Episode 306: Pete Enns & the Old Testament Nerds – Ask a Scholar Anything (About the Hebrew Bible)

Pete: You’re listening to The Bible for Normal People – the only God-ordained podcast on the internet. I’m Pete Enns. 

Jared: And I’m Jared Byas. 

Jared: We’ve got a new class for you this month, and we’re particularly excited about this one. It’s Anti-Apologetics 101: Better Ways to Read the Bible taught by Zach W. Lambert.

Pete: Yeah, did you catch that? Did you catch that? Better ways to read the Bible. It’s right up our alley. 

Jared: That’s exactly right. In this class, Zach shows you how to read the Bible differently than how you were maybe taught growing up. He’s gonna help you dismantle four harmful ways to read the Bible and then give you four life-giving alternatives. 

Pete: The live class and Q-&-A are happening Thursday, August 21st 2025 from 8-9:30 PM Eastern Time. The cost is pay-what-you-can until the class ends, then it will cost $25. Head to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/betterbible to sign up.

And if you want all our classes and exclusive bonus content, you can become a member of our online community, the Society of Normal People, at thebiblefornormalpeople.com/join. 

We have a new project coming up that we’re excited about.

Jared: Yes. Coming August 15th, we’ll be launching a new guide for those of you who are interested in the practical side of your faith. It’s called “The Slow Work of God: An Ordinary Time Guide.” If you liked our advent guide, then this is for you, because right now, we’re in a time of the church calendar called Ordinary Time, which seems like a great time to slow down, step back, and notice the sacred in the ordinary.

Pete: Here’s what’s inside: weekly readings, insights and reflections grounded in biblical scholarship written by our Nerds in Residence, writing prompts to help you process and reflect, listening recommendations from our podcast episodes that fit each week’s theme, and weekly video messages from either me or Jared.

Jared: Yep. It’s designed for people who want to take faith seriously but not always literally, and who could use a reminder that God is at work even in the quiet, ordinary moments,

Pete: Want a sneak peek? Week 1 is available for you now for free. Just head to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/ordinarytime to download it. The full guide will be available August 15th, so mark your calendar.

Pete: Welcome. It’s me. I’m Pete Enns. And today on the Bible for Normal People podcast, I’m back with our Nerds in Residence only, mind you, only the Old Testament crowd. 

Aaron Higashi: That’s right. Old Testament crowd. 

Pete: The Hebrew Bible crowd. This is our Nerds-in-Residence, they’ll introduce themselves in a second. We’re going to spend some time answering your questions about the Old Testament and Hebrew Bible. And we certainly have a lot of really good questions. We’re going to try to get to all of them if we can, but we’ll see how that goes.

Cynthia: Most societies, most cultures all throughout time have, um, ideas about how the world began. Um, and this is nothing new. I mean, we’re still doing this today, asking those big questions. How did we get here and when did this happen and how did it happen?

Pete: With that said, I’ll leave it to our amazing nerds to introduce themselves.

Anna: Hi, I’m Anna Sieges Beal. I am an associate professor of religion at Gardner Webb University, um, in North Carolina, and I, um, I teach all sorts of Bible things. They even let me teach Paul, but my specialty is this little part of the Old Testament called the Minor Prophets. But I like to refer to it as the “Book of the 12” and you can find out more about that if you try to find me on the pod, I don’t, I don’t know what episode I am, but yeah, that’s my specialty. The minor profits. 

Cynthia: Your pod was really good. 

Anna: Thank you, Cynthia. That is so nice. 

Cynthia: I liked it. Um, hi, everybody. I am Cynthia Shaffer Elliott. I’m an associate professor of Hebrew Bible-slash-Old Testament at Baylor University in beautiful Waco, Texas. I specialize also in the Hebrew Bible, but I am one of those kind of weird people who has one leg in the Hebrew Bible textual world and one leg in the material culture archaeological world. So I am interested in that intersection between text and material culture. So I am an archaeologist. Um, I work in Iron Age sites in Israel, uh, namely Tel Halif in Southern Israel and then Tel Abel, Beit Ma’akha in Northern Israel. Um, so yeah, so I really like Iron Age Israel. That’s my jam. 

Aaron: Hi, everybody. I am Aaron Higashi. Um, for the past many years now, I’ve been teaching, uh, Bible and philosophy and contextual theology courses at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona. Um, my, I don’t really have an area of expertise, but if I had an area of expertise, uh, it would be in Persian-era biblical literature, in particular Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1 and 2 Chronicles. Uh, I am in the middle of writing the Bible for Normal People’s commentary on 1 and 2 Chronicles, which is an absolutely fantastic project to undertake. Wonderfully, uh, artistic and theological texts. So I’m, I’m very excited to be doing that. 

Pete: You know, Aaron, some people might be asking what’s the Persian period. 

Aaron: Oh, uh, it starts at the end of the, uh, 6th century BCE when Cyrus the Great comes knocking on the door of Babylon and takes over the country, uh, and then continues down to the end of the 4th century BCE when Alexander the Great comes knocking and takes it back for himself.

Pete: Everybody’s knocking. 

Aaron Higashi: Very polite. 

Pete: This takes a couple hundred years—

Aaron: —international. 

Pete: Just stop what you’re doing or we’ll kill you. That’s, that’s the point of knocking. Anyway.

Anna: Right.

Aaron: Yeah!

Pete: So anyway, okay, let’s get into some of these questions. And, uh, the first couple, I’d like to address them myself because they are about the book of Ecclesiastes, which is, depending on my mood, either one of my favorite books of the Hebrew Bible or my favorite book of the Hebrew Bible.

Cause this guy is having, I think, an extended faith crisis right in front of us here. So, um, and it’s, it’s, it’s a wonderful book. It is probably Persian period, right? Um, Aaron, what you study, and, uh, the, here’s the question, uh, and this is a great question. What is your perspective on the contradictory quotations in Qohelet? Qohelet does contradict himself several times in the book. And was it the author or perhaps redactors trying to, you know, what were they trying to get at? You know, for example, if everything is, uh, the Hebrew word is Hevel, which is translated oftentimes as “meaningless,” uh, some say “absurd.” But if everything is absurd, then is one’s own faith walk also absurd?

And by the way, the ancient rabbis had that same question, because if everything is hevel, everything is meaningless, everything is absurd, well, how about studying Torah? Is that also absurd? Right? And so it almost didn’t make the cut into the canon ‘cause of stuff like this. So, so, you know, maybe this is, you know, the, the person asked the question, maybe this is less exegetical and more hermeneutical, but what’s going on here with these contradictions?

And the best answer that I have come across is by Matthew Fox, who, uh, I think is retired now. I don’t know if you guys know, but he used to teach at least at University of Wisconsin. And he wrote a great commentary on this book Ecclesiastes, and I wrote one, too, about 12 years ago, which isn’t nearly as good as his, but it’s still out there. Um, and he says, yeah, there are contradictions in Ecclesiastes.

You have, for example, um, as wisdom increases, so does vexation. You know, if you’re wise, you know a lot, and that’s what causes the anxiety. That’s what causes the faith crises. The more, you know, right? If you know how the sausage is made, it’s difficult to sort of go walking around with a simple faith like you used to have. So with more wisdom is more vexation. 

But then in the next chapter, chapter 2, he says, wisdom excels folly, like light excels darkness. So how do those two things fit together? Or chapter 5, the lover of money is never satisfied, but then in chapter 10, money meets all of our needs. So what does he think about money?

Or in chapter 7, sorrow is better than laughter, but then in chapter 8, But nothing is better than to eat a drink and to enjoy oneself. 

Cynthia: That’s my favorite part. 

Pete: Yeah, so which is better? And well, actually, I don’t think he’s being very optimistic there I think he’s being pessimistic, but having said that, the point—What Matthew Fox says is that these contradictions are not meant to be solved. They’re not meant to be sort of fixed. They are part of the structure of the book itself. Because one thing this author is trying to show is conventional ways of thinking about existence, about life, about the benefits of wisdom or the benefits of Torah or this or that. He says, at the end of the day, those things, they don’t really deliver.

Anna: Hmmm. 

Pete: And that’s part of his rhetoric to force you to a point where you acknowledge, I’m going to put it this way, the absurdity of life. And that ties to a second question asked about Ecclesiastes, which is, you know, why is everything meaningless? Then you get to the end and the author tells the, the, the readers to, well, you should obey the commands, right?

Well, if everything is meaningless, why does it, why does it end on a somewhat positive note? I mean, isn’t, isn’t obeying the commands also meaningless and absurd? And I, I love this question too, because I think it gets really at the heart of the book of Ecclesiastes, which is 12, almost 12 chapters of, yeah, life really doesn’t make sense.

You know, you work, there’s no profit for anything you do because you’re going to die. And don’t tell me that after you die, you go to heaven or something because nobody’s ever seen that. We don’t know what happens to us. There’s no guarantee of that. It’s just our lives are absurd and the best we can do is just sort of don’t ask too many questions. Just get on with it and enjoy what little you have. 

And it’s a pity that God has made the world like this, but he has. And it’s, you know, he’s the one to blame. I say he, because, you know, I’m using their language, not mine, but he, you know, he is, uh, the one who has caused the world to be, um, so absurd and nonsensical.

At the beginning of the book, he says things like, you know, it’s, it is a grievous task that God has given us. This life that we have, it’s absurd. It doesn’t make sense. And you know, there’s nothing you can do about it. What is crooked can’t be made straight. What is lacking can’t be counted. He’s not happy. He’s really really depressed. The thing is you get to the end of the book—as this questioner is asking—you to the end of the book and all of a sudden this, this uh narrator comes and talks about what you just read and he says, you know, basically this, this guy Qohelet who’s the main character in this book, he is wise, he’s observed things, he’s earned the right to speak. And I know it’s uncomfortable, because wisdom is like goads, like firmly implanted nails, like nails at the end of a, of a shepherd’s staff that you use to goad cattle into the pen. 

Wisdom hurts, but you can still learn from him. But then he says, you know, the end of the matter, all has been heard, of the making of many books, there is no end. Which my students always use at finals time saying, you know, which is Ecclesiastes, you know, but he’s talking clearly not about finals. He’s talking about, um, the constant rumination and thinking through this. There’s no end to that. So, he says, the end of the matter, all has been heard, fear God, keep the commands. And that’s not a satisfying answer for some. For me, I think it’s a beautiful answer to the question of the meaning, because he’s acknowledging yeah, life is not rosy. Life sucks. You know, it just, it doesn’t make sense. God, what are you doing? 

But for him, at least the solution is to continue on, keep being an Israelite anyway. Uh, it’s sort of like, you know, I don’t know if CS Lewis said it or somebody, but you’re standing at the edge, the precipice, there’s nothing about darkness in front of you. You have no reason to have faith, but you declare faith anyway. You know, Christians would no matter what happens, keep trusting in Jesus anyway, even if everything’s absurd. That seems to be sort of what the conclusion this author is drawing. And so you, you can’t feel the weight of the end of the book without wading through all of it up to that point, which is again, for the most part, rather a downer, I think. 

Do any of you guys have any, uh, thoughts about that? There’s one more question I want to answer, but not on Ecclesiastes, but any—

Anna: Well, I’m just interested in like your thoughts on the, so I’ve, what I’ve heard is that that ending was tacked on by somebody who was just really uncomfortable with Ecclesiastes. They were like, “Oh, Oh, I don’t like this.” We need to kind of like a schoolmarm coming along and being like, “Well, that’s ridiculous. Um, fear God and keep the commandments,” you know? So I’m curious what you think about that interpretation, because that was the one that I was really comfortable with. I was like, yeah, let’s embrace absurdity and being bummed out and then forget this, like, ending part because who needs it?

Pete: Yeah. Right. Well, I, the thing is that that person, I mean, you do have the frame narrator in Ecclesiastes, it begins and ends with the narrative. Much like Job, by the way.

Anna: Right.

Pete: And the end of Job is considered to be sort of tacked on at the end, like the happy ending. He gets twice as many kids and all that kind of stuff. Which I don’t—

Anna: And his daughters are hot. 

Pete: Yeah [laughing].

Anna: They get super hot. 

Pete: Exactly. Of course, it’s in the Bible. But I, I’m a little bit. See, the thing is that it’s, I’m, I’m very interested in the historical coming together of these texts. I mean, that’s, I, I’m fascinated by that. But on some level, someone tried to make sense of this and that’s the addition at the end.

And I want to try to understand the book as a whole. I don’t want to lop something off and say, that’s what I’m going to focus on. I’m trying to understand the canonical form of the book of Ecclesiastes. Whenever that came together, which I don’t think anybody really knows. Um, but if, if the frame narrator at the beginning and at the end are the same person, which isn’t necessarily the case, but if it is the same person, um, he starts off by saying the words of Qohelet: Everything is meaningless, utterly meaningless. You know, there’s no profit to anything we do under the sun. We just die. And when we die, we’re forgotten. Right? And just as we have forgotten people who have died before our time, we’re going to be forgotten once we die, but within a generation or two. 

And like, okay, that’s a great way to start a book. And then you launch into the words of Qohelet himself. So I think he’s introducing those words and then you have Qohelet’s words and I can’t say it’s a theory, but a hypothesis that I’ve had, which can’t be proven one way or the other. I, I, I could easily see this being written by one person and Qohelet is his alter ego. It’s his faith crisis and, and he’s trying to work it out somehow.

That’s a possibility. 

Anna: Okay.

Pete: Anyway, I just, I just like the canonical version. I think it’s important to get a handle on, and same with Job. You know, I think I read Job within those, that context as well, the whole book. Right? But, you know, I, I think I do think Ecclesiastes is one of these books that we can argue about literally forever. [Everyone laughs] It’s, it’s, it’s not, you know, people have opposite views of the book. 

Cynthia: And what would Qohelet think of that? [Everybody laughs heartily]

Pete: Maybe that’s his point. He created something so weird that we’re going to keep talking about him forever. So…

Cynthia: That’s right. He hasn’t been forgotten.

Pete: Anyway, I don’t want to dwell on Ecclesiastes all night, although actually, I do.

Cynthia: It is such a great book, though. 

Pete: It is a great book. I love it. It’s so, it’s so good. It’s, um, I don’t like when people try to tame it, you know, when they make Qohelet into, like, I forgot, was it Blankensop who had a book, um, Qohelet, Preacher of Joy? Was that the name? 

Anna: Blankensop trying too hard. 

Pete: There’s been that tendency, you know. Yeah, eat, drink and be merry, you know, like that’s not joy. That’s resignation for Qohelet.

He’s saying there is nothing better than this. Just enjoy what you have and then die. That’s it.

Cynthia: Well I, I wonder too about your thoughts, Pete, on, you know, you talked about the word hevel that’s used throughout the text. And how another way to translate it, a more like, literal way, would be like mist or vapor. And to me, when I think of that definition of that word, I think that just kind of summarizes the book for me, where he’s saying,Qohelet, is saying, well, you know, all this stuff, you know, he may be, you know, resigned to this, but at the same time, it’s gone in a moment. And that, you know, what truly, you know, what does last? And, and asking himself those, those questions. 

Pete: Yeah. I like that, too. It’s just, you know, the smoke is thick, but then just give it a moment and it just dissipates and it’s not there anymore.

Anyway. Okay. Well, one very, I’ll be very brief.

This is another question that I’d like to just address is, um, the translation choice to render the divine name usually pronounced Yahweh as “Lord.” And, um, this person says, you know, what’s messing with me is the feudal era connotation of Lord. And I, I definitely get that. I was on a committee about a year ago to revise or update sort of our doctrinal statement at Eastern University.

And one member of the committee, who’s not American, who’s actually from South Africa, uh, he said, can we do anything about that word? Because I mean, there are places around the world where “Lord” has these very, very negative connotations and, um, I mean, jump in here guys. But my understanding here is that Lord is—it comes out of the divine name because ancient Jews didn’t want us to pronounce it. 

Anna: Right.

Pete: Because it might take the Lord’s name in vain. And so you substitute it with Adonai, which is Hebrew for Lord. And that gets picked up in the Greek translation, which is, you know, kyrios, right, Lord. And that gets them picked up with the New Testament with Jesus and Caesar and any kind of leader. So I think it’s a pretty innocent historical development. Um, but the, the, the, how we read it today, absolutely. That could be a huge problem for people. What do you guys think? 

Cynthia: Yeah, I think, you know, if and that’s one of the reasons why this podcast and others are important is because a lot of times people don’t know the reasoning or history behind some of these little things, uh, that could make sense to them if it was explained. Uh, but most of the time people don’t have access to something like that. 

But of course, with the advent of podcasting and COVID now having given us all more podcasts than we could ever dream of, um, you know, this is something that I think is important for us to pass on to people, some of these little things that we take for granted.

Pete: Well, Cynthia, how about you? 

Cynthia: So, um, this question came through and I think this is a really important question. And this is something that I try to do a lot, like in my classes and my writing, but what is some ancient literature that would help folks understand the Hebrew Bible? And, um, there’s a few that, um, I think I’ll mention just a couple here, but of course, you know, it’s important to remember that Israel did not exist in a vacuum, you know? Israel had neighbors, um, and they were in a region, the, you know, wider, ancient near East, so some people call it or, uh, Western Asia and, and Israel being part of this geographical region has a lot of things in common with their neighbors.

And there’s not a whole lot about Israel that’s unique to Israel. If I’m being honest, I mean, besides the fact that they tried to be monotheistic at points and of course didn’t do so well because a culture, their culture before and during and all around them was polytheistic where they worship many gods.

So there’s a lot in common between Israel and its neighbors, including literature, and some of this literature is maybe more familiar to us than others. So the one that of course comes to mind most, um, up front is the Enuma Elish, which is a Babylonian creation epic. So, you know, most societies, most cultures all throughout time have, um, ideas about how the world began.

Um, and this is nothing new. I mean, we’re still doing this today, asking those big questions. How did we get here and when did this happen and how did it happen? And ancient people, whether they’re in, you know, the ancient Near East or Mesoamerican or wherever, they’re all, these people have asked these types of questions, these big, you know, philosophical type questions.

And so, um, Enuma Elish being a Babylonian creation epic is really similar to what we see in Genesis chapter one. There’s a lot of similarities there. And, um, so one of the things that’s a really interesting task to do if you want to look and see how familiar they are with each other, is read both of them.

I mean, the Enuma Elish is like seven tablets and they’re not complete. So you might, you could find a really good translation. We can maybe give you some recommendations, but just to see how similar they are and how both the Neo Babylonians and the Israelites saw some of the world and how the world began and the cosmology, you know, how the world functioned in their limited knowledge for that time and space.

Um, but also to see about how they’re different. That’s also really interesting. Um, and some people talk about how some scholars talk about how, well, maybe the Israelites were influenced by the Enuma Elish, and maybe they’re writing their own version of it while they’re in exile. So there’s that whole conversation, but it’s really quite fascinating.

And then of course you get another one, the Epic of Gilgamesh, also from, uh, Babylon that talks about, in part, it talks about many things, but in part, it talks about a flood and one man who is righteous enough to survive that flood. And the similarities there between the epic of Gilgamesh and the couple of different, um, accounts, flood accounts in Genesis that are woven together is also fascinating.

But one that people might not be familiar with is the Ba’al cycle from Ugarit. Um, so Ugarit is in Northern Canaan, so more, more Syria, um, that, a major city and it wasn’t really found until like the early 1900s, I think, and it was excavated and they found this palace with this library with amazing preserved clay tablets that had a bunch of different texts. And one of those texts is called the Ba’al cycle and that tells the story of one of the main deities of Ugarit, uh, Ba’al and Ba’al being a fertility god and if that sounds, you know, familiar to us, it should be because we hear a lot about Ba’al in the Hebrew Bible and how the Israelites worshiped Ba’al alongside Yahweh and other deities.

And so this Ba’al cycle talks about how Ba’al became, like, the main patron deity and how he struggled and fought against some other deities. And so there’s just a lot of similarities between the Baal cycle and different parts of the Old Testament. So those are some three, if I were to pick the top three to check out, those would be the three I would suggest.

Anna: Okay, so I’m, I’m interested, like, what do you think about, um, Israelite scriptures being influenced by these Babylonian narratives or the narratives from Ugarit? What do you think of that? 

Cynthia: I don’t see how they couldn’t influence each other. I mean, if you think about genre, and I know there’s a lot of talk right now about is genre, you know, something we should still be discussing? But if you think about it, you know, the types of literature that Israel has is not unique to Israel. You find it all throughout the ancient Near East, including Egypt. Um, and so there is some interaction going on between all of these different groups. Now, who started it? I don’t know. [Laughing]

Anna: But you do, kind of, right, Cynthia? You kind of do know. 

Cynthia: [Cynthia laughs] I mean…

Cynthia: I think. I think there’s a lot of, we know who—

Pete: We know who didn’t probably, right? 

Cynthia: I mean, I think there’s when Israel is, and when Judah or more likely the elites of Jerusalem, including their scribes and priests who are probably the only people who really have any kind of literacy in that world. You know, they’re, they’re in exile and they’re influenced by the people that they’re around. But then again, I also think that once a kingdom develops like Israel is likely to have done in some way or form, you want to start documenting things. So I don’t think they’re completely dependent on each other, but I think they’re definitely influenced by each other.

Anna: Okay, I’ve got one more question. So when I was growing up as an evangelical, what constantly came up was like, well, we’ve got so many flood narratives from so many different cultures. And so that is evidence that a global flood happened. And so since we’ve got this flood narrative in our Bible, and we’ve got Gilgamesh, and—you know, so, like, what would you say to that? 

Cynthia: Well, I think we have more than one flood narrative in the Hebrew Bible. I mean, I think, I mean, traditionally, at least, you know, text critical scholars would say there’s at least two, uh, flood narratives that are woven together in those early primeval narratives of Genesis.

Um, I mean, even if you just compare how many animals went into the ark, between the difference, between the two different accounts. I mean, I think whoever wove those two flood stories together did a much better job than those who did the creation ones. Um, um, but I think it’s really fascinating, but there is no, I mean, archaeologically, I guess it depends on what proof you’re trying to find. Archaeologically, there is no, you know, proof of a globalized flood. Now, there is proof of localized floods for sure. And so, we also need to keep that in mind when we’re reading these texts, whether it’s the Epic of Gilgamesh or whether it’s the Hebrew Bible, is that what they thought was the whole world was very different than what we think of the whole world.

Right? They had no idea that there was all these other continents that existed. So, um, to them, a localized flood was everything. And so the way they’re going to portray it is going to seem like it’s covering everything. At least that’s when I try to put myself in their shoes. That’s the way I imagine it.

Pete: I know some people, Cynthia would say that, um, yeah, all that’s fine and dandy, but you’ve got flood stories in China. You’ve got flood stories in Florida. You’ve got floods all over the world. And that, that, that proves a global flood. 

Cynthia: It proves a flooding. It doesn’t prove a global flood. [Laughing]

Pete: It proves that things flood all over the place. Right. Yeah. There’s no reason to say, well, because there’s, there’s evidence of floods across the world—

Cynthia: That they were the same floods at the same time. 

Pete: Right, right. I mean, there are different times too. That’s, that’s part of the problem with it. But still, just the evidence of floods across the world doesn’t mean there’s one flood. It means floods happen. 

Cynthia: That means floods happen. That’s right. 

Pete: Wherever there’s water, it happens. 

Cynthia: Wherever there’s water, floods happen. It doesn’t mean they happened all over the place, all at the same time and you know, God killed all of humanity. 

Pete: You know, I, like, um, Aaron, I don’t know if you want to jump in here, but, um, the Atrahasis epic too, is I think interesting in that it really follows Genesis 2 through, I guess, 8. Yeah. Pretty, I shouldn’t say it follows it, they’re, they’re, Genesis 2 through 8 and the Atrahasis Epic are very similar. You have the gods creating, and then they have workers who do the work, and the people are created. Um, but then a flood comes because there’s a problem. In Atrahasis I think it’s because they make too much noise and the gods aren’t—

Cynthia: But they’re too loud. 

Anna: I get that.

Pete: I think there’s something to that, you know, that there’s, um, again, just you guys correct me. My memory is fading here, but, um, if there’s any place in the Bible where you can say, I think the biblical literature is dependent on another piece of literature, this might be it. Cause it seems so close following the same plot line. 

Anna: Yeah. I kind of wonder if Genesis 1 is dependent on Enuma Elish too, though. 

Cynthia: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. 

Anna: But Atrahasis for sure. 

Pete: Well, some people say it’s actually the Ba’al epic too, Cynthia, you know, it’s like, um, I mean, Dick Clifford says it’s possible that all this stuff got filtered to the Israelites, the Babylonian story through Canaanite influence. 

Cynthia: Yeah, for sure.

Pete: It’s possible. And Egyptian influence too. 

Cynthia: Yeah. It’s possible. It is absolutely possible. 

Pete: I do like the Babylonian theory best personally, though. I guess that makes the most of a lot of things to me. 

Cynthia: But I think if you actually like sat down and, and compared, so if you’re new to this kind of discussion and these are new to you, these other ancient Near Eastern sources, all you have to do is compare them and you’ll see how many similarities there actually are. But I also think the differences are quite fascinating too. Um, and so if people, you know, are interested in that, I’m, I’m sure we could, um, you know, provide some resources for them to do that.

Anna: Well, I think too, like where, where we find the differences, and this is going to make me sound so Christian and I’m sorry, um, but I worry that people are hearing us say this and they’re like, oh, well then it’s all just made up and like everything that is in our Hebrew Bible is just based on some other culture.

And I, I don’t think that’s necessarily wrong, but I do think that the authors of our scriptures were trying to do something rhetorically with these other narratives, right? They were trying to make a positive statement about their one God and that their one God didn’t just like destroy the earth because people were too loud.

Cynthia: And that’s why the differences are fascinating. 

Anna: Right, yeah, because they’re, they’re purposeful. Right? We’re not just copying and pasting here. We’re trying to say something that’s true about God on the basis of the literature that we have, or on the basis of the narratives that we have. 

Cynthia: Right. And the theology that’s, the difference of the theology that’s inside those, I mean, the theology of the people who are doing the writing, not necessarily your average person, but, you know, your elite literate priest scribes.

Pete: All right, well, Aaron, how about you? Uh, you got some questions lined up for you here that you’re going to answer completely and fully with no ambiguity?

Anna: Yeah, Aaron!

Aaron: Absolutely, um, I’m going to drop a 1000 page dissertation on this question that nobody could possibly answer, but I will, I will try and do something right here. [Chuckling]

Cynthia: If anyone can do it, you can.

Pete: Yeah. 

Aaron: Uh, this question is, it’s a great question. What do we know and not know about how the Hebrew Bible was canonized? Um, and this is a question I think that if you were to ask it at the beginning of the century, the beginning of last century rather, uh, there would be a pretty concrete answer. People would be very confident, biblical scholars would be very confident in directing you to the hypothetical Council of Jamnia, which is supposed to have taken place at the end of the first century CE, um, by progenitors of rabbinic Judaism who decided what the canon was at that point and fixed it in place and it’s been fixed in place ever since. Um, and so the answer would be very easy. 

Um, but scholarship in the 20th century has called that into question, uh, along a number of angles. Uh, one, uh, were they really interested in canon in the same way that we are today? Is that term even meaningful? Because you do see early Jewish debates about the different ways that texts ought to be handled and what it means for a text to be inspired and the purity of different texts and the suitability for reading different texts on different occasions. But that’s not necessarily the same thing as canon in the way that we think about it today. So some of these debates that you see in early layers of the Talmud, for example, although they concern the nature of, of what are now biblical books, they’re just not necessarily getting at the same issue that we’re getting at now.

So that’s part of the problem. What exactly do we mean by canon? And do ancient people even have a conceptualization of canon that is similar to the way that we think about it today? Um, and the other part of the problem is that there’s just not a lot of data to draw upon to make these conclusions.

We don’t have a constant look at every single Jewish community on the planet and what they happen to have in their back storeroom where they’re keeping all these texts. So we don’t know what they’re reading, necessarily. Um, just because a text shows up at one point in history doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t have others.

Uh, just because a text is cited doesn’t necessarily mean people think it’s inspired, just because they think it’s inspired doesn’t necessarily mean that they think that that’s the same thing we mean by inspired in contemporary religious communities. So with, with a calling in the question of all these different parts, um, of that earlier questions become very difficult to pin down a time when the Hebrew Bible was canonized.

We know for relative certainty that in the first century C. E. a Hebrew canon had not been fixed. There’s still a lot of fluctuation, especially with respect to the end of the text. The Torah or the Pentateuch had been set in place for a while. The prophets were pretty set, although there is some differences in how the prophets were counted.

For example, Josephus is convinced that there are 13 prophetic books. Which is not a number I know how you get to, um, the oldest Jewish canon otherwise has eight prophetic books. There are four former prophets, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, four latter prophets, uh, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and then the book of the 12. So there’s eight in contemporary Jewish Tanakhs. There’s 21 books in the prophets. There’s never 13. So nobody knows exactly what Josephus is counting when he insists very confidently that there are 13. 

Um, but nevertheless, that’s probably a little bit more stable, but the end of the Hebrew Bible in particular, what’s, what’s called the Ketuvim, the writings, this doesn’t have a lot of stability even up through the first century.

Uh, and there’s even evidence of this in, in the gospels at the very end of the gospel of Luke. I can’t remember the chap—I should have written down the chapter before I answered this question so I’d seem extra smart, but at the very end of the gospel of Luke, Jesus is telling his disciples that he has come to fulfill everything in the law of Moses, the prophets, and then the psalms.

Right? The end is sort of clipped there. What do you mean the Psalms…as though that’s the only thing else beyond the prophets? But that actually echoes the way that Sirach, uh, in a, in a second century BCE book talks about it as well. He also says the law of Moses, the prophets, and then some hymns and stuff.

Is that identical to scriptural? Is that identical to inspired? Are all these three things the same thing? Are there differences between them? And these are questions that are probably going to be answered in particular communities. Each community is going to have their own answer to this question. 

Cynthia: Yeah, and even if you get to the Dead Sea Scrolls, you know, all of, there’s a fragment for every single book of the Hebrew Bible except for Esther. 

Aaron: Yeah. [Unintelligible] 

Cynthia: And so that makes, yeah, so it makes you wonder, you know, as far as even when that community existed, you know, 100 BC to 100 BCE to CE, you know, why did they, why did they include the books that they did? Um, and why did they exclude Esther and of course, a lot of people would say, well, that’s because Esther doesn’t have, you know, a reference to God in it and that might have something to do with it. What do you think about, you know, looking at the Dead Sea Scrolls for, for part of that discussion?

Aaron: Well, that actually helps me answer another question that’s on here too, because, uh, one of the other things—

Cynthia: Ah! I did that on purpose…

Aaron: Great segue there! [All laughing]

Cynthia: Just kidding! 

Aaron: Were there other books in the Hebrew canon in Jesus’s time that are not in the current Hebrew canon? Um, and that’s a good question because the community at the dead, uh, uh, at Qumran that had the Dead Sea Scrolls, they also had copies of Jubilee, uh, Jubilees and copies of Tobit too in Hebrew. Um, so these are texts that appear in some other canons, but not in the contemporary Tanakh. Um, and, and the actual kind of the actual segue there is that, I mean, the, another thing that the community at Qumran had is they had a bunch of sectarian texts too, texts that were very specific to them and their community.

Cynthia: They did.

Aaron: Things like the community rule scroll and the war scroll. Um, did they consider those to be canonical? And they’re stored right next to all these other texts that are in our Bibles today, but they’re not found in any other canonical connection anywhere else, they’re particular to them. Um, I think it’s a full third, almost, of all the scrolls at Qumran are of that nature specific to them. That’s interesting. Is that their Bible then? I mean—

Pete: Well Aaron, that gets back to what you said before, right? About just notions of canonicity. Like we’re, we’re trying to answer that question based on our own, um, really unexamined assumptions about what canon means and sort of bringing that into the past.

And, um, I mean, I can’t emphasize enough. Your first point was exactly right. We have to, what do we even mean by that? I mean, maybe we can say what books were important to them and why were they important or something like that, you know, and, and being inspired doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to be canonical and, and the Dead Sea Scrolls doesn’t make this any easier.

And add to that which version of Jeremiah is canonical, which version of Isaiah is canonical and, um, all that stuff is just—the fluidity of all this stuff to me is just astonishing. And, and Jesus is in the middle of that. See, that’s just Jesus doesn’t clear up the cannon for us or anything silly like that.

It’s just like the, the whole, the, the, the great irony is that the time periods within which the Christian Bible was being written and developed, those people had a different notion of what it means to have an authoritative text, a quote, canonical text. And we’re sort of doing that all backwards now. We’re imposing on those people of view of canon that they might not have, well, they almost certainly didn’t, would not have really worked with, and that’s sort of our own invention. And, um, and I think particularly not exclusively, obviously, but Protestants haven’t been much help. They’re looking for that as that ultimate authority. 

Anna: Well, and it’s that one scripture that everybody likes to go back to, right? 2 Timothy 3:12, all scripture is God-breathed and useful for instructing, training, doing a whole bunch of different things. [All laugh] Um, I forget what all the things are, but I used to have that memorized, but—

Cynthia: I like your paraphrase.

Aaron: …Righteousness, all the good works. 

Anna: Yes. All the good things. All of them. And so I think like, you know, people who are actually a little bit thoughtful will be like, oh, well, at the time that 2 Timothy was written, um, that would have just been the Hebrew Bible. And so good for you for thinking about it for just a hot second. Um, and it wouldn’t have included our New Testament, but then you have to ask, well, would they have had the Hebrew Bible at that point? And what I hear you saying, Aaron is, well, it’s a lot more fluid than that. Um, and even that verse doesn’t really get at the question of canon.

Pete: Right, right.

Aaron: In fact, if anything, I mean, right before, just a couple of verses before that, um, there’s a reference to Jannes and Jambres who are like, who are the names who are, who are hypothetically the magicians in the Exodus story that opposed Moses, but we get those names from an apocryphal text called the Apocrypha on Jannes and Jambres that I don’t even know if it exists still anymore in, in readable form. But that comes from a non-canonical text, so this quotation is coming in a context where the very idea of scripture is not stable. 

Pete: Ah bup bup. [Sarcastically] No, no, see, this is why you guys are liberal and heretical and wrong! [Cynthia laughs heartily]

Anna: I just did a Christian thing a couple of seconds ago. 

Pete: That proves that Janus and Jambres are historical. Because I quoted, see?

Anna: All I care about is Prince of Egypt. That’s like my whole thing for how that whole story worked. 

Pete: Oh, dear Lord.

Cynthia: It’s a good movie. 

Anna: It is, and the soundtrack.

Pete: In my day it was The 10 Commandments with Charlton Heston. 

Anna: I know. That is also really good, Pete. 

Pete: If you watch it, not to digress, if you watch that movie, the opening credits and stuff, you know, it talks about the sources and the sources they used was, you know, the last thing they mentioned and, and of course, the Holy Scriptures, but they mentioned the midrash, you know, they mentioned Josephus, they mentioned other people. And it’s like, yeah, to tell the story, you got to, like, get stuff from elsewhere outside of the Bible, because it’s not, it’s not the most compelling story by itself.

Anna: But look at them citing their sources. That is so cool. Prince of Egypt didn’t do that. 

Pete: I know, because it’s a cartoon.

Aaron: Uh, yes it did, it cited Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. 

Anna: Amen. That’s right. 

Aaron: That’s all we need.

Anna: That’s all we need. For sure, for sure.

Aaron: Inspired.

Pete: Well, Anna. How about you?

Anna: All right. Let’s do this. So one of the questions that I got all lit up about was this one and it is: What is even going on with sacrifice? And I think that is such a good question. 

And I might, who knows if I’ll get there, but I might have to touch on some of the things that Cynthia said. So, okay, this is what I think is going on with sacrifice. Number one. One thing that I don’t think that we often realize about sacrifice in the Old Testament is it’s just like ritualized cooking and eating.

Um, I don’t think that people usually notice that because they have, in their mind, there’s one sacrifice that you don’t eat and that is the whole burnt offering, right? All the rest of it you are, you’re fixing a barbecue and you are inviting a bunch of people to come and partake in this barbecue. And so that’s something that I think we miss.

And then also, you know, who else gets a little bit of fun out of this? Is God, because God, God gets to smell the barbecue. So just think of any time you’ve been like, you’ve come up on somebody like grilling, like sometimes when I walk around my neighborhood, I’m like, Oh, dang, somebody is cooking up some burgers. Like maybe, maybe the Southern hospitality will let me come over, but like God gets to smell that and like that, that beautiful aroma of those hamburgers cooking or whatever it might be, whether it’s like a lamb or an ox or, or anything like that.

So one of the things I don’t think we realize is that sacrifice in the Old Testament is ritualized eating. And so this is where I’m going to go a little bit anthropological. I also think that at the heart of sacrifice—and sacrifice is something that happens throughout cultures, right? Where lots of different cultures do this kind of ritualized eating. Um, I think at the heart of sacrifice is this realization that in order for us to live, something else has to die.

And I think that’s really important. And I think that that’s something that we don’t quite realize, um, as maybe like Westerners that do grocery shopping, unless you hunt or slaughter your own food, like at the heart of sacrifice is this idea that there is life in whatever it might be, whether it’s an animal or if it’s grain or that, that thing was alive and in order for you to keep on living, you have to kill something and eat it. And so by killing something, you bring life to yourself. 

And so I think that that is a part of, it’s a part of like, enacting this kind of drama that God has created the world in a way so that in order for, for one creature to keep on living, another creature has to die. And it’s this kind of exchange. And I think that that’s Gerard, but we would have to ask Jen, Jen Garcia Bashaw because she would be the one that would know.

Um, but yeah, so I think that that is what’s at the heart of sacrifice. And I think that the thing that sacrifice does is, you hear in Leviticus all the time, the life is in the blood, the life is in the blood, the life is in the blood. And so one of the things in sacrifice, if you’re killing an animal that you have to do is you’ve got to let all the blood come out. All of it has to come out. Not, not any of it can be kept there. And somehow like the shedding of that life force, the life is in the blood, has the capacity to bring life back to the camp, um, or like the community, so like kind of like infusing the community with life, but then also you can kind of hear like, oh, the life is in the blood.

So you’ve infused the community with life. But then, when you go to eat the animal, or the grain, or whatever it might be, you’re also bringing life to yourself. And so it’s this kind of like recognition of this cycle. Am I making sense, guys? 

Aaron: Absolutely.

Cynthia: Yes, you are!

Anna: Alright, good.

Pete: As much sense as one can make of sacrifice.

Anna: Well, I think for us, it’s a really weird concept because we don’t slaughter our own food anymore. We don’t go out and like, cut down the grain. We don’t do any of that. And so we don’t have to think about food preparation as kind of like a holy rite that keeps us alive, but in the ancient world, they absolutely did, you know?

Cynthia: Unless you study food. [Laughs]

Anna: Oh, and then what? Tell me, Cynthia!

Cynthia: Well, I just want to add to that wonderful explanation, Anna, I really liked that. Um, there’s this anthropologist named Mary Douglas who did a lot of work on Leviticus and sacrifice. And one of the things that she said that really stuck out to me, this idea of commensality, where your eating together serves a purpose. And so she talks about how the sacrifice is really like a meal between you and your deity that you’re offering the sacrifice to. And that the altar is like the table and the sacrifice is the meal, and that you partaking in this, you know, meal with your deity, there’s also a way to be bonding together throughout that meal. 

Um, and I think one thing that people think about with sacrificing animals is that they do this every day. Well, they did it every day at the temple, but most people didn’t do that every day. Otherwise they would have no animals. So, I mean, I think we, we have to get that misconception out of our mind that, oh, every, you know, Joe Farmer is offering a goat every day as a sacrifice. No, I don’t think that’s the case. I think these are kind of special occasions and, um, certain rituals on certain specific holy days in particular, unless there’s a certain reason, purity ritual, to go through with it.

Anna: Well, and I mean, tell me what you would say about the peace offering. Like if something has come between you and I and our relationship, we could go and offer a sacrifice to kind of like, mend our relationship, right? 

Cynthia: And have a party afterwards. 

Anna: We would eat together. And I think that we all know that like having, sharing a meal with somebody else does often, unless it’s Thanksgiving with your weird uncle [all laugh], it does often help mend relationships, you know?

Cynthia: I would agree. 

Anna: Yeah, I think that there’s something to that.

Pete: Well Anna, can I ask, can I ask you a question here?

Anna: Please! 

Pete: Um, tie, I mean, a couple of synapses are firing here. But you know, the whole sacrifice theme gets carried over to the New Testament, of course, it’s Jewish and, and Jesus as sacrifice. And I’ve never quite thought of this before until you guys sort of talking here tonight, but “this is my body, this is my blood.”

Anna: Oh, yes. 

Pete: Yeah. Right. I mean, this is a communal thing going on there. So.

Anna: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Um, the Eucharist is 100 percent us eating Jesus, right? Like, and, and I think that we miss, we miss that like, I always say to my kids, okay, we got to go to church today because it’s, you know, we’re Baptist. And so we do Eucharist once a month and, um, I’m like, we gotta, we got to go and eat Jesus and drink his blood. And that’s creepy. And I think, I think that, you know, the disciples in John at least are like, oh, that’s weird. But I guess we’ll stick with you. Um, yeah. But I think that people were really put off by that because you shouldn’t, shouldn’t be doing the cannibalism, but I do, I do think that, um, a lot of what at least John is drawing on there is that imagery of the sacrificial system and how it was, you ingest it to bring life to yourself.

Um, I don’t think that there’s a whole lot in the New Testament of, um, that, that substitution kind of idea of like, Jesus died in your place. Um, like you should have been on that altar. But I do think that there is a lot of Jesus as, you’re getting that kind of imagery of Jesus as a sacrifice.

You’re just not necessarily getting the image of Jesus as a sacrifice taking your place, if that makes sense. Um, and, and I think that even for like the ancient Israelites, when they would carry out sacrifice, it wasn’t, it wasn’t like they were like, oh, thank goodness this animal is taking my place instead. I think it was one way that they could enact—this is, this is going to get weird too. I don’t know if we have time for this, but, um, okay. 

So Cynthia, you talked about the Enuma Elish. And so part of Enuma Elish is when Marduk, this Babylonian god, slays Tiamat. And the way that he—and Tiamat is kind of like a sea monster and she represents saltwater. Anyway. And so the way that he reorganizes the universe is to cut her and divide her and cut her and divide her, to like, create the known universe. 

So I’ve been reading, I read this book by Pete’s best friend, Jon D Levenson, and it’s called Creation and the Persistence of Evil. And so Levenson’s idea is that after the exile, when chaos had just come, like raining down on the people of God, one way that they could think of to hold the chaos at bay was to, and when you read Leviticus, Leviticus gets so specific about how you’re supposed to cut up the ox or the lamb or whatever it might be. They are reenacting that act of dividing things and putting them all into their place. Just like God did, not Marduk, but just like God did in creation. When God took the waters and spread them and moved them. And you guys can’t see my hand motions. Well, some of you can if we’re live streaming this. Okay. You, I mean you guys can, but when this is on the podcast, you won’t be able to. But my hands are like spreading. 

Pete: Let it be known there are a lot of hand motions.

Anna: Lots of hand motions.

Aaron: Very evocative hand motion.

Pete: It’s actually, hand motions are everything here. They’re everything.

Anna: They’re the whole thing. Yeah. So anyway, I think, I think that one of the things that’s also going on in sacrifice is this ritualized way of reenacting creation and trying to hold the chaos of what they’ve just experienced with the exile, they’re trying to hold the chaos back and they do this on—it’s a continual maintenance sort of thing. Like, we have to continually hold the chaos back. So I would say in sacrifice, there are a couple of things. Number one, ritualized eating. They’re having a picnic. Number two, in order for us to live, something else has to die. And number three, this is a way that we can reenact that act of creation that helped hold back the chaos. And, and this is a way we can just be really, really organized in our lives. 

Cynthia: Creating order out of chaos. 

Anna: That’s right. 

Cynthia: Yeah. 

Aaron: I want to start a band called chaos picnic. 

Cynthia: Yeah [laughing]

Anna: Oh, that would be so fun. 

Cynthia: What kind of band would that be? 

Pete: Yeah.

Aaron: Well either a metal band…

Anna: Probably a metal band.

Aaron: [Long pause thinking about other option] Probably a metal band. Probably a metal band. [All agree]

Pete: Okay, that’s the only option?

Cynthia: Well, that has more chaos in it. You know?

Anna: True. 

Pete: Not folk music, then. 

Anna: Mmm, it doesn’t sound like it. 

Pete: It wouldn’t work. I know. Yeah.

Anna: You could be called like Tiamat and the Hippies and be more folky. [Pete and Cynthia chuckle in the background]

Aaron: Yes, you could. Mm-hmm. 

Pete: Um, we, we have a couple minutes. Anybody have any, anything you wanna follow up on or, or, or any other questions here that you see that you might wanna just comment on briefly? If it’s possible to comment briefly on any of these questions because they’re good questions. They have a lot of moving parts. 

Aaron: I was gonna recommend a book if people are interested in ancient near Eastern parallels. There’s a really easy book to get into for lay-level audiences. It’s called, I think it’s just called Old Testament Parallels by Matthew and some, oh, I should have Googled it before I said it. It’s called Old Testament Parallels for sure. But it’s, the great thing about it.—

Pete: Victor Matthews?

Anna: Maybe Victor Matthews? 

Aaron: That sounds right.

Cynthia: Victor Matthews, yeah!

Aaron: The best part about that is that it’s organized by, in the same order as the Bible is. So when you open it up, it starts with the parallels in Genesis 1 and 2, and then it goes to the parallels in Genesis 5 and 6, etc. So you can, you can have it in front of you as you are reading the Bible, and it will give you the appropriate parallels as you’re reading. So instead of something like where you have to search out the parallels, it’ll give you the little snippet of parallels. So I’ve assigned that to seminary students before, and they have a blasty blast with it. It’s very easy to use. 

Cynthia: That’s a good suggestion.

Pete: And if you want to go crazy…

Aaron: You don’t need to.

Pete: There’s this book, which you guys, not everybody can see, Ancient Texts for the Study of the Hebrew Bible.

Anna: Pull it up a little more so we can see.

Pete: [Mic bump noises] By my colleague, Kent Sparks, right? 

Cynthia: Yeah. 

Pete: And it’s basically everything.

Cynthia: There’s so many—

Pete: It’s a synopsis of everything. 

Cynthia: Yeah. There’s just so many great ones. And I think both of those are really good. 

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. 

Cynthia: I would, I do want to say how impressed I am with the questions. 

Pete: Yeah. 

Anna: Oh yeah. 

Pete: Fantastic. Great questions. 

Aaron: High quality questions.

Pete: That’s it for today, folks. We have, we have to do this again and get more questions and have more fun. 

Anna: Yes, we should. Absolutely. Always a blast. 

Pete: All right, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. Uh, for those of you watching and those of you listening, both, thank you for being here and uh, we’ll see you next time!

Jared: Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you wanna support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just want to give a little money, go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give. 

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Outro: You’ve just made it through another episode of The Bible for Normal People. Don’t forget you can catch our other show, Faith for Normal People, in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People team: Brittany Hodge, Joel Limbauan, Melissa Yandow, Lauren O’Connell, and Naiomi Gonzalez.