Dan Tells Dan About Tel Dan

You wonder how they get anything done when all anybody has to do is go resurrection and, you know, then the fist fights break out.

Right.

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. About the same. How are things today, Dan?

Things are good. We’re, we’re, we’re spoiled for choice in terms of fun things to talk about on the show, as always. And, and we’re, you know, having a good time doing it. So we got some, some we have chosen from all of those choices. So we’re going to be doing a couple things. We’re going to do a, a chapter and verse, but it’s actually multiple chapters. We’re just going to be talking about Acts 23 through what, 26, something like that.

Ish. Yeah, around there.

And, and the imprisonment of Paul, which will be interesting. And then it’s an Artifact or Fiction where we’re going to be talking. You know, we have mentioned it before, but we’re going to have Dan tell Dan about the Tel Dan Stele. So that will be a lot of fun.

And before all the comment sections fill up with Steely Dan references.

No, fill them up, fill them up. Make all the Steely Dan references. You want to come up with clever puns on Steely Dan titles, it’s all fair game. We’re here for it. But let’s just dive in first with chapter and verse. All right, so here we are in Acts. I have not. I’ll be honest, this will surprise no one. I’ve not read the Bible. I read the parts of the Bible that I need to read to bone up for this show. And I am obviously, as we’ve got, you know, we’ve been doing this for three and some and change years now. I’ve read quite a bit of it in fits and starts in bits and pieces.

There’s still some dark spots, some shadowy areas, though, where we tend not to, like Mufasa said, don’t never go there. Where the.

Yeah, I try not to. But one of the things that I’ve kind of missed that’s interesting is the story of Paul, which I kind of have a vague sense of. I’ve heard of the road to Damascus. I’ve heard of Saul. But I think before we really get to the story that we’re going to get to, I would like a, just a quick, a quick primer. Primer. Who, however, you want to pronounce it on, on Paul up until this point. You just give me the, the, the, the Cliff Notes on that.

Well, yeah, we’re in. So Acts starts off talking mainly about Peter, and then is like, but you don’t want to hear about Peter. You want to hear about Paul. And so, but wait, there’s more.

Act now and we’ll throw in Paul.

Yeah, the real Mark Hamill. That’s a deep cut.

That’s.

That’s going to be a deep cut for some folks. But, but yeah, this. Well, the, the most immediate context is he’s. He returns to Jerusalem and there are some accusations waiting there for him of teaching against the Temple, against the Torah, against the Jewish people. The temple is still standing in this time period, and he’s nearly killed by a crowd. So he’s having a rough time of, of a lot of this.

And yeah, I, it’s. As I was reading these chapters, I, I’m, I’m going to take us back a. I kept learning things about Paul, and then I was like, oh, wait, he’s a what? Oh, wait, he’s a what? Because. Because at one point he’s a, he’s a Pharisee. And I’m like, oh, he’s a Pharisee. And then at another point, he’s a Roman. And I’m like, oh, he’s a Roman. What’s. Like. So, so, so we have a Roman citizen, a born Roman citizen. Is that right?

Right? Yeah, yeah, he was. He was born a citizen. So. Which, which is not necessarily incommensurate with being a ph.

Both. And so this is, and this is what gets him out of trouble is when there are times when he’s going to be, you know, shackled for causing a riot. And, and he says, is this how you treat a Roman citizen? Yeah, and. And he’s got cards to play. And so, so this is. He’s got. He’s got plenty of cards up his sleeve, and he’s been traveling around, he’s been starting up congregations, he’s been teaching the good word, and now he’s in trouble with the Sanhedrin.

And what is the Sanhedrin?

The Sanhedrin is the council, the Jewish council that is kind of their highest legal body in the Roman period when they don’t have an awful lot of authority. So the council is in kind of a love hate relationship with the Roman authorities because they get a lot of their power from the Roman authorities, but also they don’t like the Roman authorities. And so the Roman Tribune is. Claudius is like, take him to the. To the Sanhedrin to figure out what precisely he’s done.

So I’m glad that you told me what the Sanhedrin was, because I was picturing like, a. Like, I was like a tetrahedron. I. I thought it was like, the octagon. Let’s take him.

Yeah, yeah, take him to the octagon and we will test his mettle. Yeah, no, it’s not quite like that, but, yeah, the Sanhedrin is the council. And that’s where our scene is laid at the beginning of Acts 23:1, where he basically is given the floor. And he starts off by saying, up to this day, I have lived my life with a clear conscience before God. And then the high priest says, hey, smack him. And.

Which is a pretty. Like, that’s pretty funny. Like, I mean, I guess he just said, not guilty.

Really?

And then they’re like, oh, yeah, well, what if we hit you now?

How does that taste? Yeah, I can. I can just. I. I would love to see Monty Python do this and have somebody up there going smite him. And.

Or maybe. Maybe that’s more a it’s always sunny in Philadelphia kind of vibe. And then Paul says, God will strike you, you whitewashed wall. Which is kind of as. As salty as Paul gets.

But, yeah, I would love to see that dramatized where Paul is just like,.

How very dare you excuse much rude or anything.

Yeah. And he says, are you sitting there to judge me according to the law, yet in violation of the law, you order me to be struck? And then the people standing by who were ordered to strike him were like, how dare you insult God’s high priest? And this is where Paul kind of does a mea culpa and is like, I did not realize, brothers, that he was high priest. For it is written, you shall not speak evil of a leader of your people. So he’s kind of like, backs down off of his bravado, but then he.

Everybody needs to take a bit of a chill pill at this point. There’s a lot of striking talk happening.

Yeah. And then. And then, According to verse 6, Paul noticed that some were Sadducees and others were Pharisees. Where. And so you can kind of see the dramatization where he’s like, my bad, my bad. But what about this? And basically just hurls this rhetorical bomb into the middle of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He says, brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. I am on trial concerning the hope of the resurrection of the dead. And then because the Pharisees believe in the resurrection of the dead, the Sadducees do not they, you know, you get the. The raised fists at each other in the council. And so he basically starts a squabble, an internal squabble in the. The Sanhedrin as his. As that. That card that he has up his sleeve.

And is the idea here that he’s sort of. He, I mean, he sound. It sounds like he’s pulling a bit of a fast one.

Yeah, he’s. This is like what Jesus would do where, where he was like, oh, the, the one among you who is free from sin cast the first. Like, you know, he’s right.

That’s because he’s not actually there because of his belief in resurrection. He’s there because of his belief in all resurrection. Right. In. In Jesus’s resurrection, specifically.

Well, he’s there, yeah. They understand his preaching to be counterproductive and to be preaching against the Jewish institutions, the temple, the Torah, the Jewish identity. And so he basically, he starts this squabble. And the certain scribes of the Pharisees group stood up and contended, we find nothing wrong with this man. What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him? Because they believe in spirits and angels and they believe in the resurrection. And so now that he started the fight, they got to take his side, and then the dissension becomes violent. So like they’re. You wonder how they get anything done when all anybody has to do is go resurrection. And, you know, then the fist fights break out, right? And then the. The tribune, fearing that they would tear Paul to pieces, ordered the soldiers to go down, take him by force, and bring him into the barracks. And then the next verse, you know, is what usually happens when you start a fight at the Sanhedrin and you get thrown in the barracks.

That night the Lord stood near him and said, keep up your courage, for just as you have testified for me in Jerusalem, so you must bear witness also in Rome, sealing his fate for a while. But we got a nice little mile marker in our story, a little bit of foreboding. The the omniscient narrator has decided to chime in and and let you know where things are headed.

Foreshadowing, I would say. I mean, maybe it’s foreboding, as I guess it’s foreboding as well, because it means he’s going to be in captivity for a lot longer than he had to have been.

Yeah. And then obviously there’s a conspiracy. And a bunch of his enemies have bound themselves by an oath neither to eat nor drink until they had killed Paul. Because, you know, that’s how things go. And you get together with your buddies and you’re like, we’re not going to eat or drink until we have done this stupid thing.

Yeah, it was like, yeah, it was like they cursed themselves if they were going to eat or drink before they killed. Which, by the way, did they starve to death? We don’t get a follow up on that, but I feel like we should.

It seems like they probably broke their oath. And I would like to know if the Oath Keepers have ever said we were not going to eat or drink until we have done the thing.

By the way, this is, this was like 40, 40 plus, over 40 men who who conspired.

40 people. And they went straight to the chief priest and said, hey, just so you know, we took an oath. We bound ourselves by an oath to taste no food until we have killed Paul. And and then they’re like, so you and the council must notify the tribune to bring him down to you on the pretext that you want to make a more thorough examination of this case. And we are ready to do away with him before he arrives. It’s not really a secret combination here. It’s a quite public combination where they go to the high priest and he’s like, so here’s our scheme to illegally murder the guy that you’re trying. And the son of Paul’s sister, evidently Paul’s got family in the area, heard about the ambush. So he went and gained entrance to the barracks and told Paul. And here’s why you gotta keep your secret combination secret.

When you go announce on the street, yeah, we’re going to march down there and we took an oath, oath not to eat or drink anything until we’ve killed Paul. So yeah, we’re going to go down there.

Hey, none of you are his nephew, right?

Nobody here is his nephew, right? Because that would ruin the whole thing.

Yeah, keep this on the DL, everybody, just because we’re shouting it from the rooftops. And so they get word to Paul and he calls one of the centurions and says, take this young man to the tribune, for he has something to report to him. So he took him and brought him to the tribune and said, the prisoner Paul called me and asked me to bring this young man to you. He has something to tell you. The tribune took him by the hand, drew him aside privately and asked, what is it that you have to report to me? And here you can envision the tribune getting down on one knee so he can be eye level with the kid. Evidently, he’s a kid if he’s taking him by the hand and he’s like, all right, young man, what is it? And the Jews have agreed to ask you to bring Paul down to the council tomorrow as though they were going to inquire more thoroughly into his case. But do not be persuaded by them. For more than 40 of their men are lying in ambush for him. They have bound themselves by an oath neither to eat nor drink until they kill him. They are ready now and are waiting for your consent.

And then the tribune’s like, okay, well, be on your way, young man. Tell no one you have informed me of this. Yeah.

Be a little be a little more discreet than they.

So he grabs two centurions and is basically going to abscond with Paul in the night, as as one does.

For Caesarea.

Which is a lovely coastal city. This is where Herod basically built his summer home.

A coastal city in what is now modern day Israel. Is that right?

Correct. Yes. Right on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

And gets 200 soldiers, 70 horsemen, and 200 spearmen just to just to ensure that those 40 wackadoos are not able to, you know, chase.

That seems sufficient to me.

Maybe even overkill.

Yeah. Yeah. Plenty more than enough.

And he also provides mounts for Paul to ride.

And take him safely to Felix, the governor. And wrote a letter, Claudius Lysias, to his Excellency the governor, Felix, greetings. And then basically says, this man was seized by the Jews, was about to be killed by them. But when I learned that he was a Roman, I came with the guard and rescued him. And I want to know what the charge is. I brought him to their council. I found that he was accused concerning questions of their law, but was charged with nothing deserving death or imprisonment. When I was informed there would be a plot against the man, I sent him to you at once, ordering his accusers also to state before you what they have against him. So that’s the letter. And now I’m thinking of the end of of Gladiator, when, you know, they’re all everybody’s darting around in the night with a little conspiracy. So they.

The thing that I’m still mystified by is a, sorry to go back, but now we’ve had him we’ve had him be able to register visually that there are Sadducees and Pharisees. There I, did they have uniforms? Did they have a big S on their chest and a P? Like, it just seems, I don’t know how.

Well, no, it was it was red and blue bandanas.

Yeah, exactly.

No, they yeah, we we don’t really I don’t think we have a good idea about any kind of dress that that might have clearly distinguished every Sadducee from every Pharisee. That’s a great question, though.

Clearly they had some way of distinguishing. Like, he had some way of visually distinguishing them.

Which is interesting to me.

They and it could be the way they wore their tassels.

Or, you know, something like that. There there could have been there certainly could have been some tradition that, you know, they had the they had the big fur hats and they’re I don’t know. That’s a that’s a great question, though. It’s an interesting thing. I’ll have to look into that.

And then and now suddenly we know, you know, I it occurred it just occurred to me, like, you know, the guy’s like, I found that he was a Roman, so we can’t, you know, I got to protect him. How how do you know? You’re just taking his word for it that he’s a Roman. Does he have the, you know, the Wakanda thing on his lip? Like, how do you know?

Yeah, because I I don’t think they talk about him presenting any papers or anything like that.

Yeah, I don’t I I’m, these are the mysteries that that I get hung up on.

You got any you got any papes, man? But so they they send him off to Felix and they keep him under guard in Herod’s headquarters. So, interesting place. You can go you can go visit. Well, I wouldn’t visit there right now, but it is a visitable place that has a lovely cafe by the by the the former port area that they where the ships would come in. What do they call that? My brain is just going.

I think port sounds right.

Okay, fine. Or they’ve built up a kind of break.

Oh, like a pier.

Well, to.

Oh, sure.

To allow the the ships to come in and be in calmer water.

Right.

And, yeah, I sound like a fourth grader right now trying to describe it. No, it looks like the thing where the, you know, so someone went was in par.

So is this Herod, you said Herod, is is this a Herod that we know, or it’s a different Herod?

Well, it was built by by Herod the Great. But, yeah, we do have, I believe, it’s Herod Agrippa that is in this area.

Oh, that’s right. I forget that there are like 400 Herods in in the space of like 50 years. There’s all the Herods.

Yeah, and it was it was it was Herod the Great who actually built the area up. But okay. And obviously all his little his little Herods, they got to your.

Various and sundry Herods.

Yeah, yeah. So they. They keep him under. Under lock and key, Herod’s headquarters. Five days later, the High Priest Ananias shows up with some elders and an attorney. My representation here. And they go and they report their case against Paul to the governor. And then they summon Paul and then Tertullus or Tertullus begins to turtle us. That would be. He was. He was part of the entourage, but began to accuse him, saying, because of you, most excellent Felix, we have long enjoyed peace and reforms have been made for this people because of your foresight in every way and everywhere. We welcome this with utmost gratitude. But to detain you no further, I beg you to hear us briefly with your customary graciousness, with the butt kissing out of the way. We have in fact found this man, a pestilent fellow, an agitator among all the Jews throughout the world and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.

He even tried to profane the temple. So we seized him. By examining him yourself, you will be able to learn from him concerning everything of which we accuse him. Which sounds kind of funny. He’s like he did some bad stuff. You ask him, he’ll tell you all the bad stuff he did. Did.

Right. Because at the. Because I. I can’t imagine that there was a law on the books against being a pestilent fellow fellow. Yeah, that. That feels like that’s. That’s a tough one to. To nail down.

Yeah, this. This is not Judean Code, section 10.303, paragraph A, subsection 1. And then the governor, by the way.

But I do want to stop and just say, well, the Nazarenes is. So he was also a Nazarene.

Well, Nazarene just means somebody from Nazareth. But it seems like that took on significance as a way to refer to followers of Jesus.

Okay, yeah.

That means because we.

The sect of the. Of the Nazarenes is. Is just. Is Christians, but we don’t have that word yet.

Right, right. So this is. This is the. Those weirdos who follow the Nazarene. So the. That guy from.

And he tried to profane the temple. How did he try to do that. Do we know?

Yes, it’s. It’s much earlier in Acts. It’s, it’s way overblown, but. But yeah, he is. Basically. He was talking about Jesus and.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, it’s. Hey, I haven’t read that chapter in a while.

Okay, sorry. I do like it. I do like it when I get to stump you sometimes.

Well. And yeah, it happens. That’s. It’s, it’s fun on, on the lives I do on YouTube, if I can get through an entire like two and a half hour live without getting stumped. But it’s, it’s rare these days because they’re, they’re getting pretty. They’ve got all kinds of questions. Governor motions for Paul to speak. He does the, you know, the pleasantries. It is not more than 12 days since I went up to worship in Jerusalem. They did not find me disputing with anyone in the temple or stirring up a crowd either in the synagogues or throughout the city. Neither can they prove to you the charge that they’re. That they now bring against me. But this. I admit to you that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our ancestors, believing everything laid down according to the law or written in the prophets. And he basically is testifying now that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous. Therefore, I do my best always to have a clear conscience towards God and all people.

I came to bring alms to my people and to offer sacrifices. While I was doing this, they found me in the temple completing the rite of purification without any crowd or disturbance. But there were some Jews from Asia. They ought to be here before you to make an accusation if they have anything against me or let these men here tell what crime they had found when I stood before the council. Unless it was this one sentence that I called out while standing before them. It is about the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial before you today. And maybe Paul’s like, huh? Anybody? No. No fights breaking out for this one. And Felix, who the text says was rather well informed about the Way. And this is. I don’t know if you’ve heard this before, but people talk about how, before it was Christianity, it was just called the Way.

The Way. Yeah. I mean, yeah, he’s, He’s. He uses that as he says, which they call a sect. So he’s clear when he says the Way. And it’s capitalized also in. In the NRSV.

Yeah, yeah. In. In most translation. It looks, Translations. It looks like it’s capitalized.

Yeah, so. So, so that’s, that’s sort of an official designation of, of Jesus follower. I’m a member of the Way.

Do you, like, you know, if you’re in the Matrix universe, you got the one here, we got the Way.

And so he adjourns and basically delays stuff. When Lysias the Tribune comes down, I will decide your case. So he orders the centurion to keep him in custody, but says give him a little bit of liberty not to prevent any of his friends from taking care of his needs. So he’s basically under a kind of house arrest and he’s got buddies who can come and go and do his shopping for him and stuff like that.

Right.

And. And then I was, I mentioned to you when we discussed doing this segment that I’ve, I’ve been to Caesarea a couple of times. First time was in 2019, and then in 2023, I was there. And in between my two trips there, they discovered cells underground. Not, not like flagella and stuff like that, not those kinds of cells, but like prison cells that were associated with the complex, the Herodian complex, which included a hippodrome and, and all that kind of stuff. And, and Herod’s palace. And, and one of the, the popular things to do, visitors to Caesarea is to go, there’s a, There’s a little courtyard, remains of a little courtyard where there was a little. There’s a hole in the middle where there would have been a, you know, a little fire that would have been burning. But a lot of scholars think if, if this is historical, that he was before Felix in Caesarea, this would have been the room.

Okay, sure.

It would have happened. And so a popular thing for visitors to do is one of them goes and stands where the, the throne would have, or, you know, the seat would have been, and the other kind of sits there and pleads their case before the, the area. But, but between my two visits, they discovered these, these underground jail cells, which, depending on how, how much comfort they afforded Paul, he might have been imprisoned in those very jail cells.

So nice. I mean, not nice. It’s not nice to be imprisoned, but that’s cool.

It’s fascinating.

Yeah, that’s cool that they found that. And, and also, like, any time something that we read from the Bible can match up to a, an actual, like, thing that we know about now, that’s always neat. That’s always extra cool.

Yeah. And so, so the, the guys wants to delay things a little bit and delays things For a couple of years.

Sure. Why not?

What’s a couple of years between friends?

Right.

And you have. So some days later, when Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish, he sent for Paul and heard him speak concerning faith in Christ Jesus. So he’s kind of. He’s. He’s kind of like a party favor. My wife wants to see the Jewish guy, bring him out. What’s the thing you say about Jesus?

Do that thing you do where you talk about that guy. Because that I. That’s always fun.

Yeah. And then it says. And as he discussed justice, self control and the coming judgment, Felix became frightened and said, go away for the present. When I have an opportunity, I will send for you. And it says, at the same time, he hoped that money would be given him by Paul. And for that reason, he used to send him very often and converse with him. So it sounds like Paul is Felix’s little plaything there in prison in Caesarea. And then Felix is replaced by Porcius Festus. And it says, since he wanted to grant the Jews a favor, Felix left Paul in prison. So, okay. Yeah, they didn’t have a lot of the due process. Seems like it’s being kind of stymied a little bit here.

I mean, we don’t know yet. What we do know is that the right to a speedy trial was not. Was not one that was afforded to him.

Yeah, we were. We were still a little ways off from. From Madison penning the.

The. The rights that would later become part of the. What was it? Was it Ten Commandments?

No, the Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Commandments.

That’s the Bill of. The Bill of the Ten Commandments. We need to press on. We’re running out of time here.

Oh, it’s just, it’s. It’s. There’s so many cool details in here. Paul appeals to the Emperor. Paul is like, look, I. I know my rights. There are very few of them.

Right.

And they are being trampled on. But I want to go before the Emperor. I’ve done no wrong to the Jews, as you very well know. Acts 25:10. Now, if. And then Festus says, you have appealed to the Emperor. To the Emperor, you will go.

And that’s the Emperor of Rome. In Rome.

Yes. And that’s. And, And I think that’s what results in Paul having to. To go to Rome. Lots of speed bumps, lots of side quests along the way.

But Festus consults with King Agrippa, who. Who comes to Caesarea, and Paul is brought before Agrippa. You know, you’ll love this guy. Bring. Get the guy out here.

This is our favorite prisoner. He is wacky.

You’re gonna love him. And then Paul defends himself before Agrippa. And then we have this famous thing where Paul, you know, tells his story, tells of his conversion and. And goes on to preach. And then he gets Agrippa to say, you. You’ve almost convinced me to become a Christian. Yeah, close, but no cigar there, Paul.

And. And then. And Agrippa says to Festus, the end of Acts 26. Agrippa kind of goes, you know what? If this guy hadn’t appealed to the emperor, we would have freed him.

So you. You get a little.

I was like, ah, you sucker.

Yeah. Yeah. So there. It certainly feels like there are elements of literary craftsmanship going on here where we get our little foreboding from a little. Jesus. We. We get a little kind of court intrigue with. With all these things, and then we get a little. Just missed the boat. We watched a movie the other day with my. With my kids, and they were like, I hate movies where there’s a misunderstanding and like, you just want the misunderstanding to be clarified. And it’s the very, very end of the movie where it’s like, dope. That’s right. So. So that happens here. Agrippa’s like, nope. Yep. Shouldn’t have appealed to the emperor. We wouldn’t let you go.

Let him go.

And then they start sailing for. For Rome. And then. Then they get shipwrecked on Malta, which is a. Coolest places in. In the world. I love going to Malta. If you’ve. If you’ve never been, you definitely got to check out the Hagar Qim temples and particularly the. You got to go to Gozo. You got to go to the underground temple.

Yeah, they’ve got some good falcons.

Well, not. Not live ones, but they. They also. Yeah. If you want to. If you want to go somewhere where you can try some horse meat, that’s part of the. That’s part of the cuisine there, so.

Sounds great.

Yeah, well, you know, it’s not awful.

No, no, I am. I. As far as I. From what I’ve heard, thanks to our current president, there’s horse meat in our. Coming into our. Anyway, that’s just the rumor that’s going around. Anywho, that’s. That’s a fun story. And we’ll have to come back to Paul at some point. Maybe. Maybe we’ll. Maybe we’ll go and get shipwrecked with him on Malta.

Yeah. They got snakes there too, that, that plays a role in the story.

So we need to get St. Patrick over there. All right, well, that was fun. Let’s move along to our artifacts and fiction. Okay, so Tel Dan is spelled T E L D A N. Correct. And it’s not about telling us something. What, what, what does that part mean?

So, so Tel Dan, it just means a hill. So it’s a tell is usually what a way that archaeologists refer to the, the remains of an ancient city, town, village, something like that, where the accumulation of, of ruins has created a bump in the landscape. So a tell, A tell. Okay. And so Dan is at the very northern end of ancient Israel. So Tel Dan is the tell that remains from this ancient city.

Another place that is visitable when that area becomes fully visible. And they’ve found a mud brick city gate that dates back to around 2000 BCE. They’ve found, there’s a, there’s a temple site there that had a four horned altar there. You can see, you can go see the layout of the, of the temple.

What does four horned mean?

So in ancient Israel, their altars, the corners would have kind of horned looking accents on the, on the corner.

But if so, four horned altar is, is a way to refer to these altars. And you can see examples of that if you Google that. They, you know, they have at Beersheba they have at a variety of different places, but there’s, there’s a city gates, the, the old Bronze Age mud brick one. And then there’s an Iron Age one when, when this was a part of ancient Israel. And they have like a series of standing stones set up outside the gate, which is kind of the standard. You have these, these divine images that would be out there by the, the city gate. Okay. Just to kind of, you know, represent this liminal passage from outside the city to inside the city. There’s a, there’s a lot going on there. But anyway, excavations 33 years ago turned up three different pieces of stone that were, they were discovered in, in a variety of different circumstances.

One of them, for instance, had been reused as parts of the rubble for, for a wall and other parts that were found in other areas. But they, they noticed there were inscriptions on them. And one of like when, if you’re on an excavation to find an inscription is the coolest thing ever.

Yeah, that’s got it. That’s, that is, that’s pay dirt right there.

Yeah, that is the coolest thing in the, in the world. And, but they, they found these pieces and were able to put them together and recover a good chunk of an inscription that was written somewhere in the mid 9th century BCE, so like 840ish, 830ish, somewhere around there. And it’s written in a kind of Aramaic that it was likely written by an Aramean king. And the one that most people associate it with is an Aramean king named Hazael, who’s mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as the Aramean king, who did battle with kings like Jehoram, slash Joram or. And Ahaziah. And as we see those names get mentioned in this inscription.

Right.

But the, the most famous thing about this inscription, and if you go check out the inscription, you will see it is like white chalk has filled in this part of the inscription these six letters that spell out Beit David, House of David. And that’s what the inscription is. Is most well known for a reference to the house of David.

And the white is. Is a modern.

Yeah, yeah, that’s what we’ve basically done.

It’s.

That’s the highlighter.

Yeah, I was gonna say it because this. I, I looked it up and this is now in a. In the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. And it does look like they. Yeah, somebody just did a highlighter on, like, white. It feels funny that they did this, but. But yes, there it is. Those, Those, like you say, those six letters. Yeah. And written in the way. In the way that, that we’ve described before, where there’s no spaces, there’s no.

They have little dots between the words. So those are, those are. That’s as good as we can, as we can expect from. From this kind of inscription.

So if you, if you’re looking at a picture, you’ll see, like, it almost. And there. It almost looks like just a chip in the, in the inscription, but those dots are separating out words now. They don’t separate them out all perfectly the way we would do today in a printed version of the Hebrew Bible or something like that, but. Right, but they do do that. It’s. It’s a very. It’s a very good inscription in terms of the, the skill of the engraver. It was part of a standing stone. It’s in the same kind of genre as the Mesha inscription or the. From the Moabite stone. Whereas basically, the king is going, I’m such. And such. And I’m so cool. And these are all the things that I did. So it’s. It’s basically his, you know, the executive summary of his. His resume.

They should call them bragstones.

Yeah, We don’t have all the inscription, but basically this is this king, probably Hazael, talking about a bunch of people he defeated. And the, the most important part is for our purposes today, I can read through the entire inscription. In fact, it’s somewhat fragmentary. The first visible word, the highest line, it just says and cut. And then my father went up against him when he fought at so and so. And my father lay down, he went to his ancestors, which, which is the idiom for he died, right? And the king of Israel entered previously in my father’s land. And Hadad, this is the Aramean storm deity in the Aramaic world, where they speak Aramaic, the storm deities, the head God of the pantheon.

And Hadad is, is that storm deity. Baal Hadad is, is a conflation of Baal with Hadad. But he says Hadad made me king, which is, you know, you would expect an Israelite to say Adonai made me king.

Right?

And Hadad went in front of me and I departed from the seven lacunae. And then we got, you know, we don’t know what some things of my kingdom. And I slew 70 kings. 70 Obviously being the, that nice large round number, right, which would be the equivalent of somebody today saying, yeah, I killed a million kings, right, who harnessed thousands of chariots and thousands of horsemen. So less than one chariot per king? No, a lot more. I had a million in my head. Okay. So, yeah, then I was like, wait a minute, they couldn’t say a million back then, so several, several per. And he says he killed Jehoram son of Ahab, King of Israel. Now this is kind of fragmentary. Like the name Ahab is, is not there, but we can see the end of the name Jehoram and we can see son. And then obviously that would have been Ahab king of Israel.

King of Israel is very clearly legible.

And I killed Ahaziah son of. And then that would be a, a different Jehoram, king of the house of David. And that’s where we get house of David.

And interestingly, so he claims to have, have killed these two kings. And it says I, I set their towns into ruin and turn their land into desolation. And then there’s a reconstruction that imagines that there’s a reference to Jehu because somebody else ruled over Israel after that. And so we think that would have been Jehu.

And, and that’s, and it basically tapers off from there. You know, he, he basically writes, ah, no, he doesn’t write that.

It’s.

It’s fragmentary.

I want to clarify one thing before we go on too far. Far, which is, is this drawing a distinction between king of Israel and house of David. Like, Israel and David are two different things.

They’re two different entities, but they’re also. It also seems like they’re two different kinds of entities.

Because Israel is the name of a nation, a kingdom that has a king. House of David is a dynastic designation.

Right.

And so what a lot of scholars think might be going on here is that the southern kingdom is not yet a kingdom. Judah is not a full fledged kingdom. We just have this dynastic family that is camped out in Jerusalem that calls themselves kings. And so, you know, they don’t. Maybe the kingdom doesn’t have a name yet. They’re just going by house of David. Okay. But you also have other references to the. The house of Omri as a reference to the northern kingdom of Israel. So it’s, it’s not perfectly clear what’s going on there. But yeah, it seems like we have the nation or the kingdom of Israel, and then we have this dynastic reference to the house of David. But this, this is widely considered to be kind of indirect evidence, data supporting the historicity of David. It’s coming, you know, over a century after David would have lived. So, you know, there’s still potential that it might not be historical. But I think most scholars would say, yeah, this leans us in the direction of concluding there was a historical David who began this dynasty.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, I remember us talking about that when we did a story about David and I asked you if David was a real person, and we briefly mentioned this stele. So interestingly, I guess before the 90s, the answer to that question would have been different.

Yeah, there were certainly scholars who thought there was a historical David, but that we didn’t have enough data to really say anything about David. And this is the closest we get to archaeological data confirming the existence of a historical David. It almost certainly confirms the existence of a Davidic dynasty.

Right.

So, yeah, I think that’s what it’s doing there.

Interesting.

Now, when we go to 2 Kings, here’s what we have in 2 Kings 12:17-18. At that time, King Hazael of Aram went up, fought against Gath and took it. But when Hazael set his face to go up against Jerusalem, King Jehoash of Judah took all the votive gifts that Jehoshaphat, Jehoram and Ahaziah, his ancestors, the kings of Judah, had dedicated as well. As his own votive gifts. All the gold that was found in the treasuries of the house of the Lord and of the king’s house and sent these to King Hazael of Aram. Then Hazael withdrew from Jerusalem. So there’s other intrigue related to the relationship between Hazael. But if we go up a couple chapters to 9, 2 Kings 9, we have Jehu, who is.

I remember that name popping up. Yes.

What’s funny is 2 Kings 9:20. I know a guy who’s in a band called. I think it was called Drive Like Jehu. And the reason is 2 Kings 9:20 says. And again, the sentinel reported he reached them, but he is not coming back. It looks like the driving of Jehu, son of Nimshi, driving a chariot, for he drives like a maniac. So. So Jehu evidently had a reputation for. For charioteering like a maniac. Yeah, yeah, but so Jehu actually comes out and is executing judgment on the house of Ahab, according to the text. But King Joram, which is another spelling of Jehoram, and Ahaziah. So King Joram of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah, they come out each in his chariot and went to meet Jehu. They met him at the property of Naboth the Jezreelite, and Jehu kills both of them.

Right.

So what we have in the Bible, and this is a contradiction because we’ve got another account in 1 Chronicles where Jehu kills both of them, Joram and Ahaziah again. But the manner of Ahaziah’s death is entirely different. In, in 2 Kings, he shoots Joram in the chariot and Joram dies. And then he says, shoot him too, and points at Ahaziah. So they shoot Ahaziah and he flees to Megiddo and dies in Megiddo.

Right.

And then you. You remember that one, right?

Yeah, we talked about that one on an episode.

Many moons ago.

And then Ahaziah’s own men take him to Jerusalem and bury him in Jerusalem.

Right.

In the 1 Chronicles account, they go looking for Ahaziah and they find him hiding out in Samaria. They bring him before Jehu, they execute him. And Jehu’s men say, you know what? This guy was the, you know, a. A descendant of Jehoshaphat who loved the Lord with all his heart. We’re going to give him a decent burial. So Jehu’s men, after they have executed Ahaziah, bury Ahaziah. But so we have two non reconcilable ways that Ahaziah died. And according to the Tel Dan Stele.

Right.

Neither of them are right.

They’re. They are further. Non. Non reconcilable. Reconcilable with this.

So, yeah, so we’ve got. It’s. I understand it to be a kind of standoff characterized by a certain ethnic group that the three of the. The different accounts of Ahaziah’s death are in conflict with. With each other.

So. Because according to Tel Dan Stele, it was Hazael who did it. It was. Had nothing to do with. With Jehu because Jehu would have been one of the enemies of the Arameans as well. And what’s funny is you can find apologetic attempts to be like, well, no, Jehu was probably allied with Hazael and so he was acting on his behalf. So like you could say that. And it could be that Hazael was just, you know, got the old five finger discount on. On credit for killing these.

Was just. Yeah. Taking credit for Jehu’s fine workmanship.

Yeah. He may have shown up on the scene and found Ahaziah with the arrow. Arrow through his chest and might have been like, hi, yeah, got it. And he was already dead. He flinched. I had to get him. Yeah. So who knows if that’s what’s going on here. But, but certainly the account that we, that we find as, as that narrative goes, is, is in conflict. But.

Well, let me ask you this because obviously the Tel Dan Stele is going to have been contemporary. Contemporary with, or roughly contemporary to the time that it’s telling these stories about.

Yes. It probably was something that was erected at some point after obviously these events. But maybe many years, maybe this was a kind of end of life, tell my story, put it on this piece of stone. And so it could have been years later, it could have been right after.

But it seems likely that it’s within the lifetime of a single guy.

Yeah. Yeah.

So talk to me about when we think 2 Kings was written. When we think Chronicles was written.

Well, the Chronicles is, is taking earlier sources and is editing them together in the post-exilic period. Okay, so like five hundreds, four hundreds BCE okay, maybe. Maybe into the three hundreds. I need to get a Chronicles expert on here too, because this, that’s one of the. Don’t go near there, Betty. Stay away from there. Stay away from the river. That’s one of those places where I don’t dip my toe into Chronicles nearly enough. So we need to have a Chronicles expert on here to give us a straight dope. But the traditions come from much earlier and certainly the Chronicles editors are borrowing some from the books of Kings and Samuel, but they, they seem to have their own independent sources as well.

And Samuel and Kings are probably based on accounts that were initially written down in the pre-exilic period. And a lot of it probably came together in the pre-exilic period. So, for instance, we’ve talked about the problem of who killed Goliath, like that account of some dude named Elhanan killing Goliath. That’s got to come from pretty early for it to predate the people who were trying to glaze David and were swiping these, these feats of strength that were actually achieved by David’s men. So that’s probably more historically accurate. That’s probably coming from an earlier layer of these traditions that may go back, you know, maybe 800 BCE maybe 7 hundreds BCE so some of these traditions probably go back pretty far, get pretty close to the historical David.

But another interesting thing to note is the Tel Dan Stele. I mentioned that it’s kind of in the same genre as the Moabite Stone, the Mesha Inscription. These are what they call monumental inscriptions because they’re intended to be set up as something that’s going to be publicly on display. But these are some of the earliest examples of historical narrative prose in an alphabetic script from this region. So you have the Moabite one written in Moabite. You have this Aramean one written in a version of Aramaic. There’s. There are, there are scholars who have pointed out we don’t have any historical narrative prose prior to these monumental inscriptions. And so that’s probably where the historical narrative prose begins, is in these monumental inscriptions. That’s kind of a, a logical evolution of things. I, you know, we go from, you know, I am such and such to I am such and such.

And here’s what I did. I got to tell you my story of what I did. And then that later goes on to, like, historical annals where people are copying down. Here’s what they did. And so the historical narratives that we find in the Bible probably do not date any earlier than this inscription. So the Mesha inscription and the Tel Dan stele probably represent the terminus post quem, the point after which, for any historical narrative prose we find in the Hebrew Bible, okay? So the traditions, anything that came from before these monumental inscriptions probably would have been poetic. So it would have been, you know, short bursts of kind of poetic parallelism, telling tales and things like that.

So there’s. Are there. So what examples of that made it into the Bible.

So things like the Song of Deborah in Judges 5 probably predates this inscription. Oh, cool things. The Song of the Sea in Exodus 15 maybe. There are scholars who argue it is very, very early. There are other scholars who are like, come on, man, it’s not that early. So, so that’s, that’s another example. The, the Song of Moses might be the same. You know, it’s. It’s kind of these like, gather round children, and I’ll tell you the tale of this thing. And they, hey, Shabbati and Shabbat and shubida doobity and hibbity dibbity.

I think that’s the song of Gilligan that you were.

Yes, well, it’s where you tell the stories with these, these little sing songy poetic things.

Right?

That’s, that’s not historical narrative prose. But you’re still telling a story.

Right.

And so that’s why a lot of people will say, like Judges 5 is. Might be the earliest written thing in the entire Hebrew Bible. It might go back to the time of a historical David around a thousand BCE or something like that.

But. But you’ll notice when you look, you’ve got Judges 4 tells the story, and then Judges 5 gives you the poem about the story.

Right?

So the Judges 4 is probably a later narrative manifestation of that story as it existed when, when narrative prose became a possibility. So, so, and then they’re like, yeah,.

Throw the song in.

Yeah, put the song in there too.

Yeah, why not?

You know that we’re gonna do what we do. You know, we got, we got Genesis 1 and then we got the other creation account in Genesis 2. We’re gonna put them back to back. Yeah, we, you know, Exodus 15, the Song of the Sea. We just told the story and now we’re gonna tell it again with this song.

Where we sing about everything that happened and what happened doesn’t really line up with the story that we just told. So, you know, that’s the way it goes.

That’s the way it goes.

Same as it ever was.

Yep. Well, that’s interesting. I love it. Steely Dan, Tel Dan stele, it’s all. It’s all the same. It’s not all the same, but it’s all very interesting. And as you are very eager to point out, Steely Dan was not named after this. Was named before we even knew this existed.

Yes. To my knowledge, there’s no etymological relationship.

Okay. Maybe they were just prescient in their, in their naming of the band. Well, that’s it for today. Thank you all for for coming along on the ride with us. If you would like to become a part of keeping this show rocking and rolling, we’d love to have you come on over to the Patreon over at patreon.com/dataoverdogma where you can get early ad-free access to every episode of the show and you can get the, the patrons only content that I never know what to refer to it as anymore. It used to be the after party and now it’s the, the, the pregame whatever it is. Anyway, it that’s a lot of fun that we have every week and, and our patrons are the only ones who get that as well as you know, like I said, the early access and, and who knows what else. You never know what’s gonna happen with us.

Thanks so much to Rodger Gowdy for editing, thanks to Sam Holden for being our right hand fella, and thanks to all of you for joining us. We’ll talk to you again next time.

Bye everybody.

Dan Tells Dan About Tel Dan

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