Sins of the (Grand)father

Their babies didn’t do anything wrong. Their babies were not like, “I’m making the conscious decision to follow in the sins of my father. Stupid Korah.” Hey everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation. And I’m doing well. How are things today, Dan?

Things are good. We are— you’re— we’re going to try and burn through this one so that you can get out of here. You’re trying to leave.

Yeah, I’m trying to get out of Dodge, get out of town, get out of the country.

Yeah.

Get to another country and then argue with some other scholars about Christology. I’m very excited about that.

That sounds exciting. We’ll see if they let you back in. That’ll be good.

If I’m on, I’m probably on some watch list, but not by anybody with an awful lot of power. So I’m not too worried about it.

That’s true. So today’s show, we got a couple of things coming up. We got, we’re going to start out with a Bible versus Bible. Yeah, that’s going to be a lot of fun. We’re going to, we’re going to see if us talking will be enough to get a generational curse placed on either of us. You’re the only one that that’s really dangerous for. I have no progeny. So we’ll just see from there. Yeah. And then we’re going to do an Is It Canon? And talk about a book that is still canon for plenty and is not canon for others. I had never heard of it, which, that makes— I mean, no one’s shocked by my ignorance, so that’s fine.

But this was, when it comes to the Apocrypha, of all the texts that could have ended up in the canon. This is probably one of the apocryphal texts. I think this is one of two apocryphal texts that came the closest to being included in the Jewish canon.

So this— we’re just— so that we don’t bury the lead, we’re going to be talking about Sirach, or the Book of Ben Sira, or I don’t know.

Ecclesiasticus is the other one, the churchy book.

Or the Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Eleazar. But that’s okay, it’s got a lot of names.

Yes, yes.

Uh, so we’re gonna, we’re gonna get to, to all of that in the second part of the show, but for now, it’s Bible versus Bible, baby. Okay, so, uh, we are not going to talk about any of the movies or TV series called The Sins of the Father.

We actually were like, let’s look this up, and, um, there were, there were books, there were, there’s a video game, there are songs, there are music, there are songs called Sins of the Father. Uh, James Coburn was in one of these, one of these pieces of media. So, you know, it’s good.

You know, it’s, it’s been ruffling some feathers.

Yep. And, and Dan was like, wasn’t, wasn’t Daniel Day-Lewis in one of these too? And then we, we found out that was, uh, that was in The Name of the Father. And that led to an entirely different neurodivergent rabbit hole. So, um, we’re back though.

We’re back. Yes, we’re here for you.

I’m going to claim that identity even though formally I have been diagnosed, uh, right out of that identity.

You’re pretty sure.

I’m gonna keep my shirt that says undiagnosed, but something ain’t right.

Yeah, exactly. We all know that. We can tell. You, you literally know everything there is to know about your special interest. I think we can safely call you—.

Call that a hyperfixation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, okay.

All right, so here it is. Uh, yeah. I’m going to launch us. I’m going to start us off.

Launch.

There’s very little that you can say against this. I’m about to present an airtight case. Okay. We’re going to Exodus 20. We’re going to the Ten Commandments. It’s in the top 10, baby. It’s right there. Somehow, strangely, it has not made it onto the wall of any public schools.

Or the references to your enslaved people.

That’s right. Yeah, yeah. It is kind of weird that they skipped this part, but here’s what it says. After it says, “You shall not make for yourself an idol,” uh, in verse 5 it says, “You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children of— punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me.”

Yeah. Well, yeah, 100% sounds awful.

Why are you—what? Why? What did those kids do? I’m like, my great-grandpa did something bad and now the whole family’s cursed.

Yeah. Yeah. God keeps coming around and, you know, moving our stuff when we’re not around.

I banged my shin the other day. It was really bad. So talk to me about this generational curse idea.

So yeah, this is something we see actually in a few different places. Now we’ve got the Ten Commandments here, but there are two other sets of Ten Commandments in the Bible. One of them is very, very close to what we have in Exodus 20. That’s where Deuteronomy 5 repeats the Ten Commandments. A little bit of wording changes here and there.

Yeah, just some fun little updates in the wording, sure.

But we do have the exact same sentence in Deuteronomy 5:9, and we’re going to come back a little bit to the context of Deuteronomy 5:9 to talk about why the author of Deuteronomy actually seems to be of two minds about this.

Yeah!

Yeah. But we also have—and those are legislative—but we also have a couple of other references to this in the other Ten Commandments, which would be the, what’s called Ritual Decalogue. We’ve talked about this before, Exodus 34, which is the set of Ten Commandments that’s actually referred to as the Ten Words. It says, “Keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation,” which when I read that, I was very confused by, because it’s like steadfast love, thousand generations of love, and forgiving iniquity, and then not forgiving iniquity.

And also the iniquity goes on to the children too. And it’s like, that feels like it’s contradicting itself within the verse.

I’m confused. Yeah, but you have this contrast, and we’ll look at in Deuteronomy, we have a similar contrast in Deuteronomy 5 and Deuteronomy 7. But Numbers 14:18 says the exact same thing: “The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children to the third and the fourth generation.” So four times we’ve got this pretty clear thing where they go, “Hey buddy, God will punish children for the iniquity of their parents to the third and even the fourth generation.” Second generation, we’re just going to cruise on by, we’re not even going to mention them. But the third and the fourth generation, that’s where things land. So that seems pretty clear, as you said, not really much equivocation going on there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There are some who will argue based on what we have in Exodus 20:5, “punishing children for the iniquity of the parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me.” People will say it’s only as long as the generation continues to reject God. Which is kind of like they’re trying to weasel out of it by saying they’re perpetuating the iniquities, that’s why they’re being punished for them. And as we’re going to see, mm-mm.

Yeah.

That doesn’t work. It doesn’t work.

Yeah. I mean, one of the main stories that we—if this were just in these sort of legislative moments, these lists of rules or whatever, that’s one thing. But this concept shows up in stories.

Oh yeah.

We’ve talked about Ham. We’ve talked about Noah. And that was like, “I curse everybody that comes out of you forever, or all of the time.” Well, yeah.

And that’s not even to say anything about the destruction of all the firstborn in Egypt.

Yeah.

Like, these were—these were the children of Egyptian parents and, you know, this was even the baby in the bassinet.

Yeah.

Suckling.

Just a sweet little kid.

Yeah.

Ain’t done nobody nothin'.

Yeah. Dead. And we’re going to talk about, at least I would like to talk about, a number of examples where God very clearly says, “Hey, you did something wrong. You’re going to die. Also, your kids are dying, too.” Yeah, yeah. And even infants. So yeah, there’s no real way around this, but—.

It’s tricky.

But now we gotta look at the other Bible.

Okay.

‘Cause we got Bible versus Bible.

Right.

It’s like Kramer versus Kramer. We gotta look at the other, you know, “I can’t take it anymore, Jerry!” I’m pretty sure that’s the Kramer they’re talking about in that show. I never watched the show. But if we go to Ezekiel 18, “Even Ezekiel thinks that my mind is gone.” I— did I put that in? I think I put that in my book. Yes, I did. That was the heading for one of the sections in my book. “Even Ezekiel thinks that my mind is gone.” I don’t even know what the reference is. That’s Weird Al.

Okay.

That’s Gangsters— or Amish Paradise.

Amish Paradise.

Yeah, where you’re like, “Even Ezekiel thinks—” I probably shouldn’t sing it, huh? I don’t know. But it’s weird stuff.

Weird Al would forgive us. But his record label might not.

Yeah, no, no, his record label, they’re vicious. So anyway, in Ezekiel 18, we’ve got this discussion of how if, you know, somebody charges interest on loans and stuff, they shall die. And then we go, “Yet you,” and then it talks about how the children shouldn’t. And then verse 19 says, “Yet you say, ‘Why should not the son suffer for the iniquity of the father?’ When the son has done what is lawful and right and has been careful to observe all my statutes, he shall surely live. The person who sins shall die. A child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent, or a parent suffer for the iniquity of a child. The righteousness of the righteous shall be their own, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be their own.” So, so this is unequivocal.

Also, yeah, also pretty, uh, pretty well stated and straightforward. And it seems—.

It certainly seems like it’s trying to fill things out a little bit and generalize, because it’s not just, you know, the child shall not suffer for the sins of the parents. He’s like, and we’re gonna even go back the other direction. A parent shall not suffer for the sin of a child. We don’t have a whole lot of stories about that. But I think you could actually read it into some of the things we’re gonna talk about. But, and then the righteousness of the righteous shall be their own. It’s kind of filling it out. But so this is secondary. This is a later kind of renegotiation of this. And I want to— and Ezekiel is late, like Ezekiel is exilic period. Right. Exodus 20 is probably late pre-exilic or maybe into the exilic period. But we can see where the pivot happens because there’s, in the earlier texts, yes, there was corporate responsibility for sin, there was corporate punishment for sin.

And then with a certain literary layer in the Pentateuch, they flip a switch and they go, “We’re not doing this anymore.” And it happens in Deuteronomy. And so it is a Deuteronomistic rhetorical goal, kind of, to overturn this. Because we already looked at— now you’re going to say, the thoughtful listener or viewer is going to say, “Wait a minute, you just read that from Deuteronomy 5:9.” We sure did. The Ten Commandments. So that’s in Deuteronomy, yes. But let’s— I’m going to read 5:9 and 10 and then read 7:9 and 10. So 5:9 and 10: “You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.” So we’ve got both sides of this. If you’re, if you’re bad, 4th generation. If you’re good, 1,000th generation.

Then we go down to Deuteronomy 7. “Know therefore”— this is verse 9— “that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who maintains covenant loyalty to those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations, and who repays in their own person those who reject him. He does not delay but repays in their own person those who reject him.” This is not just a different idea. This is clearly pointing to the other one and saying, nope.

Yeah, it does feel— it does feel like it is a— that’s a weird thing to have two chapters later. Yeah, in the same book, because the Ten Commandments—.

And this is what makes it clear that Deuteronomy is like, well, we got to put the Ten Commandments in there. Uh, okay, well, we’re going to write this thing a couple chapters later that overturns this, because it says punishing children for the iniquity of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me. And then we’ve got this—no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no—the one who rejects him gets punished in their own person, they themselves. And God’s not going to delay and wait until we get down the road to a child or a grandchild or a great-grandchild. And so we’ve got this interesting pivot here. This seems to be that Deuteronomy is inheriting this view that God will punish children for the sins of the parents, but then is trying to massage it away.

It’s trying to go, “No.” Trying to have some influence over it going forward. Now remind me when Deuteronomy, we think, was written.

Yes, so Deuteronomy, the earliest layers of Deuteronomy are probably right before the exile. This is probably King Josiah. And this actually probably doesn’t include these two chapters. So this is probably a later layer within Deuteronomy because scholars usually identify like three different main compositional editorial layers of Deuteronomy. It came together in waves. And if anybody wants a good book on this, Thomas Romer wrote a book called “The So-Called Deuteronomistic History,” which is really, really good. And he discusses, here are the clues that lead scholars to conclude this. But so the, so the part we’re talking about is probably exilic. Okay. And while Ezekiel is not a big, a huge fan of the Deuteronomy project, I think Ezekiel picks up this, um, this outcome, this product of the Deuteronomistic project.

And, and there’s a story that, um, I think kind of shows the Deuteronomistic authors wrestling with this. And it has to do with a dude named Ahab. Okay. Now, Ahab was the king of Israel. Right. And there’s a story where Ahab takes Naboth’s vineyard. Have you heard those words before in that order? Yes. Okay.

I’m trying to remember if we have talked about this on the show.

If we haven’t, we need to. So maybe we need to—so jot that down. So anyway, there’s—so Ahab ends up killing Naboth, taking his vineyard. And then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite saying, “Go down to meet King Ahab of Israel who rules in Samaria. He is now in the vineyard of Naboth, where he has gone to take possession. You shall say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, have you killed and also taken possession?’ You shall say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, in the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, dogs will also lick up your blood.’” So yeah, there’s some foreboding there. Yeah. I can imagine Elijah going, holding up his staff and going, dun dun dun! And then sprinting away so the king doesn’t have him killed. Right. Which was a problem for Elijah. He must not have been a very likable person. But so you’ve got this prophecy, this curse, two parts to it.

You will die in Naboth’s vineyard in the very place that you have taken possession of, and the dogs will lick up your blood. Now the problem is we have two different attempts to kind of fulfill this prophecy, and none of them actually—neither of them actually get it right.

Okay. It seems like a pretty simple prophecy to get correct. Yeah. You shouldn’t have too much trouble there.

A simple prophecy. Yes. That is from—shoot. R.E.M. has a song. It’s Occupy My Time. Oh yeah. So that’s 1 Kings 21 where that curse is uttered. The very next chapter, you have Ahab gets killed. “The king was propped up in his chariot facing the Arameans until evening. He died.” He gets shot with an arrow. “The blood from the wound had flowed into the bottom of the chariot. Then about sunset, a shout went through the army, ‘Every man to his city and every man to his country.’ So the king died” and was brought to Samaria. They buried the king in Samaria. They washed the chariot by the pool of Samaria. The dogs licked up his blood, and the sex workers washed themselves in it. I know, I don’t know why we brought them into the story.

Yeah, honestly, come on, guys.

According to the word of the Lord that he had spoken. So the narrator wants you to imagine, oh, this fulfills the prophecy, right? Only half of the prophecy, because the location is not in Naboth’s vineyard. Right. They’ve taken the chariot out back and they’re hosing it down. That’s not Naboth’s vineyard.

But the prophecy was quite explicit: “in the place.” Maybe the chariot went through the vineyard on the way there and dripped some blood.

and dripped some blood. Well, I think you’ve got an irrigation system where the blood flowed and ended up pooling in Naboth’s vineyard, and then the dogs were like, “What? Jackpot!” And, um, but anyway, that— so that’s one attempt to fulfill the prophecy. And then we’ve got another. We’ve got— we got to go to 2 Kings 9, and this is the one that makes the Deuteronomist uncomfortable. So here we have Jehu drew his bow with all his strength and shot Joram between the shoulders, so that the arrow pierced his heart and he sank in his chariot. Joram, aka Jehoram, is the son of King Ahab. Okay. Jehu said to his aide, “Bidkar, lift him out and throw him on the plot of ground belonging to Naboth the Jezreelite. For remember when you and I rode side by side behind his father Ahab how the Lord uttered this oracle against him: For the blood of Naboth and for the blood of his children that I saw yesterday, says the Lord, I swear I will repay you on this very plot of ground.

Now therefore lift him out and throw him on the plot of ground in accordance with the word of the Lord. So, okay, now we’ve got the offspring of Ahab, who is dying on the very plot of land. So we’re kind of like finishing the prophecy. Yeah. It’s like the dogs licked up the blood, great, but we need somebody to die on the spot.

We still need some blood that can be considered Ahab’s.

Yeah. And so, but this is his son. Yeah. And the narrative explicitly has Jehu recalling the prophecy, only this prophecy is different because it doesn’t say for the blood of his— or, oh yeah, the blood of Naboth and the blood of his children, not Ahab’s children. So anyway, the idea seems to be that if the kid suffers the fate that was promised the father, that’s good enough. Counts. That still fulfills the prophecy. Yeah. Which kind of requires the assumption that God is happy to punish children for the sins of the fathers. Now people are going to say, well, he followed in the sins of his father. Great, still not the prophecy, right?

And still, and still, it’s still a different sin, you know what I mean? Like, like if I steal a car and then my kid steals a different car, that’s two different sins. That’s not continuing the same sin.

And Joram didn’t kill Naboth. He didn’t dig him up and, and, uh, have a little mock trial with his corpse and then, and then kill him again. So, yeah, 2 Kings 9, much to the discomfort, likely, of the Deuteronomistic compiler and editor, seems to treat this story as a fulfillment of the prophecy based on the notion that the children can take upon them the sins of the fathers, and even a prophecy about punishment for sin can be transferred to the son. Yeah, they got to read the fine print.

Transferable, fully transferable. Right, yeah, exactly. This is a fungible token.

So that is an example of, one example of something within the Deuteronomistic history that would seem to not quite work with the Deuteronomist’s idea. Yeah. But let’s talk briefly about several other examples. We’ve already talked about Egypt, the plagues, the 10 plagues. Yeah. Here’s a fun one. We’ve got Korah. Don’t know if anybody remembers good old Korah from Numbers 16. Did a lot of bad stuff. Okay. Moses got up, went to Dathan and Abiram. The elders of Israel followed him. He spoke to the congregation saying, “Turn away from the tents of these wicked men and touch nothing of theirs, or you will be swept away for all their sins.” So they got away from the dwellings of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. And Dathan and Abiram came out and stood at the entrance of their tents together with their wives, their children, and their little ones.

And this is like, you know, children— I have a 17-year-old child who is responsible for themselves, but not really. But, um, little ones is explicitly your infants, your toddlers. Yeah. And Moses said, this is how you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these works. It has not been of my own accord. If these people die a natural death, or if a natural fate comes to them, then the Lord has not sent me. But if the Lord creates something new and— oh, say— the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up— oh my gosh— with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into Sheol, then you shall know that these men have despised the Lord. As soon as he finished speaking all these words, the ground under them was split apart. The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up along with their households, everyone who belonged to Korah, and all their goods. So they, with all that belonged to them, went down alive into Sheol.

The earth closed over them and they perished from the midst of the assembly. I don’t think a lot of people are aware of this story. I’m not aware of this story.

How do you spell Korah?

K-O-R-A-H. Numbers 16 is where this happens.

That’s horrifying. Why haven’t we done this story on the show?

Yeah, this is like horror movie stuff. Yeah. Like, hey, guess what? You’re going down to hell. Yeah.

Alive. And then you just— and it’s just to prove that I’m real.

This is just— this is just— but yeah, and, and they— and the narrator took the time to mention their kids and their babies were there as well. So, like, this seals the deal. Their babies didn’t do anything wrong. Their babies were not like, “I’m making the conscious decision to follow in the sins of my father.” You know, they weren’t— that’s a bad baby voice. I love their baby voice. It was kind of the Gollum kids. Yes, exactly. Stupid Korah. So yeah, that’s a pretty clear example of that. And then we’ve got Joshua with Achan in Joshua 7. They took Achan son of Zerah with the silver, the mantle, and the bar of gold, with his sons and daughters, with his oxen, donkeys, and sheep, and his tent, and all that he had, and they brought them up to the Valley of Achor. And then Joshua says, Bad move, man.

Why’d you do this? And all Israel stoned him to death. Yes. They burned them with fire, cast stones on them, and raised over him a great heap of stones that remains to this day. So, uh, yeah, his, uh, Achan, his sons and daughters also got the— a raw deal. Yeah. With, with no reference to them having done anything wrong. Right. And then we got it. We got a couple of examples where it’s explicitly a newborn. Oh my gosh. Yes. Okay. So the first one is a famous one. What happens to David after he sends poor— the— oh my gosh. It’s Uriah, wasn’t it? Yeah. Why am I— I’m getting a brain fart.

Bathsheba’s husband, right? Yes. Yes. I don’t know.

I think it’s Uriah. Yeah. Yes. So anyway, so David has this affair, well, rapes Bathsheba, and Bathsheba becomes pregnant and gives birth to a child. And thus says the Lord, “I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house, and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in broad daylight.” Okay. Sounds kind of odd. Yeah. I can imagine this neighbor being in a dear Penthouse. For you did it, secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and in broad daylight. David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. Nathan said to David— said to David, now the Lord has put away your sin. You shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child born to you shall die. And then the child dies. Okay, so, um, that is a— to the degree you want to imagine a newborn child is a person in ancient Israel, which is somewhat debatable.

Sure. That child was punished for the sins of David. It had obviously done absolutely nothing wrong. And then we have other examples of that. Oh, I skipped an example of kids being killed because their dad did something wrong. But then we’ve got this other one where Jeroboam is naughty, and then God says, “I will cut off from Jeroboam every male, both bond and free, in Israel, and will consume the house of Jeroboam just as one burns up dung until it is all gone, as one does.” And blah, blah, blah. “He will give up Israel.” “Then Jeroboam’s wife got up and went away, and she came to Tirzah. As she came to the threshold of the house, the child died.” So another example of a newborn child of a sinner being killed by God for the sin of the father. Yeah. And so when it comes to pro-life stuff as well, it’s like God will happily kill an infant, a newborn.

Yeah. And when it comes to fetuses in a womb, that’s not even a question. That’s not even a question. God’s like, “Yeah, we don’t care about this.” So— I wanted to—.

Bring up one issue that— because, you know, this can seem like it’s sort of just a funny, uh, a funny problem. But one of the things that I realized when I was researching this, when I was thinking about it, was that I was raised in a religion— your— the religion that you’re in, that believed— doesn’t anymore, they disavowed this— but for the longest time, they believed that the curse of Ham, the curse of Cain was darkness. And that became the basis for a whole series of incredibly racist— Yes. And, you know, Mormonism does not own this. This is something that was a sort of prominent idea in the 19th century for a while. And long before. So it’s not like this is harmless. These ideas of generational curses. Right. It became, you know, it was the reason— It was the rationalization for slavery.

Yeah, the reason why people could be awful to an entire group of people for no reason other than, you know, their skin color was different. Yeah.

And that was something inherited. You have that in the curse, the skin of blackness with which the Lamanites were cursed. It was passed on to their their children until somebody repented, and then magically their children were not born with the curse. So yeah, the generational curse is absolutely something that is baked into the foundations of even more recently developed religions like Mormonism.

Yeah. And becomes a thing that is just phenomenally harmful. Oh yeah. So I think I’m gonna come down on the side of Ezekiel on this one. I think I’m gonna come down on the side of, uh, no.

Well, regarding what you would prefer. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Now, when it comes to what’s in the Bible, I, you know, obviously Ezekiel’s position is in there, but so is the direct opposite contradictory position. And there are going to be people who say, you know, along with the generational curse thing, that it’s not punishing, so to speak. It’s just that the consequences— like if you have an alcoholic father, the consequences are probably going to be felt by the children. And so they’re going to— they say it that way. It’s just the natural consequences of, you know, living with and being descended from sinful people. And that’s, you know, we can put the lie to that by just pointing to these examples with David and— Tell that to Korah’s family. Yeah, tell that to Korah’s newborn infant who is, you know, still wandering around in Sheol somewhere in the upside down trying to figure out how to get back to their tent.

Dad, tell me again why this happened. Oh, I thought I would do a couple of things. You mentioned the curse of Ham, the curse of Cain, generational curses. Two really good books that I would recommend if anybody would like to look into this more. David Goldenberg, Uh, from 2003, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christian— Christianity, and Islam is a really good one. And then from 2017, also David Goldenberg, Black and Slave: The Origins and History of the Curse of Ham. So if you’re at all interested in finding out more about how that claim, generational curse, has, uh, has corrupted so many Those are those— I think those are two of the best books you can find.

Excellent. All right, well, uh, get out there and stop— don’t blame anybody for something that somebody else did.

Break these generational curses.

That’s right, that’s right. Uh, generational trauma is a real thing. Uh, anyway, we’ll just— we’ll leave it at that, uh, and move on to our next thing, uh, which is, uh, is it canon? That’s what it is. We’ll get to it. Is it canon? Here we go. All right, here we go. Is it canon? Sirach, uh, or the— or, or any of the myriad other names for this book.

Ben Sira, we got Sirach, we got Ecclesiasticus, uh, we got the Wisdom of, uh, Jesus son of Eleazar son of Sirach. Yeah, uh, this is a, a book that seems to have been, uh, originally composed around 180-ish BCE, the Hebrew original. Now, it was originally written in Hebrew and then translated into Greek by none other than the grandson of the author. Yeah. So, this is a pretty cool text from Second Temple period Judaism where we not only have an indication who the author is, we have no reason to doubt it. Like, it’s pretty straightforward. Yeah, this seems like this is accurate.

Well, and we can date it properly, too, unlike so many of the other books that we’ve talked about. This one actually, like, talks explicitly about a few things that we actually know the date of, so we can actually nail this one down. Is that right?

Yes. So, in the prologue, the grandson says that his His grandfather had come to Egypt in the 38th year of the reign of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes, and that would have been around 132 BCE. Oh, I’m sorry, the author’s grandson, he came to Egypt. Yeah, 132. That’s where Greek is a lot more common. So he was like, “Well, I got to translate this thing.” And so he has it translated, probably, he says he finished it soon after the king’s death. And we know that that king died around 116 BCE. So the Greek translation that we have seems to have been finished around 116 BCE based on his coming to a land where he needed to speak, he needed to, people needed to access it in Greek.

And he’s like, “Well, I’m going to translate this thing.” And so based on his age, how much earlier his grandfather would have been writing, probably.

Well, I was going off of what it says in Wikipedia. No less fine a source as Wikipedia. What does Wikipedia say? Where it talked about how in the Book of Sirach, it mentions, the text refers to, in the past tense, to the high priest Simon, son of Onias, and that is almost certainly Simon the High Priest, the son of Onias II, who died in 196 BCE.

We get a terminus post quem, time after which, would be 196 BCE. And that’s chapter 50. That discusses the High Priest. Yeah, and you got— we don’t have any reference to Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who comes to power around 175. So that’s probably our terminus ante quem. So we’ve got a 21-year period between which this text was written. And I think we have some Hebrew manuscripts, don’t we? Yeah.

Oh, do we? Okay, that’s unique. That’s fun. Yeah. Now, they probably—

Because the grandson translated into Greek, and we have a bunch of those manuscripts. Right. But this text was probably widely known prior to the grandson’s translating it, and so it was probably in circulation in Hebrew manuscripts as well. So at Masada, which is a kind of cliff-like fortress thing by the Dead Sea. A very cool place if you ever have the opportunity to go. But there was a Hebrew manuscript there, a scroll that had portions of chapters 39 through 44. There were a couple of manuscripts that were discovered at Qumran as well. Okay. And then we’ve got some incomplete manuscripts from the medieval period that preserve the text in Hebrew. And Geniza.

Although, uh, my understanding was that this was never included in the Hebrew Bible. This is, uh, so like it wasn’t considered scripture within Judaism, is that right? Well, it would ultimately—

By the time a Jewish canon, uh, formalized, it would be left out. However, there were debates that went on for a long time before that formalization of the canon, during which time a lot of people advocated for the inclusion of Ben Sira. And it is quoted in some rabbinic literature. It was definitely considered scripture by a representative portion of Second Temple and then rabbinic Judaism prior to this firming up of the canon with Ben Sira on the outside. Okay. And I think there are different ideas about why that would have happened. Some of the texts of the Apocrypha, they were left out because they were originally composed in Greek. And now, this one is widely circulated in Greek, but was not composed in Greek. It was originally composed in Hebrew. However, it was like pretty openly a product of the 2nd century BCE, and one of the criterion or one of the criteria of these arguments was that developed as things were firming up was it needs to be inspired.

And inspiration kind of came to a close with the last prophets.

Oh, they stopped getting inspiration. That’s sad. Yeah.

So like 4th century BCE, there was a movement to treat anything that came from after around 400 BCE, as far as they knew, Daniel comes from, even after the original composition of Ben Sira. Right. They didn’t know that. So anything that they knew came from after the prophetic period couldn’t qualify. I think that’s probably one of the central considerations that kept it out of the canon.

So the author of Ben Sira just made the mistake of not pretending—

Letting everybody know. Yeah.

Not pretending to be significantly older than it actually was. Yeah.

One of the titles was, uh, was The Wisdom of Yeshua, or Jesus, ben Eleazar ben Sira. And it is, it is in the vein of wisdom literature. So like Proverbs, like Ecclesiastes, uh, like those other texts that, that are all about the right way to live, right? And which is why the opening chapters are like, uh, here’s wisdom and personal life, here’s what you got to keep in mind, here’s your duties toward God. You gotta do… And a big one is alms for the poor. Mm. Gotta treat the parents nice, gotta treat God nice, gotta be humble, and then the poor and the oppressed are also a big part of that. So I think there’s a degree to which the New Testament’s concern for the poor and things like that is a part of this same genealogical line within Judaism where taking care of the poor is a big deal. And, um, but the, the interesting thing— I, I think one of the most interesting things about, uh, Sirach is, is basically it’s, it’s painting this picture of wisdom, and it’s picking up on some of the stuff you see in like Proverbs 8, where wisdom is personified as this woman who’s born, uh, you know, at the beginning of creation and all this kind of stuff.

creation and all this kind of stuff. Sirach is kind of playing with different personifications of wisdom as well, but kind of settles on the notion that Torah is wisdom. And so that’s one of the main theses, I think, is that, hey, wisdom helps you do all this stuff. Wisdom is important for all this stuff. Guess where you get wisdom? In the word, in the Torah. And so it’s advocating for, you know, meditating day and night on the Torah, because that is— and Torah, the word in Hebrew, fundamentally means instruction, not law. Instruction. And so I think one of the main ideas is basically to cheerlead for the Torah. Okay.

Well, there you go. It sounds a little like brown-nosing to try and get into the to the canon there.

Yeah, I mean, it is, you know, it’s, uh, there’s other wisdom literature that’s probably post-4th century BCE as well. But, uh, it, you know, where the author of Ben Sira was like, I’m not gonna be honest, I’m not, or I’m gonna be honest, I’m not gonna pretend to be a prophet from centuries before. All the other guys who were like, nah, we’re just gonna lie, um, right, they, they made it in.

They made it in. It was a noble gambit, I would say, to try and be honest, but turns out a fool’s errand.

Yeah. And if you access Ben Sira, also known as Ecclesiasticus, and in fact, I think in an awful lot of scholarly settings, that’s what I frequently hear it referred to as, Ecclesiasticus, but that’s more of a Christian name for it. The translations have to rely on both the Hebrew and the Greek, ‘cause we have Hebrew manuscripts, but there are gaps. About a third of the Hebrew isn’t there. And so we have to rely on the Greek. So you’re getting a mix of translation from Hebrew and from Greek, which is kind of similar to the book of Daniel, where you’ve got Aramaic and Hebrew. And if you’re reading in translation, you don’t know when it’s switching from one to the other. Really. Same is true of Sirach. I thought it’d be fun to read the prologue. Oh, okay, yeah, sure. Because it talks about translation, which is one of the earliest kind of meditations on translation.

It’s not too long.

And the prologue is contained, like, if you have a Bible that has Sirach in it, the prologue is part of that. It’s not just— Yes. Because I— because when I was reading about it before I started to actually read part of the book itself, I thought the prologue was just something that like the grandson was like, hey, uh, just so you guys know where this came from, uh, granddad did this. I thought it should be in Greek. Here you go. Um, but no, it— I— and so I would assume that it wouldn’t be— that the prologue would not be part— that would just be tacked on to the translation. Anyway, yeah, interesting.

It’s pretty much always included because this is the person who translated it, and you know, if you’re going in Greek, it’s part of the manuscript. But also just because of the commentary that it offers. And as I read this, keep in mind, like usually when we read biblical texts, you know, out loud on this program, we’re reading stuff that was not written when it claims to have been written. We’re reading claims to have witnessed stuff that the author didn’t witness. In the case of Sirach, as far as we know, we’re getting the gosh-honest truth here.

Straight dope.

Yeah. This is the person who translated this into Greek talking about where it came from, and as far as we can tell, it is basically historical. Okay. So, here we go. Many great teachings have been given to us through the Law and the Prophets and the others that followed them, and for these we should praise Israel for instruction and wisdom. Now those who read them must not only themselves understand them, but must also, as lovers of learning, be able through both speaking and writing to help the outsiders. So we’re getting kind of the rationale. If you’re good with the scriptures, you need to be able to communicate the scriptures. You need to be able to help the outsider. So my grandfather Jesus Who had devoted himself especially to the reading of the Law and the Prophets and the other books of our ancestors, and had acquired considerable proficiency in them, was himself also led to write something pertaining to instruction and wisdom, so that by becoming familiar also with his book, those who love learning might make even greater progress in living according to the Law.

So now we get where this is being situated within all of this. This is like a supplement to the Law. This is something to help you you know, help the law taste better. You are invited, therefore, to read it with goodwill and attention, and to be indulgent in cases where we may seem to have rendered some phrases imperfectly, despite our diligent labor in translating.

So I think that’s such a cool opportunity to be a bit of a fly on the wall in the head of this individual who’s like, “Hey, my granddad was awesome. He did this thing, and now I want to share it with y’all.” And here’s why he said he did it.

And here’s what it can do for you.

And yeah, tell them a little bit of the autobiography too. I came here, I found this copy, and I was like, “Man, this is great, but people here can’t read it because it’s in Greek, man.”

What are we going to do? Can I just register one small complaint? Yeah. Whoever did the versification of this—

Oh yeah, I don’t know what’s up with that.

—Was insane. I’m going to read verse 17 of chapter 1 of Sirach to everyone. Dan already—that was included in what Dan read. Here’s verse 17: “To read it.” And what verse comes after verse 17? Uh, that would be, uh, verse 16. Verse 16, which is amazing.

And also verse 16 is “with goodwill and attention.” Yeah, so what I imagine is going on here is the manuscript in which this is preserved, uh, is, uh, probably pretty inconsistent, and there are some places where you have, you know, things are written, a little bit is written on one line and you got to go to the next line. But here, “You are invited therefore,” in Greek, you would usually say, “with goodwill and attention.” You would usually place that before the verb. And so, I think if you literally, it would be, “You are invited therefore with goodwill and attention to read it and to be indulgent.” But yeah, why are they—why does verse 16 have to be that prepositional phrase and verse 17 have to contain the verb?

And you could solve the entire problem by making 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 into a single verse. That whole thing is like, it’s not even—that’s not even a whole sentence. And there’s that many. Anyway, sorry, uh, I’m mystified by a lot of the versification of, uh, of the Bible. Yeah, I feel like frequently there’s no sense to be made of it.

But, well, yeah, last night I hopped online with Kip Davis, where every week he reads through some Hebrew and comments on it as part of a live stream. So I hopped on there with him, and I was—he was like, “Yeah, we’re going to be doing Zechariah 2:10.” And I flipped it open and I was like, “In the Hebrew versification or the English?” And he was like, “It’s different? What’s going on here?” And yeah, that happens every now and then between the Hebrew and the English. And really, it’s just because of tradition that it has stayed the way it is. I’m trying to find, I’m gonna see if I can find a—what the manuscript must look like that compels people to divide up the verses into such minute segments. Yeah. Um, do we just have like one manuscript of the prologue and it’s—

Uh, yeah, I mean, it does seem like probably they’re trying to—they’re taking a versification that was done in the Greek and then just apply—trying their best to apply it to—

They—they wouldn’t have versified it in the—in the original Greek though. There wouldn’t have been any verses.

Well then, I don’t know, Dan. I’m not—

I have no answer. One other interesting thing to talk about is as Ben Sira goes on, like, you know, chapter 34 begins by talking about how dreams mean nothing. “Take that, Daniel!” There’s a lot of “fear the Lord” stuff. And, you know, “don’t have false friends,” “be careful in taking advice.” Here’s, be careful about physicians and healthcare and stuff like that. Uh-oh.

Don’t take the vax. That’s the RFK Jr.

Verse. Yeah. But we get to, I think it’s chapter 44, and it’s a hymn in honor of our ancestors. It’s a long poem. It’s praising people, and it starts with Enoch and Noah and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and Aaron and Pinchas, or Phineas. Phineas. Is that how we say it in English?

And it’s fascinating that they talk about the judges, Nathan and David. Nathan only gets one verse, but Phinehas has to be in there. And then when— then we get this retrospect, and this is, um, this is before we move on to Simon, uh, son of Onias. But it says, few have ever been created on earth like Enoch, for he was taken up from the earth. Nor was anyone born, ever born, like Joseph. Even his bones were cared for. Shem and Seth and Enosh were honored, but above every other created living being was Adam. So, uh, yeah, and then there’s, uh, before that he lists Josiah and, and other worthy people, uh, Ezekiel, the Book of Job. How, how shall we magnify Zerubbabel? Yeah, he was like a signet ring on the right hand. Um, yeah, it’s kind of in the, in the same vein as, as, uh, Genesis 49 where Jacob is blessing all his sons and refers to them as like, you know, it’s like a vine growing over a wall.

And this is like, “The memory of Nehemiah also is lasting. He raised our fallen walls and set up gates and bars and rebuilt our ruined houses.” So in some sense, it’s kind of trying to echo some of the scriptures.

Yeah. You know, as I sort of thumbed through the, uh, I, you know, I, I didn’t have time to read the entire book, but I would— I checked in on a bunch of things, and it’s, it’s an interesting mix of like poetry and telling, you know, it’ll, it’ll just sort of say some stuff about, like you said, you know, praising the heroes, but also like, you know, telling you what’s good and telling you what’s bad, and honor your parents, and don’t worry about the priests, and just a whole bunch of weird stuff, it does feel like it’s just a guy. It has the feel of this is just a guy saying some stuff.

I tell you the vibe I get. I get a Baz Luhrmann vibe here. Wear sunscreen. Do you remember that from the late ’90s? Like mid to late ’90s? No, wait. The Wear Sunscreen song? No. You don’t remember that? He did this song that was on the radio for— gosh, it was on the radio for a long time. And it was just kind of— it was an essay, I guess, that was put to music. So it became like a spoken word thing.

Oh, it was like, oh, okay. It was like a graduation speech or something.

Something like that. Yeah. Spoken word song released in 1997. Became known as the sunscreen song, where he’s just like rattling off advice.

Little bits of advice. All right, there you go.

Yeah, but it starts with the wear sunscreen thing, but, and goes on from there. That, good grief, like, I haven’t heard that song in 25 years. And I don’t know how rapidly and like recklessly my mind would revert to the late ’90s if I suddenly heard that song.

I feel like your mind may never have left the late ’90s. I feel like your mind might still be there.

There’s some truth to that. That’s fair. But yeah, it is kind of like a boomer was like, “Gather round, children, and let me just tell you some bits of advice.” “Your dreams mean nothing. These new agey people who are trying to read your dreams, they’re all fools.” All right, well, there you go.

It’s an interesting book and unique, I think, in some canon and not in other canon.

Yeah, but if you want to get a sense for what was important to Jewish folks in the second, first century BCE, and first and second, and into the third and fourth centuries CE for Jewish folks and an awful lot of Christians. Yeah, definitely check it out. A lot of interconnections with the Bible going backwards, but also a lot of influence going forward too, so. And the guy’s name was Jesus.

You gotta listen.

Yeah, the whole book should be written in red.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Except the prologue. Except the prologue.

But they do need to fix the verses.

They do.

‘Cause like, you remember about how long it took for me to read that. That was 36 verses.

It was a lot of verses. Yeah, it was a lot of verses. All right, friends, well, that’s it for today. Thank you so much for joining us. If you’d like to become a part of making this show go and getting access to an early and ad-free version of every episode, as well as access to the patrons-only content, go over to patreon.com/dataoverdogma and sign up. You choose what level you want to support us at, but boy does it help. Also, if you want to help us out, give us 5 stars on whatever platform you’re on, or leave a comment, share, like, subscribe, all of those sorts of things. It helps a lot and we always appreciate it. Thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing the show. We’ll talk to you again next time. Bye, everybody. Data Over Dogma is a member of the Airwave Media Network.

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