You Want a Boat? I Noah Guy

He built the ark out of gopher wood. Maybe there was some shittim.

I’m hoping for shittim. That’s my wood right there.

Yeah, shittim real good.

If I’m going to have biblical wood, it’s going to be shittim. Let’s move quickly past what I just said.

Hey everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

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 we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How go things this time around, Dan?

Well, we’re having fun here at the Data Over Dogma podcast, where you and I have already recorded this.

Yes.

But but no, then lost, recorded and lost. Uh, we’ve— we have suffered the, uh, the, the terrors of, uh, technical difficulties, but you don’t have to experience that, dear listeners and viewers at home.

Uh, all, all new jokes this time around, I promise.

All you get from us is fresh content. Uh, we promise to attempt at very least not to skip anything just because we think we’ve covered it in our, in our addled brains. Uh, so anyway, uh, we’re diving in. Uh, this, this week we’re going to be doing a textual healing, and that is going— the healing that we’re going to—.

We have, we have got that feeling.

Yeah, well, and when I get that feeling, I need that textual healing. Uh, this one we’re going to be doing some Genesis, a little Genesis 6 action, which is, uh, 6 through 8. 6, which is our good friend Noah and his, uh, shiny new boat. Uh, and then we’re gonna— in the latter half of the show, we’re gonna do, uh, Terrible Parable. It’s actually not that terrible. We’ll see how we do. We’ll see how it goes.

The worst parable. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Consider the lilies is what I have to say about that. Uh, we’ll get to some Luke down the road, but let’s start as you and I already have, Dan, with Textual Healing. And this week, like I said, it’s Genesis 6 . We’re starting, but not the very beginning of Genesis 6 .

No, no, that begins with a sordid tale. The bene elohim, the children of God, and those scrappy benot adam, or daughters of humanity, they do their thing. And that, you know, we’ve been— we’ve covered that before.

Yeah, we talked about that. And it made the Lord miffed. He was not happy about it. But it’s funny because the first 4 verses of chapter 6 feel almost entirely unrelated to the rest of what happens in chapter 6.

I happen to think this is probably something that was tacked on closer to the end in an effort to give a better rationalization for God deciding to destroy everything that lives upon the earth.

Oh, okay. So like people were reading it and they were going, “But why though? There’s a flood, but why?” And they’re like, “Oh, you know, you remember how God’s kids mated with ladies and—” And in the middle of this we have God saying, “You know what?

People aren’t gonna live as long after this. Yeah, I don’t want them around as long.

Uh, so 120 years, because, uh, just the one chapter before this is the list of all of the patriarchs, and it’s like so-and-so lived 800 years, and then so-and-so, you know, they all lived. And matter of fact, the last paragraph or the last bit in, in chapter 5 is it says, and Noah, you know, young Noah sowed his oats for 500 years, whiled away those first 500 years of youth, and then finally decided— with the boys, just out gambling, partying all night long. Finally decided to settle down at 500, at the young age of 500.

No more party buses out to Wendover, for those of you who are familiar with Salt Lake City.

And if you are, if you are a Utahn and you push real hard, maybe we can do a Data Over Dogma fun bus to the, to Wendover. That would be actually a lot of fun. I don’t know.

I think that would be a lot of fun. Maybe we should do that. I think I would, I would have every time though, um, every time I’m in a casino and, you know, we go down to, we go down to California a lot. We always stop in Vegas. That’s where we usually spend the night. And like, you know, and they smoke like crazy in the casinos down there. I get the worst headache from cigarette smoke. Oh, so yeah, that, that kills me. But, but yeah, I think that would be fun. It’s been a long time. It’s been a long time since I’ve hit up the hold ’em table. Yeah, there you go. Okay. All right. Anyway, yeah, we’re going to do it like Noah did.

No, no, we’re not here to just tell the story of, uh, of Noah and the Ark. Most people know it, although as you pointed out in one of your recent videos, recent me, not to the people listening to this, because a couple weeks, uh, it takes us a little bit.

This episode will never see the light of day.

This is never gonna happen anyway, so you guys are fine. Um, but, but yeah, you pointed out that there’s, there’s a lot of like, there’s this misunderstanding that, uh, that Noah tried to preach to the people and say repent and all this stuff. Yeah, that ain’t in here.

No, no, not to be found. And the whole idea that the people mocked Noah and they were like, “Stupid boat!” Also not in here.

Yeah, I was surprised by that.

As I was reading, I was like, “Hey, that’s a part of the story that seems important, but it’s not there.” Yeah, I think the Sibylline Oracles are the first place where it talks about Noah preaching. And then we have in the New Testament, 2 Peter somewhere, I think it calls him a preacher of righteousness. And so traditions just kind of grew up around that. But, but today we, we’re going to talk about the way the story seems to kind of repeat itself, but in slightly different ways.

Yeah, it’s confusing. If you, if you’re— if you pay too much attention, it’s a head-scratcher.

If you just go back and forth and—.

Yeah, you’ll be— you’ll, you’ll feel you, you’ll feel like you’ve, uh, circled around a bit, uh, but, but you— it’s fine. But yeah, if you pay a lot of attention, or if you do as I did and try to like catalog how long, like get the timeline down— oh no, you can’t do that. No, you’re gonna get confused. Yeah, which I learned the hard way. Yeah.

So, and there’s a reason to it. Yeah, we’re gonna start in, in verse 5, and I want to start by pointing out that, uh, in verses 5 through 8 We’re going to be talking about the Lord, and that’s the small caps Lord. I have yet figured out how to pronounce it in a way that communicates that this is written in small caps, but it is.

So this is a— you don’t know how to say small— how to say something in small caps?

No, no, no, no, no, not yet. I’m figuring it out because I don’t— for those of you who read comic books like Thor, every time they represent Thor speaking, the typeface is different from everybody else’s dialogue. Oh, I didn’t know that. And so, yeah, in like every Thor comic. And so if he turns up in a Captain America comic and it’s Thor, the typeface for his dialogue bubbles will be different from everyone else’s.

You know why? It’s because he’s an Australian doing an English accent.

Well, he’s an Asgardian. Um, he’s a god. But you can’t do that in, uh, in the movie. So, um, you know, you could, you could do a little auto-tuning and, and, um, do something fun with that.

But anyway, so something echoey or something, but that’d be annoying.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, the Lord—.

Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to say, ‘The Lord,’ and just, just throw up like that. Please don’t do that. Okay, but what you’re saying is that when it’s the, when it’s the, uh small caps, Lord, what that would be— that’s a rendering of—.

That’s a substitution for the Tetragrammaton. Yes. Okay, so, so, so it’s the name of that specific God. Yes. So the Lord saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humans on the earth. And the word here for sorry in Hebrew can just as accurately be translated, he regretted that he made humans on earth and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, I will blot out from the earth the humans I have created, people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air. For some reason, the fish get a pass because he couldn’t figure out how to drown a fish. For I am sorry that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord. So, um, so that’s 5 through 8.

We’ve got—.

We basically have the introduction of God’s, uh, displeasure with, uh, with the state of the earth, with every living thing, every living thing, every, every breathing piece of flesh on the earth.

And the animals and the creeping things, it doesn’t seem like they did anything. What did they do? Yeah, what’s their—

What’s the problem with them?

What did I ever do to you? Um, and then we get to verse 9. Now suddenly, um, some things are going to change. These are the descendants of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God, and this is Elohim. And Noah had 3 sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Uh, we already mentioned he had those 3 sons. Yeah, so chapter, uh, chapter 5, verse 32, Noah became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Uh, chapter 6, verse 10, by the way, don’t forget Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And then we’re gonna get back to Shem, Ham, and Japheth in chapter 9. Right. But here we’re moving on. Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. We’ve known. You told us this already. Yeah. And God, and God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them.

Now I am going to destroy them along with the earth. So a slightly different telling of what happened in the previous few verses. Yeah. And then, and God’s just like, so here’s what I’m going to need from you. I need you to build an ark out of— We’re going to go with the boat. Cypress. We’re going to go with the boat. Yeah. Let’s do the boat plan. We’re going to go with plan boat. Cypress wood, which you pointed out previously. Yeah.

In the last one we had a whole thing.

Speaking of the whole thing. Yeah, I had a whole thing about gopher wood.

Gopher wood. Yeah, because that’s how the KJV renders it.

And we went off on a tangent about a guy who thinks that Noah’s Ark, or well, that the Garden of Eden was way down yonder at the Chattahoochee. Because he says, you know, there’s only one place in all the world where gopher wood grows. And it’s in Florida and like Florida, Georgia, um, around there, which is not wrong.

It’s just wrong that like, well, it’s just the—

Yeah, the tree was named after the biblical story. It’s not that the biblical story prophesied that there would be a tree one time that would—

Anyway, by the way, put a pin in the idea of naming a thing after the biblical story and then people getting that confused with the real thing.

Oh yeah, we’re gonna, we’re gonna—

Later when we get to a certain mountain, we’re gonna, uh, we’re We’re gonna have some words.

And for those of you who are not from Utah, Dan just said the word mountain. Um, I hear an awful lot that, uh, using a glottal stop in place of a T there drives some people, uh, okay, no, don’t get me started on this because the thing, the Utah, like saying mountain is fine.

Saying mountain, which is how a lot of Utahns say it, is what should drive people crazy. But yeah, no, that’s it. I don’t. It’s just dialect. It’s fine.

I don’t, I don’t hear that.

There’s no right and wrong way to say words.

Exactly right. We are staunch descriptivists at the Data Over Dogma podcast. But speaking of gopher wood, I, my job title, one of my first jobs was, my dad was a general contractor and I was his gopher. And are you familiar with that job? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. The gopher goes for stuff. Yeah. Go for this. Go for that. I need you to go for this, go for that. Yeah. So I was his gopher. So that was my first job. But anyway, God tells Noah, you’re going to build this ark about yay big, about yay long. You know, there’s some timber over there.

To be clear, just so that you know, I did look it up and it’s about the size of a small container ship. But like over 100 feet, even on the smallest estimate of a cubit, well over 100 feet longer than any wooden boat that has ever been able to actually be seaworthy has ever been. So I don’t know, I don’t know how powerful gopher wood is because it doesn’t exist anymore, but apparently it was pretty impressive wood. Yeah, but, um, the—

Then we’re going, uh, we’re coming back to the story in verse 17, and I love how the NRSV starts this part off. God is— God just says, here’s how you’re going to make the ark, and then it says ‘For my part, I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life.

Which, by the way, also it does say male and female, but if you consult literally any children’s Bible book, there will be two male lions.

There’s two male lions. You gotta have the mane. It’s not a lion if you don’t see the mane. Yeah, because then it’s just, you know, you don’t know that—is that a mountain lion? Is it a cougar? Um, are those the same thing? Uh, you know. Um, also take with you of every kind of food that is eaten and store it up, and it shall serve as food for you and for them. Noah did this. He did all that God commanded him. So if we go all the way back to the beginning of God commanding Noah, he built the ark out of gopher wood. Maybe there was some shittim. I’m hoping for shittim.

That’s my wood right there.

Yeah, shittim real good.

If I’m going to have biblical wood, it’s going to be shittim. Let’s move quickly past what I just said.

So Noah did all of this, built the ark, got all the animals. All the animals are brought into the ark, all the food brought into the ark. Yeah. And then we get to—it says “did.” The “Noah did.” And then chapter 7 starts. Oh, but notice this was all God. This was all Elohim. Chapter 7 starts. Then the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you alone are righteous before me in this generation.” So it’s like Noah takes years to build an ark, and then God’s like, “I like the cut of your jib, so I’m gonna allow you to live, um, even though I explained this all to you years ago. Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and its mate, and a pair of animals that are not clean, the male and its mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive on the face of all the earth. For in 7 days I will send rain on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.”

And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him. And so now we basically get the same instructions over again, except because we’ve changed the number of critters.

Yes, yes.

So now it’s 14 of all the clean animals. And notice he says seven pairs of the birds of the air also. Yeah. Now he didn’t say this particular type of bird. He doesn’t say seven pairs of clean birds because they don’t distinguish here clean from unclean birds. And so when you look at the previous part where it says two of every kind of the birds according to their kind, and here it’s seven pairs of the birds of the air also. We have—it’s a straight-up contradiction, right? It’s two different versions of the exact same story. Also, that’s way too many birds.

That is lots of birds. Now we have way too many birds.

Gonna have a lot of predatory birds in close quarters. It’s gonna get uncomfortable. There’s gonna be poop everywhere. Uh, it’s gonna be noisy.

It’s gonna be, you know, so noisy. That’s right. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Just, just imagine being on that boat. Ken Ham, there’s no chance. There’s no way. Ken Ham, calm down.

Can’t even build a watertight Ark Encounter. Didn’t it flood or something like that? There was water damage or something like that. What did you call it? A testament to its own impossibility? Yeah, it’s insane.

The size of the thing is wildly impressive, but it is—you get in there and you’re like, oh, there’s no way. That—

Yeah, no way.

Yeah, could have possibly built this thing. Yeah, yeah, they didn’t have cranes, they didn’t have chainsaws. Yeah, and it’s—yeah, they very clearly had to use modern technology to get that thing built.

Um, yeah, this is no, uh, um, this is no Thor Heyerdahl Kon-Tiki, like, see, it could be done, it could be done. Yeah.

Um, no, if you put that thing on the water, it would twist and crack into a million pieces instantly.

Yes. Now I want to move forward to chapter 7, verse 12. We get the rain fell on the earth 40 days and 40 nights. So that’s it. And then God, God says, for I will send rain on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights. So we’ve got a timeline. Yeah. Now let’s screw that timeline all up by going to the end of chapter 7 to verse 24. And it says, and the waters swelled on the earth for 150 days, which is not 40 days and 40 nights. It’s not 40 days and then starting the first day of 40 nights. Like, is that just— that just adds up to 80.

Yeah, that doesn’t even get you to the 150. That’s— you’re not there yet at all.

And, and what if you’re saying, but Dan, but Dan, it says the waters swelled, so the rain could have stopped, but the waters could have kept on swelling. You know, the rain stopped when the waters were still a semi, but we need full engorgement. That was probably pushing it. But maybe that was just the—.

Look, if we go any further, I’m going to have to put a language advisor on our thing.

So let’s back it off of that. Yeah. So I know what you’re thinking, Dan, the fountains of the deep are still just pumping that, uh, that fluid into, uh, the waters. And, uh, but that doesn’t work with what we read in chapter 8, verse 2. The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed. The rain from the heavens was restrained. So this is the fountains of the deep and the rains from— so we got from the bottom up and from the top down stops. At the same time, waters gradually receded from the earth. So once the rain stopped, the waters start to recede. At the end of 150 days, the waters had abated. So it’s, it’s another contradiction. We got two different timelines. We got 40 days and 40 nights of rain and it stops. Then we got 150 days of rain and then it stops, and the waters abated.

And then when you look at the dates also, uh, and in the 7th month on the 17th day of the month is how, um, we have it at the beginning of, uh, chapter 8. But then later on it’s the 1st month on the 1st day of the month. And, uh, like scholars have compared the dates and been like, these, these don’t all make a lot of sense where— why these, these particular dates are They’re a little too scattershot. So, so yeah, we don’t have agreements on what’s going on with how long it was raining. Yeah. And then once the waters do abate the 10th month and the 10th month on the first day of the month, the tops— oh, the ark came to rest where?

On the mountains of Ararat. Yeah, which, uh, which in, in our last, uh, recording, you, uh, you were clear to point out that this isn’t a mountain, but it is multiple ones.

Yes, yes, the Hebrew is quite clearly masculine plural construct, which would just be the mountains of Ararat. So it’s not identifying a specific mountain, it’s, it’s identifying mountains within a region or a mountain range or something like that. And the mountain that is named Ararat that we have now, if you look it up, that name only goes back a few hundred years. We have absolutely no clue where the mountains of Ararat were located according to the author of this text.

So yeah. So take that. If anyone ever tells you that Noah’s Ark is actually, has been discovered at the top of a mountain in Turkey, that is called Ararat, you can laugh in their face because that’s just silly and stupid, and no, it hasn’t shut up.

Laugh at them from the privacy of your own home over the internet, but if you’re in person, laughing in their face might be a little cruel.

Okay, that’s true, but also maybe gently nudge them to look things up a little bit. Bit more. Yes, do a little bit better, uh, comp— more competent Googling, as Dan says.

Google competently. Or as the great poet once said, look harder. Um, so, uh, then we get to verse 6. Uh, we’ve got another, uh, interesting part of this tale. At the end of 40 days, Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent out the raven, and it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. So evidently the raven doesn’t come back. It’s just to-ing and fro-ing. Yeah, to and fro. Can I sing that song? Probably not. Disney is quite litigious. Yeah, let’s not go there. That’s my understanding, yes. And they’re in a bad way right now.

Yeah, they’re grumpy. Let’s leave them alone.

Yes, they’re grumpy, yes. Then he sent out the dove from him to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground, but the dove found no place to set its foot. Foot or its other foot. And it returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took it and brought it into the ark with him. He waited another 7 days, and again he sent out the dove from the ark. And the dove came back to him in the evening, and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf.

So no one— apparently an olive tree can survive 40 and/or 150 days underwater, which I don’t think that’s happening.

I don’t think that any of the foliage would do well with this and probably did not sprout and grow and have leaves in 7 days. So then he waited. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. Then he waited another 7 days and sent out the dove, and it did not return to him anymore. Just a raggedy man, Kevin Costner, uh, drinking his own urine, looking for some dirt. Um, keep a little dirt under you in a jar for the dirt man.

Um, can I just say, uh, that I love the movie Waterworld? Uh, this is a Gen X thing, uh, you guys, and slash early millennial thing, but yes, the movie Waterworld is a disaster. A disaster from before the start.

Oh my God. Like, making the movie was a disaster.

Everything about it is just so, so— it’s delightfully bad. And I may have to devote a good portion of our afterparty, of our bonus content for our patrons, to you and I just talking about Waterworld. But we can’t get into that now.

There are some unforgettable moments in that movie, even though it was a train wreck.

Okay, so to hear, to hear why you should watch the movie Waterworld and how to watch it well, tune in for the afterparty. Join up at the $10 a month level.

And yes, and if you were not aware, because we usually talk about it at the very end of the episode, we have a Patreon and there’s bonus content. Yeah. And great reasons to sign up at whatever level makes sense to you. Get over there. Yeah. Check it out.

It’ll be fun. Yeah. Yeah. Patreon.com/dataoverdogma.

Okay. Boom. Let’s go on with the thing. Verse 13. So the first thing that happens in what we just read though is Noah basically opens up the window and is like, ah, look, it’s water for far as the eye can see. Which is funny.

Yeah, he stays in the boat. The boat comes to ground, it comes to rest on the mountain, and he stays in the boat for like weeks sending birds out to find olive leaves and stuff.

‘In the 601st year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth, and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked and saw that the face of the ground was drying.’ So now we’re basically starting over, Noah discovering what’s going on. ‘In the second month, on the 27th day of the month, the earth was dry. Then God said to Noah, go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons’ wives with you.’ So we’ve got— we basically got different beginnings, different middles, and different ends. And this is what’s called— these are what are called doublets, uh, where you have a narrative element, uh, that gets repeated in close succession. And there’s been a lot of research, uh, on how, uh, literature grows— literature that gets passed down, anthologies of literature— how they grow, how they accrete. New things, how they get cobbled together. Starting way back in the ancient world, a lot of the Sumerian texts, we have things like the Epic of Gilgamesh and other literature that gets new pieces added to it and stuff like that.

We have the Qumran literature, what they call the sectarian literature, which is the specific group there saying, ‘Here’s what our group’s going to do.’ And that grows and it accretes new details and stuff. The Diatessaron, which is not a glowing cube that gives you divine powers or anything like that.

I was thinking it was the book from the Evil Dead series.

The Necronomicon is what I believe that is. Oh, okay.

No, those are the same.

That one was called— I’m pretty sure those are the same. Yeah. And oh gosh, Klaatu Barada Nikto. Was that the word? I’ve pronounced it wrong, so things are going to go bad for me. But the Diatessaron is a harmony of the four Gospels done by Tatian around 170-180 CE. But anyway, scholars have looked at these collections of literature that have grown over centuries and taken note of features of texts that have been cobbled together from different pre-existing sources.

Right. But, you know, you set the stage and then you set the stage again. You introduce somebody, then you introduce somebody again, right? Somebody is given a charge, then somebody is given a charge again. So this is what you have in Genesis 6 through 8, and this is what leads a lot of scholars to conclude that this flood story as we have it now is the product of two different tales of the deluge, the flood, that have been woven together in a not totally clumsy, but also not totally erudite way, right? So that we do run into these narrative inconsistencies, these chronological inconsistencies, and these— these direct contradictions sometimes.

And direct contradictions.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, you see this in Genesis 1 and 2, the creation account that we get in the first part, directly contradicts the creation account in the second part.

But whereas in Genesis 1 and 2 they just put them one after the other, right here they’ve actually stitched them together. This is kind of a Frankenstein’s monster of the flood story, right? You’ve got a big old scar going across the forehead and some bolts in the neck and flood. But and the two different stories, one is P, and this is the Priestly source. And so a lot of people will refer to the other version as J, the Yahwist, which is part of the JEDP source critical theory, which is prominent in the Documentary Hypothesis. I am among those scholars who think maybe we shouldn’t be talking about J and E as full documentary sources. Maybe we should just be talking about D, P, and non-P, whether that is pre-P or post-P. Um, and, uh, I’m just—.

I am too immature for you to be talking about pre-P and post-P. Yeah, because, uh, that’s just— my brain just goes to the wrong places for that.

Yeah, I, I can’t leave the house, uh, pre-P. It’s got to be post-P that I get out of the house.

Yeah, I try to watch it. And then you’ve got D, pre-P, that’s going to be a disaster.

Yeah. And then you’ve got the D. Don’t, don’t stop it right now. So, and D is not a part of this. There’s no D in this part of the story of Noah. Right. But we have these two different sources that are woven together and we get the same thing in the chapters right before, you know, you’ve got Genesis 1 , 2, and 3. That’s the creation stuff. Then you got Genesis 4 and Genesis 5 . And those are both genealogies, and those are the same genealogy, just told differently. Like, they, you know, they’re— they have different numbers of people and, and they go in slightly different orders. But, you know, you got a Lamech and you got a Lamech, you got, uh, you got an Enoch and you got an Enoch, you got a Cain and you got a Kenan, which is, which is just a diminutive that has been added to the name. And it’s— so it’s Cain and Caincito. Or Lil’ Kane.

Lil’ Kane. Yeah, that’s my rap name.

Yes, it’s spelled L-I-L. And although in the— in most English translations it’s transliterated K-E-N-A-N, so it’s Kenan, right? Who is hilarious. But so we’ve got a bunch of stories that are told in two different ways. And they’re just jammed in here into what is known as the primeval history, Genesis 1 through 11. And you know, then when you get to— then we get to Genesis 9 and we get the sordid tale of whatever happens with Noah and his three sons, which results in the cursing of somebody who’s not even born yet. Right.

So yeah, a lot of somebodies who’s not even born yet. An entire line of somebodies.

Yes, Ham’s son Canaan. So, so what we’ve got basically here is the flood is a combination of two different sources. Yeah, P and non-P. And that is why the flood story is hard to make sense of. That is why it doesn’t— the story is not consistent. We run into these narratives.

That’s not why. The reason why it’s hard to make sense of is because it, even if you harmonized both of the different sources, it doesn’t make sense. It’s a story that is physically impossible and doesn’t make any sense. Yes. And if you’re going to be literal about it, if you, if you want to just be metaphorical or if you want to see it in some sort of, uh, uh, non-literal way, great, knock yourself out. Yeah, yeah. So, but anyway, yeah.

That was exemplary work.

Yeah, we’re professionals and we’re not at all really, really tired and just trying to get through this. Uh, all right, so let’s move on to our next segment, which is Terrible Parables.

Parable terrible. Um, all right, and that’s terrible.

It’s— this one might not be too terrible. Uh, no, this one is terrible if you are in the, uh, the sort of the, the prosperity gospel. Uh, if you’re a worshiper of mammon, yes, maybe.

Um, if maybe it’s not so—.

If you’re one of the— if you’re in the sects of Christianity that are, uh, that are sort of— that are sort of more and more powerful in these United States, uh, that are all about making as much as you can possibly make and heralding the wealthy as God’s chosen elect. Yes. This parable is not for you.

No, no. This is, this is one of the ones that Charlie Kirk never quoted. No, this is the one I just made a video responding to Milo Yiannopoulos. You remember that dude?

Oh my gosh. I don’t know.

What’s that? Yeah. Yeah.

The gay guy that won’t say that he’s— or that’s now un-gay or—.

Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on. But somebody, some some people were posting a video of his on Twitter and I was like, this guy’s back? But the video’s from like 2023, I think. But it was getting a lot of attention. And, you know, it was, we’re founded as a Christian nation. America doesn’t work without God. All this kind of crap. But this is a story that is not going to be quoted by him, certainly not by Trump. Anyone, if you are a right-wing authoritarian, if you’re into the whole social dominance orientation scene. If Christofascism, uh, sparks that tuning fork in your loins, this is not for you.

Uh, but so, ladies and gentlemen, please open— brothers and sisters, please open your books or your scriptures to Luke chapter 12.

Yes, which is where we are here. Yes, and we’re going to start in verse 13. Um, and we’re going to read a bit. We’re going to read down, I think, verse 34. But it starts off with somebody coming up and asking him a question. So someone in the crowd said to him, teacher— and now I’m thinking of George Michael— but, um, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me. And, um, but he said to him, friend, who set me— friendo— who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you? And the question is really about, uh, in, in this time period, the oldest son got the lion’s share, if not the entire inheritance, because if you divide it up, then one man’s property within a few generations, it’s now divided up into 20 different pieces and everybody’s going their separate ways. So the idea is we want to keep it together, and so one person—.

And if you were— if you happen to be born second Tough titty, I guess. Just one of them? Well, that’s it. That’s it.

Okay, I’m used to hearing plural, but fair enough. Okay, so, but a younger person could call on the paterfamilias, the oldest, to give them their share of an inheritance, and they just leave.

And they, uh, and you know, the, the, uh, break me off one piece of that Kit Kat bar and I will go off and, uh, and make my own way.

Yeah, the, the story of the prodigal son, I think, is appealing to a very similar idea, only there the son is asking for his piece before the father, uh, kicks the bucket. Uh, but anyway, but, but Jesus is like, uh, not my job. So, uh, but he says He says to him, take care, be on your guard against all kind of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. Then he told them a parable. The land of a rich man produced abundantly, and he thought to himself, what should I do? I have no place to store my crops. Then he said, I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry. But God said to him, you fool, this very night your life is being demanded of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?

So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God. And I think the point here is that the guy who comes to him is like, I need my money. And it doesn’t seem to be because he is poor. Like, his brother is— he’s on that property.

You can die, right? You could die, and then what good, right?

What good is all that? Yeah, you’ve done all of that, and he’s saying, no, be rich towards God, not, uh, in material possessions. And then he goes into a, a little rant. Uh, therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens. They neither sow nor reap. They have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more valuable are you than birds? And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life?

That’s funny, because I first read this in the KJV because I was— oh yeah, on a weird thing. And it does not say hour— who can add a single hour to your span of life? It says something about adding a cubit to your height, which I think that’s crazy, that those are very different. I mean, the point is the same. You can’t add to things that are unaddable to of your life. But like, that’s nuts that there’s such a wild difference between those two versions.

Well, it looks like the NRSV has a note there saying, or add a cubit to your stature. Yeah. Which sounds kind of arbitrary. Why are you changing that? I don’t think that— is there a textual reason for this? Um, a cubit to his height. A cubit can measure length or time. What? Although day has been suggested, uh, the term is ambiguous in the same way as, uh, pechus. Most scholars take the term helikia to describe age or length of life here, although a few refer it to bodily stature. Okay, well Uh, there you go. So, helikia. Yeah, so helikia. So it’s, um, to his helikian, who can add one cubit, uh, or hour. And so it really comes down to, does it mean add an hour to his life or a cubit to his height?

Yeah.

So interesting. I love that. A cubit. Yeah, one cubit of time. You don’t— you can’t add a cubit of time to your thing. Yeah, which means that the ark was 100-something hours—

Hours high— tall— no, um, it’s got to be— or, well. Uh, consider the lilies, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, you of little faith. Can I ask you a question?

Yes, you may. Did they eat lilies? Is that what I’m reading? No, it says if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, and I’m assuming that grass of the field, it’s still talking about the lilies somehow. They’re seeing that as grass. I don’t— it’s a very confusing thing. I don’t know what he’s talking about.

I think the idea is that it gets dried up and it might be used as fuel, kindling or something like that. But no, they’re not eating grass. They’re not baking grass. They’re baking grass. You can’t— the grass bakes. The grass is what bakes. Anyway, um, and they might get baked on grass, but yeah, that, that, that happened.

We know that has happened.

Just— we, we know that that has happened. Um, and do not keep seeking what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying, for it is the nations of the world that seek all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. I’m going to pause here before I read the last two verses, but yeah, like, poor folks today, um, this is not very helpful advice. No, it’s like, hey, I can’t afford food. Oh, consider the lilies, poor person.

Stop worrying about food. It doesn’t matter. It’s fine.

Yeah. You can’t add a single hour to your height by worrying about where am I going to get dinner for my children. So yeah, yeah, this is, this is not helpful advice for, for people on one end of the socioeconomic spectrum.

I suppose I was wrong earlier in saying that this is bad for the prosperity gospel people because this, that the end of this could be very much used by them to say, uh, seek the kingdom and these things will be given to you, i.

Could be an interpretation of this, uh, as long as you don’t read verse 33.

Yes, yes, that’s where it all kind of falls apart. If you stop before— if you stop at 31, you’re golden.

Yeah, Joel Osteen. But I, I think these things will be given to you as well. I think it is food to eat, clothes to wear, right? I think it is the necessary— um, and a Cybertruck.

You’re thinking of food to eat, clothes to wear, and yeah, I’m thinking of the Seychelles.

I’m thinking of The Jerk now, and he’s like, I flew my friends to the Super Bowl on my private jet. They had cracks on the seat. I had to put towels on the seat. Not towels. But then we get to verse 33. Now, a lot of people know the parable of the rich young ruler where he comes to Jesus, says, oh, I’ve kept all the commandments from my youth. What lack I yet? And Jesus says, sell everything that you have and give the money to the poor. And people are like, That’s not generalizable. That’s just Jesus talking to one dude. It was—

And what he said was hyperbole.

You guys calm down. But then we get to Luke 12:33 . So he’s— he’s told this parable. He’s explained what’s going on. Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. So here we have Jesus quite explicitly telling his followers— not just one rich dude, but his followers— sell your possessions, right, and give alms. In other words, give, uh, give the money to the poor. Uh, and, and we get one more example of this when we get to the book of Acts , which is written by the same author as this story, right? Uh, where they, they say that, uh, all of them All of the followers of Jesus sold all that they had. They had all things in common, gave their possessions to the poor.

So if you’re a fan of Luke-Acts, the prosperity gospel is not for you. It’s troubling. And if you’re— Yeah. Yes. If you’re a fan of the prosperity gospel, Luke-Acts is not for you.

Yeah. Maybe just tear that bit out. You don’t want it. That’s not going to be good for you.

Yes, it is your epistle of straw that you are just going to—

And can I just say, giving alms does not mean giving to a millionaire pastor. That’s not what that means. It doesn’t mean give money so that your guy can have another jet. Creflo Dollar needs to fly. He can’t fly commercial. That’s not what we’re talking about here. Oh, gosh. So, yeah. All right. Well, there you go. I think we can leave it at that. That is a good parable for some, a bad parable for others. Not great for poor people. Also not great for prosperity gospel people. Yes. I kind of like it. It’s kind of down the middle.

The NRSV entitles this part of this chapter, The Parable of the Rich Fool. Fool. Yeah, so that would, that would be, uh, not the guy who comes up and asks Jesus to, uh, interfere in family matters, uh, not the TV show but his own actual family matters, but, um, the, the one God calls a fool because he has all— the guy, the guy that, uh, that’s, that’s building bigger barns to store his— yeah, he’s like, by golly, yeah, I need bigger barns to keep all this grain. Uh, I’m gonna go, uh, I’m gonna go beat some, uh, beat my wheat. Beat some wheat. There’s a bigger barn in your bed.

I need a big barn for my wheat. Okay, things are getting— we are getting slap happy. You’re gonna probably want— now is the time to join our Patreon, uh, and come and check out this week’s, uh, after party, because Dan and I are totally off the rails right now. Yes, we’re trying to hold it in. It—

Or my watch, my watch is like, you’re supposed to be asleep. So yeah, it’s going to get, it’s going to get weird.

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Bye, everybody.