Such a astounding topic and actually, your postcast help me through the most difficult time dealing with pain, loss and illness, because is one of few things that allows my mind to distract with something so exciting, and yet love the fun you bring in... Personally, that God lies, seems very obvious. What I find even worse though, and what I would love a podcast about from you guys, is why God is not living up to his own standart. Or in other words, how would God judge himself it he did what he did as God, but were human doing so. For example, when God asks of us to not let the left hand know what the right one does, but himself desires and needs all this worship. When we asume God to be all-powerful, then how can God create humans that are less self-centered than he actually is? As a composer I, for example, see how beautiful music can inspire people do desire to do good out of sincere reasons, whilst God seems to be so much in neeed of threat, hell, fear and punishment to make people adore him. Why, if God lived up to his own standart, does he not live the example any say "Guys, its not about me, I rather want you to live, love and embrace truth".. The argument that God simply does as it pleases him and can call good evil and evil good does not convince me at all.. Just imagine human technology could create powerful visions and dreams and someone could pretend to be God, how are we to tell the difference between "the true" and the "false God", at least from a theological standpoint. With my kids I see that yes, we have to be consequent about certain things, but the more patient, kind and empathic I remain, living the example, the more they are willing do "be saved".. And so, why is God only so concerned about a handful of people (people of Israel), and simply does not live up his own standart in so many cases.. Never saw someone really adress this, so that would be awesome..
@@GoAlamo I had a extraordinary life when it comes to physical illness and pain, and yet I think good and bad things, up to a certain extent, just happen to people... I don't seek to find a purpose in everything I experience, but always try to give it some purpose by what I make out of it.. :)
@_Niddy_ Yes, I totally agree.... I always like to say, imagine God would be your neighbour next door and do and ask of you all the things God does, what would people commonly think? I think they would say that neighbour is pretty self-interested, inconsistent and even evil.. So what makes the difference why now people still adore God, who does the same thing.. and the argument you commonly get is "because his ways are so beyond ours, that we simply can't see the good in all his evilness".. But this raises issues. It is just hypothetical, but if for example a time traveler with advanced technoligies could deceive all our senses, create even visions and dreams, and so forth, how can anyone tell the diffrence between the crazy naighbour dude, and the real God? And my answer to that would be, no one could, for he could even change the scriptures (time travel makes it possible).... And so I have come to conclude that only two things work well on discerning truth, one is the put Data over Dogma, always´... which will remain a chaning process though, and secondly, especially when it comes to spiritual discernment, to simply embrace all those things that make me treat others the way we want to be treated (always being kind towards ourselves), to weclome and embrace individuall differences, and to embrace and welcome everything that brings forth within us the qualities of Charity (like patience, -truth-embracing, kindness, mindfullness etc).. The only thing that does not cause religious harm to others, is to simply consider those things to be truth, that create a better place for us right here and now.. whilst in many cases, religion does the opposite.. In that sense, to me if God is real, and if he cares about truth, he will not at all care about himself, but live the example of what he wants us to become, everything else does not work (see kids that have parents that tell to to one, but themselves do the other, and then getting mad if the kids dont get it.. ) ... To "worship" truth by livnig and loving truth would do much more good than to merely kneel down before a God, that differs from individual interpretation to interpretation.. But yes, a podcast on these things from a acedemic consensus would be great. I know that "Only Isral" issue has already been covered, and that the God of Israel only became the God of all the earth after Psalms 82, at least some say so .. Alright, lets see what comes along the Podcast way
When you stop assuming univocality of the Biblical text, you realize the God depicted in Genesis and Exodus wouldn't care what the God depicted in Luke or John would think. And neither group of authors could fathom what people 2000 years later would think, or that both their works would be compiled into a single text and sold as a complete story.
When my Mom and Dad were searching for baby names for me, they landed on Jonah, a name they really liked the sound of. But then they went and read the Bible story, and thought Jonah was a real jerk. So I didnt end up getting the name Jonah.
In some Gnostic traditions they see the serpent in the garden as good for freeing Adam and Eve from the demiurge. The garden is thought of as a prison of ignorance by which one escapes through correct knowledge, hence the general term “Gnostic” for these traditions. Similar thing with the Tower of Babel, God was somehow felt threatened by the humans knowledge and ability to create such a structure
I love in the Genesis story that the snake is more honest and truthful and less threatened by humanity than the god that created them. It really makes sense with other stories from other cultures where snakes represent wisdom/knowledge. The snake is a good boy. Could have been best friends forever if God then didn't curse snakes and humans to become enemies.
It was also the symbol of a Mesopotamian goddess as was the fruit tree… I can see how in modernity we interpret this as misogynistic especially when the story of Lilith is added. However, analyzing this in historical context and seeing patterns in other break away religions it’s possible it was just a way to distinguish the religion from the break away religion as were (possibly) some of the dietary restrictions and rules. * I also feel obligated to state unlike my foremother feminists who didn’t read about anthropological modern concepts or were too hurt by misogyny to distinguish between the two terms misogyny and patriarchy, I do not use those words synonymously. They are two very different worldviews. In patriarchal cultures and some religions (I don’t include those that proportion to be American and whose parishioners are part of the wider United States of America’s secular culture) and cultures see both traditional gender/ biological sexes as equal and sacred. As a woman whose life long dream was to be a paleoanthropologist, I have read about evolutionary theory since childhood. I have to say that even secular atheists see these things as sacred and vital for the survival of the species… even feminists like myself who didn’t want a traditional female lifestyle. Sincerely, Leisl (more commonly called Le) Schutte writing on another person’s iPad who gave her permission to do that.
Suggestion on an episode: In the book of Jude it talks about a fight between the Angel Michael and the Devil over the body of Moses. This information is not found in the Old Testament. I would be interested in your opinions.
Origen, a 3rd century Christian theologian, talks about a book called the Assumption of Moses, which purportedly included that story. It doesn't survive unfortunately. It was never canonized. Jude's weird references were actually one of the main things that made it a controversial inclusion in the canon. There's a more complex possibility of Jude somehow hybridizing bits of Enoch and Zechariah but I'm more skeptical of that explanation.
Jonah is such a fun quirky story. Too bad most people immediately think “and the whale” when they hear about Jonah. They are dismissive and miss the satire. I am mildly disappointed that Jesus didn’t have more to say when he verbally smacked the Pharisees with the sign of Jonah. “Something greater than Jonah is here” is a bit underwhelming. “Even the animals of Nineveh had more sense than you” would have been awesome.
Excellent, as usual. I recently got the newly released Anchor Bible "Jonah" Commentary by _Rihannon Graybill_ , _John Kaltner_ , and _Steven L McKenzie_ which is really informative and covers so much it takes my breath away and makes me have to let it all soak in.
Dumb question but to address the odd dting of Jonah in respect to Nineveh, could story actually be about jonah travelling to the northern kingdom to preach yahweh's message to the king there? If the story has the king and citizens respecting yahweh's word as well as reacting in ways common toisraelites, perhaps the use of the name Ninevah was just a jab at the north at the time being an assyrian vassal? Kind of like how babylon was called and compared to egypt, or rome was compared to babylon?
Regarding the cattle, YHVH did have a habit of wanting every living thing killed in addition to the usual genocide. Wasn't Saul punished for saving some animals to be sacrificed later?
10:09 I have never heard the word Joppa before, other than as the name of the slightly posher suburb of Edinburgh next to where I grew up! To my great shame I realise I never even wondered where it got that name. (I'm from Portobello, which was (re)named after a town in Panama captured by the Royal Navy in the War of Jenkin's Ear.)
About Jonah: The missing prologue is to be found in Midrash. There Jonah was given the same mission by God once before, this time Jerusalem and its people were the ones who were told they were wicked and had to die. As with Nineveh, they repented, and God changed his mind. This had some very rough consequences for Jonah, he lost his good standing with the other prophets, who told him he must be a false prophet. When he is asked to go to Nineveh, he says no, I know you will just change your mind again, and once more everyone will call me a false prophet. BTW, one thing with this story that intrigue me when young and wondering what Bible said of people of other faiths, is that the people in Nineveh is not praying to the God of Israel, they do the rituals in their own religion, praying to their “own God”.
16:10 is there a case to be made that he actually died, and then was resurrected three days later? All that stuff about sheol in Jonah's prayer suggests that to me.
The Göttingen Septuagint has some interesting nuances in the garden story that indicate either harmonization with or derivation from Greek pagan stories. For example, the woman's name starts as Zoe and then becomes Ewa only after getting kicked out. More intriguingly, the word used to describe how Adam was formed has the meaning of "to form/raise/educate" (i.e. god took Adam from the earth and raised/educated him rather than created him out of dust), and the garden is called the garden of licentiousness/promiscuity. The overlap with the Greek pagan mystery traditions is noteworthy imo: a naive man is taken into a garden of licentiousness to eat an entheogen guarded by a serpent, has sexy time with a lady, and thus gains self-knowledge. These connections ought to be explored.
I have a different take on Jonah. The first thing is that Ioannus is very much like Oannus, the Adapa myth.And the Adapa myth is a sort of hercules like tail, but the god here is not Zeus but Enki. Enki was the god of sages. And from the mesopotamian mythology of the Apkallu the sages came from the red sea, from time to time to advise the leaders. There were 100s of leaders in mesopotamia but only seven sages and those sages shifted over time. There's a little gem here, Bethlehem is the temple site for the guardian of Enki, and the first Apkallu comes from the region of tyre. However, I speculate there was a cult site in western Arbia near the red sea. We can speculate when these sages were active based up several cues. 1. Marian kings did not progress into Canaan until the 25th century, and based on the evidence they did not progress far. 2. Shortly thereafter Sumer involved itself in a distracting civil war 3. Which uktimately ended when Sargon became dynastic leader in the 24th century; however I do wonder how far south Sargon went, it seems that his grandson was more effective in opening up S. Canaan for trade. So we can set an early limit at around the 23rd century. And the last of these sages would have probably been before the LBAC. So essentially from about 2300 BCE to 1150 BCE Another aspect of the story is its highly mythified nature. This lends one to question whether there were sages at all, and the stories changed over time. So its possible that local versions evolved to suit regional needs. So what looks here is the local judahite culture carried oral traditions about an adapa character, but instead of using his identifyable name they used his title and obscured it. The Judahite version does not go to Akkad and Sumer, but Assyria. Moreover the Assyrians were the same group that exiled Isra'el, which the Judeans played a partial role in, if inadvertantly. Whoops. So this might be part of diverting the cause of the fall not to petty rivalries in the Levant, but because the Ninevah had turned from god (i.e. not the Juhadah's fault). But there is a deeper layer here I think diffuses Dan assessment. The "god doesnt lie". So heres the basic problem, particularly in mesopotamia. There is lots of indirect evidence for mysticism and mystical practice, but direct evidence is rather poor. This is probably because the scribes who describe the stories are not the mystics who have visions. Consequently there is a disconnect. This story of Jonah is a begins very dry as a mystical quest. A god tells Jonah he has to go to Ninevah. How is god telling Jonah. God is not walking up to Jonah in the market place, "Hey dude, its time to put your sojourning sandels on". The connotation is that the character has had a vision. But then this leads us to the next question, was the boat journey real, was the fish real. And the we get to the last issue did god really say to Jonah that the Ninevites that they would collapse. So this is where we have to look at the story as seen from the perspective of mysticism and its use in fiction. This story looks, given the adapa similarity to have been built from parts. Certainly the Enki cults were mystical, I dont think thats in any real doubt. But the problem is the context is wrong, these stories are hundreds of years after the Apkallu, if they existed as written about. The other bits of the story may represent other dreams or experiences. Around these experience a story was assembled and as such god can lie, not a problem. Since there can be false prophets there can be prophets that lie. Look at Ezekial and the prophesy of Tyre. Lying prophets are not a problem. So now that we have the mystical outline of the story it needs to be edited and assembled and the narraters perpective added into the story, and finally it needs to be inscribed. So this is the problem, does the scribe understand this first part represent mystical imperative and does he realize the "inexact" nature of forcasting mysticism. If the narrator/scribe thinks the mystics are recognized by his audiance and understand errancy, then correcting the lie is not a problem. The second issue is when is the story of Jonah written and when was the book of genesis written. It turns out genesis was constructed late, and Genesis 2 was not corrected. Thus maybe the god does not lie part comes in after these two text were written. For certain biblical stories the curators of the text don't care that god lied because it does not interfere with the message they are trying to get across.
Counterpoint to the criticism of the reliefs being taken by the British Museum. Most of the relief's that were left in situ have since been destroyed by Daesh and as a result have been lost to current and future generations entirely.
So, concerning the garden bit...alot to unpack here Of all the trees of the garden you will certainly eat. Because of the tree of knowledge, is it possible to think of this as a donut shaped garden, where, in the middle, or the midst of the garden, that was not actually part of the garden I tend to imagine a giant circle being the outer most barrier, then a smaller circle in the middle, being a separation from the garden as a whole.....with a thin walking path from that central area, to the outer area from the garden, making it possible to get to that tree without having to actually go through the garden This makes it that there isn't an issue of, eat from all of these......BUT NOT THIS ONE So, god lying.....he COULD HAVE said, "IF you eat of this tree you will surely die the same day" This would have resolved the issue that, what god says here actually sounds like god saying...you WILL eat....and if you don't, I will force you....this is the first. The rest, there is no real way around it, god was lying, he knew he was NOT going to kill Adam....the serpent actually told the truth.....the serpent speaking......I think the serpent ate first, giving him the power of speech
Or when the USA terrorists invaded mosul under their Christian terrorist leader George Bush and then left it susceptible to invasion by isis like ten years later
16:00 Fin Whales (mammals not fish) live in the Mediterranean. They have a length of 24 metres, making them the second largest creatures on earth after the Blue Whale. I guess Dan is not an expert on marine biology, nor has he seen all of the Med 😊
I always thought when i was a kid that Adam and Eve were meant to be immortal, but once they ate of the tree one of their punishments was no more immortality.
God lies? Rather the representations and descriptions of God are used to justify the interests of his followers leaders? Since then religious beliefs seem to be quite useful for social manipulation.
Does God lie? Irrelevant question because of 1 Kings 22. As long as God can send a lying spirit to essentially lie for God, then past and present humans must have a VALID methodology to determine which revelations came from God and which ones came from the lying spirit. According to the Christians that I have talked, they do not have a valid methodology to make that determination. Therefore, they don't KNOW anything about God.
Yshu spole of what he called "the sign of Jonah" three times, and each time he gave it a different description. Therefore, the Sign of Jonah is a Trintiy.
Ezekiel 14:9 Yahweh tells Ezekiel when a prophet lies it is Yahweh who tells them what to say. Yahweh tells the prophets lies to speak in his name. Presumably to "give them over" to their "indulgences." Just thought I'd toss that in for the is it possible for Yahweh to lie question. Yes. He can and does. He said so lol supposedly through Ezekiel.
*YAhweh the false prophet* Deuteronomy 18:20-23 _But a prophet who presumes to speak in my (Yahweh’s) name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be _*_put to death._* _…”How can we know when a message has not been spoken by Yahweh?” If what a prophet proclaims in the name of Yahweh _*_does not take place or come true, that is a message Yahweh has not spoken._*_ ..._
I got an ad to LDS & another ad for christianity. They're hilarious to put that kind of ad on this one. This where people that wants to deconstruct from religion comes to get help. 😅
I think it is worth mentioning that there is a difference between lying and being wrong. Its a pet peeve of mine that in the modern world there is an assumption that possible mistakes are treated no differently than deliberate deception. Or changing one's mind equals lying. Of course the other apologetic would be that it isn't God lying but those reporting on him making mistakes.
But isn't the Bible divinely written The way I understood it was God wrote the Bible through the Bible writers The Bible is God's word right Are you saying God made a mistake
@@oldcountryboy The Bible never makes such a claim, so who ever told you that obvious had no understanding of the Bible. At best the writings that comprise the Bible may have been commissioned by priests who claimed to have heard God speak, but they certainly were neither written nor dictated by God.
@@oldcountryboy Which is not what I said. Personally, I do not think the Bible is all one thing. I suspect some of the books were added more for political reasons than moral ones. Which is not to say there is nothing inspired. I do think there are many wonderful moral lessons that could be called the "Word of God", but I agree with Dan that it is not univocal. For most of the history of Christianity "Word of God" was not defined as being literally dictated. It was understood to be more about moral lessons than accurate history. Jona was understood by both Jews and Christians to be a fable or parable. IT is really only fairly recently that fundamentalists have insisted it was historical.
I present that Adam actually repented Psychologically, if you are blaming someone, you will stop short of saying "and I ate".....I see it as Adam admitting what he did, giving the whole truth
Enki is the Trickster god, same god as Ea, Ia, Yah. I dont see why scholars are so timid to make this connection. Bethlehem is The house of the guardian of Enki, its that simple.
Jona did not call the Ninevites to repentance. Jona predicted their demise, and he was upset with God's forgiveness of them -- the source of Jona's petulance. God had made a liar out of him. Of course the entire story is a satirical parable, not an account of an actual occurrence. Compare tales of Diogenes. Similarly, the Garden Story is not meant to be a scientific or historical narrative, and treating it as such is silly. Woke pronoun usage is not appropriate, and does not reflect the biblical text.
@@BobSmith-lb9nc the English translations use that word, yes. What words are used in the manuscripts that they're based on? Also, if you're going off the belief that the texts are inerrant, I'm going to need a lot of evidence
@@hive_indicator318 The actual biblical text does not use woke pronouns. Inerrancy and infallibility are red herrings. Only fools practice these ideologies.
@@BobSmith-lb9ncGod is referred to as they multiple times in the Bible, and the only reproductive organ God is described as having is a womb. So either God is a woman or a Trans man
You know, I started watching these for Dan, but I'm really growing fond of Dan as well.
I like this show so much
Such a astounding topic and actually, your postcast help me through the most difficult time dealing with pain, loss and illness, because is one of few things that allows my mind to distract with something so exciting, and yet love the fun you bring in...
Personally, that God lies, seems very obvious. What I find even worse though, and what I would love a podcast about from you guys, is why God is not living up to his own standart. Or in other words, how would God judge himself it he did what he did as God, but were human doing so.
For example, when God asks of us to not let the left hand know what the right one does, but himself desires and needs all this worship. When we asume God to be all-powerful, then how can God create humans that are less self-centered than he actually is?
As a composer I, for example, see how beautiful music can inspire people do desire to do good out of sincere reasons, whilst God seems to be so much in neeed of threat, hell, fear and punishment to make people adore him.
Why, if God lived up to his own standart, does he not live the example any say "Guys, its not about me, I rather want you to live, love and embrace truth"..
The argument that God simply does as it pleases him and can call good evil and evil good does not convince me at all.. Just imagine human technology could create powerful visions and dreams and someone could pretend to be God, how are we to tell the difference between "the true" and the "false God", at least from a theological standpoint.
With my kids I see that yes, we have to be consequent about certain things, but the more patient, kind and empathic I remain, living the example, the more they are willing do "be saved".. And so, why is God only so concerned about a handful of people (people of Israel), and simply does not live up his own standart in so many cases..
Never saw someone really adress this, so that would be awesome..
I can see your point. Bad things happen to good people and no religious person has ever wondered about that. Ever.
@@GoAlamo I had a extraordinary life when it comes to physical illness and pain, and yet I think good and bad things, up to a certain extent, just happen to people...
I don't seek to find a purpose in everything I experience, but always try to give it some purpose by what I make out of it.. :)
❤ Jesus power. Warning it is intense. Last 3 days. Can be long term.
@_Niddy_ Yes, I totally agree.... I always like to say, imagine God would be your neighbour next door and do and ask of you all the things God does, what would people commonly think? I think they would say that neighbour is pretty self-interested, inconsistent and even evil.. So what makes the difference why now people still adore God, who does the same thing.. and the argument you commonly get is "because his ways are so beyond ours, that we simply can't see the good in all his evilness"..
But this raises issues. It is just hypothetical, but if for example a time traveler with advanced technoligies could deceive all our senses, create even visions and dreams, and so forth, how can anyone tell the diffrence between the crazy naighbour dude, and the real God?
And my answer to that would be, no one could, for he could even change the scriptures (time travel makes it possible)....
And so I have come to conclude that only two things work well on discerning truth, one is the put Data over Dogma, always´... which will remain a chaning process though, and secondly, especially when it comes to spiritual discernment, to simply embrace all those things that make me treat others the way we want to be treated (always being kind towards ourselves), to weclome and embrace individuall differences, and to embrace and welcome everything that brings forth within us the qualities of Charity (like patience, -truth-embracing, kindness, mindfullness etc)..
The only thing that does not cause religious harm to others, is to simply consider those things to be truth, that create a better place for us right here and now.. whilst in many cases, religion does the opposite..
In that sense, to me if God is real, and if he cares about truth, he will not at all care about himself, but live the example of what he wants us to become, everything else does not work (see kids that have parents that tell to to one, but themselves do the other, and then getting mad if the kids dont get it.. ) ...
To "worship" truth by livnig and loving truth would do much more good than to merely kneel down before a God, that differs from individual interpretation to interpretation..
But yes, a podcast on these things from a acedemic consensus would be great. I know that "Only Isral" issue has already been covered, and that the God of Israel only became the God of all the earth after Psalms 82, at least some say so ..
Alright, lets see what comes along the Podcast way
When you stop assuming univocality of the Biblical text, you realize the God depicted in Genesis and Exodus wouldn't care what the God depicted in Luke or John would think. And neither group of authors could fathom what people 2000 years later would think, or that both their works would be compiled into a single text and sold as a complete story.
we stan a giant genderfluid fish
When my Mom and Dad were searching for baby names for me, they landed on Jonah, a name they really liked the sound of. But then they went and read the Bible story, and thought Jonah was a real jerk. So I didnt end up getting the name Jonah.
In some Gnostic traditions they see the serpent in the garden as good for freeing Adam and Eve from the demiurge. The garden is thought of as a prison of ignorance by which one escapes through correct knowledge, hence the general term “Gnostic” for these traditions. Similar thing with the Tower of Babel, God was somehow felt threatened by the humans knowledge and ability to create such a structure
I love in the Genesis story that the snake is more honest and truthful and less threatened by humanity than the god that created them. It really makes sense with other stories from other cultures where snakes represent wisdom/knowledge. The snake is a good boy. Could have been best friends forever if God then didn't curse snakes and humans to become enemies.
It was also the symbol of a Mesopotamian goddess as was the fruit tree… I can see how in modernity we interpret this as misogynistic especially when the story of Lilith is added. However, analyzing this in historical context and seeing patterns in other break away religions it’s possible it was just a way to distinguish the religion from the break away religion as were (possibly) some of the dietary restrictions and rules.
* I also feel obligated to state unlike my foremother feminists who didn’t read about anthropological modern concepts or were too hurt by misogyny to distinguish between the two terms misogyny and patriarchy, I do not use those words synonymously. They are two very different worldviews. In patriarchal cultures and some religions (I don’t include those that proportion to be American and whose parishioners are part of the wider United States of America’s secular culture) and cultures see both traditional gender/ biological sexes as equal and sacred. As a woman whose life long dream was to be a paleoanthropologist, I have read about evolutionary theory since childhood. I have to say that even secular atheists see these things as sacred and vital for the survival of the species… even feminists like myself who didn’t want a traditional female lifestyle.
Sincerely,
Leisl (more commonly called Le) Schutte writing on another person’s iPad who gave her permission to do that.
Suggestion on an episode: In the book of Jude it talks about a fight between the Angel Michael and the Devil over the body of Moses. This information is not found in the Old Testament. I would be interested in your opinions.
Origen, a 3rd century Christian theologian, talks about a book called the Assumption of Moses, which purportedly included that story. It doesn't survive unfortunately. It was never canonized. Jude's weird references were actually one of the main things that made it a controversial inclusion in the canon. There's a more complex possibility of Jude somehow hybridizing bits of Enoch and Zechariah but I'm more skeptical of that explanation.
Jonah is such a fun quirky story. Too bad most people immediately think “and the whale” when they hear about Jonah. They are dismissive and miss the satire.
I am mildly disappointed that Jesus didn’t have more to say when he verbally smacked the Pharisees with the sign of Jonah. “Something greater than Jonah is here” is a bit underwhelming. “Even the animals of Nineveh had more sense than you” would have been awesome.
"MOO TO GOD!!!!!" 😂😂😂oh my god you guys I was wheezing 😂
I can't help but envision Sennacherib chasing Hezekiah through the desert: "I want my five dollars!"
God never lies, but the people who made him up sure did
Excellent, as usual. I recently got the newly released Anchor Bible "Jonah" Commentary by _Rihannon Graybill_ , _John Kaltner_ , and _Steven L McKenzie_ which is really informative and covers so much it takes my breath away and makes me have to let it all soak in.
This was stunning.
Dumb question but to address the odd dting of Jonah in respect to Nineveh, could story actually be about jonah travelling to the northern kingdom to preach yahweh's message to the king there? If the story has the king and citizens respecting yahweh's word as well as reacting in ways common toisraelites, perhaps the use of the name Ninevah was just a jab at the north at the time being an assyrian vassal? Kind of like how babylon was called and compared to egypt, or rome was compared to babylon?
Fantastic episode!
Regarding the cattle, YHVH did have a habit of wanting every living thing killed in addition to the usual genocide. Wasn't Saul punished for saving some animals to be sacrificed later?
10:09 I have never heard the word Joppa before, other than as the name of the slightly posher suburb of Edinburgh next to where I grew up! To my great shame I realise I never even wondered where it got that name. (I'm from Portobello, which was (re)named after a town in Panama captured by the Royal Navy in the War of Jenkin's Ear.)
About Jonah: The missing prologue is to be found in Midrash. There Jonah was given the same mission by God once before, this time Jerusalem and its people were the ones who were told they were wicked and had to die. As with Nineveh, they repented, and God changed his mind. This had some very rough consequences for Jonah, he lost his good standing with the other prophets, who told him he must be a false prophet. When he is asked to go to Nineveh, he says no, I know you will just change your mind again, and once more everyone will call me a false prophet.
BTW, one thing with this story that intrigue me when young and wondering what Bible said of people of other faiths, is that the people in Nineveh is not praying to the God of Israel, they do the rituals in their own religion, praying to their “own God”.
16:10 is there a case to be made that he actually died, and then was resurrected three days later? All that stuff about sheol in Jonah's prayer suggests that to me.
The Göttingen Septuagint has some interesting nuances in the garden story that indicate either harmonization with or derivation from Greek pagan stories. For example, the woman's name starts as Zoe and then becomes Ewa only after getting kicked out. More intriguingly, the word used to describe how Adam was formed has the meaning of "to form/raise/educate" (i.e. god took Adam from the earth and raised/educated him rather than created him out of dust), and the garden is called the garden of licentiousness/promiscuity. The overlap with the Greek pagan mystery traditions is noteworthy imo: a naive man is taken into a garden of licentiousness to eat an entheogen guarded by a serpent, has sexy time with a lady, and thus gains self-knowledge. These connections ought to be explored.
I have a different take on Jonah. The first thing is that Ioannus is very much like Oannus, the Adapa myth.And the Adapa myth is a sort of hercules like tail, but the god here is not Zeus but Enki. Enki was the god of sages. And from the mesopotamian mythology of the Apkallu the sages came from the red sea, from time to time to advise the leaders. There were 100s of leaders in mesopotamia but only seven sages and those sages shifted over time. There's a little gem here, Bethlehem is the temple site for the guardian of Enki, and the first Apkallu comes from the region of tyre. However, I speculate there was a cult site in western Arbia near the red sea. We can speculate when these sages were active based up several cues.
1. Marian kings did not progress into Canaan until the 25th century, and based on the evidence they did not progress far.
2. Shortly thereafter Sumer involved itself in a distracting civil war
3. Which uktimately ended when Sargon became dynastic leader in the 24th century; however I do wonder how far south Sargon went, it seems that his grandson was more effective in opening up S. Canaan for trade.
So we can set an early limit at around the 23rd century. And the last of these sages would have probably been before the LBAC. So essentially from about 2300 BCE to 1150 BCE
Another aspect of the story is its highly mythified nature. This lends one to question whether there were sages at all, and the stories changed over time. So its possible that local versions evolved to suit regional needs.
So what looks here is the local judahite culture carried oral traditions about an adapa character, but instead of using his identifyable name they used his title and obscured it.
The Judahite version does not go to Akkad and Sumer, but Assyria. Moreover the Assyrians were the same group that exiled Isra'el, which the Judeans played a partial role in, if inadvertantly. Whoops. So this might be part of diverting the cause of the fall not to petty rivalries in the Levant, but because the Ninevah had turned from god (i.e. not the Juhadah's fault).
But there is a deeper layer here I think diffuses Dan assessment. The "god doesnt lie". So heres the basic problem, particularly in mesopotamia. There is lots of indirect evidence for mysticism and mystical practice, but direct evidence is rather poor. This is probably because the scribes who describe the stories are not the mystics who have visions. Consequently there is a disconnect.
This story of Jonah is a begins very dry as a mystical quest. A god tells Jonah he has to go to Ninevah. How is god telling Jonah. God is not walking up to Jonah in the market place, "Hey dude, its time to put your sojourning sandels on". The connotation is that the character has had a vision. But then this leads us to the next question, was the boat journey real, was the fish real. And the we get to the last issue did god really say to Jonah that the Ninevites that they would collapse.
So this is where we have to look at the story as seen from the perspective of mysticism and its use in fiction. This story looks, given the adapa similarity to have been built from parts. Certainly the Enki cults were mystical, I dont think thats in any real doubt. But the problem is the context is wrong, these stories are hundreds of years after the Apkallu, if they existed as written about.
The other bits of the story may represent other dreams or experiences. Around these experience a story was assembled and as such god can lie, not a problem. Since there can be false prophets there can be prophets that lie. Look at Ezekial and the prophesy of Tyre. Lying prophets are not a problem. So now that we have the mystical outline of the story it needs to be edited and assembled and the narraters perpective added into the story, and finally it needs to be inscribed. So this is the problem, does the scribe understand this first part represent mystical imperative and does he realize the "inexact" nature of forcasting mysticism. If the narrator/scribe thinks the mystics are recognized by his audiance and understand errancy, then correcting the lie is not a problem.
The second issue is when is the story of Jonah written and when was the book of genesis written. It turns out genesis was constructed late, and Genesis 2 was not corrected. Thus maybe the god does not lie part comes in after these two text were written.
For certain biblical stories the curators of the text don't care that god lied because it does not interfere with the message they are trying to get across.
Loved reading this
As I recall, the identification of the plant that provided shade to Jonah was a longstanding debate in early Christianity.
Counterpoint to the criticism of the reliefs being taken by the British Museum. Most of the relief's that were left in situ have since been destroyed by Daesh and as a result have been lost to current and future generations entirely.
I gotta think that the cattle line at the end was meant as a big laugh line.
So, concerning the garden bit...alot to unpack here
Of all the trees of the garden you will certainly eat.
Because of the tree of knowledge, is it possible to think of this as a donut shaped garden, where, in the middle, or the midst of the garden, that was not actually part of the garden
I tend to imagine a giant circle being the outer most barrier, then a smaller circle in the middle, being a separation from the garden as a whole.....with a thin walking path from that central area, to the outer area from the garden, making it possible to get to that tree without having to actually go through the garden
This makes it that there isn't an issue of, eat from all of these......BUT NOT THIS ONE
So, god lying.....he COULD HAVE said, "IF you eat of this tree you will surely die the same day"
This would have resolved the issue that, what god says here actually sounds like god saying...you WILL eat....and if you don't, I will force you....this is the first.
The rest, there is no real way around it, god was lying, he knew he was NOT going to kill Adam....the serpent actually told the truth.....the serpent speaking......I think the serpent ate first, giving him the power of speech
Might be safe to say that the book of Jonah belongs to the same genre as Life of Brian.
Fascinating! Yes!
Dan saying money shot tho
I can't help thinking of Kant's moral imperatives and how he might feel about this episode.
Just want to put out that Nineveh is today, Mosul. You probably heard of it during the ISIS campaign.
Or when the USA terrorists invaded mosul under their Christian terrorist leader George Bush and then left it susceptible to invasion by isis like ten years later
16:00 Fin Whales (mammals not fish) live in the Mediterranean. They have a length of 24 metres, making them the second largest creatures on earth after the Blue Whale. I guess Dan is not an expert on marine biology, nor has he seen all of the Med 😊
I always thought when i was a kid that Adam and Eve were meant to be immortal, but once they ate of the tree one of their punishments was no more immortality.
Interestingly, there are several species of fish that change their sex, a few even going back and forth. So one thing the Book of Jonah got right. 😄
God lies? Rather the representations and descriptions of God are used to justify the interests of his followers leaders? Since then religious beliefs seem to be quite useful for social manipulation.
Were cattle sacred in the Middle East like they were in India? There are sacred cows in the Odyssey, remember.
And narrative attributed to god is adapted according to earthly endeavours.
26:06 so... Identity politics?
Does God lie? Irrelevant question because of 1 Kings 22. As long as God can send a lying spirit to essentially lie for God, then past and present humans must have a VALID methodology to determine which revelations came from God and which ones came from the lying spirit. According to the Christians that I have talked, they do not have a valid methodology to make that determination. Therefore, they don't KNOW anything about God.
Yshu spole of what he called "the sign of Jonah" three times, and each time he gave it a different description. Therefore, the Sign of Jonah is a Trintiy.
13:30 Mmmmmm Divination in the Bible yummy 😂😂
Ezekiel 14:9 Yahweh tells Ezekiel when a prophet lies it is Yahweh who tells them what to say. Yahweh tells the prophets lies to speak in his name. Presumably to "give them over" to their "indulgences." Just thought I'd toss that in for the is it possible for Yahweh to lie question. Yes. He can and does. He said so lol supposedly through Ezekiel.
*YAhweh the false prophet*
Deuteronomy 18:20-23
_But a prophet who presumes to speak in my (Yahweh’s) name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be _*_put to death._*
_…”How can we know when a message has not been spoken by Yahweh?” If what a prophet proclaims in the name of Yahweh _*_does not take place or come true, that is a message Yahweh has not spoken._*_ ..._
I got an ad to LDS & another ad for christianity. They're hilarious to put that kind of ad on this one. This where people that wants to deconstruct from religion comes to get help. 😅
I think it is worth mentioning that there is a difference between lying and being wrong. Its a pet peeve of mine that in the modern world there is an assumption that possible mistakes are treated no differently than deliberate deception. Or changing one's mind equals lying.
Of course the other apologetic would be that it isn't God lying but those reporting on him making mistakes.
But isn't the Bible divinely written The way I understood it was God wrote the Bible through the Bible writers The Bible is God's word right Are you saying God made a mistake
@@oldcountryboy The Bible never makes such a claim, so who ever told you that obvious had no understanding of the Bible.
At best the writings that comprise the Bible may have been commissioned by priests who claimed to have heard God speak, but they certainly were neither written nor dictated by God.
@@brettmajeske3525 So the Bible is not the word of God Okay got it
Why would the all knowing god send someone he knew would be wrong? Seems the only answer would be to intentionally mislead…to lie
@@oldcountryboy Which is not what I said.
Personally, I do not think the Bible is all one thing. I suspect some of the books were added more for political reasons than moral ones. Which is not to say there is nothing inspired. I do think there are many wonderful moral lessons that could be called the "Word of God", but I agree with Dan that it is not univocal.
For most of the history of Christianity "Word of God" was not defined as being literally dictated. It was understood to be more about moral lessons than accurate history. Jona was understood by both Jews and Christians to be a fable or parable. IT is really only fairly recently that fundamentalists have insisted it was historical.
I present that Adam actually repented
Psychologically, if you are blaming someone, you will stop short of saying "and I ate".....I see it as Adam admitting what he did, giving the whole truth
Tarshish is Atlantis /s
Does the Trump of Mar-a-Lago lie?
nah, it would fail too
Enki is the Trickster god, same god as Ea, Ia, Yah. I dont see why scholars are so timid to make this connection. Bethlehem is The house of the guardian of Enki, its that simple.
i like the Letter of Jeremiah (310 BCE) and Ruth (290 BCE) more. egypt sucks. job sucks. ptolemy l soter sucked.
Jona did not call the Ninevites to repentance. Jona predicted their demise, and he was upset with God's forgiveness of them -- the source of Jona's petulance. God had made a liar out of him. Of course the entire story is a satirical parable, not an account of an actual occurrence. Compare tales of Diogenes.
Similarly, the Garden Story is not meant to be a scientific or historical narrative, and treating it as such is silly.
Woke pronoun usage is not appropriate, and does not reflect the biblical text.
What "woke pronoun usage" are you referring to?
@@hive_indicator318 Referring to God as "they," while the biblical text says "he."
@@BobSmith-lb9nc the English translations use that word, yes. What words are used in the manuscripts that they're based on? Also, if you're going off the belief that the texts are inerrant, I'm going to need a lot of evidence
@@hive_indicator318 The actual biblical text does not use woke pronouns. Inerrancy and infallibility are red herrings. Only fools practice these ideologies.
@@BobSmith-lb9ncGod is referred to as they multiple times in the Bible, and the only reproductive organ God is described as having is a womb. So either God is a woman or a Trans man
Both of these men are from what I can tell Bible Rejectors or Christ Rejectors...As is there Listeners...Will see how that plays out for them...