll talk about as well, but if you look up, it looks like the mountaintop is burnt.

Dan Beecher Ah.

Dan McClellan Just like the sand of Nuweiba Beach, it seems like fire has burnt the mountaintop because the rock is all black, and the bottom of the mountain is not black.

Dan Beecher And that would be significant because somewhere in the text it says something about a fire on the mountain, or what it- Yes.

Dan McClellan Somewhere in the text it does say something about God descending upon the mountain in fire. You have the pillar of fire- Right ... and then you have the pillar of the cloud that follows them by day and by night. Now, the interesting thing about this idea that this pillar of fire is burning sand and burning the tops of mountains is the only time you ever have any reference to what the fire that attends God's presence does to things is in Exodus 3 when it's burning the bush but is not actually burning the bush. It's not consuming it.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so, the only time the text ever tells us about this fire that attends God's presence, it says it doesn't burn stuff. Well- And so- ...

Dan Beecher the bush wasn't made of rock or sand, Dan.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That was a good bush.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It was made of something else, and that's why everybody really enjoyed being on the- Man ... on the mountaintop.

Dan Beecher "Is it me or is this bush not really burning, man? I can't tell. Looks like it's just on fire, but never burns."

Dan McClellan "You got any more of that manna, man?" "No, man, Moses isn't here." "No, it's me, man." And just a heads-up, we need to do a segment about this, but we know for a fact- About Cheech and Chong? No, about cannabis. We know for a fact that cannabis was used in rituals in ancient Israel.

Dan Beecher Yeah, man.

Dan McClellan So, we'll revisit that.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Let's get Cheech and Chong on the show, and we'll talk about cannabis in the rituals.

Dan McClellan Yeah, I think they would love hearing about that- All right, Cheech- ... the evidence.

Dan Beecher Yeah ... this one goes out to you. I know you listen. I know you're a fan. So the- So, let's get Chong ...

Dan McClellan the problem with this observation, however, is that the top of the mountain is black precisely because it is covered in what is known as contact metamorphic rock, which is rock that has been exposed to a heat source and so has charred, burned, darkened the outside of it. And the problem is the heat source that does this is either underground magma or lava flows. And one of the ways that we know this is not because God dipped a toe on the top of this mountain is that there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of square miles of western Saudi Arabia that are covered in contact metamorphic rock. So, you can go look on Google Earth and find Jabal Maqla, J-A-B-A-L M-A-Q-L-A, and you will see that there's kind of a little black thing that surrounds the top of it, and that black thing then extends- ... for miles and miles and miles to the west and to the south, and as you zoom out, you can see it's basically the majority of western Saudi Arabia that is covered in this stuff.

Dan Beecher You don't know that God didn't burn and visit all of those mountains.

Dan McClellan He was just kind of like, "Oops, I let my robe kind of drag a little bit, so." He walked there, man. That's how he got there. And so, that's really the main thing that people like about Jabal Maqla. Now, Jabal al-Lawz is further north, and near Jabal al-Lawz, well, there's one other thing at the base of Jabal Maqla. There's a pile of stones that's like 20 feet high. Natural rock formation. There's no way that a group of ancient Hebrews who were on the run from the Egyptians were like, "Hey, let's take multi-ton stones and create an altar." But there are petroglyphs that include different types of cow-type animals, and some of them, they suggest, are representative of the golden calf. However, there are a bunch of different animals that are depicted on this, and they also depict people hunting those animals on this. And archeologists have already dated these petroglyphs to the Nabataean period, which is about Third century BCE to second century CE. So around 1,000 years too late for this to have anything at all to do with Aaron's altar or the golden calf. So that's definitely not that altar.

Dan Beecher And- Also, when you make a golden calf, you're focused on the golden calf. You're not drawing pictures of it on the rocks. You already have the calf. It's right there.

Dan McClellan Yeah, we got the calf. We don't need the picture.

Dan Beecher They're schematics.

Dan McClellan You have to be creative about this.

Dan Beecher It was a study for the- Yeah ... for the actual physical thing. I like that.

Dan McClellan And then there are a couple other things that are found near Jabal al-Lawz. For instance, what they call the Split Rock of Horeb.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Which is a very large, 60, 70-foot-tall stone that does kind of look like an upside down-- like somebody took a guitar pick and stuck it in a pile of rocks. Only the guitar pick is a giant rock. And then it's got a split, just a perfectly vertical split right down the middle of it. And, the argument is that this is where Moses struck the stone to bring forth the water, and they argue, "Look, the stones are all eroded." "This is where the water came out."

Dan Beecher It's as if water has been pouring over these stones.

Dan McClellan Well, and here's the thing.

Dan Beecher How could that possibly have happened?

Dan McClellan This pile of rocks is in the middle of a wadi, and so there are actually two sets of erosion marks, and they're, not perfectly, but they're perpendicular to each other more or less.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And none of them radiate out from the stone. They just go right on past the stone in the two different directions. And, one of those sets of erosion marks is going perpendicular to the wadi, and this is actually what probably moved those stones into place- Oh ... and that would've been glacial flows.

Dan Beecher Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan And so you have these scars going over these rocks that are glacial flows just moving on past, and these rocks were put into place. And so that's- Damn ... you're looking contemplative.

Dan Beecher Listen, I have seen images of Saudi Arabia. There are no glaciers in Saudi Arabia. Checkmate on you, sir.

Dan McClellan Well, you know what? There are also whale skeletons in the middle of Libya, and that's because- ... the world was different millions and millions, or billions and billions of years ago.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So yeah, this happened a long, long time ago.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then you also have erosion marks going perpendicular to the glacial scars, and this is caused by the flash flooding in the wadi that this pile of rocks is in the middle of.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so you don't have any indications of erosion radiating out from the stone except for wind erosion that is right around the stone itself, on the stone itself, not the stones that are down underneath the Split Rock of Horeb.

Dan Beecher So- I mean, I suppose Moses could've smacked the rock with a stick right when a flash flood started. And then boom.

Dan McClellan Flash flood coming. That's the dinner bell, kind of quack, quack, quack.

Dan Beecher Everybody to the...

Dan McClellan Now I'm thinking of the "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," "To the trees!" As the flash flood.

Dan Beecher I need to get you off of '90s. You've had your fill.

Dan McClellan Never.

Dan Beecher You don't get any more '90s references for this episode.

Dan McClellan So the last thing to talk about, however, is that they claim to have found animal pens next to what they think is an altar, and 12 pillars in the area, which they believe are the 12 pillars that were set up by Moses. And of course, once you look at the actual archeological reports, and they point out these are just animal pens, there is no altar, and the 12 pillars are, again, Roman era cylindrical- ... or not archeological, architectural pillars meant to hold things up and not meant as standing stones, matzevot, then you can put the lie to those claims as well. So basically, absolutely nothing that Ron Wyatt found in this area, in any way, shape, or form whatsoever, even plausibly represents artifacts left by any historical Moses, any historical Joshua.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Most of it is either from millions of years ago or from 1,000 years after any historical Moses or Joshua would have lived.

Dan Beecher But- And what's interesting is that none of this disproves the Exodus, or anything like that. It's just, he's bogus.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher There is no archeological evidence for the Exodus, but at least not as it's presented in the Bible.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher But it's just so funny that people hold onto this guy and present him as being such a towering figure in archeology. If your main arguments are that bad, you should probably pivot. You should probably figure out a different tack.

Dan McClellan Or go back to your day job, which is- Yeah ... a more honorable one than lying to the public- ... in order to try to protect people's faith.

Dan Beecher Go put some people under anesthetic. It's a better profession.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Hey, a good anesthetist is invaluable, because yeah, my wife is not an easy stick She tells everybody that, and they're always like, "Oh, I'm the best there is at this." And then they always have to go get the- The really good one ... the ultrasound machine or the really good-- Yeah. So a good anesthetist is worth their weight in gold, and does not find fake artifacts in the middle of- Exactly ... Turkey or Saudi Arabia, and then lie about it.

Dan Beecher Okay. Well, let's move on. We'll leave Ron Wyatt to- Rest in peace ... to pass into the dust.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher I hope he was buried at sea, in the Dead Sea. I hope that's what they did. It seems appropriate.

Dan McClellan I have not looked into it.

Dan Beecher I haven't either. So we're moving on to chapter and verse.

Dan McClellan All righty. We're in Luke 10, Gospel of Luke, and I think it's important to point out at the beginning that the Gospel of Luke is most concerned, out of all the gospel authors, for representing the marginalized and the oppressed.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan For instance, Jesus talks about, and talks to, women more frequently in Luke, and we see the foreigner represented, we see the poor represented more favorably in the Gospel of Luke. And so in chapter 10, he deputizes the 72 disciples.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan He goes, "Now you have the power to cast out demons." And they go off, and they come back later and say, "Hey, we cast out demons in your name. It was really great," and they all rejoice, and there was much rejoicing.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan And then we have a lawyer, an expert of the law, a nomikos, who stood up to test Jesus, as the text says, and he calls him "teacher," didaskale, which could also be translated "master." But he asked, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" And Jesus responded, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?" He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." And he said to him, "You have given the right answer. Do this and you will live." And I want to point out real quick here that we've got two commandments that are given here that have nothing to do with the Ten Commandments.

Dan Beecher It's true.

Dan McClellan And there's no part of the Bible that actually says, "Oh, by the way, these are the two most important commandments." But this is the exact same answer that Jesus gives in the Gospel of Matthew when they ask him, "What is the greatest commandment?" And he does precisely the same thing. He quotes Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. And this is kind of part of the conventional wisdom of the day. When you had big, complex things, you tried to distill them down to their essences. This is kind of a Greco-Roman/Jewish thing that you did to show that you knew your stuff. And so the essence of the law is what Jesus says in Matthew is, "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." So Luke here is putting that statement into the mouth of this lawyer who's testing Jesus. So Jesus says, "Yeah, that's all you got to do."

Dan Beecher You did it. You came up with it. You're done.

Dan McClellan Yeah. "Good job. Get out of my face, kid." "You bother me." But wanting to vindicate himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" Which is- Oh, dun dun dun.

Dan Beecher Yeah. That is a lawyerly question.

Dan McClellan You got to love your neighbor as yourself.

Dan Beecher Okay, who's my neighbor?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Is it the guy next door? Because he's a jerk. But I'll try.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And this is something- Who counts?

Dan Beecher ...

Dan McClellan that we see all the time these days, including from, oh, the vice president and others, where they say, "Now wait, we've actually got a hierarchy of love- Yeah ... that we've got to pay attention to."

Dan Beecher Yeah, exactly. Or a hierarchy of neighbors that we've got.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Look, everybody's your neighbor, but some are more neighbor than others.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Let's not get into this equality of neighbors kind of nonsense.

Dan Beecher Yeah. We've got to distinguish neighbor from- Don't commit the sin of empathy and think that everybody's your neighbor.

Dan McClellan Yeah. But that's exactly what the lawyer did here with Jesus.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And Jesus replied with a story, because that's just what you want when you ask a question is a story.

Dan Beecher It's a parable. That's better than a story.

Dan McClellan It is a parable. It is probably the most famous parable in the world, and it's also entirely fictional.

Dan Beecher Oh, yeah.

Dan McClellan Which I always get pushback. Every time I say that, people are like, "You don't know that."

Dan Beecher Well, you don't.

Dan McClellan Oh my gosh.

Dan Beecher Ugh.

Dan McClellan Okay. Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho." Jerusalem's in the hills. Jericho is in the river valley. It's just north of the Dead Sea. Not a long trip, but you've got about a 3,000-foot elevation drop. It's pretty rocky. It's pretty treacherous in this time period.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Not a lot of people are around.

Dan Beecher "And fell into the hands-" I remember that Martin Luther King Jr. actually mentioned that road. He had visited with his wife, and he mentioned being on that road and how- Oh, really?

Dan McClellan ...

Dan Beecher rocky and how many twists and turns it took, and he just said, "Yeah, it makes sense that this would be where someone might fall into the hands of robbers."

Dan McClellan Yeah. That's interesting. I didn't know he had been there and told that story. But yeah, if Jesus was like, "Look, man, somebody fell into the hands of robbers," they were like, "I bet it was on the way to Jericho."

Dan Beecher That place sucks.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That road is terrible.

Dan McClellan They need to put some guardrails up. "Fell in the hands of robbers who stripped him, beat him, and took off, leaving him half dead." Now, by chance, a priest was going down that road, and a lot of scholars think that a lot of the priests who worked in the Temple in Jerusalem lived in Jericho at the time. I don't know how accurate that is.

Dan Beecher But we're talking about Jewish priests?

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yes. So these would be the man's brethren.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, members of his in-group. Now, by chance, a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And you can imagine him going, "Ugh," and- Yeah ... a little pick up in his step.

Dan Beecher You go, "You've got blood all over you.

Dan McClellan Yuck." So likewise, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. So we got a priest and a Levite who are supposed to be the most privileged classes among these Jewish folks who live in and around Jerusalem in this time period.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And they're supposed to be the exemplars. They're supposed to be showing people how to live, and they are both like, "Not going to touch that with a 10-foot pole."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And I've heard people say, "Well, they were just ensuring that they were maintaining purity." Because if he was dead, they don't want to touch a dead body because then they're ritually impure, which is a nonsense excuse.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Because there was a hierarchy of these kinds of concerns.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan If somebody was being murdered, you don't go, "Ah, I can't do anything about this because if he dies and I touch him, then..." Because one, ritual impurity was not sin. It was just ritual impurity. It was just something that- And you can re-purify yourself, right?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan You were just like, "Oh, I got ritually impure. All right, well, I'm not going to be able to make bowling tonight." But it didn't mean you did anything wrong.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Which still would characterize these folks as being like, "No, I don't want to touch that. I got better things to do." But a Samaritan, while traveling, came upon him, and when he saw him, he was moved with compassion. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, treating them with oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day, he took out two denari, this is like two days' wages- Mm ... gave them to the innkeeper and said, "Take care of him, and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend." Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? He said, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise." So we've got an interesting twist here because the lawyer was like, "Well, who's my neighbor?"

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so we go from object to subject. Jesus is like, "Mm, wrong question. It's not who's your neighbor, it's are you worthy to be called a neighbor to someone else?"

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan As far as you're concerned, everybody's your neighbor. It's just up to you to be worthy of being a neighbor to everyone else.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And there are a couple more things to note. The lawyer doesn't say the Samaritan. He can't even bring himself- Right ...

Dan Beecher to acknowledge that because in this- And we should quickly just mention what a Samaritan is.