Transcription
Hey everybody, I'm Dan Mlelen, and I'm Dan Beecher. And you are listening to the Data Overdogma podcast, where we try to increase the public's access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and combat the spread of misinformation about the same.
We're going to pull one from the Exodus, uh, because, uh, we, we like to keep things topical here. And we're going to go to Exodus chapter 22, uh, which is part of what's known as the Covenant Code. Which, >> yeah, I wanted to, I wanted to start by saying that like this is, I, I was sort of like looking over this and reading through it and I went back a couple chapters and realized that two chapters before, >> it starts with what, what we call the Ten Commandments. >> Yeah. >> But like the book itself doesn't say Ten Commandments. It just starts listing rules and then you go to the next chapter and there's way, way, way more rules and then you go to the next chapter and it's all laws. It should be like the 97 commandments or something like that because it just keeps going and going and going and it gets >> minutely specific in some cases. >> Yeah. Yeah. And and there's a lot of repetition as well. There are over 600 commandments according to the traditional uh enumeration of of the commandments within Judaism. But just within the book of Exodus, we actually have several different layers of collections of commandments. And that's and that's ignoring that we also have another set of commandments in Deuteronomy. And we have other sets of commandments in Leviticus. >> Yeah, we're going to have to do a just a Ten Commandments question mark. >> Oh yeah, 'cause we've got, we've got at least three different iterations of the Ten Commandments and they are not all the same. And not only that, like they're, they're not broken out easily in the text as like there are different ways to count them >> discrete commandment. Yeah. >> Yeah. There are different ways to count the Ten Commandments. Uh, just in Exodus 20. Uh, Exodus 36 is actually the only place where it says it calls them the 10 words um in Exodus 36. And that's the closest we get to the label Ten Commandments, which is then transferred to Exodus 20 because Exodus 36 is primarily about festivals and rituals and things like that. It's not your your set of uh moral laws. But we digress.
So back to back to Exodus 22, which >> is is that that's what we're on, right? >> Yes. Exodus 22. So this is part of the Covenant Code, which scholars identify as probably the earliest layer of legislation that is found in the book of Exodus. So this is something that's coming from maybe 10th, probably more likely 9th or 8th century BCE, and it's being incorporated into this growing narrative. Uh, and so these are the earliest um layers of legislation. And in verse 29, and in if you're looking in the Hebrew, um, it is uh actually verse 28, but in virtually all English translations, it's verse 29. Uh, we have this statement, and I'll read it in the KJV just for those who um, who are nasty. Uh, "Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits and of thy liquors." So, we're talking about offerings, sacrifices, uh, colon, "the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me." And then I'm, I'm going to briefly go into verse 30. "Likewise shalt thou do with thine oxen, and with thy sheep. Seven days it shall be with his dam. On the eighth day, thou shalt give it to me."
>> Yikes. Yikes indeed. >> I'm that that is, I mean, if I'm reading that correctly, they just chucked something in there in the middle because like this whole chapter has been about like what you do if someone steals an ax and what you, you know, how how all of this happens. It's about like livestock and stuff and then this starts with with uh with sacrifices and then just in the middle there, they're like, "And your sons, your firstborn sons." It cannot mean what it seems to mean, can it?
>> Well, that's uh that's the argument that a lot of folks make. Uh, to begin with, we don't have the the traditional word for sacrifice here. Uh, we have this verb natan, which means to give. Uh, "you will give it to me." And so some people are are arguing that that has a different, that's got to have a different nuance here. Like, give to me in the sense of turn them over to priesthood service. So like what we see uh at the beginning of Samuel with Samuel's mother promising to give Samuel to the priesthood um if she is able to conceive a son.
>> I think I can see where that argument might fall down though because uh generally speaking, this is just a guess. I don't think that the God of Israel wants people to give the firstborn of their sheep and oxen into priesthood.
>> Ding-ding. So, the very next verse complicates that because uh and in the Hebrew it says um uh which means "thus you will do." In other words, do the same thing with your oxen and with your sheep. And then it repeats the the verb natan at the very end. On the eighth day, you will give it to me. Uh, so yeah, that's natan tnoli. So you will give it to me. So um, that is very clearly a reference to sacrifice. And so given that verse 30 is referencing is referring back to it's resuming the verb at the end of verse 29, we should understand them to be um employed with the same sense, with the same nuance, which would indicate sacrifice. Um, and there is another passage in the Hebrew Bible that I and many others um argue is another biblical author interpreting this passage in precisely that way. Um, so that is uh in the book of Ezekiel and it is uh Ezekiel chapter 20 and it's verses uh 25 and 26. And here we have Ezekiel is uh going off about how you're not um the the Israelites were not living up to they were given laws, they were not living up to them. And then um and then we have in verse 25 and uh I'll go from the KJV again just just for fun. "Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good and judgments whereby they should not live." And this is actually contrasting um the statutes and judgments that God is talking about having given at Si says, "You will live by them." And so here he's saying, "I gave them also statutes and judgments whereby they should not live," and "I polluted them in their own gifts in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb that I might make them desolate to the end that they might know that I am the Lord." And this phrase "pass through the fire" is a uh a colloquialism that refers to child sacrifice, offering children as burnt offerings. Uh, and so Ezekiel here is it looks like Ezekiel is looking back at Exodus 22:29 and trying to explain why we seem to have this commandment to sacrifice children in the Covenant Code. And Ezekiel's explanation seems to be, "I gave you laws, uh, but you were too busy worrying, trying to live by the laws of of your forefathers, your ancestors. Uh, and so I said, great, let's do that. And the point was to desolate you and to show you who was boss."
>> Okay? >> And and so Ezekiel's kind of saying, "I gave you some good laws. You decided you didn't like them. I gave you some bad laws um just to uh show you who's boss." And and there are are scholars who have gone to great lengths to try to reinterpret this as referring to something else. Like uh one popular argument is that the laws that were not good is a reference to the Deuteronomistic laws. We talked about how we got the ones in Exodus and we got the ones in Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic ones are from later. And so it's talking about how those were the ones that these authors didn't like and >> Oh, interesting. >> But but it's not a strong case. It rests on uh a very thin argument that when they refer to statutes and judgments here, they must be referring some to something other than actual thou shalt and thou shalt not commandments. But uh we see earlier in this chapter in verse uh 18 um "I said unto their children in the wilderness, walk ye not in the statutes of your fathers, neither observe their judgments, nor defile yourselves with their idols." So the reference to statutes and and judgments is um looking back at the way they um like Joshua says, uh "Are you going to follow the gods of your fathers on the other side of the river or the flood or whatever, or are you going to follow after Adonai?" They kept returning to their ancestors' gods, which resulted in all this stuff. So so Ezekiel is understanding Exodus 22:29 to refer to child sacrifice. But we have other approaches to this as well. In Exodus 13, for instance, we have uh a reference to this idea of uh giving the firstborn, but it supersedes that with a commandment to redeem the firstborn. So, it's it's an odd way to think about this. Uh, like you're supposed to redeem your child so that it does not get sacrificed. It's like, why not just not have the commandment to sacrifice them in the first place? Uh, I mean, if if the point is, you know, we need a little, we need some some walking around money if you have a baby, just say, "Hey, you have a kid. Pay a little bit of money as an offering to God as a thank you for allowing us to have a healthy healthy child." No need to say, "Well, what if we required they sacrifice the baby and then at the last second we pull it back and we say, 'No, we just want some money from you.'"
>> Um, >> I mean, there is one example of that uh that that yanking it back in. Yeah. That jumps immediately to mind, but >> yes, >> it does seem like a bad system, especially if you're going to apply it sort of across the board.
>> Yeah. And yet it is so firmly embedded in in the kind of ideological historical foundations of both ancient Judaism and Christianity. The idea that a child uh that child sacrifice is somehow baked into these traditions with um uh we have Isaac and Abraham. Abraham didn't seem like this was too much of a shock.
>> Uh he kind he kind of just goes shrugs and goes along with it to some extent. He uh really took it in stride. Um and but then says, you know, "God will provide." And then we have the uh the substitution for uh Isaac is is offered. And then there is Jesus who is uh offered in sacrifice in in one um interpretation of the significance of that story. And that's one where uh God does not provide, so to speak. There's one interpretation is that Jesus is the the the lamb that is provided so that the rest of humanity doesn't have to uh not be sacrificed, but at least uh suffer in sin and die and and be punished for eternity.
>> Yeah. And there's >> back but back in Exodus 22, that's that's still centuries away. We're >> Yeah. So >> yeah, there and there's a, there's a great book called "The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son" by uh a great scholar named John D. Levenson, subtitle is "The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity," which talks about the role of child sacrifice in these traditions. So that's uh that's an older book. I think it's uh 30 years old by now, from 1993. But if anyone's interested in in a a wonderful discussion of the fact that child sacrifice seems baked into these traditions, I would highly recommend that one. I'm just, I'm sorry, I am still reeling about just the just that initial uh Exodus commandment to uh to sacrifice your firstborn son >> right >> to God. >> Because there's no indication that it doesn't that it applies only to one small class of the people, right? There's, it, I'm looking at it. I looked for a while trying to figure if this, this was just like only the the priests would have to sacrifice their firstborn, or only this group or the elite of of some sort, but it seems like it's a blanket statement that's supposed to be about everybody. Am I wrong on that? What am I?
>> No, no, it's uh it's pretty straightforward. This is uh commandments to the Israelite people and it's embedded right within these other commandments about, you know, bringing your, excuse me, bring in your oxen and your sheep and and everything like that. So yeah, there's no indication that this is kind of an isolated, only for uh for these people over here commandment. However, it, it seems very likely two things. One, we have we have no material remains that attest directly to any child sacrifice in ancient Israel.
>> Okay. >> Um, and two, it seems like based on the literature around it that this was very quickly reinterpreted, renegotiated in another direction. Um,
>> Yeah, it doesn't it doesn't seem like it would be good for a society if every firstborn son of that society had to be, you know, chucked.
>> And and but this this raises another interesting observation. There is a related society where we do have a lot of direct physical evidence of child sacrifice. So um in northern Africa, in Carthage, we have a Punic Phoenician settlement and there is an area that uh is being, it is frequently referred to as a Tophet, which is the name of an area in Jerusalem where child sacrifice were child sacrifices were rumored to have happened. And so this uh area in Carthage is is being referred to as a toph. They have found over a thousand burials of infant remains. And scholars have argued for a while, well, this is this must be uh funerary. They're just, these are infants that died in childbirth or shortly thereafter, which is something that was was even more common anciently than it is now. Far more common anciently. Um, but uh many of these burials one show indication of having been burnt and two come with inscriptions that talk that refer to these things as offerings and as things that are being given to a deity. Sometimes this deity is Baal, sometimes it is other deities. And there's an interesting word that is included that seems to identify the specific type of offering that it is. And um in this language, this Phoenician Punic language, very closely related to Hebrew, they did not use vowels. So the consonants are MLK, which many scholars think is the Phoenician Punic version of what we would pronounce Molech from the Hebrew Bible. Now, traditionally, that's been understood as the name of a deity in the Hebrew Bible. And we've talked about this uh to some degree in the past that this was this was some god of child sacrifice. Sometimes it's identified with Baal. Uh >> Everybody who's upset about Hollywood right now uh refers to them uh you know uh worshiping Baal and Molech. Um, but based on these inscriptions at Carthage, it talks about how this this infant is a is a MLK Thor Baal, where the usage indicates that word is a noun. That word is a is a category of offering or sacrifice.
>> Okay, that's interesting. >> Yeah. Uh, so there was a scholar named Otto Eissfeldt who back in 1935 argued that based on on these inscriptions, if they are relevant to the the Hebrew Bible's discussions of of child sacrifice and this Molech figure, we probably need to reinterpret that word Molech as a reference not to a deity but to a type of sacrifice. Uh, and so I, the tide has over the last almost hundred years, the consensus has been shifting uh in the direction of understanding this as uh a reference to a type of sacrifice. And I would say the balance is probably beginning to favor that. >> That it's not yet an overwhelming consensus, but in the publications that I've seen over the last 10 years or so, scholars increasingly are favoring that understanding. And a wonderful book if uh if anyone is interested in looking into this, and I think we've recommended it before on the podcast, is uh uh Heath D. If anyone is interested in looking into this, and I think we've recommended it before on the podcast, is uh uh Heath Durell uh "Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel," where he goes into great detail about these things. So what this would mean is that there was no deity named Molech, but there are references in the Hebrew Bible to children being offered as this specific type of Molech offering. Uh, which is which is pretty horrifying. But one thing that scholars who are looking into the child sacrifice that went on in Carthage are commenting on is that if they believed that these sacrifices would bless them in the future uh in a world where um polygamy was common and where pregnant women were spent most of their their time pregnant, if you gave up the first in the uh expecting that that would mean you would have more successful and more um pregnancies and and births in the future, that would not seem to be such an enormous sacrifice. And and they also talk about how in the literature and in the way children are are conceptualized in this time period, because infant mortality was so high, there was not as strong a connection between the parent and the child until it had survived for a couple of months and seemed like it had a chance of of making it into childhood, if not into adulthood. And so this is not to say they didn't care about their kids back then, but it's to say when they're weighing their their family's survival and the odds of children surviving, the notion that sacrificing a child as a way to try to increase the odds that we'll have uh more healthy children in the future was not as horrifying to them as it would be to us.
>> That makes sense to me. I, that, I, you know, I've often thought that even up until fairly recently in our own history uh infant mortality was just a fact of life and it was just something that that people had to deal with very regularly and they must have had psychologically a very different approach to it than we have.
>> Yeah. Yeah. If it was it was probably over 50% back then. So if you were hope, you know, if we are hoping to have four or six pregnancies, maybe we're lucky if two or three of them actually survive in into adulthood. And so taking one of those and saying, "We're going to do this ourselves so that maybe the deity, whoever it is, will allow more to survive in the future." That was a that was a calculation that um very clearly was made and at least by people in Carthage. Isn't there uh somewhere in I think the Exodus laws there or maybe oh maybe it's maybe it's in Numbers that I'm thinking of, but are there is some discussion somewhere of sort of a baby not really becoming a a person almost until X amount of time in after its after its birth? I'm not, I'm not getting to this correctly and I'm not >> this this is something I've I've uh talked about in the past and particularly in within discussions about the morality of abortion and things like that.
>> The the child was not considered to to be a person until they they drew first breath. That's when life begins within the um the ideologies of the societies that produce the Hebrew Bible. But yeah, there there is indication and I don't think it's in the Bible. I think it's uh it's in some of the extra-biblical early Jewish literature where like full personhood was it was um, you know, it was a spectrum, but full personhood was really something that was achieved a couple months after, >> right? >> um, just when you were through that window of greatest threat to the life uh of the infant, that was when they were probably not considered as uh fully a person as uh as they were a little later down the road. And and I know it sounds kind of callous to talk about children in this way and to talk about the way parents are are thinking about their children, but these are just as as I think you called them, just kind of um psychological ways to deal with the stresses of the reality of survival in this time period. This was just a way to minimize the the trauma uh of the inevitability of losing children uh in this time period. And so it's uh it's not fun to talk about, but um it is something that I I think people need to understand as they look at uh texts like Exodus 22:29, that it's it's not justifying it, it's explaining it. It's saying this, this is not something that would that you know, just could not be possible in this time period. It absolutely was possible in this time period. We have evidence that societies did precisely this on a large scale. And so there's no reason to say we can't that this is not possible for the societies that produced the Hebrew Bible. And at the same time, we have no indication that despite even though that law is there, we have no indication it was ever enforced or that anyone in Israel ever engaged in that. In fact, there's a good argument to make that this legislation was not widely known, was not widely enforced until we get down to around the 2nd century BCE. Although it seems unlikely to me that it would make it this far to us, like that this law, that this, that this uh commandment would have been recorded enough that it got all the way to us without some of the people actually doing it. It seems almost impossible that it would never have happened.
>> It's it, well, it depends on how quickly it was reinterpreted. And this is something that I talk about in my in my um 2022 book, "Adonized Divine Images," is that if there is ambiguity in um a term or in legislation or something like that, a lot of times it sticks around precisely because it is easily reread. And so things that we look at today, we're like, "How on earth could Psalm 82 or some of these other passages, how on earth could they have been preserved for thousands of years and people have considered them inspired and and a part of their authoritative literature?" And it's like, if you have a a way to kind of influence a reinterpretation of that verse to go from theologically problematic to theologically not problematic, that's all it needs. And then every other generation after it is like, "Oh, yeah, that's not a problem."
>> Um, and so I, I don't know if if anyone ever did it. I, I think it's plausible that this happened for a time anciently, but we don't have any direct evidence of it. And and another example of something that is a that is a piece of legislation and we don't know if it ever happened is um uh the sot Numbers five, the ordeal of the woman suspected of adultery. That's that's something where we see like rabbis debating about whether or not it's appropriate to involve a pregnant woman and all this kind of stuff, but we have no indication anyone ever did this, that anyone was ever put through this ordeal. Um, but it served a rhetorical function in its place in the literature uh in which it was embedded and and maybe that's why it's there, to serve a rhetorical function, not necessarily something that was expected to be carried out.
Well, one thing I can say with absolute certainty, I feel positive that uh that I am in the clear to say this even biblically. Um uh don't follow this particular commandment uh ever for any reason. Do you do not need to sacrifice even even your livestock. Don't you don't even have to do that. But definitely don't uh sacrifice your own firstborn sons. Leave them alone. They're fine.
>> Yeah. There there's a theory of ritual that that um categorizes ritual as things that are what they call causally opaque. What that means is that there is no clear connection between the action and whatever the desired outcome is. And ritual and sacrifice is an example of this. We don't really have a way to show there's any connection between sacrificing animals and anything good happening. Um, but you know, and and this extends beyond the religious sphere into what we would consider the secular world. There are all kinds of different rituals that we engage in socially on a day-to-day basis because there are ways to show others that you know the rules. You're an upstanding member of society. You can be trusted. You're a good person. There are a bunch of different ways we engage in rituals to do that. But according to to ritual theory, there, these are things that are causally opaque. And so I would say that this is one that is not only causally opaque but objectively harmful. And um
>> Yeah, I think I think you're in the clear on that. I I don't think many people will argue with you over that.
>> So if if anyone is under the misapprehension that we are claiming this is something we should be reinstituting, I don't think they understand our podcast very well.
>> And I think it's okay to. Yeah. Even if it is in the Bible, I think uh I mean, this is just another example of like one of the things that you're not, like nobody thinks that you should do this. So anyone who says, "I obey all of the laws of the Bible," >> is a pretty good one to just point out and say, "Yeah, you don't."
>> And and as I, I've said many times on um on different social media channels, >> nothing is non-negotiable in the Bible, >> right? Everything is negotiable and everyone has negotiated things and this is just an example. Everybody renegotiates this because nobody thinks this is something that is one, of God, two, has any value to us today. Uh, and so yeah, >> so if someone gets legalistic with you about like, ah, you know, you, your, your view on X, Y, or Z is non-biblical and therefore blah, blah, blah, you, you just ask them when how they how they did sacrificing their firstborn. >> That it's it's pretty low-hanging fruit. But but yes, anytime someone like this is the word of God, you got to do it. It's like, what do you think about this um, that's always something that that will have been renegotiated away. But I think the case is strong. It, it, I would call it the academic consensus, even though it's probably pretty close. That's uh this was originally a commandment for Israelites to sacrifice their firstborn children and specifically their firstborn sons. Yes, >> that's Yeah, that's rough. Uh, but there you go. It's it's it's there in black and white on the papyrus. There's nothing we can do about it at this point.
Well, uh thanks, thanks for that, Dan. Uh, what a horrifying uh little thing, little jaunt into into the laws. Uh, if you friends at home listening, viewing us uh on the YouTubes or in your in your various podcasters, if you would like to become a part of making this show go, please feel free to become one of our patrons over on patreon.com/dataoverdogma. If you'd like to write into us about anything, you can reach us at contact@dataoverdogmapod.com. And uh we'll talk to you again next week.
>> Bye everybody. Hope you have a good week.