Bible Magic!

Throughout the ancient world, everybody just seemed to presuppose that, yeah, there’s magic out there, that witchcraft works. It’s just a matter of trying to suggest that when we do it, the person on the other end of the line is righteous. When they do it, it’s demons. Hey, everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

And you are 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 about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Things are good. Things are good. It’s my birthday, so I’m just chilling here. I just stepped foot into my 50th year.

Oh, wow, that’s.

I’m not 50, to be clear. I’m 49.

49, okay.

But that thus begins, you know, you start at zero, you don’t get that one until that first whole year has gone by. So this means of counting is backwards looking.

Yes, yes, yes. Well, congratulations. Happy birthday. By the time this goes out, you will have been a couple of weeks into that 50th year. You will be gaining all kinds of experience.

I’ll be a wise old man by then. Right now I’m just a young spry doofus. But soon the wisdom’s going to hit. It hits at 50, right? That’s when it kicks in.

That’s what I heard. Yeah, flooding in. The floodgates are open. You get the key to unlock all those doors.

Thank goodness. So speaking of wisdom, today we’re going to be talking about—and also speaking of like, magical things happening, like wisdom just magically occurring at 50—magic’s the theme of the show, man. We’re going to be talking about some awesome—we’ve had people on Patreon and other places ask us about various sort of magic that appears in the Hebrew Bible, including magical implements and various things. So we’re gonna dive into that to begin with and then we’re gonna zero in on some things very specific that’s sort of of that realm.

Yes.

An archaeological find, if I’m not mistaken.

An archaeological find. Yeah. We’re actually gonna talk about the single earliest witness to any text in the Hebrew Bible. And it is a magical text.

Interesting.

Yes.

I like it.

Yeah.

All right, well, let’s start with some magical thinking.

Yeah, I think it would be helpful first to talk a little bit about the concept of magic as we understand it and as we use it, particularly in relation to the Bible, because there are an awful lot of people who understand magic to be something that other people do. Basically it’s religious stuff that I don’t like.

Right.

Is magic just like a cult is a religion I don’t like, magic is the bibbidi bobbidi boo that I don’t like. Because when I go bibbidi bobbidi boo, well, that’s just priesthood or that’s just God or that’s just a miracle or something like that, but it’s not magic. And so the distinction between what might be called priesthood authority or God’s authority or something like that and magic is an arbitrary one. It is one that is drawn by the folks who are involved in it or against it.

And I can see why the word magic would end up feeling maybe disrespectful or somehow dismissive, but I don’t think that’s how we want to use that word now. Like, I don’t feel like we want to be dismissive or disrespectful of what we’re going to talk about.

No, not at all.

But yeah, I mean, I think that these practices and sort of implements, objects that are imbued with God’s power or imbued with some sort of power, these are all things that—I mean they’re certainly not exclusive to Judaism, Christianity, etc., but they are present there and present in the Bible. And how do you talk about them without using—without, like, I suppose we could find other words, but magic is the right word. It’s what’s happening. So let’s, yeah, let’s get into where we’re at. Like what kinds of things are we talking about?

Well, I think there are—I identify, someone might be able to identify more, but just off the top of my head, since we started the show, I’ve thought I can identify three different kind of brands of magical stuff going on in the Bible. One is magic associated with divination. How can we tell God’s will, what God wants?

When he was ready to go and he wanted to. And he made a deal with Laban about him taking all the, the spotted and speckled sheep and, and goats and stuff. He went and took a bunch of sticks and. And peeled the bark off and stripped them to make them look spotted and speckled, and then put them in watering troughs while certain animals were there and then took them out while others were not there to influence their. Their litters, to influence the kinds of animals they would give birth to. So that’s a, that’s a kind of sympathetic magic where you create something that is supposed to have some kind of metaphysical connection to some kind of outcome.

Right.

And then we have what now we’ve just thought of four. We have imprecatory magic as well. And that’s where you’re trying to harm other folks. And so if, if one thinks of. I think the first one that pops into my head is Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with the doll. And we like, we have clay dolls from ancient Southwest Asia and Egypt where they, like, write curses on them and then smash them.

Right.

And that’s supposed to like, affect other.

Folks sort of what, what, what we, who grew up in, you know, the late 20th century were told was a voodoo thing. But.

Yeah.

Has nothing to do with voodoo, but.

Right. Well, you know, far be it from us to miss an opportunity to demonize marginalized groups, so.

Right, yeah, absolutely.

So we’ve got the sympathetic, we got the divination, and then we’ve got the imprecatory, and then there’s the apotropaic. And apotropaic is a $2 word that refers to warding off evil.

So I think we’ve talked about this in context, in the context of our, our episode about Lilith, did we not? There was an apotropaic amulet.

Yeah.

That was there to, to protect against. Was it to protect against Lilith coming and getting you?

Yeah. So this was something that dates to between 700 and 1000 CE. So we’re getting in on the medieval period. And this was this idea that this amulet, if it had these three angels’ names on it, Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof, then Lilith would not be able to kill your newborn. And so that was probably an etiology, an origin story for the use of this amulet as an apotropaic or a protective amulet for the baby. Okay. And so we have all kinds of apotropaic magic going on as well. In fact, what we’re going to talk about in the second part of the show is going to be apotropaism. It’s going to be about warding off evil. But for the first part of the show, we’re going to talk about divination. And particularly associated with two things. They can be separate or together. And usually English speakers know them by Urim and Thummim. In Hebrew, Urim ve Tummim.

And these are tools of divination. It’s not divinization. Excuse me. That might be another type of magic. Tools of divination.

Sure.

In other words, a way to discern God’s will.

Yeah.

And so when we did our episode on the Necromancer of En Dor.

Right.

There’s a. The introduction to that story says that Saul was seeking the Lord’s will, related to whether or not he should go up to battle. And it says he could not find an answer from the prophets or through the Urim and Thummim. And so they. He had access to this tool of divination, and it just wasn’t working. He gave it the bop. He gave it the Nintendo blow. He did all of that, and he still was not getting the answers he was looking for.

So, I mean, he probably. The moisture probably actually damaged the. Don’t do it. Yeah, don’t do the blow.

You don’t want to get the. The mountain dew fumes in the. In there.

Yeah, I remember reading that. Like Saul. Matter of fact, I have it pulled up here in 1 Samuel 14 .

Okay.

Verse 41, where Saul prayed to the Lord, “Why have you not answered your servant today? If the fault is in me or in my son Jonathan, respond with Urim. But if the men of Israel are at fault, respond with Thummim.” So it was like. It was like a binary system. He had a. He had a whole, like, you know, if the. If the blue light comes on, then we know that it’s this. And if the red light comes on, can do. We know what this looked like, what this Urim and Thummim was because it was part of a breastplate. Right?

We don’t really have an idea what form it took because it doesn’t really describe it. It only ever refers to either Urim or Thummim or Urim and Thummim together. But it was something that went into the breastplate somewhere. And sometimes it seems to overlap with the stones that were put in the breastplate or on the shoulders. And so it’s not consistent. So we have in Numbers 27:21 , 1 Samuel 28:6 , we have. And then there are like five other references to just the Urim all by itself, which was some kind of object that facilitated divination. And then you find Urim and Thummim together in Exodus 28:30 , Leviticus 8:8 , Deuteronomy 33:8 , Ezra 2:63 , Nehemiah 7:65 .

Interesting.

And there’s. There were even scholars for a long time who thought that these were not actually physical objects, but that they were abstractions.

I’m just forever now going to think of them as a red and a blue light right over the net. That’s that to me.

Well, here’s the thing. There is ancient Jewish tradition associated with the Urim and the Thummim, which, by the way, these are two Hebrew words, they’re both in the plural that mean lights and perfections.

Oh.

However, in the plural you can create abstractions by putting nouns in the plural. And so it could mean. It could mean illumination and perfection in the abstract sense. But again, there are several passages that seem to reflect the idea that this is. These are physical objects that were means of, of divination. And so they. In Exodus and even in a bunch of other places, the idea is that they go in the breastplate of judgment that was worn by Aaron, which has 12 different stones on it. It’s to be woven together from linen and wool. Wink, wink. And gold and other things. And then there’s supposed to be like a pocket in there. And there is ancient Jewish tradition that these stones actually illuminated.

Wow.

That there was some kind of way that they lit up to indicate the, the will of God or that. That when they lit up, that indicated that the, the will of God was being communicated. If maybe by some other means. And. And there is some tradition that that suggests the letters, it would spell stuff out. Oh, the light.

It’s like an LED display.

Yeah, something like that. Yeah. We don’t know if it projected. It feels like the Bat-Signal. So you had the, the Adonai signal that would, that would light up the clouds.

Or if it’s just a chest mounted jumbotron sort of situation.

Yeah. And if it was, if it was a clear night and there were no clouds, then you were SOL. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, it is some kind of means of divination and because it does not describe exactly what’s going on in the Hebrew Bible. Everybody is just kind of making stuff up. But we have. We have later rabbinic texts that talked about, for instance, one, the Babylonian Yoma 73a, which dates to between the third and the fifth centuries CE. When asked how were the Urim and Thummim inquired of. And the answer comes, the inquirer had his face directed to him who was consulted, and the latter directed himself to the divine presence. And, and so there is linking with temple symbolism and imagery and stuff like that. And they would either either some stuff would come into their mind or it would light up.

And then there’s. There’s even. There’s some Jewish tradition that suggests that the stones on the breastplate were the Urim and Thummim, or the two that went over the shoulder were the Urim and Thummim. And then Josephus actually talks about this as God declared. So Josephus is writing in the 90s CE, okay. And he’s. He’s captured during the war when. When Rome destroys Jerusalem.

Josephus was the. Sorry, the Jewish historian who then. And then. Oh, sorry, you’re telling the story.

Yeah, yeah, but he came.

He was of Jewish descent.

Right. And they capture him and he’s like, I could be of use to you guys. And he basically writes the stories, histories about Judaism in a way that’s intended to kind of represent Judaism to the Roman Empire in a good light. But he says in one part, God declared beforehand by those 12 stones which the high priest bare on his breast and which were inserted into his breastplate when Israel should be successful in battle for so great a splendor shone forth from them before any army began to march, that all the people were sensible of God’s being present for their assistance. And so here, the idea is that it’s. It’s basically a binary thing. It’s a yes or a no. Should we go out to battle? That’s a yes. And that. And then, you know, if you see the priest walking around and he’s just beaming light, then they were like, oh, man, we’re gonna win today. Got a good feeling.

It’s.

Got a good feeling about this match.

This is gonna go great.

Yeah. And so in that sense, it’s, It’s. It’s kind of woven into the idea of this war palladium, the representation of God’s presence and approbation of going into. Into battle.

Little did they know that the Moabite priest’s chest was also glowing. And that didn’t go, great.

Yeah. And then the Philistines brought out their fish God. Right. Who actually has nothing to do with being a fish. And then we have. Yeah. They would consult them before the war. And that’s why Saul was going to. Going to the Prophets, going to consult the Urim. And it was silent. So, you know, if. If it, like, doesn’t light up means no. Lights up means yes. If it’s broken, how do you not.

Right.

Be like. That’s a no. I’m not really. Are you answering no.

Twice for yes and once for not? Yeah.

And then we’ve got.

That’s why, that’s why you need both. That’s why you need the Urim and the Thummim. So that you can have, so you can have one for, you know, one of them is the Ur. Is. No. Yeah.

Oh, except you just don’t drop them and then be like, oh, shoot, which one was which?

Hopefully they look different.

Yeah. And then in the Dead Sea Scrolls, they’re mentioned a handful of times, including in the Temple Scroll 11Q19, which says the king must not go to battle prior to coming to the high priest to inquire of him about the judgment of the Urim and Thummim. So we’re.

Let me just put on my rocks. I gotta. I gotta put on my rocks to know.

Yeah. And, you know, within the Latter Day Saint tradition, the Urim and Thummim is. Is picked up as basically a peep stone. That’s what they’re saying. Oh, that’s the Urim and Thummim, which, to be honest, is not far off. I mean, the. There’s certainly an awful lot of overlap in the functioning of certainly a divination thing. Right, right. And.

And when divination was huge in the, in the 1800s and like, all through, like, we think of it as, you know, we’re talking about it in an ancient context, but it continued till and continues. Like I, I still see people dowsing for. To find water.

Yeah.

And that sort of thing. It doesn’t work, but people do it and they swear by it. A lot of people swear by it.

Well, and when you think about it, frequently when you hear stories about the efficacy of prayer, particularly within the Latter Day Saint tradition, you sometimes hear stories about, oh, I was. I lost this thing and I decided to kneel down and say a prayer. And then I was shown where it was in my mind or. And then the next place I looked was it. Or something like that. Which is just divination.

Yeah.

Mediated by prayer. It’s, it’s basically dematerializing the, the object, the facilitator of divination.

Right.

Saying no, we, we do it with our voice rather than with a rock or with a, a particularly shiny rock. It’s, it’s, we’re still doing the exact same thing. And yeah.

I mean think of, you think of all the people who are very into the healing powers of crystals or whatever.

Yeah.

Like that’s, that is again, you take an object that is a shiny pretty rocky and and you imbue it with various power.

Yeah. Whether having to do with frequencies or with anything like that. You, you can imagine the, the high priest with the, the 12 different stones on, on his chest. People like oh gosh, here he comes again with his crystals.

Like this one is rose quartz and that’s good for healing. Smoky quartz. And that is Doterra.

Would have made a killing.

Wait, we said we weren’t going to be disrespectful. Let’s keep going.

I’m.

We lied. We’re going to be a little disrespectful sometimes for, for fun.

But we, we distinguish what is good divination from bad divination basically on who we think is on the other end of the line.

Right.

And so we have divination in the Hebrew Bible as well as in the New Testament. How did they choose the apostle that was going to take Judas’s place? They rolled dice, they cast lots. And so but because it was Adonai on the other end of the line is like, this is okay. It’s okay when we do it. But you know, if you. And this raises interesting questions about the intercession of angels within early and even contemporary brands of Christianity as well as within some brands of Judaism. You have a lot of attempts to appeal to other entities besides God. And, and Jesus was doing that as well. To. There’s one of the reasons that, or one of the criticisms of Christianity among some early Jewish folks was hey, that’s the wrong person. On the other end of the divinatory line. We have, we’ve got to have Adonai on the other end. And the Christians were just like, well what if he is Adonai?

Did you ever think about that?

Yeah, I mean that’s, that is a time honored tradition. People accusing, you know, even you look at Christians accusing different brands of Christians of your thing isn’t working or isn’t valid because it’s not, it’s not the right version of our, of our belief system or whatever. Like that. Yeah, that happens a lot.

And then, you know, witchcraft is, is just a, a variation on, on sympathetic magic and divination and things like that. Although it’s frequently aimed at kind of a generic faceless divine agency out there that is not, that is not named and personified and represented in, in most cases, in, in some cases it is, but in most cases it’s not. So. So Christians and, and folks who are in the Bible trying to seek God’s will are doing the same kinds of things that any other people engaged in divination are doing. Right. They just feel like there’s one, there’s one object of our inquiry that’s appropriate and anybody else is inappropriate, which is just about exclusivity more than it is about any kind of innate fundamental ethical or moral qualities associated with.

Well, and as you said, like, it seems like at least some of this. So like Urim and Thummim seem to be like direct lines to Adonai or whatever. But then you get, there’s a lot of like, gray area. You talked about the, what you, you said the necromancer. I still like the Witch of Endor just because it sounds really fun. And, and I’m, and I’m. Yes, it’s true. I am still picturing an Ewok, but the, the, you know, she was practicing this practice that worked, that had, that, that, that was an effective magic.

Yeah.

And it’s, you know, it had been banned by Saul. Was it Saul that banned it?

Yeah.

But that didn’t mean that God had banned it and it clearly worked. So I mean, it, it. One would think God approved question mark. God disapproved question mark. It seems to be in gray area.

Well, and this, and this raise. This raises an interesting point about the conceptualization of magic and the disapproval of non, non godly magic. Let’s, let’s say. Or what is unsanctioned. Yeah. What is presupposed throughout all of it. Whether you’re talking about Pharaoh’s magicians who successfully turn staffs into snakes, or you’re talking about the Necromancer of Endor, or you’re talking about anything else. The presupposition is that the world is chock full of invisible forces that we can access. If you know the right words, if you have the right materials, if you have the right ingredients and recipes.

Right.

In other words, it’s all true. It’s just a question of what you’re allowed to go out and take advantage of. And for the Bible, it nowhere says like if, if it didn’t work in their perception, they wouldn’t have to ban it or prohibit it.

Right, right.

They wouldn’t have to say, no, don’t, don’t go consult with the deceased if nobody ever got anything out of it. But the Bible represents consulting with the deceased as, as working as doing exactly what they’re. So throughout the ancient world, everybody just seemed to presuppose that, yeah, there’s magic out there, there’s witchcraft works. It’s all, it all works. It’s just a matter of trying to suggest that when we do it, it’s with the person on the other end of the line is righteous. When they do it, it’s demons.

Right.

Everybody is demons. Rawr. And even when you get down into the New Testament, Paul is saying that an idol is nothing but it represents or it’s a conduit to demons. So they’re out there and they can do what they are sought after to do. But you’re not allowed to do that.

Don’t, don’t. But don’t. Yeah, yeah, I think I, I mean, I guess that is, that has been the, the bugaboo of magic since time immemorial is just what’s. Okay magic and what’s not magic. I think, yeah, we’re, we’re a much more an interesting moment in history where I think we’re starting to stop. We’re, we’re, we’re believing less and less in magic as we get more and more sort of scientific and, and, and exp. More and more good explanations for weird phenomena in the world or whatever. But I, I do think that it is that. Yeah, that seem, that seems to be the crux of it. It’s just like, who’s doing it? Who’s, who are they? Who in whose name are they doing it?

And, and, and it’s not even like, are you trying to hurt somebody or help somebody? Like, if that were the criterion, like, I could understand that a little bit more. But if it’s like, you know, you’re allowed to curse somebody in God’s name, you’re not allowed to bless somebody in Asherah’s name.

Right.

Or something like that. It’s like, what is it? Do we really need to be getting upset about that? Does that not just come down to the jealousy of God?

Right.

Saying I’m the only one you’re not allowed to.

Yeah, that is an interesting distinction. You can’t do good for others.

Yeah.

If it’s in the wrong name that I had. Yeah, I had that hadn’t really occurred to me. But yeah, it definitely seems that that is a, that. Yeah, that’s what it, it’s, it’s about who’s being glorified in the moment.

Yeah. And, and I, and I think this fundamentally comes down to an us versus them distinction. Whatever we do is good, whatever they do is bad. And our, our gods are good. Whether, you know, we’re, whether we’re rolling dice or looking at shiny rocks. If anybody else does it, even if it’s to help someone, including helping us, it’s wrong because they’re not us, they’re them.

Yeah. Well, there you go. That is a, I think a good primer on the magic thing. Let’s, let’s get specific now and dive into Ketef Hinnom.

Ketef Hinnom. Right. Ketef Hinnom is a. It is a part of the valley of Hinnom. It’s a ridge part that’s mostly rock and there are a bunch of graves that were carved into the rock there. And you can go visit it. It’s a fairly small area, but you can go see how they carved little channels in the rock where you’re supposed to lay bodies and, and little circles up top where you put offerings and things like that. And then do we have a sense.

Of the time frame, the time period.

That this, this is going on in the Iron Age, so pre-exilic period all the way down to. Surely it would have been used afterwards as well, but we’re talking like 8th, 7th century BCE so this is where there’s the Judahite rock-cut tomb is kind of diagnostic of this time and place where you carve benches and, and repositories into the rock and that’s where you lay bodies and they decompose and then you collect the bones and you throw them into the repository, which is where they all collect. And there’s, and there’s a, this idea of being gathered to the ancestors can be linked with the idea of once you’re, when you’re a. A single skeleton, with or without flesh, you’re an individual. But then once your, your bones get, you know, they’re, they’re not connected anymore and they just get tossed into a heap of bones.

You are no longer a single individual individual. Your identity has disintegrated and you have been gathered to the ancestors. You’re now a generic ancestor.

Interesting.

Interesting.

And so that there’s. There were phases of the afterlife based on the material of burial and then of mortuary interactions and things like that. But back in the 60s somebody discovered in one of these tombs associated with a burial. Now, a, a roof had collapsed in. And so there was some. It was difficult to distinguish some of the. The different layers, but they found two little scrolls of silver that were rolled up tight. And, and I’m talking little, little like one of them is only an inch wide. The other is. Is just over half an inch wide.

Oh, wow.

And then one of them’s only. And one of them is about 4 inches long. The other is about 2 inches long. But when they unrolled them, these little silver scrolls, they found they. They noticed scratches on the inside of them and discovered that they had writing on them. And so these became known as the Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls. And they’re dated to about 600 BCE. So whoever was buried, they were probably buried around 600 BCE right around the time of the Babylonian exile, or at least the beginning of it. And what they discovered written on these scrolls was a version of what’s known as the priestly blessing from the Book of Numbers , chapter 6, verses 24 through 26. And so this is the earliest known witness to any biblical text ever. And the. And it comes from centuries before the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And it’s a, it’s a version of the priestly blessing. It’s not exactly the same as the priestly blessing, but a couple of interesting things about this. Scholars are pretty sure that the purpose of writing this priestly blessing on these scrolls and then rolling them up tight would have been to as. As magical amulets, basically one of those four kinds of magic that we talked about in the first segment. This would have been the apotropaic sort because it was may the Lord bless you and keep you. And that’s. That’s basically promising protection. The word for keep is. Can mean watch or guard. And so it is a prayer for protection. But when you inscribe it on little silver, silver scrolls and roll them up tight and put them in a little pouch that’s not designed to be read.

Right.

That is functioning as an artifact, not as a text. And I talk in my book about how my book YHWH’s Divine Images: A Cognitive Approach, totally open access. You can go find the PDF online about how inscribing the divine name, which is written the Tetragrammaton Yod Heh Vav Heh, which is written at least seven times on the two scrolls, inscribing that materializes the divine name. And pronouncing or materializing the divine name was thought to invoke the deity’s presence and agency. And so if you write it a bunch and then roll it up tight and keep it on you, it’s kind of a constant reminder. And the. I’ve got the divine name with me, so I’ve got God’s presence with me. And if that text that contains the divine name is saying, bless you, keep you, guard you, watch you, may his face shine upon you kind of stuff, you’re basically, every time you’re walking and the thing bumps against your chest, it’s like, ah, yes, I have Adonai’s protection.

Adonai’s guarding me, keeping me, watching me. Adonai’s face is shining on me. And so it is functioning in a kind of magical way to remind you and give you a sense that you’re being watched over by God. But then the person was buried with it, which indicates that it was probably also understood to protect and guard them through the afterlife, because anciently they did think there was an afterlife, and they did think there were entities in the afterlife who could mess you up. And so Adonai could also grant protection in the afterlife as well. And so the, the Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls are, in addition to being the earliest version of the, of any text from the Bible, they’re. They’re a piece of, of material magic. They’re a piece of apotropaic. They’re an apotropaic amulet, in brief.

And these are actually quite common around this time period. In fact, starting around 800 BCE we begin to see apotropaic amulets spreading out from Egypt. And they’re found in Phoenicia, they’re found in Israel, they’re found as far away as Greece. And they usually involve some kind of inscription and frequently some kind of iconography like a drawing of a deity or a symbol for a deity or maybe an animal that is associated with a deity. And so the, the goal is the same. The goal is to invoke the presence, the agency of a deity who can protect and can guard and watch over you.

The thing that popped into my mind when you. Sorry, I’m going to. I’m going off on a bit of a tangent here. No, but when you described this was a mezuzah.

Yeah.

Which is the, the, the sort of, the Jewish tradition that continues to this day of writing on a scroll and, and it’s just, I think it’s just verses from a Torah. From the Torah, yeah. And then, and then you put it in a little thing and you, and you keep that on your door frame or whatever.

Mm. Yeah, this is. There are a handful of texts that are inscribed, usually in very small lettering, so that they can be rolled up tight. And that, that is put inside this, the vial or the cylinder that goes inside the container. And that is, yeah, put usually at an angle on the door frame. And so. And it’s doing the same thing. The idea here is to provide protection to everybody inside that door, everybody in that household. But also usually when coming or going, you would like there was some kind of interaction with the mezuzah, whether you kiss your fingers and touch it or something like that, which was a reflection of this hope that that protection would be with you while you’re out in the world as well. And so this is doing, this is doing the same thing that divine images and particularly standing stones did in the ancient world, because sometimes people would have standing stones in their house and some, and many cities would have standing stones right outside the front gate.

And this similarly was a way to signal to others this city is dedicated to this particular deity, and this particular deity is overlooking and guarding and watching out for this city. And so very, very similar stuff, but on a miniaturized scale. And you have, and you have those same texts are put in boxes that are put on the forehead when you have the, the phylacteries where the, the leather strap goes around the, the forehead and then around the, the left arm down to the hand, that kind of thing is, is doing the same kind of thing. We’re invoking the divine presence, divine agency, whether it is for protection or to facilitate some other kind of blessing. Right. So there are, and, and I wrote about the, the mezuzah in my book as, as well as an example of material media that used the inscription of the divine name as a catalyst for invoking divine presence.

But this, this probably goes back to stamp seals. So a lot of people know that anciently you didn’t have a signature. You had a little seal that had your name or some symbol or something like that, big King Ranch with a, you know, horns on it or something.

Right.

And you would press that into wax or something like that in order to signify your possession, your ownership, your approbation, something like that.

Right.

But we find some stamp seals that invoke the protection of certain deities, usually with symbols associated with protection or with protective deities. And so they are functioning kind of as apotropaic seals, so personal seals. And including. There’s, there’s an interesting example, the letter omega was used frequently in association with, with childbirth. And the idea seems to be that. So from Mesopotamia to Judah, we find the Greek omega symbol. It was associated with miscarriage, and the symbol was often put on the graves of children. And there’s no explanation of what’s going on, but some scholars think that it might invoke protection of this child. And. And they think the omega symbol may represent the womb.

And so because it’s a.

It’s like it’s two lines at the bottom, but basically a circle.

Yeah. Just think of an O, but the bottom is open. And the two lines that come around instead of meeting, just kind of turn back and. And stick out on each side. And so it could be representative of.

That’d be a reasonable symbol for a womb. Yeah, I guess.

Yeah.

And.

And so some people think that those symbols are there because they’re trying to invoke blessings on a womb or protection for miscarried children in the afterlife or something like that. But we have all kinds of iconography. Animals, scorpions, for instance, are associated with. With certain types of protection. There was an amulet that was discovered at Mount Arbel, and Arbel is this mountain cliff face that is on the west side of the Sea of Galilee. And if you ever get to go there, you got to go up to the top of Mount Arbel. It’s the best view of northern Galilee. But don’t fall off, please. And they found this little pendant, and on one side it has a Greek inscription that says the one God who conquers evil. And then it shows somebody on horseback, and they have a halo behind their head, and they’re with a spear.

They are spearing a. A female figurine that’s laying on the bottom. And then there’s a variation on the tetragrammaton written in Greek. And then on the back side, it says one God. And you’ve got this evil eye symbol. And this probably dates to the 5th or the 6th century CE, but it would have been understood as a protective amulet that had. It was a pendant. So it had a little thing with a hole in it for you to put your necklace through it or something like that. And. And you would wear that, and that would protect you from, you know, if anyone were trying to give you the evil eye or. Or put a curse on you or something like that that would protect you from that. In fact, in magical Greek papyri, this is something that we find in the Common Era in ancient Greek, as well as in late antique Greek, you find a lot of papyri with magic texts written all over them. And like the people think that Abracadabra, which is supposed to be this magical phrase, is.

Is based on an ancient Aramaic curse. And it’s not. But there were lots of magical papyri that would talk about different figures from the Bible, even, even pagan texts where they’re not Christian, they’re not Jewish. A lot of them had the Greek letters iota, alpha, omega, which would be a Greek transliteration of how some people would have pronounced the divine name, the tetragrammaton. In fact, we find that precise spelling in. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, in one of the Greek translations of Leviticus in place of the divine name. And so that was used in more than any other divine name in Greek magical papyri. You had the tetragrammaton used as a. As a way of invoking protection and blessing and, and even curses and things like that. So the, the ancient world, beyond just Judaism and Christianity into what we refer to as the pagan world, was just saturated with the notion that there are forces out there in the world.

And like we talked about earlier, some of them you can. You can appeal to for divination or for cursing others, but overwhelmingly, you wanted to appeal to them to protect you from the other divine forces that were out there that someone else might try to throw at you.

Yeah, I mean, it is fascinating and it is. And again, like, I love that you started this conversation with ideas of, like, what. What has come through to now because there’s still so much of this, like, I think. I think a lot of people hearing this would want to sort of poo, poo ancient stuff, or, or, you know, as being weird or as being like, well, that was obviously not real, but, like, there’s so much of this stuff that still occurs now and, and that, you know, every religion has variations of these.

And, and I think it’s interesting that you see among Christians today, you see a lot of concern for protecting from the dark forces that are out there in the world. And it’s. It’s baffling to me how many people out there are just like Bobby Boucher’s mom and think everything’s the devil, right? Everything is demonic, and you’ve got to protect yourself. And, and usually it’s, you know, you see it all the time on social media, pray this prayer to protect yourself, or there are even folks who think that. And, and I, I think we have plans to talk about this in another show that, you know, wearing certain kinds of fabrics will help heal you and will help protect you. And frequently, prayer is kind of the, the replacement media for the the amulets and things like that, that went before. But there are a lot of people who think you’ve got to pronounce Jesus’s name correctly in order to invoke, to adequately invoke God’s attention or God’s protection or God’s blessing.

And if you don’t say the name correctly, then you, you know, it doesn’t work. And this has, this is very closely related to the idea that we want to write God’s name on these, these amulets. Even if we’re like going to draw a picture or something like that along with it, we need to have their name on it. And we found a very common way of doing this in the ancient world, from like Carthage to Malta to Cyprus to all over is, is to have little strips of, of gold or silver or something like that. And they would. Would draw like Egyptian deities, like a little parade of Egyptian deities. And then they would write on there, “Bless Dave.” And you know, the, the. That was, you know, somebody probably paid a pretty penny for that. And then they would carry that around with them. And, and that would be. That would. Made them feel like these Egyptian deities were. Who are protecting them. And one of the. One of my favorite artifacts of all time is.

Comes from a place called Kuntillet Ajrud. And this is an inscription along with a drawing. And the drawing is of a male and a female deity. And they are drawn using imagery associated with Egyptian deities, one named Bes and the other named Beset.

Right.

And scholars, I am among those scholars who think that this is intentionally either interpreting or reinterpreting these two figures as Adonai, the God of Israel, and Adonai’s Asherah. But it’s doing the exact same thing. You got a little inscription, you’ve got a drawing of deities who are associated with protection, and you are invoking their blessings to protect you, to guide you along the way. The same thing that is going on in Numbers 6 . That God will watch over you and protect you. And I think even the—yeah, Numbers 6:27 says, they will put my name upon them, the children of Israel, and I will bless them, them. So the, the link between having the name there and having the, the blessings is, is pretty explicit. So this kind of, this kind of apotropaic magic is found all over the ancient Mediterranean. It’s found in the Bible. It’s found in our artifacts. It is the way our earliest witness to the biblical texts was used.

That’s what it was there for. And, and some people think that that pro—the working of the priestly blessing into the book of Numbers , that this.

Oh, okay.

This may have been. So originally, that blessing may have just been a blessing that people wrote down and carried with them. Yeah. And then somebody was like, hey, give me that thing over there. We need a blessing to write into the.

Unroll your silver. I want to put. I need. I’m padding for space here on my.

What was that blessing you said the other day? I liked that. Yeah, let’s put that in here. So how. That. That’s a possibility. The other possibility is that the book of Numbers was in place already, and somebody was like, I like that blessing. Hey, man, can you write this blessing onto this silver scroll for me so I can wad it up and I can carry it around a little amulet and one day I’ll be buried with it?

It works either way. It works.

Yeah, it’s. It’s sixes. Tomato, tomato. And so while today we tend to think of this as—as parochial and hokey and, and, and something that good Christians or even good Jewish people don’t do, or at least some people present it that way. This is very much in, in the air.

Oh, my God.

The Bible was being written. This is.

Think about.

This was just as natural as slavery was back then. This was. But it’s not something you questioned.

It’s still just as natural. I mean, I think I, you know, you, you have talked a lot about the—the psychological aspects of religion. The—the. What do you—what do you call it? What’s your thing?

I’ve got a few things.

Cognitive Science of Religion. That’s. That’s what I’m trying to get at. And you know, when you think of—when you think about it, you want something to protect you when you’re in a scary moment and, you know a Christian who’s wearing a Christ, a cross or a crucifix around their neck, when they’re in a scary moment, they grab for that. You know what I mean? That, like, that’s how—that is the same thing. It may—they may not immediately be thinking, I’m invoking the magic powers of this thing or, you know, even the image of, like, holding a cross up to a—to a vampire, vampire, which is, you know, I think most people don’t believe in vampires, but it’s like, worse psychologically, we’re still doing the same thing.

Yeah, I, I will. I will be vulnerable right now and share a story that I don’t think I’ve ever shared before. It’s—well, most people know me know that I do not like flying. Like, if there are any bumps at all, I am not happy. And I first discovered this when I was 19 and my—my grandmother flew my brother and me over to Germany and we spent a summer bumming around Germany. And I’ve got some cool stories from that. But I remember somebody had given me a cross on a necklace. I was not religious at all at the time, but I had it with me. And I remember on the flight back, I was. It was rough. It was a—it was a bumpy flight and I was just like a light bulb went off and I reached, went into my backpack, grabbed this cross, and I just like put an almost permanent imprint of that cross on my palm because I was squeezing the crap out of that thing. Not because I believed anything was going to happen, but it allowed me to kind of focus on something material that just intuitively I was like, this is helping.

And, and there is, there’s a. There are tons of data that show that having something material can help, which is one of the things that I. One of the ways I think Protestantism shot itself in the foot because, like, Catholicism is very much about the materiality of worship. You have relics, you have crucifixes, you have saint statues, you have. Even the cathedrals are, are involved in the materiality of worship. And Protestantism was like, no, we’re not doing it anymore. And, and everything was sola scriptura. But at the same time, if you think about the, the Ketef Hinnom silver amulets as a magical object because they were inscribed with the divine name. What’s a Bible if not a piece of material media filled with the divine name? And frequently you’ll have people using the Bible as an icon, as a piece of.

As a, as a divine image. Yeah. As something that is thought to bring the spirit or something like that. And people treat it with respect. You know, you don’t, you don’t drop your Bible. Latter-day Saints might have been familiar with. There was a. There was a very asinine, very sexist thing that went on in missions a long time ago where they would say, every time you drop your scriptures, your future wife gains five pounds. Oh. Which was. Yeah. Which was awful.

Which was awful. What you made me think of was. And this is what I thought you were going to say. Because Latter-day Saints who have gone downtown in Salt Lake City during their general conference, there are always jerks who are protesting. They’re usually, they’re some brand of like, evangelical or whatever, and they’re, you know, they’re there to tell the Mormons that they’re the wrong kind of Christians and that they’re gonna go to hell or whatever.

Right.

And I remember one guy who was really trying to be in everybody’s face, and he would take the Book of Mormon and he would throw it on the ground and drag it around, you know, by a string or whatever. And then he would say, and I dare you to take my Bible and throw it on the ground. I’ll beat the crap out of you.

And blah, blah, Right?

I was like, okay, I guess your Bible. Yeah. Like you say, it’s. It’s more than a book to that man. To that man. The, you know, the pages, it wasn’t just ink on paper. It was. Right. It, it was something.

It was endowed with something that they, that you couldn’t see but you knew was there. Which is, which is literally the exact same intuitive feature of what is responsible for the Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls, for all these magical amulets, for everything that went on anciently as a way to materially manifest God’s presence. And so I, I write about that, and that’s kind of the conclusion to my book looking at ancient, ancient and medieval and even modern Jewish and Christian practices where the, the text of the Bible is treated as a divine image. And so, yeah, that’s. So when people talk about how Christians worship the Bible, it’s like, yeah, I get that as a critique, but it’s very much real. And it’s, it’s something that is just a natural, intuitive outcome of thinking of the Bible as containing, you know, because it contains God’s name a bunch of times and things like that, that there’s something.

It is endowed with something immaterial that’s. That can help you. And so. And I, I would even venture to say that there’s a sense in which that has a small influence on the notion that we need to have a Bible in every classroom.

Because that makes a lot of sense to me.

We can’t have a crucifix in every classroom, but if we’ve got a Bible in every classroom, guess what we’ve got the divine name and everything’s sitting there. Yeah. And so it’s given off that kind of whatever. As long as you’ve got the mana, then, you know, you’re. God is There.

To be clear, that doesn’t make it okay.

Right, right, right, right. Not. Not constitutional, but not appropriate.

Yeah. All right, well, I think this is fascinating. I think this was a fun conversation.

In short, to conclude Bible, magical object.

Yeah. Yeah. Good. Okay, everybody get out there and enjoy your. Your magic. Have fun with it. It’s. I mean, it’s clearly a psychological, human thing. I mean, we, you know, we’ve talked about how our psychology is sort of riddled with. With magical thinking and agency detection has led to a whole bunch of. Anyway, I. It’s very human. It’s very human to. To have these, these. To imbue objects with magic. So get out there and enjoy your magic, people.

Yeah. Don’t give other people a hard time because they enjoy their magic a different way than you. Right.

But also don’t inflict your magic on anybody else.

Right.

Yeah. Don’t act like anybody’s.

Yeah.

Not cool because they don’t do your magic.

Anywho, imprecatory magic. Not a good thing.

Not a good thing. Don’t do it. All right, well, if you have anything you’d like to say to us about this, let me tell you something. The best way to get our attention, because we get a lot of people trying to get our attention from every venue in the world and it can be a little bit tricky and we frequently don’t get to. To people who have written to us or whatever. The best way to get our attention is to become a patron of the show our patrons get. We read all of the messages from our patrons. So if you want to become a patron of the show, you’ll get early. You can get early access to every episode ad free. And if you’re at a certain level, you can also become you. You can get the After Party, which is bonus content every week. To get all of that, just go to patreon.com/dataoverdogma. If you would like to write us an email, please feel free to do so. contact@dataoverdogmapod.com and we’ll talk to you again next week.

Bye, everybody.