The Fabric Conspiracies

Now get this. The energy of these two fabrics put together—wool sweater on top of a linen outfit—collapsed the electrical field as well as wearing of black colored fabric.

Now I want—what I’m picturing is you put the wool sweater over your linen dress or whatever and then they both just disappear.

And they’re gone because the light suddenly is canceled out.

They’ve canceled each other out now. Now you’re naked. Congratulations.

Hey everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

And you happen to be 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, Dan?

Glorious, man. It’s a great day for a little bit of Bible talk. We might even do—we might do some debunking of some lunatic stuff.

Yeah, get those bunks out of here.

Yeah, bunks are the worst.

We don’t need no stinking bunks.

That’s right. So, the thing we’re going to be debunking, we’re going to do a conspiracy watch thing because we’ve got someone who has—who’s coming in hot with some good science.

Or so she says. That’s going to be fun. And then we’re going to do a contradiction, Bible versus Bible, where the Bible seems to say a couple of different things.

So that’ll be a lot of fun. So let’s dive in with conspiracy watch.

Dun dun dun.

All right, Dan. Poor you. You get to deal with all of the nutballs out there just spewing stuff about the Bible. This one’s interesting though. This one, I mean, you know, this one isn’t—at least it’s not like the coming apocalypse or whatever. This one seems to be far more docile.

Yeah, it’s—it’s not quite as harmful, but it’s something that I’ve seen pop up quite a bit recently on social media. And it just baffles me. I’m like, where do they find these people? And why are other people out there like, I like what this person is saying. So what we’re going to start with though, before we get to the actual conspiracy itself, is a prohibition that we find in the books of Leviticus as well as in Deuteronomy. And this prohibition is on wearing linen mixed with wool. And so what this is, is fabrics made out of the weaving together of linen and wool fibers.

And now I’m going to stop you right there, because I’ve heard it many times as—and I’m looking at Leviticus right now, and it says a garment made of two different materials, or two different fibers, depending on what you’re going with. Now, why are we nailing it down to just linen and wool?

Yeah. So what passage are you looking at? Leviticus 19:19 .

Yes. So what it says is shaatnez is the word there. That “two different materials”—that’s the NRSVue. Yeah. And shaatnez is the word. But we can find this word, I think, in at least one other place. We find it in Deuteronomy 22:11 , where it says, you shall not put on or dress in shaatnez—and then it says, wool and linen. Okay. Woven together.

So that—

So shaatnez is a kind of fab—it’s like a kind of fabric.

Yeah, it’s like a category of fabric. But here the—the word probably means, you know, the forbidden fabric or something like that.

And some scholars think this comes from an Egyptian word which would support the theory that the point here is to avoid a specific type of fabric that other societies wore, and particularly maybe Egyptian societies and particularly Egyptian priests. Okay. So it’s kind of like they—you know, those fools and their rayon that they like to put on. We—we’re only wool over here. Like, so it’s—it’s a way to distinguish us from them, maybe. Right. That might be what’s going on here. Except there’s another passage that kind of complicates that because there are folks who suggest, hey, obviously there’s something wrong with wearing linen and wool at the same time. And what makes this problematic is the fact that Exodus 28:6 is talking about the ephod. This is the—

This is the uniform that the high priest wears. We talked in a previous episode about the breastplate where the Urim and Thummim were being tucked away.

Yeah, yeah.

Within says they shall make.

With the Christmas lights all over it.

Yeah, with the 12. With the 12 stones, so. Which always reminds me of the Bush album Sixteen Stone, which I don’t think there’s any connection. Anyway. Ephod, Exodus 28:6 . They shall make the ephod of gold, of blue, purple and crimson yarns, and of fine twisted linen, skillfully worked. So that’s the NRSVUE’s translation. Now, the issue here is that the words that are translated, purple and crimson yarns in most English translations, one of them is tekhelet and the other one is argaman. And this means purple and crimson wool. Okay. This is yarn made from wool that has been dyed these colors.

Right.

And so in other words, the ephod is made from wool mixed with linen.

Oh, Leviticus and Exodus are in a fight.

There is a bit of an incongruity here. And even Josephus noticed this incongruity. There’s a part in the Judean Antiquities where he says that lay Israelites, regular old Israelites, and Judahites and Judeans and Jewish folks were not supposed to wear linen mixed with wool, that’s reserved for the priests.

For the priests, right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s what popped into my mind was that like, yeah, if it’s just for the priestly garb, the ephod, then that’s different than what the person on the street is allowed to wear, I guess.

Now, now this is presupposing univocality, of course, because it could just be that whoever wrote Leviticus just really didn’t like mixing wool with linen. Maybe they got spanked when they were a kid and their parents were wearing wool and linen together and it just left a bad taste in their mind. I don’t know.

Or some. Something itches and they just didn’t.

So there we don’t know for sure that there was this kind of systematic wool and linen only for priests rule from beginning to end. It could just be somebody was like, we couldn’t care less if you wear wool and linen. And somebody else was like, oh, oh, I care. But there is, there is another passage. If we go to Ezekiel 44 , they’re talking about the gear that the priests wear. They who shall enter my sanctuary and approach my table to minister to me, and it says, they shall have linen turbans on their heads and linen undergarments on their loins. They shall not bind themselves with anything that causes sweat. So when you think about linen as a pretty light.

Fabric wool, pretty heavy fabric. And so maybe you don’t want to mix linen with wool because you don’t want something that’s going to make you sweat or.

Or just you don’t want to mix your summer clothes with your winter clothes. What are you even doing?

Yeah, because the last thing you want is to be serving the Lord and you got swampy pits.

It’s so true. It’s so true.

Or, or you know, your undercarriage is just in bad shape. You don’t want any of that. So maybe it has something to do with sweat. The long and the short of it is that we seem to have different perspectives and nobody is explaining this in a way that is clear. So who knows? And so that brings up the conspiracy.

Yeah. Because someone knows.

Yeah. Oh, and, and before I get to that, though, there are, there are a lot of Jewish folks today who will, when they want to buy clothing, will actually take their stuff to a shaatnez expert to have it verified that the clothing does not contain linen and wool together.

This is the textile version of keeping kosher.

Yes. So this is, this is something that is taken very seriously among certain social groups within the Jewish tradition today. And there’s even like a rule that you can, you can wear because it’s stitched together. You can wear a linen shirt with a wool jacket over top, but you have to be able to take one off without the other, because if they only went on and off at the same time, then they would be considered to be together a single garment. Yes. And so, and, and this prohibition extends to curtains and tablecloths and towels and things like that, so.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. So okay. There’s. There’s a whole industry for the observance of the shaatnez prohibition. Having said that, that brings us now to, to the conspiracy theory because I get tagged in videos quite frequently that will say that will raise the question we have why.

I don’t know where she got an actual doctorate, but she’s a naturopathic medicine doctor and then has some kind of doctorate from a—some school that does not—that is not accredited. So right off the bat, I’m like, I—I don’t know if this person is—is going to be on the up and up with all the scholarship, to be clear.

And I’m gonna get some flack for saying this. Naturopathy is not doctoring. It’s—it’s—it’s not science-based. It’s not backed up by any real science. It’s—it’s bunk. Or rather I’ll just say I will choose the data over that particular load of dogma.

Yeah, don’t.

Yeah, don’t say—don’t forego real medicine.

To go to a naturopath—and go to a naturopath if you want. They, you know, they—they claim to know a lot about nutrition and stuff and many of them have studied a lot about nutrition. But, but if—if they’re not going to cure your cancer, you still have to go to a doctor.

And if, if you—look, if you want to do shiatsu, if you want to get some acupressure done, if you want to get some reflexology done, go off. But, but I don’t know, man, that—

You’re just spending money on a bunch of stuff that a lot of, again, really feel there’s no data for any of that stuff.

Yeah, but, but if you want to write in and complain, please address your complaints to Dan Beecher.

That’ll get you too. You’re Dan also.

Oh, dang it. Okay, so there’s a—there’s an—so this is supposed to go back to research that was published in 2003. No one that I know who has access to scholarship—and, and I’ve heard from a number of people, physicians, physical scientists, experts in physics and, and other things who have tried to track down this research. It all supposed to go back to 2003. Nobody can find this research from 2003. However, in 2013, in a journal called Hebrew Today, Dr. Yellen published an article called “Linen: The Preferred Fabric for Clothing of Healing, Healthy Living and Well-Being.” And this is supposed to be summarizing the research that was conducted slash published slash shouted into the ether in 2003. And it begins by talking about electronic properties. Oh, and it’s—yes. And we have a bullet point on the second or the first page of this article that says, “Scientists have discovered that linen fibers reflect light,” period.

You know what? You didn’t need scientists for that.

No. You just needed to—

Can I see it? I’m literally looking at linen right now. It’s reflecting light.

Yeah. Okay. “The light energy aspect of living organisms has been measured by many individuals within the capital S scientific community.”

Nobel Prize winning Dr. Otto Warburg—this is a real person—identified signature frequency numbers of the average human at 70 to 90. That is not a real thing. So I and other professional scholars who make our livings doing scholarship have never been able to find any such claim by Nobel Prize winning Dr. Otto Warburg.

Yeah, but there’s a pro—like the second you hear the words frequency…

Your—your spidey sense should be—your hackles should be all the way up.

Yeah, the frequency—high frequency—spidey senses tingling and—and here’s the other thing. 70 to 90 what? Right?

As you like—you and I were talking earlier and you said frequency units, which I think is about right. Like it’s 70, you know, 70—shut up. Yeah, it’s 70 sciences of frequency. Shut up.

Reminds me of the Brian Regan skit where he wants to get somebody to come pick up the packages and he has to enter height, length, and girth, and he’s like, “I—well, the height’s this, the length is this, and I don’t know what girth means. What’s the size? 10 girth units.”

Yeah, all.

Okay, so it goes on. All results with numbers less than 50 were identified as the signature frequency of chronic disease.

Oh, I. Okay, gotcha.

Any number less than 15 was identified with those having a diagnosed incurable condition such as cancer.

Oh, okay. Cancer is all about your frequencies then.

Yeah. Yeah. The measurement of linen fabric measures 5,000 signature frequency. I did not misspeak. Now this was published in 2013. This. This person has a website where they have an updated version of this paper and they have edited this part so that it says the measurement of linen fabric measures 5,000 signature frequencies, which is worse.

Yeah, that’s different.

Better not. You haven’t improved this.

Right. Because we. We now have multiple signature frequencies rather than multiple units of whatever frequency you’re talking about. How do other fabrics compare? Plant fibers like cotton and hemp are not a healing fiber when measuring its signature energy output.

Oh, oh, linen is healing. I didn’t. I didn’t catch that. We were healing.

Yes. Using linen standard bleached and colored cotton measures 40 of energy. Once again, I did not misspeak.

I’m just gonna pause and just say. Look, frequency can refer to any number of different things. We’re just talking about the number of times a thing happens. So in, for instance, sound. Sound is measured in cycles per second. That’s frequency. Light is measured in, you know, light in, you know, a wavelength. Frequency is wave. You know, how many times a wavelength will. Will pass by a thing.

In a second or whatever. Those are different. But. But it’s all different. Like, you know, 880 cycles per second in sound is concert A or 440 is concert A. In light, that would be meaningless. It doesn’t make a sound. So it’s like these, like, frequency can refer to any number of things. You know, this, the tachometer on your. Or the, the. Is it the tach? What the. Measures the number of cycles that your engine.

RPMs. That’s a frequency measurement. But you can’t just say 20 frequencies.

Yeah. So I’ll pause here to point out that usually when people report this, when people make videos where they share this and they say, Dr. Heidi Yellen published research in 2003 that found that they will. They will just arbitrarily add in megahertz. They will say 5,000 megahertz, 100 megahertz. But, but that’s going to run into a problem here.

But I, but I want you to. I want to quiz you. Okay. So that. Because there’s a revision on this sentence as well. Okay. So I’ll read it again from the 2013 paper. Standard bleached and colored cotton measures 40 of energy. Guess what the revised sentence says?

I mean, I can’t even. I, I can’t fathom. Like, it could be. We could be revising to 40,000. We could be revising of energy into like a unit or something, but I have no idea.

Standard bleached and colored cotton measures 40 units of energy. What are those units? Doesn’t matter.

Does. Shut your mouth. That’s what those units are. Energy units.

EU. Now here. Here’s where we get into trouble with the folks who say that this is megahertz. The good news is that organic unbleached cotton measures 100 Angstroms, which is a normal but not a healing fiber. So we have a clue. We actually have a unit of something. But it’s not a unit of frequency. No, it’s a unit of length.

And particularly an incredibly small unit of length. Yeah, yeah.

It’s like a. It’s like a. Well, I just looked it up. It’s 10 to the minus 10th of a meter.

Yeah. It. So like point zero.

One nanometers.

Yeah. So 100 Angstroms is like one or 10 nanometers. I don’t remember exactly which it is. But we’re talking. If we’re talking about light frequencies. And, and she started off this section by saying scientists have discovered that linen reflects light.

Yeah, that’s right. So we have to be in the electromagnetic spectrum.

We are. This is radioactive. This is X-ray to gamma-ray.

Levels of that. So this would be a wavelength.

Right.

Which would mean this. This frequency is off the charts.

Yeah. And deadly. Like, you don’t you don’t want to wear something that is emitting gamma rays now or X rays.

Right. So the people who say this is megahertz are on the other side of the universe from what’s going on here.

Oh, right.

Because they’re talking, if this is megahertz, they’re talking about wavelengths that are literally a billion times longer.

Right.

Like a hundred megahertz is like a 3 to 4 meter wavelength.

Yeah. For those of you who are lost in the science of all of this, just know that like in the electromagnetic spectrum, which is what light, visible light, is part of that spectrum. And electromagnetic waves, the wavelength, you can calculate the wavelength by the frequency and vice versa. You can those relate to each other. And yes, these people are just randomly choosing whatever, just, just units that don’t apply to anything because it doesn’t work to just say 40, whatever.

40 of energy.

Yeah, 40 of energy.

So the way this is being represented in this paper in a journal from 2013 makes it very clear that this person does not have the foggiest idea what they’re talking about. But yes, the folks who then pick up this, this quote unquote research and then share it online and say, oh, they must mean megahertz are even further off base with what they’re talking about. She goes on, the silk fabric measures 10, which would fail to support health in the human body. So your silk undies are probably making you sterile. Could it be a low number? Because of its origin, silk is produced from a quote, unclean insect. Could silk be also unclean? Because the industry is reportedly using spider webs to increase the strength of the fabric. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Rayon measures at 15 signature frequency. Also updated to 15 signature frequencies.

Pure wool measures 5,000 angstrom.

We’re back to angstroms.

We’re back to angstroms. So for an individual desiring to be well, the best recommendation from the instructions of Torah is to wear linen. Also, Torah gives a warning of wearing wool and linen together proved in scientific studies to be accurate the energy of these two fabrics. Now get this. The energy of these two fabrics put together wool sweater on top of a linen outfit collapsed the electrical field as well as wearing of black colored fabric.

Where the two textiles measure 5,000 signature frequencies. When put together, these canceled each other out and brought measurable weakness to the human body.

Wow. It’s okay.

No, it’s not.

She turned it into a Faraday cage is what she did.

When you have wool that evidently vibrates light at 5,000 angstroms, when it bounces off of your wool and you have linen that does the same. They do not cancel each other out. That’s not how it works.

I now I want. What I’m picturing is you put the wool sweater over your linen dress or whatever, and then they both just disappear.

And they’re gone because the light suddenly is canceled.

They’ve canceled each other out. Now you’re naked. Congratulations.

Flax fabric is an excellent filter, protecting against chemical exposure, noise and dust.

Chemical exposure. I can’t imagine a worse fabric to keep you from chemicals than linen.

Linen clothing reduces solar gamma radiation by almost half, thereby protecting humans wearing linen.

Okay, I’m, I’m, I’m not going to read any more of that. But no, in short, this is pure and utter nonsense.

Yeah. We haven’t cracked the code, I’m afraid.

Yeah. This person does not understand how frequencies work. And, and notice that they. According to the text of the Bible, when you’re talking about Torah, it’s talking about mixing them together. Right. And here it says, don’t put a wool sweater over a linen shirt, which is like not in the text and also is explicitly not what is prohibited according to the Jewish tradition that has developed ever since. Yeah. So, yeah. Highly, highly, highly problematic. So weird attempt to try to bring pseudoscience in to try to explain what’s going on in this prohibition in Leviticus and also in Deuteronomy 22 .

You know, I, it’s. It. I forgive people. Not, not everybody cares about physics. And that’s fine. You don’t have to be interested in it the way I am. I enjoy physics. I’m not a physicist. I, there’s plenty I don’t understand, but you know, basic stuff like how waves work and all that sort of thing, I’ve got some foundation in. But woof. If it just. If you don’t know anything about physics, that’s fine, but don’t trust non physicists about it. That’s that. All I’m saying is like, the second someone says, oh, energy, oh, frequency, oh, blah blah, blah, maybe turn around and walk away. You don’t, don’t. At least don’t take your fashion advice from them.

Yeah. Get up from the table. If you’re doing speed dating, just move on to the next person.

On to the next person, ding the bell and go. Go ding the bell yourself and move.

On to the next person.

Woof. That is, that is amazing though. I. So I find that delightful.

That’s, that’s a real prohibition in Leviticus and Deuteronomy not explained anywhere. Contradicted in, in other places. If we’re assuming that there’s actually something wrong or inappropriate about the mixing of those two fabrics. But yeah, when you have all the data, when you are aware of what’s going on in Ezekiel 44 , what’s going on in Exodus 28 , it kind of makes sense that, hey, we got a bunch of traditions here that came together and, you know, they don’t all line up big deal, but trying to, trying to suggest that there’s some kind of magical powers undergirding this or science powers or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t worry. You will not get cancer from getting, from having the wrong clothes. That’s, that’s. Unless it is, unless it’s radioactive or, or, or putting out X rays, in which case. Yeah, do get new clothes in that case. All right.

Why couldn’t, why couldn’t Jesse have been like Mr. White? Look, the frequencies cancel out. We can’t be worried. I, I just, I just love the thought of Walter. Jesse.

Breaking Bad.

Shut the hell up.

Yeah, indeed. All right, well, speaking of fabrics and, and clothes, let’s move on to our fun little Bible versus Bible. And the reason that we’re talking about fabrics and clothing is that we are going to talk about the owner of the very famous multicolored dreamcoat. Joseph.

Yeah, Joseph. And the coat of sleeves. Which is sleeves. Yes.

Please tell me that’s the right translation of it. And we’ve just.

Yeah, that’s. That’s the right translation. Well, it uses.

How many sleeves did it have?

Well, it’s.

Other coats not have sleeves?

Well, some people think it might have been something with extra long sleeves or something like that, but it. Yeah, the. That it was multicolored is just an interpretation of, of what that might mean. Oh, yeah. So sleeves.

So someone tell Andrew Lloyd Webber that he has to rewrite his, his musical Joseph and the Amazing Coat of Sleeves.

Yeah, okay.

Well, that’s not what we’re talking about, though.

No, it’s not what we’re talking about. I, I just pulled up the. The. We’re looking at Genesis 37 . I just pulled it up in the NRSVUE. And as. And as you’re talking, referencing obviously Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The NRSVUE has decided to title this section Joseph Dreams of Greatness. Oh, yeah. Of stardom maybe, but.

Yeah, exactly.

But we’re talking about Joseph being sold into enslavement or slavery.

Because we’ve got a problem in the story. And, and I want to look at a chunk of text. Genesis 37 , verses 18 through 30. And this is the story of Joseph being sold into slavery. But I want to just highlight a few parts of it that raise questions.

Because we. We seem to have a convoluted narrative here. So they see the brothers, they see Joseph, and they conspire to kill him. And they said, yeah, we’re gonna kill him. We’re gonna throw him into a pit, and we’ll just tell dad that some evil beast hath devoured him.

Right?

And then Reuben heard it and says. He delivered him out of their hands and said, let us not kill him. Reuben says, let’s just throw him in the pit and we’ll leave and we won’t hurt him.

So already we’ve got our first like, “Huh?” moment.

When they’ve already decided not to kill him. And then one of them’s like, “Wait, let’s not kill him.”

Yes, exactly.

So they see Ishmaelites and they’re like, “I got it. We’ll sell them to the Ishmaelites.”

Right?

Then it says, then there passed by Midianite merchantmen, and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for 20 pieces of silver. So we’ve got Ishmaelites and we’ve got Midianites. Somebody is drawing Joseph out of the pit and selling him to Ishmaelites. Now, I’m going to skip down to the end because Reuben comes back and Joseph’s not in the pit. And he falls to his knees and yells out, “Why, God?” No, he didn’t say that. But he rents his clothes. And then the very last verse of this section: “And the Midianites sold him into Egypt unto Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh’s and captain of the guard.”

Okay, wait a minute.

Yeah, we got Ishmaelites. The brothers are like, “Ah, let’s sell them to the Ishmaelites.” Somebody draws them out of the pit and sells him to the Ishmaelites. Then the Midianites sell him into Egypt.

So, but I mean, we also have the Midianites selling them to the Ishmaelites. So we’ve got Midianites double-dipping here.

If that’s who drew him out of the pit and sold him.

So says it right there.

Well, it says “there passed Midianites by,” and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit. But there, there are folks who will argue—the brothers are standing, sitting there saying, “Hey, let’s sell them to the Ishmaelites.” And then the narrative is just like, “Look, Midianites!” And then it says—it says that the brothers then decided, “Okay, the Midianites are gone. Let’s take him out of the pit and sell them to…” So the antecedent of “they,” the “they” who drew him out of the pit is, like, for all intents and purposes, the immediately preceding antecedent would be the Midianites. But it’s not impossible that the antecedent is intended to be the brothers. So it depends on how you interpret it. But we’ve got a bunch of problems here. So now there’s one thing that some people will do to try to resolve this. They will say that the Midianites were the Ishmaelites. And there is one piece of evidence for this.

There’s a part in the Book of Judges , and like Judges 19 or something like that, where they compare the Midianites to the Ishmaelites. They basically say they’re the same people. But this is based on a cultural convention having to do with jewelry that a certain group of people wears. And so it doesn’t really indicate, “Hey, every time you see a Midianite that’s also an Ishmaelite, and every time you see an Ishmaelite that’s also a Midianite.” It’s kind of a weird little narrative: “Hey, these guys are like these guys over here.” But the bigger problem for this particular narrative is that the text itself explicitly distinguishes them, right? Says, “Hey, there are Ishmaelites coming.” And then some Midianites walk by, and then there were some Ishmaelites. And if you read Midianites as the antecedent for “they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit,” then the Midianites sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites, meaning they are different groups of people. Right. But a lot of people don’t want to accept that.

But—well, and also, like, if you’re not saying—if you’re saying—and the NRSVue does make the distinction and says that when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph out of the cistern and sold him for 20 shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites. But why—why are we commenting on the Midianites? Like when they—when the—when this one group happened to pass by. Yeah, then the brother—like, it makes no sense. We’re—we’re still in the muck. There’s still.

But scholars have noticed this is a problem for a while, and a lot have not been satisfied with just saying, “No, the Ishmaelites are Midianites, man. Don’t you get it?” That doesn’t satisfy thoughtful people. But you can actually isolate portions of this story and separate this story out into two freestanding, independent narratives with their own beginnings, their own middles, their own ends, and they make perfect sense. I will read them separately, and you can see the two different stories that were woven together to create the. This third story.

So to be clear, you are going to read all of the words from this section of what we have in the Bible. But we. We’ve taken something that’s interwoven, unlaced it.

Correct.

So that. So that now it’s just some of the verses are in one of these stories and some of the verses are in the other.

Correct? Okay, so I’ll read one and then the other. So the first one begins in verse 18. And when they saw him afar off. You know what I’m. I’m. I was reading in another translation where I actually highlighted the per. The verses that are different. I’m going to read in the NRSVUE because I’m sick of that other translation. And they saw him from a distance. And before he came near to them, they conspired to kill him. 21. But when Reuben heard it, he delivered him out of their hands, saying, let us not take his life. Reuben said to them, shed no blood. Throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but lay no hand on him that he might rescue him out of their hand and restore him to his father. And they took him and threw him into a pit. The pit was empty. There was no water. Then they sat down to eat. Now we’re going down to 28. When some Midianite traders passed by. They drew Joseph up out of the pit. When Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not in the pit, he tore his clothes and returned to his brothers and said, the boy is gone.

And I. Where can I turn? Meanwhile, the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard. So basically, they. They throw him in the pit, and then they went sit down to eat. Some Midianites come by and are like, jackpot! Hey, in the pit. The Midianites free pit guy, pick him up, take him off to Egypt to sell them. Reuben comes back and is like, crap, he’s not in the pit. What am I going to do now? Okay, so that’s. That’s one version of the story where Reuben is the one who. Who seeks to save Joseph. And the Midianites are just happen. Happening by, and they’re like, hey, free pit guy.

And you’re right, all of that made sense. It went in an order that made sense. There was nothing confusing it. That went smoothly.

Yeah. And then we have the other story. And they said to one another, here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits. Then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him. And we shall see what will become of his dreams. And we go down to 23. So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the ornamented robe that he wore. And we’re going to skip 24. In the beginning of 25, and looking up, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead with their camels carrying gum, balm and resin on their way to carry it down to Egypt. Then Judah said to his brothers, what profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and lay. And not lay our hands on him. For he is our brother, our own flesh. And the brothers agreed, Lifting him out of the pit, they sold him to the Ishmaelites for 20 pieces of silver.

And they took Joseph to Egypt. Then they took Joseph’s robe, slaughtered a goat, and dipped the robe in the blood. They had the ornamented robe taken to their father. And they said, this we have found. See now, whether it’s your son’s robe or not. And blah, blah, blah, blah, boom. So we’ve got an entirely separate story where they’re like, hey, let’s kill him. And Reuben’s like, let’s not kill him. Let’s just throw him in this pit and. And for safekeeping.

Yeah, just for a while.

And they were like, oh, Ishmaelites. Hey, let’s, let’s. Or actually, they don’t even. The pit doesn’t even come into play in this, does it?

No, no Ishmaelites at all in that one.

When Joseph had come unto them, they stripped Joseph of his coat and they lifted up their eyes and looked and saw a company of Ishmaelites. So they’re like, oh, let’s just sell them. Sell them to the Ishmaelites.

Right.

And then they sell him to the Ishmaelites. No Midianites involved, no Reuben involved, no pit involved. And completely different story.

No, there was still a pit. Wasn’t there still a pit?

I think they said what? They said, “We’re going to cast him into a pit. We’re going to kill him and cast him into a pit.”

And say some animal got him, but they—they grabbed him, they took off his coat, and that’s when they saw the Ishmaelites, and so they sold him to the Ishmaelites.

Right? Yeah.

So the pit is only theoretical.

Yes. The pit is just one of the possibilities.

Yes. Okay, so we’ve got two entirely different stories of how Joseph was conspired against by his brothers and how he basically made his way into Egypt. In one, Reuben tries to save him, the Midianites intercept him and sell him into Egypt. In the other, Judah is the one who saves him and sells him to the Ishmaelites who take him to Egypt. So somewhere along the way, the editor of this version of Genesis was probably like, “Ah, I really like both of the stories. Is there a way we can keep both of them?” and so tried to weave it together to create one single coherent narrative, but it results in these problems with the Midianites being confused with the Ishmaelites and Reuben and Judah both alternating between saving him from death.

So, and who’s selling what to whom is like—who’s selling whom to whom becomes very, very muddy.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it seems—I mean, if you read it together, the way it’s presented in my Bible, in the Bible, what you’re seeing is—I mean, you could be forgiven if you thought that like four different exchanges took place. Like, yeah, the brothers sell him to the Midianites, the Midianites sell him to the Ishmaelites, and then somehow the Midianites get him back.

And then he’s sold to Potiphar. That’s—that’s—but none of that is clear, so… yeah, I like pulling it apart. It definitely makes—it definitely makes it more clear. Do we have any—I mean…

Oh, we have no—we have no manuscript evidence of this.

It’s—it’s just a way to make sense of it.

Yeah, it’s a way to make sense of it. Because this—because this stitching together would have happened long before any manuscripts that we have existed.

Right. Yeah, you know, it—it just calls to mind a—you know, the wrangling that happens in any room where there’s a whole bunch of people trying to make decisions about a text or whatever.

It—yeah.

It always ends up being just a nightmare of, like, compromises and stuff. And like, maybe, you know, I can imagine a bunch of rabbis all sitting around going, “Well, I need this part,” “I like that part.”

“Well, I like that part. I want that to stay in.” And they’re like, “Okay, we’ll just include it all.”

I guess that reminds me, I’m going through the copy edits on my new book, and in the introduction to my book, initially I had a story about how I was going over why I use certain language that I use. And I say normally in my social media stuff, I say Adonai instead of pronouncing the divine name. And I say, “In this book, I’m going to spell it out just because that will make it more accessible. It’ll be easier. This shouldn’t present a problem except for future Dan when he has to record the audiobook, and future Dan can suck it.” And then I have a little footnote that is like a reference to Psych with Shawn and Gus harmonizing, “Suck it.” And then later on, I talk about how I am going to use gendered pronouns for God, even though normally in my social media stuff I don’t.

But here, just because I don’t want it to be very confusing, I want it to be more accessible. I say, and I’m exclusively talking about the God of the Bible, who is gendered male throughout, I am going to use gendered pronouns. And that shouldn’t present much of a problem, not even for future Dan. Now when it went to the editors, they struck the part about future Dan can suck it.

Like, what is this doing here? This doesn’t make any sense because we’ve never referred to this before. So it happens.

This kind of stuff happens when you’re editing text, even today, even when multiple professional editors are looking at a text. So, yeah, this. This story is a mess.

Yeah. And. And again, like, the. One of the themes of our show is embrace the mess. Like, we don’t. Like, I, I. It’s so funny when people feel that they have to impose perfection on a 3,000-year-old story or whatever that has been, you know, was probably orally passed down from person to person for a while, and then. Yeah. You know, different oral traditions were written down. And, like, it’s gonna be messy.

And that’s not a problem. That doesn’t mean the Bible’s not true or whatever. It just means the Bible’s not. You shouldn’t be literal.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think it makes it so much more interesting.

When you’re like, oh, there are two different versions of the story, and. And you can think about, well, why would it have been important for one editor to have Reuben be the one to do it? Why would it have been important for another to have Judah do it?

I think that makes that makes engaging with the Bible more interesting, more fun. Otherwise, you know, all you’re doing is just spending all your time trying to save the Bible from itself.

You just find yourself just defending dogmas, and you never get to appreciate it for what it actually is. You have to just defend believing that it is something it is not.

Well, I think that is a wonderful place to close out our conversation. So we’ll just leave it at that. You don’t need to defend the Bible. You can just let it defend itself. It’s right there.

It’s a great poet once said, let it be.

Indeed.

It’s good enough.

It’s good enough. All right. Well, if you are one of our wonderful patrons, you will get more, especially at the ten dollar a month and up level. There’s more content for you over on patreon.com for the after party. If you would like to become one of our patrons at any level and support us and, and what we’re doing here, your contributions mean the world to us. It is so important we get the bulk of our, of our support from our, our patrons. So go head over to patreon.com/dataoverdogma and that’s where you can, you can choose what level you want to support us at. You, you can get early and ad free versions of every episode. You can get the after party, which is weekly content. And you can get our undying gratitude, which is worth more than all of the things.

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Bye everybody.

The Fabric Conspiracies

Segments

The Transcript

Scripture Index

Terminology