Black Hole Sun

Jonah gets upset when they repent and are forgiven because Jonah was like, I knew you would do this to me.

You’re always doing this. You’re always making me look bad in front of my friends.

You’re always forgiving people. Hey, everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

And you’re listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation. Amen. How are things today, Dan?

Things are good, man. We’re going to do some combat, and today we’re going to be.

Got my combat socks on.

That’s right. Get yourselves ready. That’s the second. The second half of the show. We are assuming at this moment that by the time this reaches you all, there’s a world for this to go out into.

Yes, there is an open question about whether or not the earth will crash into the sun or the sun will expand to engulf the Earth on April 8th.

Yeah, yeah, April 8th. It’s. It’s. It’s going to kill us all.

Yeah. So if you’re listening to this, it’s probably either the 15th or the 16th, or maybe later if you’re just irresponsible and we should know for sure whether or not the Earth has come to the end. Our money, the line was not very great that they gave us, but our money is on the Earth still being there.

Yeah, yeah, that’s. That’s our bet. I just got back from Philadelphia and I saw some of where they make our money around.

Oh, yeah, you went to a mint.

I went to the mint. And I’ll tell you what, it’s. There’s something very funny about going to a mint right now because it just feels like the. It’s. It feels like you’re watching a VHS factory or something. Like, it feels like. Does anyone still use this stuff? The physical. Like, you see them making pennies and nickels, which are worth. Which cost more to make than they are worth, and I just go, what?

I have.

What are we doing here, people?

Yeah. I haven’t touched a penny in years.

Well, yeah.

And then, you know, you’re in Philadelphia and you’re surrounded by everything. Benjamin Franklin.

Right.

And the number. You’re suddenly reminded of the volume of quotations from Benjamin Franklin about pennies specifically, and it just becomes a whole thing. Apparently, there’s a tradition of throwing pennies onto his grave, which is weird, really.

Like, take that, Franklin.

Save one of these.

A sock full of nickels just start wailing on his, on his grave. There was a, there was an old video of where Ben Franklin, like, visits a kid in. In the dead of night to try to teach him about. Was it a, was it a Mystery Science Theater 3000? I think it was a Mystery Science Theater 3000 thing.

Where they, they. They watch this video. It’s like one of those educational videos from like the 50s, right? Whereas, like, Ben Franklin shows up in this kid’s bedroom and like, lectures him on saving money. Oh, man, it was bad.

Oh, Ben.

He was a nut.

They. They all had their, their issues back then, but they also had eclipses back then. And that is what we’re going to be talking about in the second segment.

Oh, segue, man. You brought it all back around. Nice going.

That’s where the, that’s where the money is. Is made or lost. In our case, lost. But.

But before that. Yes, we’re going to do a, a, a Chapter and Verse that is actually just a chapter today. So let’s get on to that.

All right.

This Chapter and Verse, we… We’re going to Acts. You had suggested to me that we could do the Council at Jerusalem. And I said to you, “What’s…?” I don’t know what that is. And you said, oh, you probably rolled your eyes. We were texting. So I, I didn’t get to hear the exasperation in your voice, but you very kindly pointed me in the direction of Acts 15 .

Yes, Acts 15 , the… The dead center of the Book of Acts and yeah, the Ides of the…

Book of Acts , if you will.

And Peter’s got to beware the Ides of the Book of Acts because he’s mentioned in Acts 15 . And then he drops out of the Acts of the Apostles entirely. Peter is not mentioned again after the Jerusalem Council. Paul then takes over as the main character. Paul’s main character syndrome is fed by the Jerusalem Council and then he takes over. And then additionally the… The apostles and the elders at Jerusalem who are mentioned a handful of times, and particularly in Acts 15 , they’re mentioned once again in like, Acts 16:4 . And then they too disappear from the narrative, just as we… We shift from a Jerusalem-focused ministry to the broader Gentile-focused ministry in Acts. So a lot of scholars would suggest this is intentional craftsmanship on the part of the author of Acts, who is traditionally labeled Luke.

But I’m not a fan of that theory, so I will just continue to refer to the author of Acts that they were… They wanted to set this up as, as kind of two acts.

Get it? Act one and act two.

Ta-da. And… Yeah.

And…

And the pivot point is the Jerusalem Council or the Council of Jerusalem.

Okay. And if we’re pivoting from… From Peter to Paul, I just want to know because I, you know, I read Acts 15 , and where’s Mary in all of this? No, I’m going to say, where’s Barnabas? Barnabas was a big deal. He’s there right next to Paul. They’re doing it together. They’re a team. They’re… They’re a… They’re a duo. They’re an act. And then suddenly, like, Paul just gets all the credit from… From then on out.

Yeah. And there’s… There’s an argument to make. Some people think the attribution of… Or the… The assignment of authorship of Luke and Acts to Luke is based on the prominence of Luke in the Book of Acts . And in this way, it kind of functions as the Gospel according to Paul. And so Paul is… Has got to take over control of the narrative. And you see at the end of Acts 15 , verses 36 through 41, the two of them have a falling out and go their separate ways. And the authors. Yeah. And the author of Acts is like, sorry, man, I gotta stick with Paul.

You’re just, you’re… Barnabas is just too onerous to write. It’s too big a word. It sounds silly. We’re just gonna go with Paul.

Yeah. Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus. Sail away. Sail away. Sail away. And Paul chose Silas and they went their own way to Cilicia, strengthening the churches along the way.

Oh, there you go, Paul. Paul has a new sidekick, I guess.

Yep, yep.

In Silas. All right, let’s get into this council and. And what it’s for and what they decided, because I think some of their decisions. I’m gonna side with them. I’m gonna say they made some. Some good decisions. And then other ones I’m gonna be. I’m a little sketchier on.

But. But it definitely, like, is a pivot point for Christianity as an idea, as. As its own church, as its own entity going forward.

Yeah. And. And there. There are scholars who will. This kind of affects the break between Christianity and Judaism and. And other scholars would. Would argue against that. But certainly this represents one of the main turning points. But even if you go back into the Gospel of Luke , you have Luke representing non-Israelites favorably. Luke is. Is kind of. There’s foreshadowing going on. Luke is leaning into this. Hey, this is. This is going to be for everybody storytelling. Whereas in Matthew, you have Jesus saying, I am sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And it’s not until afterwards that we have this. This pivot. But we have something interesting. I want to start actually in Acts chapters 10 and 11.

Oh, I was not prepared for this. Okay, fine, go.

So this is where. This is where you have this gentleman named Cornelius who is a centurion of the Italian cohort. And he comes to. To jam with. He. He wants to. He’s a God-fearer and he’s interested in some literature basically about Christianity. And Peter is on his. His roof, you know, taking a nap, passed out, don’t know what’s going on, but he’s hungry. And he has this vision where this sheet is lowered down and he sees all these different kinds of animals, clean and unclean. And he hears a voice that says, rise, kill and eat. And he says, nay, my Lord, for I have never eaten any unclean thing. And God says. Or this voice says, what God has declared clean, you shouldn’t call unclean.

And this. Peter has this vision three times. And then he’s just kind of left going, what? And doesn’t know what’s going on. And then there’s the knock at the door, and they’re like, you have a gentleman caller. And he says, I am not dressed to receive. Just kidding. That’s not in the text. So he goes down and meets with Cornelius and suddenly kind of picks up on what this means. Oh, wait a minute. Maybe what this means is the Gentiles should have access to the gospel as well, not just Jewish folks. And so it’s actually. It’s actually doing two things, this vision. One is the actual content of the vision. It’s saying, guess what? No more distinction between clean and unclean foods. In other words, we’re not going to do the unclean foods thing anymore. And the other thing is.

And that figuratively, we’re going to extend to who can access the Gospel. Gentiles can access the gospel. And. And a lot of folks. I made a video the other day where I said that, that one of the kind of eradication of this distinction of clean and unclean foods. Part of it takes place in Acts 10 . And a bunch of people are like, no, that was just figurative for taking the gospel to the Gentiles. Like, I didn’t read the verse where it was like, oh, P. S. the whole vision thing, that was all pretend. We’re actually not doing that. Like, that’s obviously also a part of it. They didn’t come back and say this was all for illustration purposes. None of this is legally binding. So then we. We come.

Although, to be fair, that method of communicating, which is just sort of all weird, esoteric metaphor, you can’t hold it down to anything. Yeah, it is tricky.

It’s squishy. It’s very squishy. But that’s what makes it enduring, because it can be molded to fit all kinds of different circumstances.

Oh, we’re going to be looking at some enduring, weird stuff later on in the show. Like. Like the. It is. Yeah, it’s enduring, but that’s because you can keep reapplying it in new and creative and really bizarre ways.

And I would think that, you know, I. I’m just. Frankly, I don’t understand. Personally don’t understand a God that doesn’t want to communicate clearly. Maybe it’s the neurodivergent in me that just wants all of the language and communication to be clear and easily understood.

But do you know what they call it? They have a word for the idea that the Scriptures are clear and easy to understand. You know what that word is?

Perspicuity.

Oh, yeah.

Okay. The perspicuity of Scripture. The perspicuity of God.

I was going to say fiction. It’s not the fact that it’s unclear and easy to understand.

No, the Bible is perspicuous.

It’s conspicuously perspicuous.

Yeah. Well, ideally, the reality is that the perspicuity is few and far between.

And. But we’re gonna. We’re gonna take our show to Antioch now in Syria, in the north, kind of. Right where the. The northeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea. And we have Paul there. And we have this story at the beginning of Acts 15 . It says then certain individuals not going to say who, but just certain individuals not naming names. Yeah. Fulano de Tal, if you know what that means. Came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. And after Paul and Barnabas had. Barnabas, excuse me. Had no small dissension and debate with them. Paul and Barnabas. And some of the. Do I keep saying Barnabas?

I like it. I’m enjoying it. You say it however you want.

That’s why Paul chose to part from Barnabas. He couldn’t say his name half the time.

This is how Jacob became James. And I’m dead serious about this. Jacob was Iacobus in Latin. And then I just replaced that B with an M. Yeah. And that happened in Latin and it became Iacomus. And that became Iacomo, which became Tiago, which became Jaime, which became James, which became San Diego, St. James, Santiago, all of that. Okay. Anyway, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to discuss this question with the apostles and the elders. So we’re setting the stage by saying basically some people came into Paul’s house and told his people what they had to do and he wasn’t having it. Interestingly, there is what many scholars believe to be a variant account of this. Did you. I don’t know if you came across this Paul in Galatians 2 .

The first dozen or so verses is explaining the Jerusalem Council from his perspective.

And it conflicts in some details with what’s going on in Acts, because Paul says he went up to Jerusalem because of a revelation, not because some, so some no-names came down to his territory and started causing trouble in the neighborhood.

Started arguing about everybody having to be circumcised.

Yeah, yeah. Like, hey, not everything is about your, you know. So they. They go up to Jerusalem. They were sent on their way by the church. And as they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, they reported the conversion of the Gentiles and brought great joy to all the brothers and sisters. So basically, the con. Bringing the Gospel to the Gentiles without having the Gentiles have to go through Judaism to get there is a great thing. And the author is letting you know everybody is rejoicing about this. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them. But some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and said, it is necessary for them to be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of Moses. So basically, this is going to be a big debate about whether or not the law of Moses is still in effect and whether or not Christians must hold to all of the rites and ordinances of Judaism, including for men, the rite of circumcision.

And again, when we look in Galatians 2 , Paul talks about it in. In slightly different details. The apostles and the elders met together to consider this matter. After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, my brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers. And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us. And in cleansing their hearts by faith, has made no distinction between them and us. Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? So Peter is picking up the torch for bringing the gospel to the. The Gentiles.

Yeah, that’s a. That’s a bold statement. Yeah, just saying. Just saying, “God…” Yeah. “God made a choice among you.”

I mean, like, none of you are the guy. I’m the guy.

That’s not you. So listen to me.

Yeah. It’s got— It takes nerves to stand up and be like, “Look, you remember how God said I’m in charge?”

Right.

Anyway.

Exactly. And it’s been happening ever since.

Yeah. On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will. In other words, Jewish folks, they have the law that they’re following. But for Christians, salvation is in grace. It’s not in the works of the law. And so Jewish folks who are keeping the law, or Jewish folks who are believers in Jesus, can continue to keep the law for the sake of cultural reasons. But But those who are not Jewish don’t have to adopt those conventions in order to be saved because salvation is through grace and faith. The whole assembly

And that didn’t become a big problem point.

No. Well, not for— Not for about 1400 years, but, yeah.

Boiled over, things went a little slanchwise.

The whole assembly kept silence and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles. And then here’s where we get to kind of the linchpin of the whole thing. After they finished speaking, James replied—now this is the brother of Jesus.

This is Jesus’s own flesh and blood, who we hear about in James likely has become the leader of the church in Jerusalem following the death of Jesus. And so when James stands up, everybody listens. Even Peter is like, “Hey, remember, God put me in charge.” And James is like, “Sit down.”

“I got this.”

“Don’t worry, my brothers, listen to me.” Simeon has related how God first looked favorably on the Gentiles to take from among them a people for his name. This agrees with the words of the prophets as it is written. And then we got Acts 15 , verses 16 through 17, which I think are fascinating because this is supposed to be a quotation from Amos chapter nine, verses 11 and 12.

Right.

But it’s not what you will find if you look in your Old Testament at Amos 9 , verses 11 and 12. It’s a little bit different. And the differences are— There are two things that are causing difference here. One is that it’s going from the Greek translation, the Septuagint, and it changes a couple of words. So I’m going to read what he quotes, and then I’ll talk about the difference between this and what we actually find in the Hebrew. Okay, so this is what the The prophets wrote. “After this, I will return and I will rebuild the dwelling of David which has fallen; from its ruins I will rebuild it and I will set it up, so that all other peoples may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles, over whom my name has been called.” Thus says the Lord, who has been making these things known from long ago.

So it sounds like the prophets have prophesied of a time when the Lord’s blessings would be extended to all the Gentiles over whom God’s name would be called.

That’s definitely what that sounds like.

Yeah. It’s not what is actually in Amos. And I’m just gonna—

I knew it. They’re tricking me again. And this is Amos, chapter which?

This is Amos, chapter nine. And here’s verse 11 and 12. On that day, I will raise up the booth of David that has fallen and repair its breaches and raise up its ruins and rebuild it, as in the days of old. So we’re doing okay.

Yeah, roughly similar.

In order that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name, says the Lord who does this. Oh, so here… Yeah, here’s where things go sideways, or… What did you say? Slaunchwise or something?

That’s right. That’s a… That’s a Beecherism right there.

Well, I was thinking squanch, but there you go. That’s… That’s from another show. So here are the main differences. Amos says, in order that they may possess the remnant of Edom, and Acts 15 says, so that all other peoples may seek the Lord.

Yeah, that feels different.

Feels different. And the difference is in two words. In the Hebrew, Edom is spelled according to one spelling, not the full spelling, but what we call the defective spelling. It’s spelled exactly the same as the Hebrew word for humanity or man; Edom and Adam can be spelled the same way. And so the Greek translation doesn’t understand that this is talking about Edom and thinks it’s talking about Adam. And so has humanity or mankind or something like that.

Oh, and Edom, to be clear, E-D-O-M is a place.

It’s a type of music, EDM. I’m just kidding.

Stop it.

Yeah, stop it. It is a place. It is southeast of Israel. And so Edom would become Idumea, and the Idumeans, prior to, just prior to Jesus’s life, would all be forcibly converted to Judaism. So King Herod was actually an Idumean, so considered like an outside, an outsider who also happens to be Jewish. So anyway, and then the other problem is we’ve got possess the remnant of Edom. Possess is a verb, yarash, in Hebrew that means to dispossess, to take over, something like that. It is misunderstood as darash by the Septuagint translators or they have a variant text as a source text. Darash means to seek. So the Septuagint translation here actually says, so that the remnant of man may seek.

Oh, wow.

And then it stops. It doesn’t… This is a transitive verb. That means that this is a verb that takes a direct object, but the, the text doesn’t provide a direct object because it is a mistranslation that results in an incomplete sentence. And so when we pick it up in Acts, what are they? What is the remnant of humanity seeking? Well, obviously we’re going to put the Lord in there, right? So that’s what the author of Acts puts into James’s mouth. And then even all the Gentiles, over whom my name has been called in the Hebrew, we have all the nations who are called by my name. So Amos is actually a prophecy about the nation of Israel reconquering territories that they once held, but then lost at the period of their, their largest expanse. They had hegemony in Edom and in other nations that they later lost. And so this is a prophecy about the nation of Israel taking back over the land of Edom and any other lands that at one point had been possessed by the people of Adonai, the people of the Lord.

And it gets reinterpreted thanks to these words. Now, whether this is incidental, whether it is intentional, some people think it is inspired. Some people think that they were using testimonia, which is where you cobble together inspiring statements from fragments of different scriptures.

Whatever the case, good thing nobody does that anymore.

Yeah, whatever the case, what James ends up saying is not what the prophet says. And it’s also in Greek, right? So James was not speaking in Aramaic or Hebrew when this came out of his mouth, which means it didn’t come out of his mouth. It means that this is. The only way that this prophecy works in this context is if it is in Greek. And so this is through.

Is through multiple mistranslations or.

And so this is a literary creation.

Right.

In other words, it is the author of the Book of Acts who is putting these words into the mouth of James, the brother of the Lord.

But because. What you’re. Sorry, let me make sure I understand what you’re saying. Because James would have spoken Aramaic or Hebrew.

Yeah. As.

As his primary, like, spoken tongue.

Yeah. This. This council in Jerusalem would have been going on in. In Aramaic or Hebrew.

Okay. So. And those mistranslations are. Would only have happened because of the way things work in Greek. Because of the way. Okay.

Specifically, it is the precise mistranslation that the Septuagint is responsible for.

Right.

In other words, if James was actually quoting Scripture, he had just peeked in the Greek Septuagint and was like, okay, I’m going to quote that.

He was like, yeah, I could be reading this in its original Hebrew or whatever, but I feel like it’s better to go with the Greek translation of it and translate it back. Do you remember that there was an SNL sketch back in, like, the 80s where they had taken a song and. And it had been translated into. Into the. Into, like, French, and they were like, and now we’ve translated it back and it was just a popular song, but, like, the words were just slightly.

Oh, gosh. Yeah, that was. I don’t remember. Long time ago.

Anyway, they’ve.

They’ve done that with, like, Google Translate now where they translate it into Aramaic and then translate it back into English or something. And, yeah, it’s always goofy. It’s.

It’s not the best way to do it.

Nothing beats, however, the song by that Italian singer that was all gibberish.

Oh, that was. That was pretend. Pretend English.

Yes, that was pretend English because I was like, I can. I can hear it. I can hear it. If I didn’t know English, this would fool me.

You guys should Google that if you want to just pause the show for now and go Google Italian guy. Italians. It was like, in the 70s or something.

Yeah, yeah, there’s a great video, but. Holy cow. Yeah. And then. Yeah, so. And then there’s Come Together, which is also just gibberish. But so. So this seems to be something that the author of the Book of Acts is putting into the mouth of James based on either their copy, their copy of the Greek translation of Amos, or these testimonia so may. The author of the book of Acts could not just go down to the local Crossway and pick up a Bible and know that it was going to be the same as everyone else’s. They had, these were mostly on scrolls and you had different scrolls produced by different folks. And so there were lots of differences. But. And then we have James who immediately moves on to a peculiar alteration of the law.

He says, therefore I have reached the decision that we should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God, but we should write to them. And then, and then here we get this list. These are the things we’re going to maintain as part of the law. This is what’s required of you.

We’re going to let them leave their wee wees alone. But here are the things that they do have to do.

Right. So we go from 613 down to 4 and here they are. We should write to them to abstain only from things polluted by idols. And this probably refers mainly to food. But, but other things that have, that have been sullied, pollute.

And I. A food by an idol.

Offer the food to the idol.

Oh, so like if it was sacrificed to an idol.

Yeah. So this, this is a big debate with Paul is should we eat food that has been sacrificed to idols? Because a big part of participation in the Greco-Roman society at this time period would have been participating in feasts and house parties and things like that. And one of the things that they would have done is, you know, poured out a little for the homies. Only the homies are the gods. And so if you are then going and partaking of that food, are you partaking in the worship of the deity and.

No, none of that. That’s right out.

Yeah. Although Paul’s. Paul. Well, we’ll get to Paul. So that’s thing one, things polluted from idols by idols and from sexual immorality. And I, and I’m pretty sure I’m. I don’t have the. Let me pull up the Greek real quick. This probably is porneia. Yes, porneia. Porneia is where we get pornography, the word. And it is kind of a grab bag of illicit sexual activity. And as exciting as that sounds to a lot of people, there’s. You can’t go to the store and say give me the grab bag of illicit sexual activity. So it’s fundamentally related to adultery and sex work. So these were the things that were considered unseemly in the Greco-Roman world around this time period for the more conservative crowd.

And then. But it was broader than that as well. It basically included anything that a social group considered to be illicit sexual activity. And so for Christians around this time period, particularly the more philosophically oriented ones, the more conservative ones, it would have certainly included pretty much all sex outside of marriage. Although there is a question about things like masturbation and sex with slaves, because they were not considered fully people. And so there is an argument to make that perhaps that was considered unproblematic. So I.

They needed to spell out a lot more things. I’m just gonna say that we now any. Like, the fact that this book is still being followed means that there’s a lot of. There are a lot of questions that are still.

Hanging out there.

Yeah. And, you know, at the time, it would have been. The unwritten rules would have sat a lot closer to the surface. So you would have a. If you were part of this community, you would have a much clearer idea of what they considered in what they considered out. We would have fewer instances of George Costanza saying, was that wrong? And so. So that’s. That’s number two. And from whatever has been strangled. So within Judaism, there are prescribed ways of slaughtering animals that are going to be eaten. The blood has to be drained from them. And so this is probably related to the idea of things polluted by idols. In other words, there were probably ritual ways to slaughter animals that involved strangling them at the time. And this is probably seen as unseemly.

There’s. If. If you are interested in being disturbed, there is an interesting episode of No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain where he. He participates in the slaughter of a. A very large pig for a. I forget what the name of it it’s called, but a specific kind of feast, a Cajun style feast.

And. Yeah.

They strangle it?

No, they don’t strangle it, but they drain its blood. And there’s a large knife involved. Somebody’s holding a pistol.

All I’m gonna say is strangulation is literally the weirdest possible way to. To slaughter an animal for.

Yeah, it’s like, let’s take the longest, least efficient and most, most disturbing way.

This image with, like a pig and a headlock. Like, come on.

Oh, man. I. My. My grandfather taught me a trick when I was growing up to hypnotize chickens. You grab them by the feet. You put them down on their back so their head’s on the ground. You put your finger in the dirt right by their eye, and then you draw a line going straight away from them, and it messes with their depth perception. And so they sit there just staring at the line. And so my grandfather was like. He put a chicken like that, drew the line, and then the chicken was just, like, frozen.

Just, just.

And then he just chopped his head off while it was just laying on the ground.

Okay, yeah, sounds great.

This is.

This is one of those helpful episodes where we have useful tips for everybody.

For their lives there, folks. So I grew up on a farm. Folks who grew up on a farm are used to this kind of thing.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And then thing four is blood. So James basically rewrites the law of Moses, meaning eating blood.

Right.

Eating blood. Right. We’re going to do away with all of these other things. We got four rules. Things polluted by idols, porneia, you know, whatever we consider to be illicit sexual acts, things strangled and blood. And so three of the four things have to do with ritual purity of food.

Which is peculiar for this new Christian group that is being taken to the Gentiles.

Why is that peculiar?

Well, when you talk to Christians about why they don’t follow certain Old Testament laws and why they do follow others, why… Why certain of them should still be relevant, you generally get one of two different rationalizations. One is that anything that Jesus quoted as being relevant in the New Testament, like, that stays. Like Jesus endorses it, and so it stays. And then anything that wasn’t quoted goes. And it, you know, that has fuzzy boundaries. That doesn’t work. But that’s one of the rationalizations. The other rationalization is that the laws of the law of Moses can be divided into two or three different categories. One is moral laws, and the other is ceremonial laws. And then the third category, which comes up with like, by like Aquinas around a thousand years later, is civil laws. And so what they say is Christianity keeps the moral laws, does not keep the ceremonial and the civil laws.

Right.

However, three of these four things are ceremonial laws. And Paul rejects those three ceremonial laws. Because Paul says, hey, we know an idol is nothing in the world. Sacrificing food to an idol doesn’t change anything about the food. It’s meaningless.

And so you’re fine, eat the food. Doesn’t matter. Now, if you’ve got some, you know, some weak brother who is there, who’s like, oh, we can’t eat the food, then, you know, you don’t want to scandalize him. You don’t want to destroy his faith by you just chowing down. And so that’s where we get the idea that a brother should not place a stumbling block before another brother; it is basically the idea that you, you know, don’t rejoice in your freedom right in front of these tender little snowflakes who… Who are going to be ruined by this.

Some poor Pharisee who’s still trying to keep the laws the way they’re supposed to.

Or… Or any Gentile who’s just, you know, a little milquetoast.

Yeah, exactly.

And so Paul is like, yeah, none of that matters. There’s… yeah, okay. And you know, there are large Christian populations in different parts of the world that have a long history of eating things like blood sausage.

And other things like that. Obviously, James’s four rules didn’t stick.

Nope. So basically we’ve gotten rid of Peter’s out, James is out. Basically we can ignore all these guys at this point.

Well, and this is one of the things I keep saying, like, nobody derives their worldview from the scriptures. Not these people who we’re talking about in the scriptures, not the people who wrote them, not anyone who follows the Bible. Because we all negotiate, we all pick and choose. And these things were… they were not picked. And then we get… So James is like, let’s do this. And then in verse 22, it says, then the apostles and the elders, with the consent of the whole church, decided to choose men from among them and to send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They sent Judas called Barsabbas and Silas, leaders among the brethren, with the following letter. So Paul is taking this letter that says, “The brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the brothers and sisters of Gentile origin in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings. Since we have heard that certain persons who have gone out from us, though with no instructions from us, have said things to disturb you and have unsettled your minds, we have decided unanimously to choose men and send them to you along with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, we have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth.

For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and and from blood and from what is strangled and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell."

Yeah. So that’s—they were like, “Can we get it in writing?” And they put it in writing. And so those are the four laws of Christianity according to the author of the book of Acts , 25% of which stuck.

Yeah. And didn’t stick convincingly. Like, was—was confusing and weird. The sexual immorality part. And then—and then the part that this whole thing was about, or at least part of what it was all about, which was the circumcision somehow came back and now I’m circumcised. How did that happen? That was the one thing that they said we didn’t have to do anymore. And now—and you know who it was? It was John Kellogg. Did you know that?

Did you know that?

That’s why I’m circumcised.

Because the guy—I had never worried about why you personally are circumcised. You should. I am aware that Kellogg is—is responsible for some—for some unseemly stuff.

I’m very—I’m—I’m very anti-circumcision.

And… Yeah, they gathered the congregation together. They delivered the letter. When they read it, they rejoiced at the exhortation. So basically everybody is having a great time because they all lived happily ever after. They just had 609 rules and regulations lifted and they were left with four. And they would be getting rid of three of those before too long in short order.

Okay, but.

But isn’t this—isn’t this bizarre though, that the only thing that stuck was this concern for sexual purity which has become probably one of the central identity markers of Christianity today, even as it is, you know, flouted by an awful lot of people. The people who push—who push this note the hardest are frequently people who are the worst at keeping it. Or.

And if you—and if you haven’t read Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s book Jesus and John Wayne, you should definitely go do that.

Well, we have gone way over time on this, but it has been fascinating.

Do we.

Is there anything more?

Should we just move on from there? It goes into Paul and Barnabas separating, but we already talked about that. So. So I think we’ve… there’s more—more we could say about the Jerusalem Council, but I think that’s a pretty—I think that’s a pretty decent outline.

Little primer for you.

Yeah. And obviously circumcision was a part, one of those 613 things that was done away with.

Well, as Paul says goodbye to Barnabas, we will move on to conspiracy watch.

Dun dun dun.

Okay, so.

Okay, sorry. That’s a conspiracy sound.

That’s a good. Look we just had. As we said earlier, if assuming there’s still Earth and everyone is still there and they’re listening to this, we just, we just had here in these United States in North America and maybe. Nope. Only North America. Right. A, an eclipse. A total solar eclipse. I hope some of you got to see it. When I went to see the, the solar eclipse, it was a few years ago, it was a really wonderful experience and I thought it was so cool. So I think it’s something, if you, if you get a chance to experience it, definitely do it. However, I, not everybody shares my enthusiasm for solar eclipses. I, I have a friend on Facebook who is a studier and practitioner of Ayurvedic medicine.

This would be the, the ancient Indian medicine. And she posted a whole thing about how you shouldn’t look at the eclipse because it will cast a dark Ayurvedic shadow over your soul for 13 years or something like that. That has not been my experience. Interesting. To my knowledge, no, no noticeable shadow has been cast over my soul. But Ayurvedic people are not the only people who are worried and, and, and fear can and have theories about what this eclipse portends. I love it because these eclipses happen almost yearly, I think somewhere on this planet. But we only hear about the, the crazies, at least for us, only come out when, when they hit the United States. So yeah, the crazies have come out. What are they saying, Dan?

Oh gosh. What are they not saying? This, I, I, I think one of the, it when I first started seeing the, the, the conspiracy theories about the eclipse, it started with this claim that this eclipse will be passing over at least the, the field of greatest totality will be passing over seven cities in the US while in North America, one of them’s in Nova Scotia called Nineveh. And yes, and so this, that is.

A, that is a. The name of a thing in the Bible.

It is a thing in the Bible. It is a place in the Bible. It for a time was the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. And there is the famous prophetic book of Jonah where Jonah is sent to prophesy destruction in 40 days to the city of Nineveh. And then there’s also in the book of Matthew . Well, it’s in, it’s in the Gospels, but usually Matthew is quoted where Jesus said, there, this adulterous generation seeks a sign, and there will be no sign given to it except for the sign of Jonah. And this is where the people who promote this conspiracy theory stop reading. And they say this eclipse passing over seven cities called Nineveh must be the sign of Jonah. And the reason they should keep reading is because Jesus then explains precisely what the sign of Jonah is, which is, just as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so too the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.

One of those. Okay, but typological interpretations could possibly have.

Anything to do with an eclipse, right?

Absolutely nothing to do with an eclipse. Additionally, it’s just not true that there are seven cities named Nineveh that the path of totality will cross over. It crosses over two.

I’m so confused about how. I’m sorry, I’m still confused about how they’re connecting this to the sign of Jonah.

What is that?

What are they saying it is?

They’re saying the eclipse is the sign of Jonah and it is for this current adulterous and evil generation. And because I don’t know who first came up with this, I’m not saying this is rational. I’m just saying that I started seeing these videos pointing this out, and I went and looked on Google Maps and I was like, okay, 15 of those cities are not under the path of totality. They are outside of it. Right? Entirely. Only two of them are actually inside that path. And also, that doesn’t mean anything. And that is only the beginning of these claims. So additionally, they mistake. They misrepresent what Jonah was sent to Nineveh to do, because they say Jonah said, you have 40 days to repent, otherwise destruction. And so that’s what they’re saying this eclipse is giving us. Jonah did not say, you have 40 days to repent.

This was an unconditional prophecy of destruction. It did not give them an out. 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown. Punto. Full stop, period. And then the King said, well, let’s repent anyway. Who knows what God will do?

We’ll see.

Yeah. And we talked about the book of Jonah previously. Jonah gets upset when they repent and are forgiven because Jonah was like, I knew you would do this to me.

And you’re always doing this. You’re always making me look bad in front of my friends.

You’re always forgiving people.

People I really hate.

And so, yeah, they misrepresent the sign of Jonah. They misrepresent the prophecy, or they misrepresent Jonah’s prophecy. They misrepresent where these cities are located. And then it gets worse because then they look at other eclipses from recent years. One is the 2017 eclipse that kind of went west to east.

Over the United States. And they said that one passes over seven cities called Salem.

And Salem is a name that we find in in Genesis. That. That’s. Melchizedek was supposed to be the king of Salem. Now actually, Melchizedek was the king of Sodom, but they changed it. So. Yeah, we’ll. We’ll talk about that.

Blew some minds. Yeah, we’ll have to get to that.

Yeah, we’ll talk about that another day. And it also doesn’t cross over seven cities named Salem. It crosses over like five. And then as I, as I mentioned to you, I counted. I just googled how many cities named Salem in the US there were like 43 of them.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, you can drop an eclipse somewhere on the contiguous United States and you’re probably going to hit some Salems.

You’re going to get a Salem.

Yeah. You got. You’re probably going to get some Springfields. So, yeah, that’s. That’s not a big surprise. But then they talk about how. Right. Where the, those two. The 2017 and the 2024 eclipse intersect, there’s supposed to be a town called Rapture.

And so they’re like, ah, is the Rapture. Finally we’re getting to the Rapture. I get to fly off into the skies and watch as my neighbors and. And everybody else is left on Earth. And which is also not true that the Rapture city is outside of the intersection of those two paths of totality.

Where would that be? Somewhere in like, like I’m gonna guess if I’m. If I’m thinking about those two paths somewhere like Nebraska or something.

I think it’s Indiana.

I think it’s right around Indiana. So one of them crosses over Indiana, Ohio, and the other is. Is coming sweeping through Nebraska, Missouri. Okay. And then they. There’s a third eclipse that was. I forget what year that was in, but that one goes west. East, but instead of in a southernly southerly route like the 2017, when it’s in a more northerly route. And so if you plot these three eclipses, it makes what looks like a sideways A.

With the, the bar kind of extending well beyond. You know, it’s. It’s basically three different things intersecting like that. And then we have people pointing out you can spell or the, the, the paths of these eclipses spell out the old Hebrew character Aleph and the old Hebrew character Tav. And Aleph and Tav are the first and the last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which means they would correspond to the alpha and the omega in the Greek alphabet, which means the paths of these eclipses mean Jesus.

The first and the last, the alpha and the, the omega.

I mean, three intersecting lines probably will often do that.

Yeah. I don’t, I don’t know the odds of that, but I’m pretty sure it’s. Yeah, it’s not, it is a non-zero. The odds of, of you being able to squint at three lines and say, I can kind of see an A and an X. Yeah. And so this is basically the. Throw the prophetic spaghetti at the wall. And the more you can imagine into these events.

The more clear it is that it is prophetic. And then we have the, the gentleman in the cowboy hat from the other day.

Oh yeah, that was a good one. If you haven’t seen Dan’s video taking down this video, it’s on TikTok. It’s great.

So this guy was like, I’m gonna take you down this deep, dark rabbit hole. Yeah. And I was like, ooh. Scared me with a good time.

And then he’s like, it’s about CERN. And I was like, I’m out.

But you weren’t out.

No, I was not. I stayed in. I have, I have heard about CERN way too much about how CERN is opening up portals to hell.

CERN, by the way, is the, is the Large Hadron Collider. Right thing. It’s, it’s just physics experiments is all it is. Yeah. But not if you listen to Christian conspiracy theories because yeah, it is. It pretty much every, everything that happens in the Book of Revelation centers around CERN.

Right.

If, if you listen to these guys. So what did he have to say?

And, and Geneva, Switzerland, because like there’s a United Nations headquarters there. Like there people are concerned about the environment there. Everything on your list of right wing authoritarian bitching is going to be in Geneva.

So what he said is that the Large Hadron Collider, and that, that CERN’s logo, which is the rings and the particle tracks and everything like that.

Can I just say it, it is a bad logo. It is not great, objectively an ugly logo.

It’s not great. I think it’s from the 50s, but yeah, it’s not great. But he says it’s 666.

Right. Which doesn’t work at all. If you look at it, you could see that there’s. You could. There could be some sixes in there, but there’s like five different offshoot, like stems. So it’s probably like. I looked at it and I’m like, I see a six, I see a P, there’s a D. Maybe I got. I don’t. Yeah, it’s. You can’t. It can’t just be 666.

Right. Right.

We’ll leave it at that.

And you. And you have to, like, erase some stuff to get 666 and maybe.

Maybe make one a mirror image or something.

Anyway, but he says that the Large Hadron Collider is built over top of or next to or underneath or something. An old temple to Apollo.

The God Apollo.

And this is based on a false etymology for the name of a commune that part of the Large Hadron Collider goes underneath. And that is. Oh, I forgot what the name of it is. It’s in French, but it’s like Saint-Genis-Pouilly and Pouilly. They say, oh, this comes from this Latin term, Apolliacum, which is a reference to a temple of Apollo. And that’s just pure and utter nonsense. Pouilly in this French name comes from Paullius or Pullius. It has absolutely nothing to do with Apollo. I have. I’m familiar with the. Geneva is a location of a temple of Apollo conspiracy theory from the notion that the death of Antipas that’s mentioned in Revelation chapter two took place at Geneva, even though it explicitly says that it took place at Pergamum.

Because some, like, somebody edited a Wikipedia entry once and was like, Antipas was killed in a. In a brazen bull at an Apollo, you know, a temple to Apollo in Geneva or Lyon in France.

Right.

And which are two different places, by the way.

Yes, yes. And I imagine they were just giggling to themselves as they watched, but, like, people just took this and ran with it. And now we’ve got this asinine notion that Geneva is, you know, that basically the. The gate to hell is underground in Geneva.

And it’s nonsense. But the reason this all came up is because they have. They schedule when the Large Hadron Collider is going to be on and off and what kinds of experiments they’re going to be doing with it, like years out.

And so it has not been on for months. And I think they started powering it up last month, but they’re actually going to start experiments with it again on April 8th.

Right.

And so the way this guy said it was that it’s going to be at full power when the eclipse hits. It’s like, well, one. It’s on the other side of the Earth.

Yeah. No one in Switzerland will even be aware that there’s an eclipse happening.

Yeah. We’re Americans, though. We’re the only ones who matter. So if it’s happening here, then it is relevant to everyone else.

I think he’s minorly pissed off that. That the CERN collider, that, like, the end of the world place isn’t also here, just like, somewhat centered around New York City or something like that. You’d think that he would be pissed that. Anyway, part of.

Part of the address of a United Nations building in New York is evidently 666. So there are absolutely theories that. That the Antichrist lives in New York.

666, as we’ve discussed on this show, has nothing to do with anyone now, so.

Right. Yeah.

Anyway, go on.

It’s about Nero and. And, yeah, he was saying that they. He claimed that the scientists at CERN are insisting that they’re opening up gateways to other dimensions and that, quote, entities are passing back and forth.

That was my favorite claim that he made, which was about the intention of the scientists there, because that we can verify.

Yeah, like.

Yeah, no, they. They are not claiming that. That’s not what it’s for. That’s what you’re claiming it’s for. You’re saying that.

And. And. Oh, man. And so the idea is basically that this is. And there’s a. There’s a passage in Revelation about the pit that opens and the destroyer Apollyon is gonna come out and, you know, waggle his tail or something. I don’t know. But he says that Apollyon is also a reference to Apollo, whose temple is at CERN, whose logo is 666, and they’re trying to open up gates to hell.

And Apollyon has nothing to do with the god Apollo. It comes from a. A Greek verbal root that you learn in, like, your first or second semester of taking Greek, apollymi, which means to ruin or destroy. And there’s a great joke that if you learn a modern language, you know, you learn. Where’s the bathroom? My name is so and so.

When you learn ancient Greek, you learn the gods are angry and things like this.

What you don’t know how to say, Donde esta la biblioteca? In ancient Greek.

No, no se ni eso. But you, you know, you’re reading like Homer right off the bat, so there’s a lot of that. So you learned the verb for ruin and destroy right away. But that’s where the name the Apollyon is the destroyer. And this, it’s supposed to be a translation of the Hebrew word Abaddon, which means destruction. So anyone who has just a, a rudimentary understanding of these texts and this history and, you know, science.

Can see that all of this is pure and utter nonsense. But unfortunately, the people with the least capacity for critical thought and the least curiosity are also the people who have access to the Internet and have for some reason, the ganas, the desire to go out and spread these asinine conspiracy theories that, that I’m sure just riddle some people with anxiety and fear. People who are, who are deep in this. People who were raised to think that the world could end at any second and if they masturbated yesterday, then they’re going to go to hell. I imagine folks like that are, do not enjoy all of the, the doomsday prophesying that is going.

Well, it’s, it’s even worse than that. Yes, there’s the, the, the personal anguish and anxiety that this causes. But I went into that guy’s video and I went into the comment section and one of the first comments that I saw. Comment section and one of the first comments that I saw. I mean, and mind you, I see why this guy is spreading these dumb things because it’s got like over a million views.

And, you know, there, these comments, the, you know, the, the, the comments that have risen to the top are all like, you know, I believe this is totally true. But, you know, no weapon formed, no weapon shall prevail against me. I got Jesus and blah, blah, blah.

Right.

And then there was one that was like, my kids think I’m crazy, but I can. But we know that this is happening. And I just thought that is tragic.

Yeah. I, I.

And that’s happening all over the place. Like, yeah, there are people who are pestering their families about this stuff because they’re so scared about it.

And they’re literally alienating themselves from the people that they love the most because of a whole, like, litany of really bad interpretations of this, of this book.

Yeah. Yeah. And I get messages from time to time from people who have been, you know, they’re those kids who, who don’t have relationships with their parents anymore, with their brothers and sisters or whatever. Because, because they have just gone down that deep dark rabbit hole that this guy is trying to drag people down into. Yeah. Because it’s turned into this basically club of, you know, let’s believe all these asinine things about how, you know, pharmakeia and vaccines are, are the tool of the devil and they’re the, the mark of the beast. And, and all of this stuff which is not productive at all. It does nothing except ruin relationships and ruin people’s self-esteem and their confidence and their hope and their ability to function within a society that really has no use for this kind of fear-mongering outside of just structuring power and making some money.

And so, you know, maybe that guy makes 500 bucks off of this video over the course of a few weeks on TikTok. I mean is that worth it?

I want to make 500 bucks but I, I, look, I, I, I’m not too hung up on my own ethics, but I definitely don’t, I, I’ll make 500 bucks a different way than that. That’s just too much pain and anguish too. Like, you know, and now people are, I’m sure there are people who are stocking up on toilet paper and, and you know, non-perishables.

.22 ammunition. Yeah, that, that was the big thing for a while when Obama was president.

.22 ammunition. He was going to make it illegal. So the gun shops were like, come get it now. And they were like yes sir.

Thousands of dollars on ammunition.

Yeah, it’s, it’s sad, it’s a little scary and it would be nice if any of them noticed when any of these things didn’t come true and go, oh wait, maybe there’s something, maybe there’s a lesson to be learned here.

In the meantime, I went, like I told you, I went into that comment section. Yeah. And while I was in there I, I just posted a little comment that just said, hey, anybody want to bet, I’ll bet you, I’ll bet you money about this that none of this is going to happen.

So put a date on it, put a deadline.

Yeah, yeah, let’s, let’s, let’s work out the particulars and then let’s make that bet. And I say, you know, rather than being estranged from your family members, make them pay you. If they’re wrong, make them pay you. That’s all I’m saying.

Have them subsidize your edibles.

That’s right.

And then rub it in their face.

All right. Well hopefully, hopefully the, the end of the world has not come by the time this comes out and we’re all doing okay. And maybe CERN will have some cool discoveries for us at some point soon.

I hope so. That’d be cool.

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Bye everybody.

Black Hole Sun

Segments

The Transcript

Scripture Index

Terminology