Episode 340: Pete Ruins Everything with Bill Schniedewind
In this week’s episode of The Bible for Normal People, Pete talks with biblical scholar Bill Schniedewind about where God is located in the Hebrew Bible and how different understandings of divine presence developed throughout ancient Israelite religion. They explore the archaeological and biblical evidence surrounding temples, sacred spaces, the Ark of the Covenant, and the centralization of worship in Jerusalem, challenging the idea that Israelite religion followed a simple progression toward one centralized system. Together, they consider the Bible’s competing visions of God’s presence, the tensions surrounding political and religious authority, and how those unresolved tensions reflect the complexity of both Scripture and the human search for God.
Mentioned in This Episode
Books:
Josiah’s Reform and the Dynamics of Defilement: Israelite Rites of Violence and the Making of a Biblical Text by Lauren Monroe
Locating God: A History of Israelite Religion by Bill Schniedewind
Who Really Wrote the Bible: The Story of the Scribes by Bill Schniedewind
Join: The Society of Normal People community
Support: www.thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give
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Pete: [00:00:00] This is Pete Ruins Everything, where assumptions come to die and nobody leaves happy. I'm Pete Enns.
Pete: This is Pete Ruins the News.
Pete: All right, so there is an evangelical argument for supporting Donald Trump that I think deserves to be taken more seriously than it often is, and it goes something like this. Look, we know who Trump is. We know about his character. We know about the sexual misconduct, the lying, the narcissism, the cruelty, the pardoning of criminals, and the obsession with himself.
We're not pretending he's a saint. We're not even necessarily pretending he's a particularly good Christian, if one at all. But none of that means God can't use him. God can use deeply flawed people to accomplish God's purposes. It's even in the Bible. Cyrus was the king of ancient Persia. He [00:01:00] wasn't an Israelite.
He wasn't a worshiper of Yahweh, but he served God's purposes by releasing the Judean exiles and allowing them to return home. And in Isaiah chapter forty-five, get this, God calls Cyrus his anointed. That's the Hebrew word mashiach, where we get messiah from. So God used the pagan king Cyrus to accomplish God's purposes for Israel, and now, the argument goes, God is using Trump.
Trump is our Cyrus, our anointed one. Now, I want to be fair to this argument because I think sometimes Christian critics of Trump don't get it. They keep pointing to Trump's character as though his evangelical supporters somehow haven't noticed. They have. They just think that what Trump accomplishes is more important.
After all, look at what Trump's fighting for. He opposes abortion. He appoints conservative judges. He fights the expansion of LGBTQ+ rights. He's aggressive on immigration. [00:02:00] He pushes back against progressive policies and against what many conservative Christians see as the secularization of American culture.
And these Christians haven't simply made up a random list of things they think God cares about. They believe the Bible provides this list. They don't simply happen to dislike abortion or randomly happen to hold traditional views of sexuality or happen to prefer certain views on family and marriage.
They believe scripture teaches them these things. So the reasoning makes sense. If the Bible tells me what God wants and Donald Trump is accomplishing those things, why shouldn't I conclude that God is using Donald Trump to accomplish God's purposes? And if his lack of moral character bothers me, well, that's where Cyrus comes in.
God has done this before, and now they believe he is doing it again. That's the argument. And that's why the common accusation [00:03:00] evangelicals are hypocrites because they support an immoral man misses the point. So let's think about this for a second. And for the sake of discussion, let's grant the argument as much as possible.
Let's say Trump really is accomplishing things God wants accomplished. Even then, the Cyrus argument doesn't work. Here's the thing. "I am choosing Donald Trump" is very different from saying, "God has chosen Donald Trump." The first is a moral and political judgment, we all make them. The second is a claim to know what God is doing, and Cyrus doesn't get us from one to the other.
If someone believes abortion is murder because of their reading of the Bible, and therefore they vote for Trump because they believe his policies will save unborn lives, just say that. Cyrus isn't necessary. See, that's a moral calculation. Whatever concerns I have about Trump, I believe the [00:04:00] good he will accomplish outweighs them.
People can argue about that calculation. I certainly would, but at least it's clear what kind of an argument it is. So why bring Cyrus into it at all? Well, obviously, to give that argument the stamp of biblical authority, and this is where a familiar way of using the Bible comes into play. Take a biblical story, isolate the feature that seems relevant to the present moment, and bring it directly into our world.
In this case, Cyrus gets reduced to one portable idea: God can use an ungodly ruler to accomplish God's purposes. And as a general theological principle, yeah, fine. Christians have always taken ancient biblical stories and asked what they might mean beyond their original context. But here's the problem.
An analogy isn't revelation. Isaiah tells us that God was using Cyrus. It doesn't tell us [00:05:00] that God is using Donald Trump, and it certainly doesn't give us a decoder ring for identifying which 21st-century political leaders God has chosen. That's the leap. God can use a morally compromised ruler is a reasonable theological claim.
God is using Donald Trump to accomplish these particular purposes is a claim to know what God is doing, and Cyrus can't tell us that. Why then do some Christians believe God is using Trump? Because Trump is advancing things they already believe God wants advanced. Fine, that's the argument. But they didn't learn from Isaiah that God chose Donald Trump.
They already believed Trump was advancing God's purposes, and then they found a biblical character who seems to fit. Believe that God is using Donald Trump if that's what you believe, but don't say Cyrus proves it. Analogy isn't revelation, [00:06:00] and it is a fearful thing to claim to know the mind of God when God has not spoken.
Okay, moving on. Today, we're talking with biblical scholar Bill Schniedewind about a simple question in the Hebrew Bible: where is God located? Hmm. Well, Bill wrote a whole book on it, Locating God: A History of Israelite Religion. And some of you've heard this one, but ancient Israelites didn't always answer that question in one way.
Is God in the temple? Is God on a mountain? Is God in the ark? Was he with the people wherever they went? Drawing on archeology as well as biblical texts, Bill traces how those different ways of understanding God's presence developed and competed with one another over centuries. And along the way, he offers a fresh way of telling the story of Israelite religion, not as a neat progression toward one correct answer, [00:07:00] but as an ongoing struggle with a tension the Bible never completely resolves.
God can be encountered somewhere, but God can't finally be contained anywhere. So let's get into it!
Bill, welcome back to the podcast. This is a little bit different. This is just me and you yakking, but it's good to have you back.
Bill: Yeah, it's good to be back. It's always good to see you, Pete.
Pete: You know, we're gonna talk about a topic... I'm not even sure how to get into this, 'cause I think it's got all these moving parts that are interesting, and I think we just have to sort of dive in.
But it has to do Within the Hebrew Bible, where is God located? Like, where does this God be? And, the answers to that question are fascinating, and they involve, I know with your work in [00:08:00] archeology, it has something to say to this. Uh, of course, the biblical text has something to say.
And, um, yeah, I, uh, uh-
Bill: Yeah, well may-
Pete: I mean, maybe I could- And Israelite religion too- Yeah ... it works into this, right? So, like, how the religion evolved or developed, whatever you wanna call. So, let's just get into this here.
Bill: Well, maybe I'll start with, like, why I was thinking about this problem, and it's partly because I was really dissatisfied with this whole discussion of centralization of religion in Jerusalem.
You know, we go to Jerusalem today, we go to the Western Wall, right there. You know, you put your prayer in because I used to say, "Hey, if you wanna meet God or you wanna get a, you know, local call," you know, that's where it is. Mm-hmm. Um, but I was really unhappy with the concept of centralization being located in one moment in history.
And why-
Pete: Where does that come from? What is that moment that it came [00:09:00] from?
Bill: Yeah. So in the Hebrew Bible, we have this story of Josiah, and he finds a scroll, right, in, in Jerusalem a- the temple. Well, actually, his priest, you know, finds it in the temple, and he brings it to the scribe, and they read it to the, to the King Josiah.
And, and then, um, and then, you know, Josiah's moved by reading the scroll, and he initiates these reforms, which are often thought to be related to the Book of Deuteronomy. And, um, these reforms supposedly have to do with the centralization of religion in Jerusalem in the seventh century.
And the more I, you know, read and look at archeology as well, the more I'm dissatisfied with the answer to the question.
Pete: It's too neat? It, it's, it's just too, too black and white? Is that it, or?
Bill: It's too neat. It's too, it doesn't fit the archeology that well. It doesn't fit how I think about [00:10:00] the problem.
I'm also really kind of a very practical person, you know? So I'm also always thinking about, like, how does this work on the ground? You know? Mm-hmm. If you actually centralize religion in Jerusalem, what happens when I live in Hebron or Lachish or Joppa or, you know, some other city?
Like, it's Shabbat, you know, or it's whenever.
Pete: Yeah, what do you do?
Bill: What am I doing? I'm not going to Jerusalem. So this is a real kind of problem. To me, centralization is a huge problem.
Pete: And, so one of the problems is, again, this sort of nice linear black and white. It was sort of a mess, and then under Josiah in the late 7th century, "Oh, no, we, we...
Listen, here's this law. We haven't been keeping this. We haven't been doing the Passover right. We need to now make this be our central document." And I mean, not to get too far afield in this, but the reigning theory is that, well, he didn't [00:11:00] find anything. He sort of created it.
Bill: Yeah, I mean-
Pete: Yeah, I know.
Bill: I don't really buy that. He didn't find anything, you know? I mean, that's such an easy answer. Mm. Well, the Bible says it, so it couldn't have happened. So it couldn't have happened.
Pete: Yeah, yeah.
Bill: I mean, I hate to be flippant, but, I mean, that seems like half of modern scholarship is if the Bible says it, you know, let's find a, a way that it can't be true.
I mean, I think there's a scroll. They found a scroll. I mean-
Pete: Mm-hmm ...
Bill: what it means to find it, you know, or they rediscovered it or whatever, uh, it becomes ... There's something that happens. And, and I'm also a big fan of ... You know, I'm a very practical person, so I think that the Bible is written about events that actually happened, you know?
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Bill: People don't write, you know, about the 10th century in the seventh century. They write about [00:12:00] the seventh century in the seventh century.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Bill: Just like me, I mean, I'm writing a book now on immigrants and migrants in the Hebrew Bible. Why am I writing it now? You know? Not because what happened in, during the Revolutionary War.
I'm writing about because, you know, it relates to my time. People write about their time and, you know, I think that's a really important thing to remember.
Pete: Right.
Bill: So in Josiah's time, there was a book. Now, what that book was we can argue about.
I don't think that they're talking about Deuteronomy. I think they're talking about the holiness code, but that's a different discussion . . .
Pete: Okay, yeah ...
Bill: for a different day.
Pete: That's a different podcast entirely, and we'll have to- Yeah ... do that one time, too. But, so I mean, the point here, this digression that I actually put us on, um, centralization is the issue here, and it seems to, like, uh, some people, it seems to have appeared out of nowhere.
But you draw a, uh, frankly, a much more [00:13:00] interesting and complex picture of, you know, God's centralization. That means God's home. This is where God dwells. If God shows up, God's gonna show up here, and we have rituals to maintain that. And, that's not how everyone in the Hebrew Bible thinks about God's location.
Bill: Yeah, I mean, God's here, there, and everywhere in the Hebrew Bible, right? He's on Mount Sinai, and I always say it's really convenient if you put God somewhere because then if you're looking for him, you know where to go. Mm-hmm. Like, you go to the Western Wall, there, you know, God's presence is there.
Or you, you know, you go to the temple in Jerusalem, there's God, right? Or you go to Mount Sinai-
Pete: Mm-hmm ...
Bill: right? And there's God. So Moses has a vision at the burning bush of God on Mount Sinai. He goes off to Egypt, right? And then he comes back and God's still there, right? And then Elijah can come back, you know, several centuries later and go and visit God on Mount Sinai.
He's still there, right. Yeah. It's, [00:14:00] it's really... I mean, if you can put God in one place, right, and keep him there, you know, that's really good, 'cause whenever I need God, I can always go find him.
Pete: Mm-hmm. Right?
Bill: But then, but then you start looking about, you know, the, the metaphor of God, you know, being everywhere and being with us, um, sort of completely undone, un- undoes this idea that God is in a single place.
Pete: Yeah. I, I mean, that sort of, you know, would elicit a response, I think, from people saying, "Centralization? Are you kidding me? How can God be centralized if we have these traditions that has God all over the place," and Sinai, you know, hundreds of years after the Moses experience.
And, so how does archeology sort of help you see the larger picture?
Bill: Well, I mean, archeology is one of the catalysts for me in some ways because [00:15:00] in the late bronze period, let's say in the second millennium BC, you have temples everywhere.
So if you go to Hazor, you know, they've excavated, like s- I don't remember how many, several temples in, from the, you know, 13th, 14th, 15th century BC. There's a couple temples at Lake Ish. Everywhere you go, there are temples. Every city has temples, sometimes multiple temples. And we excavated the Iron Age much better than the Late Bronze Age, but we have a lot more temples in, in the, uh, Late Bronze Age.
And then when you come to the Iron Age, actually, there are almost no temples. I mean, there's the temple in Jerusalem. If we talk about Judah, there's a temple in Jerusalem. There's a little shrine at a fort called Arad. Um, there's a, supposedly a new temple at Motza. I think there, [00:16:00] it is a temple.
Pete: And the time period again?
Bill: We’re in the 10th, 9th century. Right. This is the time of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, right?
Pete: Right.
Bill: Yeah. There are basically no archeological examples, or almost no archeological examples of temples. So you go from a world in the second millennium, where there are temples, excavated multiple temples at lots of different places.
Everywhere you go, there's a temple. And then you come to the Iron Age, the time of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and there are almost no temples. Just, you know, an exceptional here or there, and you're like-
Pete: Well, what happened?
Bill: Well, exactly. Come on, Bill. What happened? Something happened.
Pete: You're not looking hard enough.
Bill: The problem is, we've looked harder in the Iron Age than in the Late Bronze Age, right? Right. We've excavated the Iron Age, 'cause it's the Israelite period.
Pete: Right.
Bill: You know, five, 10, 15 times more than the Late Bronze Age. We know it much better, and we see much less evidence. [00:17:00] And then he starts, you know, thinking about the Hebrew Bible itself, and it talks about worshiping God on every high hill and under every green tree.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Bill: And you're thinking, well, maybe they were serious. Maybe they really were worshiping God on high hills and under every green tree and not in temples.
Pete: Yeah.
Bill: And this reminds me of the story, this is my favorite story. I wrote a book on 2 Samuel 7. This is the promise to David, where David comes to Nathan and says, "Hey, I wanna build a temple for God."
And, you know, Nathan, the prophet, says, first he says, "Ah, yeah, sure. Go ahead." And then, you know, God comes to Nathan and says, "Hey, you know, who is he to build a temple for me? I've been wandering around in a tent and a tabernacle, and I never asked for a temple in all these years," right? So it, there's this very interesting undoing of the promise, and there's this characterization of a God who doesn't live in [00:18:00] typical Late Bronze Age temples, but he, you know, he lives in a tent, right?
This is the tabernacle.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Bill: Uh, and that metaphor is a really strong, important one, and yet the same story, you know, in verse 13 says that Solomon's gonna build the temple for my name. Like, wait a second.
Pete: Exactly right. Yeah.
Bill: It's just like, wait a second. You said I didn't need a temple and now all of a sudden, it's gonna be okay. Solomon built one. It's okay. So you get this tension, I think, that's part of the Hebrew Bible throughout of, on the one hand, the desire to build a temple, and on the other hand, this idea that, you know, God doesn't live in temples.
So, like, what the heck is this temple here for?
Pete: Yeah, yeah ...
Bill: But temples are really convenient 'cause if you put God in a temple, not only do you know where he is but now you can get priests and people who can control and define [00:19:00] religion. Bureaucracy. Because if you don't have, you know, a central place and then central authorities, then any Tom, Dick, or Harry, you know, or any priest, prophet, or person can claim that, "Oh, I saw God here, I go- I saw God there."
Putting God in a place and then having personnel and officials gives you an institution that can define religion and define, like, where is God and how can we approach him?
Pete: Right. You know, I'm wondering, you know, the writing of these texts are predominantly coming from no earlier than maybe the 10th century.
I know there are some earlier texts in the Bible than that, but the heart of it and, and continuing on into the post-exilic period. And it's fascinating to me that texts that are dominated by, maybe I'm [00:20:00] overstating, by a centralization mentality, or at least attempt to centralize, these various traditions are still hanging on into the Second Temple period, right?
I mean, and afterwards, yeah, they're, they're always there. So we don't have, like, chaos, "Oh, centralization, yay, we finally did it," and that sort of stays, because that whole system goes kablooey in the exile, right?
Bill: Yeah, no, the exile sort of undoes everything, right? And the exile really challenges the institutions.
But it's interesting that I don't think, that it starts with the exile. I think that when you look at the archeology, what I really learn from the archeology, and this is where, you know, I'm like, I'm not using archeology, I don't wanna prove the Bible. I wanna understand it.
I wanna give it a context. And, when I read the archeology, I say, I have this situation where I have temples, and in late [00:21:00] Bronze Age Canaanite religion, they have temples, multiple temples everywhere. And then suddenly, in the time of the Hebrew Bible, beginning in the Iron I, you know, in the 11th century, let's say, 10th century, the temples all disappear.
Pete: Okay, can we-
Bill: What's going on in religion?
Pete: Well, that's my question. What is going on in religion? Like, why?
Bill: You have a different group of people, you know that are running the world, obviously. Okay. I mean, there's, I mean, this is, of course, the problem with the origins of ancient Israel, but I mean, I think one of the things it shows is there's something substantively different between second millennium and first millennium, early first millennium.
I mean, so call it a conquest, call it a settlement, but there's a new group of people who think about religion in a different way than in the Middle Bronze, Late Bronze Age that [00:22:00] preceded it, and one of it has to do... And they're addressing the problem. They know it, right?
Pete: Yes.
Bill: They, because, what is the 2 Samuel 7 all about?
It's that God lives in a tent, right? So, like, there are these people who wanna, who want religion not to be centralized and controlled, and I think it has to do with different types of cultures too. Like, who wants, who wants centralization? Political powers want centralization. But if you have a clan-based, family-based, you know, religion, then you wanna decentralize power, right?
Where you keep religion in a local place instead of in a central place.
Pete: Right.
Bill: But of course, once you have a king, you know-
Pete: Well, that's it. It changes everything, right? I mean-
Bill: It changes everything. Suddenly David wants to build a temple, right?
Pete: Right.
Bill: And, in spite of what, you know, the local- So you have this, I would say, [00:23:00] built-in tension that runs through the entire, um-
Pete: Right
Bill: Hebrew Bible and into the Second Temple period of this impulse to worship God everywhere in tents, on high hills. Now, notice when the Hebrew Bible talks about, you know, worshiping God on every high hill and under every green tree, they're not talking about Baal. They're not talking about other gods.
They're talking about Yahweh. They're talking about the God of Israel on every high hill and under every green tree.
Pete: Yeah.
Bill: Now, at some point, you know, the Jerusalem temple then says like, "We can't control orthodoxy- ... how people think if we're just letting everyone do their own thing on every high hill and under every green tree. Mm-hmm. We need to, we need to centralize this. We need to make sure that everybody thinks correctly about Yahweh, right? Right.
Pete: I mean, that strikes maybe a rather obvious thing to say, but I'll say it anyway. Let's say the shift in [00:24:00] worship practices, that was maybe more family-oriented and not, um, administratively, you know, like, like a temple or things like that, the Iron Age, that, that brought changes or something about the Israelite people.
But mapping onto that tension is the monarchy itself-
Bill: Right ...
Pete: which the Bible is also ambivalent about.
Bill: Yeah.
Pete: That I find fascinating, too. We're seeing these deeply competing voices about some of the most basic structures of Israelite existence. And I think that might be why it's hard to write a history of Israel.
I mean, the text is gonna send you in five different directions, and the archeology is not always there and-
Bill: No, I think that's totally correct. I mean, and you see it from the very beginning, like when Israel wants to have a king, this is the famous passage in 1 Samuel 8, right?
Pete: Yes.
Bill: You know, Samuel the prophet [00:25:00] says, you know, "You don't know what you're asking 'cause this is really gonna screw everything up."
But I would actually also look to even the story in Exodus 19 at the foot of Mount Sinai, right? 'Cause what does God promise in the text? Like, you will be an, a, you know, a kingdom of priests. Yeah. Right?
Pete: Right.
Bill: So who needs a temple, like, when we can approach God directly, right?
Pete: And that's fascinating ...
Bill: Right?
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Bill: And then, the text undoes it. You know? So I would say there's this built-in tension in both, you know, the kingdom of Israel and, you know, the temple of Israel. There's this kind of like, they're both in some ways, I would say, um, flawed institutions.
Pete: Yeah.
Bill: Right. And yet, in some ways, necessary institutions as well. I mean, Israel felt like, "Well, we've gotta have a king. We can't not have a king, otherwise we have the period of judges, you know, and it's [00:26:00] just basically anarchy." We need someone to approach God because, like, we can't trust ourselves to do it individually.
Mm-hmm. And this is, I think, this isn't just the Hebrew Bible. Uh, uh, you know- Right ... I think that this is deeply seated in religion as a whole. Yeah. This tension. And I see, I think that you see it played out in the Hebrew Bible, in the Old Testament, and it continues into the New Testament, and you can see it anywhere if you look at religion in the world.
Pete: Well, 'cause people- You, people, yeah ... are involved, right? Yeah. And that's what happens.
Bill: Absolutely.
Pete: This, this to me is not tangential. It actually, it steps right from this 'cause I know people ask this question. I get this question a lot. We have this series of texts we call the Hebrew Bible or whatever, and it's sort of not of one mind.
It's all over the place a little bit, and in places there are serious tensions about [00:27:00] fundamental issues. This collection of texts was brought together and those tensions remained. It wasn't like there was one powerful voice that removed all the... I think some tensions were removed in the editing process, but not all of them were.
They're still there. And, the question people ask me, students ask me, like, "Why?" I mean, leave God out of it. Just why would people edit together these texts that are so disparate?
Bill: Um, there are different voices. There are certainly different voices. There are different... I wrote about this in my previous book about scribal communities.
There are different scribal communities that reflect different parts of the story. And, the other thing I would say is, you know, the Bible's a real book. You know? It's not some artificial thing. You know? And it reflects, to me, the deep issues of religion and society. [00:28:00] I see a dialogue, you know, a dialectic that's going on.
And this is our dialectic 'cause in some ways we want a king, but in some ways we understand that having a king means that the kingdom of God is distant. Or, you know, having a priest mediate distances us. On the other hand, having a priest mediate is really convenient, you know?
So these are deep-seated central dialectics, and Scripture in that sense is speaking, by allowing both voices. It gives us a real insight into what's going on and what we experience.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Bill: Uh, it's much more real. I mean, you could just tell me, like, you know, and if the Bible is a simple text, right, you know, these are the things it says and, and it, there's this sort of simple, unified voice.[00:29:00]
But no, it reflects the actual complexity of what we experience as people and how we, you know, try to approach God, right? Right. If we wanna find where God is, I mean, that's a really simple question. Yeah. And it's a really hard answer. Yeah. And Scripture is reflecting all the problems of this.
You know, one of my, you know, and it's so funny, it's always, like, undoing itself. There's this, you know, great passage in, uh, it's 1 Samuel 4. You know the story of the Israelites are fighting the Philistines, and they wanna go out to battle with the Philistines, and they're having problems. So they say, "Oh, you know, let's get the Ark of the Covenant because the Ark of the Covenant is the actual presence of God.
You know, if we just bring it into battle, we'll win." And the Philistines actually hear that the Israelites are gonna bring the Ark of the Covenant into battle, and they're, like, freaked out because, you know, a [00:30:00] god is in the camp, right?
Pete: Right.
Bill: And then the Israelites, you know, go into battle with the Ark of the Covenant, and they lose the Ark of the Covenant, right?
Right. And, this idea of controlling God, you know, in God's presence doesn't work. On the other hand, as soon as the Ark of the Covenant gets into the Philistine camp, then suddenly the presence of God is there, and, you know, the the Philistines are like, "Let's get rid of this thing," you know?
Pete: Yeah.
Bill: Um-
Pete: Right.
Bill: So they send it back. But it's really an interesting story in the way it reflects the desire to control God, you know and the divine presence, and the way the story undoes this in a very sophisticated way. And, the Ark never really loses its sense of metaphor for the presence of God.
Pete: Right. I mean, as you're talking, I keep thinking of Julius Wellhausen [00:31:00] and how the centralization of worship was a real negative thing that took away the spontaneity of the patriarchal period. You know, Abraham builds altars wherever he goes, it seems, and things were a lot looser and the bureaucracy hadn't taken over yet.
Um, that's an old view, and I think many scholars have serious problems with how that's phrased. But let me ask you anyway- I think I know the answer to this question from your point of view, but would you see Josiah's reform and the centralization of worship as not the best move the Israelites could have made?
Or is it just something that happened and this is the way civilizations go?
Bill: I would say that it's overrated, first of all. That's what I would say, you know, in the sense that [00:32:00] I don't think Josiah centralized religion to begin with. I think that the centralization of religion begins when Solomon builds a temple.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Bill: Right? That's the first beginning of it. There's a reform of Asa that probably has to do with centralization. There's great archeological evidence for a reform by Hezekiah-
Pete: Right ...
Bill: that was centralizing. I mean, the little temple shrine at Arad was destroyed or dismantled in the time of Hezekiah.
The horned altar that we know from Beersheba was dismantled in the time of Hezekiah.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Bill: There's a gate shrine at the city of Lachish. It's really well documented, and it was dismantled and defiled, so it couldn't be used. They put a... Actually, it's great. They put a toilet into the gate shrine, and they buried the toilet-
Pete: Yeah
Bill: in [00:33:00] the commode, right? In the gate shrine at Lachish during the time of Hezekiah. I think the, uh, temple at Motza was also dismantled in the time of Hezekiah. So, and the Hebrew Bible mentions in brief a reform of Hezekiah where he did, you know, something, and he also removed the Nehushtan, which was this bronze serpent that Moses had made, which is really interesting because, I mean, Moses made the damn thing, right? I mean, it's a sacred thing. And you're just destroying it now? But it illustrates how, um, religion can even how sacred things can become corrupt.
So I mean, I think Hezekiah moved in a lot of different ways to centralize religion
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Bill: And Josiah takes credit for it.
Pete: Right.
Bill: Um, [00:34:00] Josiah has another reform. I think Josiah's reform is more focused around the Holiness code, as opposed to the Book of Deuteronomy. And, I’m just developing an idea by Lauren Monroe.
She wrote a book on the Josianic reforms I think is the best book, where she argues in detail why she thinks the Holiness code is what's the main text. But Josiah's scribes are saying, "Hey, Hezekiah, we're doing it, too," right?
Yeah. So let's take credit for what Hezekiah did. Um, and they leave a little, you know, a couple verses about Hezekiah's reforms, but then they write two chapters on Josiah's reforms which is, it's, which pretty typical, you know? But- It's like the last president takes the positive things that happened and none of the negative [00:35:00] things.
Pete: Well, we're coming close to our time here. Uh, just a one side issue, you mentioned the Holiness code a couple of times. That's the second half of what is our Book of Leviticus.
Bill: Yes.
Pete: Right? So, that's a whole different area in terms of the history of understanding Josiah, but that's another podcast, too. We can't get into that.
Bill: That's a great topic.
Pete: Yeah, it is a great topic. It's throwing everything up in the air.
Bill: Yeah.
Pete: I think.
Bill: It's throwing up a lot in the air, but I think I make a pretty compelling case for it in this book, Locating God: A History of Israelite Religion. I think there are two reforms, religious reforms. Hezekiah's religious reforms are largely based on the Book of Deuteronomy, the core of Deuteronomy and Deuteronomic ideas, and Josiah's reforms are largely based on the Holiness code, which I think are related to the Am Ha'aretz, or the people of the land, [00:36:00] and their peripheral groups.
They're the elders. They're, you know, that come into Jerusalem after Sennacherib's invasions. Very interesting- Yeah, kind of yin and yang between these two reforms and they go in different directions, but that's a topic for another day.
Pete: It is. I mean, there's so many topics I can think of talking with you.
Bill: That's my plug for the book. You have to read the book.
Pete: I know. I will. Okay. So get off my back, Bill. Geez. All right. So just, uh, last question. It's sort of, you know, a practical question because people listen to this podcast, and they're trying to figure stuff out, and they like questions. They're fine with ambiguities and things like that.
But with all the stuff that you've done, what do you hope contemporary readers, whether they're lay readers or clergy or anything like that, what would you like them to sort of take away from this? You know, um, [00:37:00] what sort of reorientation maybe, um... How do we imagine God's presence today? I mean, how can this fit into some people who are just reading the Bible, hearing this, and saying, "This is interesting.
I wonder what the implications are for me and how I read this stuff"?
Bill: You know, I guess I would say two different things. On the one hand, I would say I want people to see the Bible as a book written and reflecting ancient Israel, like, the realia. This isn't, like... It's not some abstract thing that people talk about in offices. I mean, these are people, and they reflect the real things that were happening in their worlds, and them trying to work them out, you know?
Pete: Yeah.
Bill: And these questions like, "Where is God?" is not an easy question. It's a simple question. And, you know, sometimes people try to give you simple answers to these kind of questions. But I think the Bible, you know, points us [00:38:00] rather to the complex reality of the lives that we live. You know? And that's, in a sense, to me, it's really an authentic book. And so, for me, I want... I also am reflecting on sort of my own thinking about religion, and the problem of political centralization or orthodoxy, and also, you know, the advantages of orthodoxy.
It's nice to know the simple ideas. On the other hand, at some point, we look here, we start looking more closely and realizing, like, it's great to have the simple ideas, but the world is more complex.
Pete: Right.
Bill: And, I think, you know, it's not one or the other. You have to... I think we have to hold the two in tension.
I don't wanna get rid of the simplicity. Right. But, at some point, you know, it's more complex than that. And we, I [00:39:00] think, to grow and think more deeply, have to embrace the complexity and essentially the tension between these things.
Pete: Yeah. Can I say amen to that? I agree, and I think we try to do a lot of that here, too.
But, um, anyway, Bill, I appreciate you coming on again. This was a fun conversation, and we coulda kept going much longer. But it's, great to have you here.
Bill: We'll come on for the next book.
Pete: All righty. We'll do that. All right. See ya.
Bill: All right.
All right, bye-bye.
Pete: And now it's time for You Ask, Pete Answers
Rhonda: Hi, my name is Rhonda, and I'm new to the Bible for Normal People. And I'm sure that over the 10 years that y'all have covered the role of Satan over the generations and whether his role or relationship to God has changed and how it's [00:40:00] changed, how he's... And the difference between how we see him today and how they saw him then.
It seems like in some books he has a working relationship with God, and then in others he doesn't. So I was just wondering if you could, uh, give me some information that would help me with that. That's my question.
Pete: Well, thanks for the question, and you've actually asked a much bigger question than you might realize.
What happens with Satan between the Old and New Testaments? How we get from the Satan in Job, who seems to be working within God's heavenly court, to Satan as the great cosmic enemy of God in the New Testament, that's probably two podcasts at least. So I'm not going to try to solve the whole thing here.
Instead, I want to focus on one fascinating example where we may actually be able to see some of this development happening. And I say may because, as we'll see, scholars don't agree about what's happening here. The example is the story of [00:41:00] David taking a census of his fighting men. The story is told twice in the Bible: first in 2 Samuel 24, and then again in 1 Chronicles 21.
And the two versions begin very differently. Here's 2 Samuel 24:1. "Again, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them saying, 'Go count the people of Israel and Judah.'" God is angry with Israel, and God incites David to take a census. The census turns out to be a terrible idea.
David eventually realizes that he has sinned, and as a result, there is a plague in which 70,000 Israelites die. But notice the problem. Who got this whole thing started? God did. God incites David to do something that David later confesses as sinful, and for which 70,000 people wind up dead. That hardly seems fair.
Okay, now hold that thought, because centuries later, the author of Chronicles retells this story, [00:42:00] and here is how 1 Chronicles 21:1 begins. "Satan stood up against Israel and incited David to count Israel." What? Wait, uh, yeah. Samuel says God incited David. Chronicles says Satan incited David. So which is it?
And more importantly for this question, who exactly is this Satan? That is not nearly as obvious as our English Bibles can make it seem. The Hebrew word Satan, pronounced Satan, basically means an adversary or somebody who opposes. The Hebrew word itself is not a name meaning the devil. In fact, it can refer to perfectly ordinary human beings.
In 1 Kings 11, for example, two of Solomon's political enemies, Hadad the Edomite and Rezon, are both called Satans, adversaries, opponents. And here's where it gets really interesting. In Numbers chapter 22, the famous [00:43:00] story of Balaam the prophet, he's riding on his donkey when the angel of the Lord blocks his path.
And Numbers says that the angel stood there as a Satan to Balaam, as his adversary. So God's own angel can be Satan. That should immediately make us cautious about seeing the word Satan and thinking, "Oh, the devil." Elsewhere in the Old Testament, in Job and Zechariah, we meet the Satan, ha-Satan in Hebrew, the adversary, the accuser, and there he sounds something like a prosecuting attorney.
It seems to be more of a role or title than a personal name. But in 1 Chronicles 21, here's what makes it a little bit complicated. There is no word "the." It simply says Satan. And scholars have been arguing for quite a while about what Satan without “the” in front of it means. One possibility, and [00:44:00] probably the one most Christians assume, is that this is Satan with a capital S.
If we follow this reading, something significant has happened between Samuel and Chronicles. The older version says God incited David. The later writer perhaps finds that troubling and puts some distance between God and the sinful act. So God didn't incite David, Satan did. And if that is right, this could be one little snapshot of a much larger development in Jewish thinking about the Bible.
Because some earlier biblical texts are remarkably comfortable attributing troubling things directly to God that later Jews and Christians would instinctively associate with evil powers. For example, 1 Samuel 16 says that an evil spirit from the Lord tormented Saul. Not from Satan, from the Lord. In 1 Kings 22, the prophet Micaiah sees God sitting with the heavenly council trying to [00:45:00] figure out how to lure King Ahab into a battle where he will be killed.
One spirit volunteers to become a lying spirit in the mouths of Ahab's prophets, and God basically says, "Yeah, that'll work. Go do that." Again, that is not how most Christians today imagine the spiritual world. We tend to have two very clear columns. God, angels, truth, goodness on one side. Satan, demons, deception, evil over there.
But some of the older biblical material doesn't divide things up that neatly. God runs the entire show, the good, the bad, and the ugly. So one common explanation of 1 Chronicles 21 is that we're seeing Satan beginning to develop from a description, an adversary, toward the supernatural figure later Jews and Christians would call Satan with a capital S.
Perhaps this chronicler is putting some distance between God and the direct [00:46:00] cause of David's sinful action. Samuel says God did it. Chronicles says Satan did it. That is certainly possible, but, and this is where I want to ruin the explanation I just gave you, it is not the only way scholars understand the passage.
Some argue that Satan in 1 Chronicles 21 doesn't mean Satan at all. It simply means an adversary like it does elsewhere in the Old Testament. In that case, 1 Chronicles 21:1 would mean an adversary arose against Israel and incited David to take a census. Possibly a human adversary, another nation on the attack.
We know the word can mean that. The problem is that Chronicles never tells us who this mysterious adversary is, whether earthly or heavenly. But there is a third possibility that I find especially fascinating. Scholars including Paul Evans and Ryan Stokes have argued that the Satan in 1 Chronicles [00:47:00] 21 may be a heavenly adversary who actually works for God.
In other words, not yet Satan, God's cosmic enemy. Think back to Balaam. In Numbers 22, the angel of the Lord stands in Balaam's way as a Satan, and there is an interesting verbal connection. In Numbers, the angel stands in Balaam's or Balaam's way as a Satan. In Chronicles, Satan stands against Israel. And then keep reading 1 Chronicles 21.
Who shows up later in the story? The angel of the Lord. God sends the angel to bring the plague against Israel. David sees the angel standing between heaven and earth with a drawn sword stretched out over Jerusalem. So Stokes, in particular, asks whether the Satan at the beginning of the chapter might be connected to this divine executioner who appears later.
If so, the chronicler hasn't necessarily changed, "God did [00:48:00] it," into, "God's great cosmic enemy did it." The change might be more like this: Samuel says God did it directly, Chronicler says God's heavenly agent did it. God, divine agent to David. And if that's right, the Chronicler's Satan might actually be closer to the Satan we meet in Job.
Remember Job? The Satan shows up in God's heavenly court. He is certainly not a nice guy. He challenges Job's motives. He brings horrible suffering upon him, but he can't simply do whatever he wants. God authorizes what he does and sets the boundaries. So perhaps 1 Chronicles 21 isn't evidence that Satan, with a capital S, has already become the independent cosmic enemy of God.
Perhaps we're still in this older world where a Satan can be a heavenly agent performing some pretty unpleasant work within God's administration. And if you're thinking now, "Okay, Pete, so which one is it?" Well, [00:49:00] welcome to biblical scholarship. I don't think the text gives us enough information to settle the question with certainty.
It could be Satan emerging as a more independent supernatural adversary, it could mean simply an adversary, or it could be a supernatural adversarial figure still operating under God's authority. And if I had to take a side, I would lean toward that last option. But here's why any of this even matters.
The real question underneath 1 Chronicles 21 isn't simply, "Who is this Satan?" It's a much bigger question. If God is sovereign over everything, where does evil come from? Does God cause it? Does God authorize heavenly agents to do it? Can spiritual beings oppose God and act against God's purposes? The Bible doesn't give one neat, unchanging answer to these questions.
It preserves the wrestling, and that wrestling doesn't stop with Chronicles. During the Second Temple period, Jewish thinking about the spiritual [00:50:00] world becomes much more elaborate. Why? Well, that's another podcast episode. But one factor may actually be the theological pressure created by monotheism itself.
If there is only one God, and that God is both sovereign and good, how do you account for evil without making God its direct cause? Jewish writers increasingly spoke of an intermediary and sometimes rebellious spiritual being or beings, like fallen angels, evil spirits, Belial, Mastema, and Satan. Add centuries of foreign oppression and apocalyptic thinking, and by the New Testament, Satan has become something much closer to the figure Christians recognize, the great supernatural opponent of God's purposes.
That development wasn't a straight line, and different Jews told the story differently, but here's the point. We can't take the later picture of Satan and simply drop it back into every Old Testament passage where we see the Hebrew word [00:51:00] Satan. That makes the Bible tidier than it actually is. And I think the Samuel-Chronicles census story is such a fascinating example because we can see biblical writers wrestling with one of the oldest theological problems there is.
If God is in charge of everything, where does evil come from? And rather than giving us one answer, the Bible preserves the wrestling. Well, folks, thanks once again for tuning in, and I'll see you next time. Right, honest moment here, folks. We've been making this podcast for 10 years, and one thing that's hard is hearing from our listeners that they don't have anyone to talk to about it.
The podcast goes out to thousands of people, millions over the years, but then there isn't often a place to process and talk about it.
Jared: That's why we built the Society of Normal People, because we wanted there to be a place where the conversation doesn't just stop.
Pete: There are about 1,500 people in the Society already who didn't want the conversation to stop either.
We hope you'll join them.
Jared: The link is in our show notes, or go to [00:52:00] thebiblefornormalpeople.com/join.
