Lord of Spirits - The Gods of Gerizim [Ep. 140]

righteous with which for them to stand [music] and not to fall. And he will be the light of the nations and the hope of those whose hearts are troubled. All who dwell on the earth will fall down [music] and worship him. And they will praise and bless and celebrate with song [music] the Lord of spirits. 1 Enoch 48:es 4-5.

The modern world doesn't acknowledge but is nevertheless haunted by spirits, angels, demons, [music] and saints. In our time, many yearn to break free of the prison of a flat [music] secular materialism to see and to know reality as it truly is. What is this spiritual reality like? How do we engage with it well? How do we permeate everyday life with spiritual presence? Orthodox Christian priests Father Andrew Steven Damik and Father Steven D. Young host this live call-in show focused on enchantment in creation. The union of the seen and unseen as made by God and [music] experienced by mankind throughout history. Welcome to the Lord of Spirits.

Hey, greetings dragon slayers and giant killers. You are listening to the 140th episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast. I'm Father Andrew Steven Damon coming to you from Three Martyr Studio in Raleigh, North Kakilaki. And with me is Father Steven D. waste deep waste deep in the swamps of Lafayette, Louisiana. And we are indeed live and uh that means that Mike Hassan Dan will be taking your calls starting in the second half.

Now I have to you had that lead in again.

>> Uh huh.

And uh I know you probably don't have time to listen to a lot of stuff since you're now on staff at a southern mega church. Um [laughter]

>> no lies detected as the kids say these days.

>> But uh [clears throat] but uh and so you probably just heard that little bit right before we went live. But I'm familiar with that talk.

>> Do you know that person who who who let us in? You know what he had the unmititigated Gaul to say in that talk?

>> No. What did he say?

>> He said that you should not publicly speak out and cause dissension against the spiritual authorities God has put over you. What kind of nightmarish clericalism is this? [laughter]

>> How how dare he say such a completely ridiculous and uncchristian, unbiblical, unorthodox thing. What unmititigated Gaul?

>> Let me just say.

>> Yeah.

>> Okay. Go on. Go ahead.

>> Yeah. Anyway, well, tonight uh we are going to be discussing a group that anyone who's read the Bible has heard of, and that's the Samaritans. So, probably have some sense from the Gospels that Jews and Samaritans don't get didn't get along. I don't actually I don't know much about the relationship these days. Uh but where did these people come from? What was their religion actually like? And what does does Samaria mean anything within the Christian tradition um large at large? So why don't we start with some historical framing father in case people don't know about the whole >> north side southside thing in >> they probably know there's at least one good one. [laughter]

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

>> Right. Um, and uh, he's and and if you're old enough, you remember him smiling at you from the back of RVs when you're on road trips across America with a little halo over his head.

>> Oh, yeah. Oh, man. That is a ancient deep cut right there.

>> There you go. So, uh, [gasps] but yeah, we're not talking about that guy per se. Um although you know if you're into the RV lifestyle, you are welcome amongst our listeners. You've probably heard every episode, right? You've got some time. [laughter] Uh but uh yeah, we're going to talk about the Samaritans and uh we we've got a bit of a a cotton eye Joe thing going here. Where did you come from? Where did you go? Right. Uh and uh there's several places we could start, right? And we are going to loop around a little bit, right? We could we could start with the tribes. We could start with the patriarchs who the fathers of the tribes. We're gonna we're going to loop back there, but we're going to start with sort of our historical survey in terms of where where did the how did there come to be a Samaria and Samaritans uh with a little bit of history of what happens when uh the kingdom divides. The kingdom being the kingdom of Israel. Um, we have to remember that in terms of being a kingdom, as we've said before, we've gone over the timeline and the reason we reiterate this is that I think a lot of people have an exaggerated timeline in their heads, right? So in terms of there being a king of Israel collectively, right, of all over all the tribes, uh if we are generish generous and include Saul.

>> Yeah.

>> And as we said before on the show, Saul was less of a king and more of a war leader. He was basically there to lead the armies of the 12 tribes into battle. Uh he did not have a capital city.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. He did not have like a bureaucracy or anything, right? And a court and all of these kinds of things that we associate with being a king and ruling a kingdom. But we'll be generous and include him. You're looking at a little over a hundred years.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> of an actual united kingdom of all 12 tribes.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Cuz I mean I think people have this idea that like

>> you know thousands of years or something like that like that there was this you know that that that the land of Canaan after it was conquered was this Israelite kingdom for at least centuries upon centuries and then some point then the Romans took it.

>> Right. Right. And so and this is that number that number is also based on us being people who believe the Bible is true. Right. So you go and ask a secular Old Testament scholar, they're going to tell you David never existed and Saul never existed.

>> Right. Right.

>> Right. And they're going to tell you, you know, there never really really truly was a United Kingdom at all ever. Right. Um, but we believe the Bible's true. So, not going to spend a lot of time arguing about the date of the Exodus because it bores me. But regardless of whether you go for the the early date, the late date, the even earlier date, right? Where you peg the Exodus doesn't totally matter because basically that's an argument about how when the Exodus happened, when the conquest happened, and then how long the period of the judges was. because we have a pretty good peg date for where Saul and David and Solomon would be. Okay? And so we're talking about the very end of the 11th century BC would be where you get Saul and by the end of the 10th century BC the kingdoms have split.

>> Okay. So that's if you want to know where that roughly 100 year and 100 years is being generous again you want to know what h 100red years that is that's what h 100red years that is okay um that's when we're talking about uh in time and if you read the story of especially David closely right because Saul never tried it's not that Saul tried to establish a capital city in your bureaucracy and stuff and failed he never tried

>> yeah well I mean he was fulfilling what it is that the Israelites said that they wanted They wanted a king that would lead them out and, you know, bring them back in or whatever, which is a war leader. That's what they were looking for,

>> right? And so that's what he was doing. And that's why every time we meet him, he's in a war camp, right? Whether it's going up against the Philistines, whether it's right, the Amalocites,

>> right? He's that's what he's doing. Um, so he never tried. So it it would have been I mean in in a hypothetical world where Saul didn't apostatize so horribly, right? It would have been presumably Jonathan would have become king and he would have done those things, right?

>> Uh but that's not the real world. So it it's David who does those things. And as you read the story of David and he's and he frankly struggles to do those things, um you can already see during David's reign that uh there are these tensions between north and south, between the northern tribes that will become the northern kingdom and Judah and Benjamin and some of the Levites who are at the temple who will become Judah, right? And this to the point that remember David is made king of Judah before he's made king of all Israel. The story of David there are two separate coronations. He's made king of Judah. And then he has a rival, one of the sons of Saul, who's basically being propped up as the next king in the north. That gets resolved and then David is made king of everything. But that so that tension is already there. And if you know anything about US history, you can see a parallel kind of thing. Of course, we know about the northern states and the southern states going to war in the American Civil War, right in the 1860s. But before that, right, from from 1776 on until the Civil War, there are constant tensions between North and South, right? Part of the reason Washington DC gets built as a new capital is because it's right on the border between the North and the South,

>> right? That's why they picked that cuz the southern states were mad about Philadelphia being the capital, right? Um, so there are already these tensions, right? They're all there's already they're they're they're unified but not tightly, right? And David is just beginning to set up. He starts the process. He I mean he captures the city of Jerusalem and makes it his capital. Okay? Didn't build a palace for himself because he didn't want to do that until he had built a temple and God didn't let him build a temple. So there's only a temple and a palace in Jerusalem when Solomon builds them.

>> Mhm.

>> Right. So David is really beginning the process. Solomon really starts to do that. But part of the problem with Solomon's sin when you read about it in First Kings uh is the way he's going about doing that. So if you ask someone who's gotten the Sunday school version, right, you get, you know, Solomon had a thousand wives, right? 300 wives, 700 concubines,

>> right? And the problem is that he was sexually immoral.

>> Yeah.

>> Is usually how it is kind of presented, right?

>> Yeah.

>> And but biblically, I mean, that's true, right? And he's violating the the commandment in Deuteronomy that says the king is not to multiply wives to himself, which a thousand. Yeah, you're [laughter] um so uh that is a problem, but that's not the main problem. The main problem, Solomon's main sin that gets the kingdom taken away from him or most of it is the fact that uh he was getting those wives. It wasn't just he was walking around the streets of Jerusalem and kept noticing pretty girls, right? It was [laughter] he was he was making these treaty deals. He was making these international agreements.

>> Yeah.

>> with his pagan neighboring nations to solidify rule within Israel, right? And in so doing, the way those international deals were sealed was by the daughter, one of the daughters of that king becoming a wife of Solomon.

>> Yeah. And then after that happened, right, that wife would come to live in Jerusalem with Solomon. And oh, she would want to open a nice cultural center [laughter] in Jerusalem, aka a temple for a few of the pagan gods that she worshiped back home.

>> And I mean, you know, Solomon put even some of them inside the temple to Yes. Yahweh, the God of Israel.

>> Yes. Yes. We're told later on because Josiah destroys it that Solomon had a chariot idol to the sun god that had been worshiped in Jerusalem before David took it

>> in the temple courts.

>> Yep.

>> Yeah. She uh Sedakica. Uh so yeah so it was what's going on in the text is that this comparison uh is being made between Solomon's sexual promiscuity and his spiritual promiscuity. Right? That that's what's at play sort of in the text. That's Solomon's sin, right? And that's also the play that's going on with that is the foolishness of the wisest man in the world, right? Uh so there are several of these contradictions at play in the story of of Solomon, right? And uh sort of paradox, he's a paradoxical kind of figure. Um, and so that situation is what results in authority over the northern tribes being stripped away from him, right? And let's go a little further, right? uh what we're really seeing in the text because first and 2 Kings are written long after all of this happened.

>> Yes.

>> Or third and fourth kingdoms. Yeah. Third and fourth kingdoms in the Orthodox Study Bible.

>> They're written in retrospect, right? They weren't being written like as the things happened, right? [laughter] Like we needed to do. This is not a a chronicle in in the normal sense of a chronicle like and then and then this year this is the stuff that happened and then this year this is the stuff that happened

>> now that existed right and you know how

>> it's referenced in the text it's referenc first and second kings third fourth kingdoms keeps referring to as to all the other stuff this king did is it not in the annals of the kings of Israel right

>> yeah which we don't have those unfortunately and the books of chronicles are not are not those

>> but the point being you know the king the king is doing fine on bragging about his accomplishments. We will leave that to him, [laughter]

>> right? The the biblical text is here to tell us something else about these figures, right? Uh not just to boast in their accomplishments. So, um this is reading from the perspective. So, this is someone who's living in exile. uh first and second kings third and fourth kingdom seems to very clearly be written by someone who's in exile before the return from exile. Um, because there are a bunch of places, one of which we're going to read a little later tonight, where the author keeps saying until this very day.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

>> Right. He'll describe something and say, "And it's this way to this very day." Well, that implies he's writing it at some distance in the future from the event. Right? Otherwise, saying until this very day doesn't make a lot of sense, right? If I say, "Yesterday, I made a bank deposit and that money is in my account to this very day." Right? You'd be like, "What?" Like,

>> uh, so um, right? So, there's there's some expansive time. And so this is why it's called part of the Deuteronomistic history when we're when we're describing this part of the Old Testament is that the author is looking back at the history of Israel, right? Leading up to its, you know, the destruction of the northern kingdom and the exile of the southern kingdom. And he is interpreting it. He's explaining why things unfolded the way they did. and his basis sort of his interpretive lens is the book of Deuteronomy. So for example he sees in the book of Deuteronomy kings are not to multiply wives to themselves.

>> Yeah they're not

>> despite what people say

>> despite what some people say that God was totally cool with polygamy or something like that. [laughter]

>> It's explicitly against the Torah.

>> Yeah. and you're not to make these foreign agreements and you're not to build shrines to foreign gods and you're not to right and he sees all of these things. And so as he looks back, he says, "Wow, the kingdom of Israel as a whole fell apart very quickly." Right? Almost as soon as it was beginning, it all fell apart. Why is that? Well, he looks Well, Solomon did all of these wicked things, [laughter] right? according to the Torah, according to the book of Deuteronomy, right? And so this was God's judgment, right? This was God's judgment. And the reason I want to phrase it that way is that uh part of what the scriptures do, right? When you're reading a historical book in the Old Testament, it's not just communicating historical facts or even just communicating a certain uh take on historical facts, but it's also modeling for us how we should interpret and understand history. Both events happening in the world and events in our own lives, right? And there are lots of examples of this. The one I point to all the time in terms of someone using this example is if you read the monastic sources and stuff about the fall of Constantinople in 1453, they all say the same thing. They say, "Well, the bishops and the last emperor and stuff had had agreed to this union with Rome, this false union with Rome."

>> Yeah. Yeah. Right. I mean like the the faithless like the laments there are for instance there are laments written for the fall of Constantinople

>> and it's basically about we have sinned we need to repent. This happened to us because of our sins.

>> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And more recently after the fall of communism, the Russian people had long periods of public collective repentance over what had happened to the Zars. They weren't alive. Most of the people directly involved were not alive. People who were still alive were children when the Bulvic revolution happened.

>> Right? It was 75 years later, right? But that's how they interpreted history. So just a a note here as we're going through this and we're going to see this a lot. We're going to see that what we get in from the scriptures about this history, the history of Samaria that we're talking about tonight and whatever other history we want to talk about is also a model for us of how to interpret and understand events. Right? So judgment is coming down right for for Solomon. And so uh Solomon retains the title king of Judah and successfully passes it on to his son Rehab. Um, which is that first coronation that David had. But that second coronation never ends up happening. uh and rather God sends a prophet to somebody we've talked about in a previous episode. Jeroboam, son of Nebat, uh who is is not a good guy.

>> Yeah. I mean, he gets a sin named after him.

>> Yes. [laughter]

>> One thing you should get out of these texts is, you know, don't don't get a sin named after you.

>> Like like the the quest to commit a truly original sin

>> should not be one that you're on.

>> Yes. So, like biblically, there aren't even that many biblical examples of this.

>> No,

>> there's the sins of Jerobom, the son of Nebat, and and the sins of Balum

>> that I can think of off the top of my head.

>> Baum, son of Bor.

>> Uh, could make an argument for Jezebel. That's a little But even that, that's a little strained.

>> Uh, so yeah. Yeah, you got to really really mess up to get a sin named after you in the Bible. Um, but so Jeroboam when you first meet him in the text, it doesn't look like it's going to be so bad, right? It's, you know, hey, there's going to be this judgment on Solomon, but the prophet of God says to Jeroboam, uh, he's he's going to remain the king of Judah and Benjamin, because of what he what God had sworn to David, his father. Um, and so the Davidic line is going to remain in Judah. But he makes the same offer to Jeroboam.

>> Yeah. He says, Uh I I was just say I think it's worth pointing out by the way that just because God makes this kind of offer to someone and even says he's going to bless them

>> does not mean they're a good guy.

>> Yes.

>> Does not make them

>> It's conditional.

>> Yeah. [clears throat]

>> It's conditional.

>> He says at the time, right? He says, "If you, like my servant David, keep all of my commandments and walk in all of my ways, then I will bless you as I blessed him, and a child of your loins will sit on your throne forever." Right? Uh so when that doesn't happen, it's not because God didn't keep his promise. It's because Jeroboam, right, didn't fulfill the condition. [clears throat] But it's worth noting. I know we we've we've touched on this at least briefly in the past, but it's worth noting David, who kept all of God's commandments and walked in all his ways, except for the whole, you know, murdering a guy to cover up the fact that he got his wife pregnant. Yeah.

>> Right. And this is something we've pointed out, but it's worth pointing out here too because of Jeroboam, right? So, this isn't saying this isn't God setting a a bar that's impossible for Jeroboam to meet.

>> Yeah.

>> You know, oh yeah, I'll I'll uh I'll establish your dynasty, Jeroboam, assuming you could be perfectly sinless for the rest of your life,

>> right? [laughter]

>> No, he just has to do like David. He has to do like David and repent when he sins.

>> Yeah.

>> You can sin very grievously, right, as David did and repent,

>> right? And still meet this condition that God is giving,

>> right? Um so that's what he says to Jeroboam. Jeroboam not only is wicked, but he does not repent. And that's the problem. Um so Jeroboam is from the tribe Jeroboam son of Nebat is from the tribe of Ephraim. This is important because the vast majority like the largest tribe in all of Israel was Ephraim. Largest number of people you could go through all the censuses in the Torah, right? And that continued. So, it's the largest tribe, which means because God aortioned the land based on family units, Ephraim also controlled the most land of any of the tribes.

>> Yeah.

>> And Ephraim had gone in and taken most of their land.

>> Yeah. Because remember, God told each tribe, "Take this part of the land. Take this part of the land. This is your land."

>> Right. Because again, there was a condition, right? That land was promised to them, they had to go take it. If they didn't go take it, that wasn't God breaking his promise. That was them not meeting the condition. Right? And so, we tal we've talked before about how at the end of Joshua, even though a bunch of the tribes did not take their land, the end of the book of Joshua, it says God fulfilled all the promises he made to Abraham about the land. Yep. All

>> right. Uh sorry dispensationalists once again. Um so uh Ephraim has the the the largest amount of territory of anybody. If you throw in Manasseh, the other half tribe descended from Joseph. So Ephraim and Manasseh who were brothers descended from Joseph, right? If you throw the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, you have almost all of the northern kingdom.

>> Yeah. Because the rest of the tribes didn't actually go take their land that they were supposed to take,

>> right? Like Dan did not take any of its land. They went and attacked the city of Leish, massacred everyone, renamed the city Dan, and they just had that city and its envir environs, right? Like the villages and stuff around the city, right? So the rest of those northern tribes remained small, right? Reuben was on the other side of the the Jordan.

>> Yeah.

>> Uh in evershrinking Moabitete territory. But you can,

>> you know, especially if you're following the book of Judges and the wars with the Moabites and things, but we won't go down that whole rabbit trail. But so Ephraim in particular and Ephraim and Manasseh, if you put them together, are almost the entirety in terms of like land controlled by the northern kingdom and the vast majority of the population. So Jeroboam being an Ephraimite makes a lot of sense, right? Um

>> yeah,

>> and this also is something that's kind of telegraphed in the book of Genesis. This is something so we we've, you know, we've heard all of these Bible stories and they've gelled in different ways in our brains. But if you can imagine a person who literally knows nothing about the Bible and they just pick up a Bible and say, "I'm going to start on page one, right, and read through it." Okay? And so they they read the book of Genesis. They read the whole book of Genesis. They finish the book of Genesis. Okay? The impression you get at the end of book of Genesis, uh, the story of Joseph is about onethird of the book of Genesis.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. Huge portion of the text is the story of Joseph. And as you read the text, once you get to chapter 12 and the patriarchal narrative start, it's Abraham, right? And then Isaac is considered his firstborn, even though he's not technically the firstborn, right? He's the firstborn from Sarah. Ishmael was technically the firstborn, right? Uh son of Abraham, right? And then you have uh Isaac has Jacob and Esau. And Jacob is considered the firstborn even though he was, you know, kind of the second born because Esau was the firstborn, right? Even though they're twins, Esau came out first, so he was technically firstborn, right? Uh but so you got Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and then if you've just read Genesis and nothing else, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. That's who the focus shifts to. And yes, Joseph isn't technically the firstborn. Reuben is. But Joseph is the firstborn from Rachel. And all through the story of Jacob, we're told over and over again that Rachel is the wife he loves, [laughter] right? He gives Joseph the code of many color, right? The favorite, like marking him out as the favorite, right? And the firstborn. So you would walk away from the book of Genesis expecting, right, that that that the rest of the Old Testament is going to be about Joseph and his descendants and then maybe, you know, his brother's descendants also with them, right? Like that would be the normal expectation. This is one of the things I point to to argue that Genesis as part of the Torah has to be way older than modern scholars want to admit. Because if it was written after the destruction of the northern kingdom, why would you focus so much on Joseph?

>> Yeah. It doesn't. That's not the story of those people. That's the story of those other people,

>> right? Because if if you're writing later, especially like after the exile, like where Judah is the continuation, wouldn't your focus be on Judah? We get the story of Judah and Tamar. That doesn't exactly make Judah look good. Joseph comes out looking really good at the end of Genesis. Judah, not so much, right? Like, why would it look like that? Unless it was written, you know, before all the other stuff happened, right? But so there is this in the scriptures there is this Ephraimite tradition. Ephraim is incredibly prominent. Joseph is the most prominent among the sons of Jacob in the Torah. Uh Ephraim is the biggest tribe, right? And that seed is a blessing from God, right? Um they have the most territory. So they had the northern kingdom as Jeroboam is trying to now consolidate it as its own separate entity, right? Uh as he's trying to do that, they have a heritage in the Torah they can point to, right? They don't have to fabricate things, right? They they have, right, reason to say, "Hey, we're we have a proud tradition, too, right? We have have this thing." Um so we immediately problem is we run into immediate problems with how Jeroboam goes about it right. So uh Jeroboam for example decides it's a big problem that the the temple is in Judah's territory.

>> Yeah. So he sets up his own deal.

>> Yeah. And so people have to go there to worship. And so he sets up a golden calf at Dan all the way in the north end of the kingdom and Bethl all the way down in the south end of the kingdom. Uh it says, "Hey, you could just go offer your sacrifices to Yahweh there."

>> Yeah. It's basically idolatrous worship of Yahweh,

>> right? And that becomes sort of the state cult, right? And uh make no mistake as before this you read the text closely he was paying Levites to do this right there were apostate Levites not all the Levites were at the temple that's why I always say when I'm talking about Judah I always say some of the Levites right there are Levites who are working for hire right like if you read the end of the book of Judges there's a Levite who's getting paid paid to offer sacrifices to a silver idol in Dan,

>> right? So, uh you could they could in the northern kingdom accept the Levites being the priests without necessarily

>> accepting the temple or [laughter] actually following the other commandments regarding worship, right? Um, so he has his own Levites on the the payroll of the new monarchy who are are doing uh the sacrifices at Bethl and Dan. That becomes the state religion, right? That is the sin of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, right? And and what is the core of that sin? The core of that sin is he is very deliberately taking the people who he's supposed to lead and rather than using the Torah as his guide for how to lead these Israelite people, he is instead leading them in the opposite direction. He's leading them into idolatry.

>> Yeah.

>> And expressly away from the correct worship of God. Um, and so we end up early on, we get a couple of dynasties very fast. Uh, Jeroboam's son gets killed and replaced by his killer. Uh, who [clears throat] reigns for a little while and then, uh, turns it over to his son who gets killed. [laughter] Uh, and see there's a there's an important connection here that the text is making between political corruption and spiritual corruption.

>> That those are two things that go together. That go together. Again, there's not this separation that we have in our heads, right, of well, there's like material things and then there's spiritual things, right? like, you know, oh, that guy's a Christian. He's just totally corrupt, right? [laughter and clears throat] Right. You can't really separate faith and morals that way, right? But also, if your culture and your society is involved in false worship, the worship of false gods or worshiping a complete misunderstanding of God or worshiping God in in an idolatrous and therefore sort of utilitarian manner, etc., etc., right? then it is going to be corrupted if it's not corrupt already. Right? You can't you can't separate those two. Um and so that happens. And if you want ultimate level corruption, every few years you've got a new king cuz someone killed the old one and took his place, right? That's not political stability. That's not helping anyone prosper right in your nation. uh that is bad in all ways. So then Omry comes to power and Omry establishes the Omr dynasty which is going to be the longest lasting though that's not saying much the northern kingdom that's uh uh but most infamous dynasty of the northern kingdom. [clears throat] Yeah.

>> Um, so Omry is the one who raises the northern kingdom, which is called Israel, to be an actual geopolitical player to being important. Right? So, we all know, I'm about to talk some smack on Likensstein. Um there's some countries that are perfectly good countries, but they're not big players.

>> It's true.

>> In geopolitics, right? I mean, Switzerland has banks at least, but you know, Likenstein.

>> No, one is going to be invaded by the federated states of Micronia.

>> Yes. Yes. Tonga is not attacking anybody, right?

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> Okay. So there are big players, there are not big players. So northern kingdom of Israel becomes a player, right? Gets dealt into the the game of geopolitics under Omry. Uh and this is true to the point that uh when we find some of our earliest inscriptions that talk about the nation of Israel, right, as a nation, uh they refer to it as Bate Omry, the house of Omry.

>> Yeah. So means he's considered to be such an important person that it gets named after him.

>> They're not even calling it Beth Ephraim or something like that. No, it's

>> Yeah. Not bait ef not bait Israel. [laughter]

>> Yeah.

>> Uh bait omry. Um and this is true to the point that here's a certain amount of irony. Not like rain on your wedding day. No actual irony [laughter] that uh we have an inscription. You can go see it if you're at the British Museum. uh that depicts Joo, a much later king of the northern kingdom. This is where the irony comes in. Who is the one who finally wiped out the Omride dynasty depicts him and refers to him as Joo of the House of Omry. Wow. because they were everybody else was still calling the country that,

>> the nation that even though [laughter] this guy had wiped out Om's dynasty. So there's that, right? But that so that shows you the shadow of Omry Lub's I mean he is everybody remembers Jeroboam. There's a Jeroboam II very near the end, right? Uh so I mean he's there as a founder. the shrines are there and stuff in terms of the official religion. Uh but uh if you want the George Washington of the Northern Kingdom, it's Omry, [laughter] right? If you want the guy, right, who makes makes them uh great as far as they ever were, it's Omry. Uh now, despite all that, he gets eight verses devoted to him in the Bible. [laughter] That's terrible. Yeah. Like like if if if your only knowledge of ancient Israelite history is the Bible, you would not think that Omry was that big of a deal.

>> Yes.

>> Yeah.

>> We have multiples more written about him outside the Bible than inside the Bible.

>> Yeah. So the world basically thought that he was a really big deal whereas the biblical writers are like, "Eh,

>> not so much." And in fact, [clears throat] here is what they say about him.

>> Yeah. Okay. So, this is uh first kings 16, also known as third kingdoms, starting with verse 21. Then the people of Israel were divided into two parts. Half of the people followed Tipney the son of Ginath to make him king and half followed Omry. But the people who followed Omry overcame the people who followed Tipney, the son of Guinath. So, Tipney died and Omry became king.

>> Let me let me pause for a second.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Uh, ain't that a great euphemism? Half failed one, half the other. But Ore's people overcame them and Tibney died. Yeah, he he just died. [laughter] He just died. Okay, go ahead. How did he die? I don't [laughter] I don't know. Yeah. Okay, so verse 23. In the 31st year of Asa, king of Judah, Omry began to reign over Israel. And he reigned for 12 years. Six years he reigned in Tiraza. He bought the hill of Samaria from Shemer for two talents of silver. That's a lot of money by the way everybody. And he fortified the hill and called the name of the city that he built Samaria after the name of Shemer, the owner of the hill. Omry did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did more evil than all who were before him. For he walked in all the way of Jeroboam, the son of Nabbat, and in the sins that he made Israel to sin, provoking the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger by their idols. Now the rest of the acts of Omry that he did, and the might that he showed, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel? And Omry slept with his fathers and was buried in Samaria. And Ahab, his son, reigned in his place.

>> That's a name that probably people recognize.

>> Yes. Yes. That he's the most famous Omride that you know about. Uh

>> yeah. Yeah.

>> So eight eight verses. That's it. And what is the context? Well, he he killed his opposition and took the throne. He bought a hill and he was evil and he died. [laughter] That's that's the Bible's take on the great Omry. If you want to know more, you could hear him bragging about himself in his own annals. Right.

>> Yeah. Um that's it. Um so uh the important part here, right, in terms of the history is hey Samaria, right?

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

>> Uh which in uh in Hebrew is Shamron. Um so Shemer is the guy he buys it from. He names it Shamron after the guy he bought it from. [laughter]

>> Yeah. Uh, it's an inspiring story of how you named a place. By the way, there's there's that that's a little bit of comedy there in the text. Believe it or not, [laughter] it's like [gasps] uh there's no real significance to the name, right? Is basically what they're saying.

>> Samriia, right? Because basically because Greeks don't make the sound sh it's not it's not a sound in Greek. Samaria. You can hear how Sham, Shamron, Samaria.

>> They don't like ending names with an with a new. [laughter]

>> Shamron becomes Samaria.

>> Yeah.

>> Um Yeah. So, and so he buys that hill and he builds the capital city on it, right? Uh that becomes the capital. So, that's why it says he reigned for six years in Tursza. Then he buys the hill. That's a new capital. and Samaria, the city of Samaria on that hill, that fortified hill. And you build cities in the ancient near east on hills because you can then build walls around the rim of the hill that makes them very hard to lay siege to because you have to go uphill

>> to get to the wall even. Right. Everybody can see you coming, etc. Right.

>> Uh so Samaria,

>> by the way, we I was say we have a good question in the chat which is relevant to right to this point right here in the story. So, uh, Katie asks, "Were all the tribes basically like independent of each other? Was Judah unaware of Ephraim and their golden calf or would they be aware?" So, like what is the political situation between the tribes at this point?

>> Uh, they uh so between the two kingdoms uh I think is where that's going, right? Uh

>> yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

>> They uh yes, they're aware of each other and they're varying levels of hostile toward each other, [laughter]

>> right? Uh at this point that hasn't erupted into anything. Um because Judah is very small and until Omry uh uh is the northern kingdom of Israel is very unstable,

>> right?

>> Uh so later on this is going to erupt into like the Sero Ephraimite war is not between the Syrians and the Ephraimites. It's the Syrians and the Ephraimites. The Ephraimites being the northern kingdom, right? Being Israel attacking Judah.

>> Yeah. And and I mean, you know, remember the [clears throat] other tribes in the north basically didn't take the land they were supposed to take, So they all remained relatively small and that's why Ephraim dominates the northern kingdom.

>> Right.

>> Right. So Dan is so small they're not going to be self-supporting.

>> Right.

>> with basically one city and its environs.

>> Yeah. So they they basically team up with they team up with the big guy,

>> right? And so and they border it anyway, right? So you just become part of it. Now you've got access to the infrastructure, trade, on and on and on, right? Protection from invasion,

>> right?

>> Uh one city alone trying to defend itself, good luck, right? Um so yeah for all those reasons the smaller tribes are staying attached to Ephraim uh the smaller less powerful uh tribes in the north. Um so yeah so Samaria be remains the capital city all the way until the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians. Okay. Um, people are probably pretty aware of Ahab, Omry's son, and his wife Jezebel. Uh, we've talked about her uh, and him. Uh, although he's basically an appendage of her, [laughter] that's who she bosses around. Um, in the in the past, uh, I'll show it in various contexts. Uh, as you can tell from her name, which contains the name Bale, uh, and, uh, as a tidbit, Jezebel was probably not her actual name.

>> Uh, because Jezebel in Hebrew means where is Baal?

>> Yeah, kind of.

>> And they probably messed with her name to make

>> Yeah, that's Elijah's joke, remember? Like, hey, maybe he's in the bathroom. Maybe he's on vacation, right? Um, so yeah, they probably so her name was probably something more like something giving praise to Baal and the the writer of scripture did not want to say anything in praise of Baal and so flipped it. Right. Yeah.

>> In the same way that um Saul, like King Saul, had a son named Ishba,

>> man of Baal, but in the Hebrew text, it refers to him as ishbos, which means man of shame instead of man of Baal,

>> right? Um so that's a very common thing in in the biblical text, right? They're not going to write something saying Baal or the title Bal Zabul meaning great lord Baal gets turned into Bahal Zabub the lord of the flies.

>> Lord of the flies. Yeah.

>> Yeah. So yeah. Um and probably that happens with Jezebel. But the whole story that the prophet Elijah, the prophet Elisha, um Jezebel, so Jezebel is the daughter of the king of Siden. And so much like what Solomon did, Omry made a deal. Part of him entering the geopolitical scene made a deal with the king of Siden, meaning he made a deal with the Phoenetians. [clears throat] Uh trade deals. And how do you seal that deal? He married his son Ahab to the daughter of the king of Siden, namely Jezebel. And Jezebel, just like with Solomon, brought with her Baal worship.

>> Yeah. Big time. So now you've got two layers of bad religion in uh apologies to Greg Gavin uh in uh the northern kingdom of Israel. You've got the state religion of the golden calves and you've got bail worship at high places, right? So it's sort of doubly bad. And she begins to murder the prophets of Yahweh. Right? That's where we're first introduced to her, right? Uh that ends up, of course, getting turned around on the prophets of Baal after Mount Carmel. And Ahab and Jezebel uh have judgment pronounced against them. Uh Jezebel ends up uh falling off a wall and getting eaten by dogs. Uh [laughter]

>> dogs.

>> Neither of them have streets.

>> Yeah, it's gross.

>> Yeah. I mean I mean third fourth kingdoms, first second Kings, you got a lot of a lot of these characters get Game of Thrones endings, man. Uh [laughter] uh Ahab dies uh in battle. Um we've talked about that whole episode before. Uh but uh not only that, there is now going to be judgment against the whole dynasty, right? And part of what ends up bringing about judgment against the whole dynasty and ensuring that is a not so nice lady named Athaliah. And who is that?

>> Yeah. And Athaliah. Interesting. The Yah at the end of Athaliah is abbreviation of Yahweh.

>> Yeah. Athalia.

>> Yeah. And why would that be? Well, this is the Yahweh of the state religion in the north, the golden calves.

>> Oh, they're Yahweh. Yes. And she was married off in a trade deal. She's descended from Ahab. She's an Omride princess in the northern kingdom. She gets married off to the son of the king of Judah.

>> So marrying south as it were.

>> Yes. And so uh and then things get worse because you may remember from way back in the long ago time, longtime listeners, you may remember that in the southern kingdom of Judah, unlike the northern kingdom and most other kingdoms of the ancient near east, there was an office of the gibber there was an office of queen mother. This began with Solomon. Solomon had a throne set at his right hand for his mother Ba Sheeba and she was considered the the closest adviser to the king and had therefore had a position of power within the kingdom. And this is why as you go through uh first and second kings or third and fourth kingdoms, every time you have a new king of Judah take the throne, a new divin king takes the throne, it tells you the name of their mother.

>> Yeah.

>> Okay. Um there are some people who will try to say, well, that's just because of polygamy, right? Well, that's partially true in the sense that, you know, the the the wife of the previous king who became the queen mother was the one who was the mother of the new king, not just one of his wives in general, right? Uh not his first wife necessarily or senior wife or whatever or preferred wife, but the the actual mother of the king. But you don't see that in the northern kingdom. And they were just as polygamous in the northern kingdom, if not more so. You don't see that in the neighboring kingdoms around Israel and Judah. That's that's a peculiarity of of Judah. Judah's monarchy is this office of queen mother. And as we've pointed out in the past when we talk about this, this is why it is very Jewish. It is built into the idea of the Messiah. The Messiah Bened [laughter] Benawed, right? the the Messiah, son of David, right? That when you have the Messiah, the son of David, when he is enthroned, you expect the announcement of the name of his mother. Yeah.

>> And you expect his mother to be

At his right hand, right, as the closest adviser in his kingdom. It's eminently biblical. Okay. Uh, as we have covered at length in the past. Yes. So Protestant friends on that one. Um, but that doesn't mean that every person who held this office was a good person. Right. Right. Just like most of the kings were not good kings in the Old Testament. Uh, Athaliah gets this office and is a very bad person because, uh, her husband dies. Her son now is king but is a child. So, guess who's running things? Yeah. Athaliah. And she decides to use that power to try to wipe out all the rest of the line of David. Yeah. Basically merging Judah and Benjamin into the Ephraimite kingdom, effectively. Yes. Yes. To try to effectively annex them and destroy the Davidic monarchy. Yeah. Okay. Uh, which of course does not work, right? Does not end up working. Uh, and in fact, is sort of the last straw. Rough justice happens, and it's actually the Omride dynasty. It's actually the descendants of Ahab who get completely wiped out, and that slaughter gets finished under Jehu, who we mentioned earlier, who then becomes the king of the northern kingdom of Israel, uh, very near to the end of its existence.

Uh, so, um, looking at Israel's history as we've just gone over it in very brief, right? We're not going to read through all of, yeah. First and Second Kings, right? [laughter] Sorry, guys who wanted that. Um, I will do that eventually on Whole Council of God, and it is in the archives. But, um, there's this, there's this tension within the history. So, without a doubt, there's not a tension in the sense that like, you know, there's good things and there's bad things, right? Like, it's pretty wicked all the way through, right? We don't get a Josiah, in the northern kingdom. Yeah. Right. Um, I mean, they get some pretty, pretty big deal prophets though, right? Like, big deal. In terms of the kings, in terms of the kings, right? Yeah. There's not even a brief period where they're not idolatrous, right? Like, religiously, they're idolatrous from the start, and it only gets worse once you get Baal and other gods coming in. Um, so there's never a period where that's on the right track. There aren't good, just righteous kings, right? But, but even though they're that way from the start, God doesn't just write them off. He keeps sending them prophets. And not just any prophets. Yeah. Okay. Elijah, Elisha, Jonah is originally a prophet to the northern kingdom, and others. And, and actually, Jonah is traditionally considered a successor to Elisha. A lot of people don't know that, by the way. Yes. So, right. So, these are major prophets, right? It's not, you know, God's really focused on Judah and he, but, you know, some of the crumbs fall from the table and go to the northern kingdom. He is just as, if not more involved in trying to call the northern kingdom to repentance as he is with the southern kingdom through his prophets. Yeah. Okay. So, the northern kingdom is very much not written off. And that's why I say there's this tension, right? There's this tension that God still loves them, right? They are still part of Israel. They are still part of his people. A very wicked part, but still part, right? And that's the, that's the tension, right? And then sort of the end for them comes, and, uh, we're still not reading the, the, the whole, uh, First and Second Kings, but we are going to read, we are going to read a chunk here. Yeah. Uh, and we're going to pause and go through parts of it because the details of the fall of the northern kingdom, the fall of the kingdom of Israel get passed over very quickly sometimes, right? I mean, we have on this show in the past just referred, the Assyrians come, they, uh, deport everybody, right? Like, [laughter] you know, just in short. And then the Assyrians came. Yeah. Right. Um, and they were very bad. Um, the, the, but, as I like to say, the worst people in the world at the time. Yeah. But when you actually read it in 2 Kings, or Fourth Kingdoms, this is one of the, the passages in, uh, First and Second Kings, or Third and Fourth Kingdoms, that most clearly and obviously and unambiguously is doing what I talked about earlier, right? It's almost like the author turns to the camera and is like, "Okay, here's why this is happening." [laughter] Right? Yeah. See all this horror happening behind me? This is why. Right. Like it's like editorial, right? Um, yeah. Okay. Second Kings, also known as Fourth Kingdoms, chapter 17, starting with verse 6. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria. And he carried the Israelites away to Assyria and placed them in Halah and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and had feared other gods, and walked in the customs of the nations, whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced. And the people of Israel did secretly against the Lord their God things that were not right. They built for themselves high places in all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city. They set up for themselves pillars and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree. And there they made offerings on all the high places as the nations did whom the Lord carried away before them. And they did wicked things provoking the Lord to anger. And they served idols of which the Lord had said to them, "You shall not do this." Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, "Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes in accordance with all the law that I commanded your fathers and that I sent to you by my servants, the prophets." But they would not listen, but were stubborn as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the Lord their God. By the way, that doesn't mean that they were atheists. [laughter] Yeah. Let's pause there a second. Let's pause there a second. Yeah. Yeah. This is one of the most obvious where the word believe actually means faithful. They were not faithful to the Lord their God. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so listen to the narrative. We get a recap, right? We get a narrative recap here. So we're informed. Okay. The Assyrians come, they capture Samaria, they take the capital, right? That means, you know, it's over, right? Pack it in. But then it turns editorial. And we get the story. And it goes all the way back, right? Because these are people, these tribes, their ancestors who God brought out of the land of Egypt and brought out of slavery. It starts with what God had done for them. Yeah. And he brought them there to that land. And notice the reference. He drove out the wicked people who were there before them and gave that land to them. Right? And then what did they do in return? [snorts] Right? [laughter] Did all this good. And what did they do in return? Right? They did all the things that those people who had been driven out did. Right? Every hill, there's a pillar. Every tree turned, they turned into an Asherah. Right? Now, obviously, that's not literally every tree, right? Okay? Not literally every, but you get the point, right? It's a little bit of hyperbole. I know people have trouble with hyperbole sometimes, but, um, right, so, uh, but they did this and they provoked God to anger. Right. And so God would have been right at that point because he told them in the Torah, he told them when he brought them in, he said, "If you become like the people I drove out, I will drive you out as well." Right? They had been warned. At that point, God could have destroyed them. But here, the text wants us to know that that's not how God responded. Instead, he sent them prophets. Yeah. All right. Again, there's a little hyperbole. Every prophet and every seer, right? [laughter] Like every single one, right? They came and said, "Hey, you need to repent. You need to stop what you're doing. Repent. Keep my commandments, right? And you will be blessed, right?" That's what he wants. God does not delight in the death of a sinner, but that they turn and live, right? Says to the prophets, but what? But they wouldn't listen to the prophets. They were stubborn. They wouldn't be faithful. Right? Uh, this is, right, this in capsule form, this is what Christ keeps saying to the Jewish leaders in the Gospels, right? Here is everything God has done for you. You are wicked in response. And so he sent you prophets. Now he's sent you his son, right? Why? To call you to repentance. Why? Because he loves you. He doesn't want to see disaster befall you despite your wickedness, despite your ingratitude, despite your hatred of him, but you're stubborn and you won't listen. Right? And that's when disaster comes. Right? That's what when when Christ appeals to the prophets and talks about them killing the prophets, and this is what he's referring to, the historical example that they have in their own scriptures that they're repeating as they persecute Christ and seek his death. Ready to roll on here? Yes. Okay. Picking up with verse 15. They despised his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false. And they followed the nations that were around them concerning whom the Lord had commanded them that they should not do like them. And they abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God and made for themselves metal images of two calves. And they made an Asherah and worshiped all the host of heaven and served Baal. And they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings and used divination and omens and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. Therefore, the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah only. Judah also. Take a pause there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Uh, so notice it says he removed them out of his sight, right? Uh, and none was left, [laughter] for the tribe of Judah only. Uh, so the reason I want to pause on this is, right, uh, there have been people historically and even to this day who take that literally. Yeah. Who want to say, "No, that's literal. There are no, there were no descendants left in the land of any of the northern tribes." Yeah. Completely emptied out, supposedly. Yes. Now, there's, there's a pile of problems with this from modern genetic testing to people from northern tribes who show up later in the biblical narrative, uh, you know, handful of individuals, but still, right? Uh, and also just the fact we've already seen in, in this particular piece of text, a bunch of hyperbole. Yeah. Right. They did not literally turn every tree into an Asherah or a pole. Right. They did not literally have a pagan altar on every single hill. Right. Yeah. Uh, this is hyperbole. And so the idea is that just as their rebellion was sort of complete or total, right? The judgment against them was is complete and total, right? But it's, it's not trying to be taken literally in the sense that there are like no, not a single, zero numerically zero survivors left in the land. Okay. Go ahead. All right. Picking up with verse 19. Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the customs that Israel had introduced. And the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel and afflicted them and gave them into the hand of plunderers until he had cast them out of his sight. When he had torn Israel from the house of David, they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king. And Jeroboam drove Israel from following the Lord and made them commit great sin. You can hear that this is basically like this is an overview of everything that has just happened, right? Yes. The, the worst, worst hits. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. [laughter and gasps] The people of Israel walked in all the sins that Jeroboam did. They did not depart from them until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight, as he had spoken by all his servants, the prophets. So Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria until this day. And the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuth, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the people of Israel. And they took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities. And at the beginning of their dwelling there, they did not fear the Lord. Therefore, the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them. So the king of Assyria was told, Let's pause. Let's pause there for a second. Yeah. It's interesting. [laughter] Because that's kind of odd, right? Like probably people had read that before, right? This is kind of a detail. They're like, "Wait a minute, what?" [laughter] Pagans show up. Yeah. Pagans show up. They settle in the cities, and then lions start attacking them. And which the text says that God sent the lions. Yes. God sends lions just to like, yeah. Like this is some kind of weird horror movie like Jaws spin-off, right? But with lions. Uh, [laughter] the, so, [clears throat] the idea here is, whose land is it anyway, right? Yeah. God's, right? That was the whole point back in the Torah. That land, and frankly, all the land that there is, the whole world, right? The whole cosmos belongs to God. And so, especially that part. Yeah. God can decide who's, who's going to live there. And that's what he said to them. That meant God could remove the giant clans in front of Israel. That meant if Israel became wicked like them, God would remove them, right? And replace them with someone else. Okay? So this replacement happens under the Assyrians. Okay? But the people who the Assyrians send in to resettle the area after deporting the Israelites, uh, right from the get-go are pagans and not worshiping, uh, Yahweh, the God of Israel. Yeah. They're worshiping their own gods, which is the problem. That's why God removes people from that land is for worshiping other gods, right? And so because there isn't a human judge there, right, or an Israel there anymore through which God can enact his judgment against those newcomers, the land itself sends lions. The land itself sends wild animals, and, and the land itself does not cooperate with them and their crops. Right? The land itself rebels against their wickedness, right? Uh, and so this is a problem, right? And now we're, now we're going to hear about how this problem gets solved. And this is important for where we're going tonight. Okay. Verse 26. So the king of Assyria was told, "The nations that you have carried away and placed in the cities of Samaria do not know the law of the God of the land. Therefore, he has sent lions among them, and behold, they are killing them because they do not know the law of the God of the land." Then the king of Assyria commanded, "Send there one of the priests whom you carried away from there, and let him go and dwell there and teach them the law of the God of the land." So, one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and lived in Bethel and taught them how they should fear the Lord. Not, every nation. Yeah. Right. And teaches who? It's pagans. The, these Gentile pagans. Yeah. Right. And whoever was left, right? Whatever other survivors were around, right? But teaches them what? Teaches them the Torah. Yeah. Teaches them the Torah and to worship Yahweh, the God of Israel. It's kind of an early evangelistic, uh, moment, really. Yes. It's almost like we've got a big group of Gentiles coming in to replace the northern tribes. There you go. Telegraphing the end of the episode. Yes. [laughter] That's okay. I, I, you know, the Bible is not exactly a recent publication. Yeah. Yeah. I think people have read, [laughter] read it. Maybe certain parts not in as much detail, but, Not as much. I mean, I, I've learned a lot. Uh, okay, picking up now with verse 29. But every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the shrines of the high places that the Samaritans had made. Every nation in the cities in which they had lived. The men of Babylon made Sukkoth-benoth. The men of Cuth made Nergal. That's my, it's my favorite name. The men of Hamath. This is not the Warhammer 40k Nurgle, by the way. Just so people know. Yeah. Really? No. And the men of Babylon made Sukkoth-benoth. The men of Cuth made Nergal. The men of Hamath made Ashima. And the Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak. And the Sepharvites burned their children in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim. They also feared the Lord and appointed from among themselves all sorts of people as priests of the high places who sacrificed for them in the shrines of the high places. So they feared the Lord, but also served their own gods after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away. To this day they do according to the former manner. They do not fear the Lord and they do not follow the statutes or the rules or the law of the, or the commandments the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel. The Lord made a covenant with them and commanded them, "You shall not fear other gods or bow yourselves to them or serve them or sacrifice to them, but you shall fear the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt with great power and with an outstretched arm. You shall bow yourselves to him and to him you shall sacrifice. And the statutes and the rules and the law and the commandment that he wrote for you, you shall always be careful to do. You shall not fear other gods and you shall not forget the covenant that I made with you. You shall not fear other gods, but you shall fear the Lord your God, and he will deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies." However, they would not listen, but they did according to their former manner. So these nations feared the Lord and also served their carved images. Their children did likewise, and their children's children. As their fathers did, so they do to this day. Right? So, uh, notice, uh, the text almost sounds like it's contradicting itself. Yeah. Right. So it says, "To this day they do according to the former manner." Oh, no. So, first, so they feared the Lord, but also served their own gods. And then it says, "They do not fear the Lord." [laughter] They do not follow the, Yeah. I mean, it's different definitions of that. Like so basically the idea is they're sacrificing to Yahweh, but also sacrificing to other gods. But hey, remember, Yahweh said don't sacrifice to other gods. But the, the, Yeah. And so the important, but then after that again, it says they feared the Lord, but they also serve the, right. Exactly. The point being, the point being that if you worship the Lord, but also worship other gods, you're not really worshiping the Lord. Yeah. Yep. The true worship of God has exclusivity embedded in it from the very beginning from the Torah being given to Moses. Right? The exclusivity is built into it. This has a lot of applications that we don't have time to go into tonight. But exclusivity is a dirty word religiously in our modern scene. But exclusivity is at the core of what Christianity has already been, always been about throughout the history of the world. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of job one. It's, [clears throat] commandment one. Yes. [laughter] There is literally, the opposite of inclusiveness. It's at the core of true religion. Yeah. Um, so, yeah, so, and this is describing the initial phases of resettlement, right? And so one of the reasons why, uh, we know it's hyperbole also is, what was the purpose of moving all these people around, right? So, in part, the Assyrians would move people around like this, uh, to try to prevent rebellions. Yeah. So, they're no longer connected to their ancestral land. They're kind of dispossessed. People are more likely to fight to defend their own land than just some land, right? Um, but there's another piece to that because there's not just your identity in terms of you identifying with the particular land. There's also your identity as a people, right? Uh, and so the Assyrians also wanted to break, and a big part of this resettlement is the Assyrians trying to break the identity of these peoples as peoples, right? So they're deliberately trying to get people to intermarry. Yeah. So they deliberately left people there to intermarry with the people they were importing. Right. Because now these Babylonians aren't going to end up being Babylonians anymore because they're going to intermarry with the other groups and with the, the, the local former Israelites. And the Israelites have got to, Yeah. As I say, they're not just trying to assimilate the Israelites. They're also trying to assimilate these Babylonians and these other groups of people. They want them to kind of merge and be Assyrians, essentially, and just have one identity as Assyrians for the whole empire. Yeah. So this is, because if you have a lot of intermarriage, people don't tend to keep a lot of distinct identities. They, they tend to merge. Like, they fall apart. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And we see this even on the level, right? So I've mentioned before, I think on the show, that, uh, one of my former Old Testament professors, uh, Dr. Lawson Younger, spent a good chunk of his career translating a bunch of previously untranslated Assyrian tablets to track down exactly where all of the quote unquote lost tribes of Israel went. And he pretty much found the cities and villages where they were sent, by translating these tablets. How do you do that? People's names. Yeah. Because they had Hebrew names, right? They had Hebrew Israelite names. And that's true for a few generations, and then those names disappear. Yep. Yep. From the city's records and from trade records and things. Why? Because they've intermarried. They've lost their Israelite identity. Now, let me add another layer to this. What is the easiest way to identify an ancient Near Eastern person based on their name? Because Semitic languages are all pretty close. That's true. I mean, probably the easiest one would be to see what kind of theophoric stuff is in there. Exactly. Because it tells you which god. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This wasn't in the notes, by the way. I actually just guessed correctly, everybody. Yes. [laughter] It's good. You're tracking with me. Score one. Yes. Yes. [laughter] Because this wasn't in the briefing yesterday, you know. Yeah. But yeah. No, but that makes sense, right? Like, like everyone's naming their kid, not everybody, but a lot of people are naming their kids with names that include the name of their god. And, and it's your god that really kind of, you know, is the distinction as to which group you are. We were just talking about Jezebel, right? Has Baal in her name, right? We were talking about Athaliah had, you know, and so that's the issue. And so a big part, there is no distinction between cult and culture at this point in history, right? Yeah. Right. And so part of breaking down this down is breaking down your allegiance to those ancestral gods. Yeah. Right. And that's going to become important here when we get to the second half because what we've been presented here in Second Kings is a certain picture of Samaritan religion because now that's this is where the Samaritan identity begins. Right. So the, before the Assyrians, they were, they would have been called themselves Israelites. They were part of the nation of Israel whose capital was Samaria. Maybe the actual people who lived in Samaria would have been referred to as Samaritans, like Jerusalemites or whatever, right? Or Parisians or parasites, or whatever they call them in France. Um, so, right. But Samaritan as an identity comes out of this because it's the people living in the land of Samaria, which surrounds the city of Samaria, which is what the Assyrians call it now, just the people living there. And so the Samaritan identity becomes a new identity. And our first picture here of Samaritan religion, right after the resettlement, is that essentially you have this mix. Yeah. Right. You have some Yahweh worship, probably not very orthodox Yahweh worship. [laughter] Right. Given everything, right? But that's mixed with each of the groups that came there having brought their own gods with them. But now as they start to intermarry and they start to mix and blend and develop a Samaritan identity and a Samaritan culture, part of that is going to be a Samaritan religion that's going to frankly involve all of them. Yeah. Giving up significant elements of what their past worship was. Uh, and we will get into a little more of what that looks like in the, uh, the second half. Indeed. All right, that's our first half of this episode on the Samaritans. We're going to take a break and we'll be right back. Father Andrew Steven Damick and Father Steven D. Young will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-2346. That's 855 AF radio. Poised between East and West, between Orthodox and Catholic, Lithuania, the last of Europe's pagan nations, did not forget its ancient tales such as that of the Giantess Neringa, Eglė, Queen of Serpents, and the Iron Wolf. Rather, they fulfilled and enriched them with legends like the Hill of Crosses and the Miracle-Working Icon of Our Lady of the Gate of the Dawn. In the Wolf and the Cross, Father Andrew Steven Damick and Deacon Seraphim Richard Roland take a very personal pilgrimage into a land where history and legend have met and fused, where Orthodox Christians have lived as a minority for nearly seven centuries. Their faith founded upon the blood of martyrs and the witness of dozens of saints. To find this book and others like it, you can go to store.ancientfaith.com. Again, that is store.ancientfaith.com. Father Andrew Steven Damick and Father Steven D. Young will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-2346. That's 855 AF radio. Hey, we're back everybody. I know. Wrong bumper. Mike, you're fired. Just kidding. Just kidding. Maybe. [snorts] Uh, [laughter] that's okay. We are back. It's the Lord of Spirits. for talking about that. One job. I know. One job. I know. I know. Actually, I think that's the first time that that's happened, or at least the first time I can remember. So, I mean, there's 140 episodes. So, that's pretty good. But the call board is lighting up. We have all these people calling in. Who knows what it is they want to talk about. Multiple people from Texas apparently. Probably completely confused. They can get another, completely confused. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So, uh, yeah, who knows? Who knows? We'll see. Uh, we'll see what's going on. Poor Mike. He's just probably frantically pressing buttons, you know, picking up the phone with one hand, you know, clicking the bumper with the other hand, probably hitting something with his toe on his left foot, you know. So, that's that's all occurring. So, symbols. [laughter] Can we get a, can we get a camera there in the studio at Chesterton so everyone can see what's going on there? I just want to see everybody, everybody have get a chance to see the franticness, franticity, franticosity. Um, yeah, let's just take some calls. Oh, yeah. Go ahead. I was, I was informed by a secret means that there's a fellow Lateran alum in the YouTube chat. Oh, yes. Yes. Someone. Yes. It's the same Dr. Lawson Younger. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Congratulations. You have, you both had the same, had the same professor. [gasps and sighs] Um, yes. Yeah. May, may we may have met. Who knows? Oh, one of our occasional callers, Anos, says in the chat, he says, "Father Andrew, since Father Steven mentioned you joining a southern mega church, you should start leading pilgrimages for trips to Lithuania." Just kidding. Just kidding. Um, I mean, I will always go to Lithuania, but I'm not going with like a, a group. [laughter] I wonder if you're going to start doing Zoom exorcisms and how much you'll charge. That's what I'm wondering. [laughter] It's true. I mean, if it's voice only, it'll be so much. If it's, uh, if you actually want to see my face, if you want me to touch the screen, that's going to be a little extra. Yeah. So, there's they have to do it. You should actually, if they have to watch you do it, you should actually give them a discount. That would, Oh, well. [clears throat] Anyway. All right. Well, let's go ahead, take some calls. So, um, yeah, we've got William. He says of Tennessee, but, uh, his phone says he's in Wilmington, North Carolina. So, William, welcome to Lord of Spirits podcast. Where are you really? Uh, Tennessee. My phone is a liar. Your, Oh, is your phone from North Carolina or? It is, but much like a, you can't trust what it says. Wow. Are you trying to use like a, a phone VPN to watch like Korean Netflix? [gasps] No. I, uh, I got this phone in North Carolina, but I live in Tennessee. Okay. So, your, your phone is all about the pulled pork, but you're going on with the ribs. Is that what it's about? Uh, yes. Although there are some wonderful rib places in North Carolina as well. That is true. That is true. It's actually a good strategy though. Here's why. Because most of the junk calls you get will be from the other area code. That's true. Yes. But it's annoying when I get calls from them asking if I want to be, uh, pulled about some local political issue that, uh, [snorts and laughter] I have no connection to. Block, block. So William, what's, what's on your mind tonight as we're talking about the Samaritans? Well, speaking of the Samaritans, um, the descendants of Ephraim and intermarriage. Um, my question was on Asenath, the wife of the patriarch Joseph. Um, which first is sort of prelude to the question is, is Asenath considered a saint in the Orthodox Church? Because like she's name-dropped quite positively in our, uh, first wedding service, but I'm not sure what date she is on the calendar. Yeah, Joseph and Asenath. Um, I don't know if she's a saint on the calendar. Joseph has a Synaxarion entry, but I don't think, I can, I can look this up real quick while we're talking. I mean, it's a good question. Um, uh, yeah, I mean, I, I literally had the Synaxarion right on hand here. Um, which is how I know that certain Old Testament figures are not saints. Just want to rub that in for some people. Um, [laughter] uh, let's see. So, that would be in December most likely because that's, uh, when all those people are being commemorated. Actually, I think Joseph is in Lent, but anyway. Oh, okay. Okay. Um, yeah, let's see. Patriarch Joseph icons are really cool because he has an Egyptian headdress. Yes. Yes. Yes, he does. So, yes. Congratulations, Asenath. Uh, she is commemorated on the Sunday, uh, yeah, the Sunday before the Nativity. She is listed as the righteous Aznet, the wife of Joseph the All-Comely. Yep. Yep. Yep. So there you go. Saint Asenath. You can get an icon of her, you know, painted. Uh, absolutely a canonical saint of the Orthodox Church. I have looked. It is very difficult to find an icon of her. I might have to get, You would have to get it commissioned. Yeah. Uh, to get it commissioned. Yes. But in any case, uh, she has been a fascinating figure for me because, well, she is, uh, Egyptian who married a Jewish, uh, guy. Um, and in previous episodes, y'all had talked about how, um, Rachel was seen as the mother of the Jews, iconographically, Rachel weeping for her children and whatnot. I was wondering if, uh, Asenath, as the, uh, mother of Ephraim, who became the largest tribe, um, and had in her gentile connection, if that half-gentile, um, identity, um, of Ephraim was considered significant or, uh, the Jews, the Samaritans, and the early church. If there was a concept of being a sort of mother of the Gentiles in the same way that, uh, Rachel was, or even mother of the Samaritans in the same way Rachel was considered the, um, mother of the Jews. I don't think so. I mean, usually, like, the thing you are is the thing your dad is, you know. Um, at this point. Yeah. That changes in Judaism, [clears throat] later. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Of course. Of course. But yeah, the fact that Joseph, you know, that, I mean, that, sorry, that Manasseh and Ephraim are sons of Joseph. That's what they are. You know, that's their, their main identity. So, so the Rachel thing, and this is going to come up later, uh, uh, teaser, um, like that very verse you quoted, it's going to come up here in a little bit. Um, Rachel was considered the mother of all of Israel. And this is another one of those things of Ephraim kind of standing, Ephraim kind of standing in for all of Israel. Yeah. Because she was, of course, actually Joseph's mother, right? So it's a little different, right? It's, it's Rachel is, is, sort of the mother, really grandmother, but mother of Ephraim. And in texts that are treating Ephraim as synonymous with Israel, she is therefore treated as the mother of Israel. Right. Uh, the other thing with Asenath is, uh, starting, [snorts] in the Second Temple period, but this really flowers, shall we say, in the, uh, Rabbinic, in Rabbinic Judaism. Uh, so when you get to, we mentioned how things change, so things are reckoned matrilineally in Judaism. Yeah. That starts changing after the exile. Think about Ezra and the prohibition against marrying foreign women, right? Um, so that, that becomes an issue. And so in response to that, uh, you start to see this development of this tradition that flowers in Rabbinic Judaism where they try to make Asenath not Egyptian. Are you ready for how? Go for it. Um, is she, uh, Joseph's niece? Yes. There's a midrash. Oh. That, uh, when the men of Shechem forced themselves on Dinah, uh, Joseph's sister, uh, she became pregnant. Wow. And the baby was left on the walls of Egypt. Now, I don't think Egypt actually has like walls around the country, but you get the point. The baby was abandoned somewhere near Egypt. Baby is adopted. I think maybe they were going for like a, a Moses typology thing, right? Is maybe adopted by Egyptians, uh, becomes the adopted daughter of that Egyptian priest, and then marries, marries Joseph. And that gets them around him having a non-Israelite wife. Now, it causes a bigger problem because Leviticus 18, you're not allowed to marry your niece, right? Yeah. So that explanation has its own problems. But yeah, so that was in Jewish circles. Whereas when you read like Joseph and Asenath, these texts that were super popular in early Christianity, uh, very quickly she becomes an image of the Gentile Church. Yeah. And sort of the, the romance between them is seen as sort of a story that's about conversion, right? It's sort of, uh, if, if we're thinking of the Church as the bride of Christ, then romance would be sort of Christ converting, wooing the soul, right? It's that kind of dynamic. Yeah. In, uh, early Christian thought regarding Asenath. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you very much for that. That's a great question. And, uh, um, I, I, I can't believe I had never bothered to look up whether Asenath was actually commemorated as a saint before, but now I'm very happy to learn that she is. So it's good. It's good. Thank you. I love the, the title, Saint Joseph the All-Comely. Also, the all-comely. Because it's like he is renowned throughout the history of the church for looks maxing. That's it. [laughter] Well, I mean, if you read Joseph and Asenath, right? Like the text basically, she's like, "Wow, this, wow, you know, like that's the whole thing." [snorts and clears throat] She's just impressed by his all comeliness. Okay, we're going to take, uh, at least one more call here. So, we've got Isaac calling from Loveland, Colorado. Isaac, welcome to Lord of Spirits podcast. Good afternoon, fathers. Um, as someone with a, with a phone number in a different state than where I live, I can vouch. It is great for spamming junk callers. [laughter] It's one of the easiest ways to sort that out. So, you're in Loveland. Are you perhaps connected with Father Evan's church out there? Oh, yeah. We, we, I hang out with Father Evan quite a bit. Do some fly fishing with him when I can. And got a fun parish up here growing quite a bit. Well, tell him I said hello. Calm down. I'm just, I'm just asking. [laughter] I didn't say his life. There could be a hundred Isaacs at that church, you know, probably not as many as Piouses and Pherioses and Seraphims as we, as we all have these days, but, Tons. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's in the OCA. Uh, we do have, [laughter] I think we've got more Seraphims than Isaacs, but there are at least six Isaacs. Well, there you go. So, you're just, just one of six. So, what's on your mind, Isaac? So, I'm, I'm curious. It would seem as though that the displacement of the 12 tribes is the result of them not being faithful to God. And I, I guess I'm, I'm trying to sort that with the idea that like, I guess, um, you guys said the punishment was hyperbolic when it says that, you know, they were all gone, they were all killed. Than the idea being that they were, you know, the, the text as being as hyperbolic and well, how am I trying to say this? In so much as the 12 tribes were unfaithful, that many were displaced or killed or or punished. And that trying to settle that with the idea of, you know, that that Christianity is a, uh, is maybe not so individualistic as it was when I was raised in a Protestant background, but more communal and that we, we're saved in relationships. Yet, it would seem as though perhaps if, if, you know, there was a Jew in the 12 tribes that was not unfaithful, would they still have been punished for the unfaithfulness of their community and their tribe? H. So kind of a, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so what, what do you think, father? I mean, what's, Yeah. I mean, functionally, functionally, yes. Right. Um, functionally, right? Not it isn't like, you know, um, the deportees were individually less evil than the people who were killed by the Assyrians, for example. Yeah. Right? Like on an individual sorting out basis, right? Um, the blessings of God came upon the whole nation, right? He brought them all out of Egypt, right? Brought all of their descendants, right, to the, to the land and, and gave, gave them all the land. Some of them were righteous, some of them were wicked, right? Uh, and then the wickedness, right, the collective wickedness begins to tip the scale. That doesn't mean there was not a single person, right? At, at the time of, of, uh, Elijah, remember, he despairs. He's like, I'm the only one left in the northern kingdom who still, Yeah. Worships you. To it. God says there are 10,000 who haven't bowed the knee to Baal. Right? So that there is this faithful remnant there. But when, [clears throat] when devastation comes upon the country, the nation, in terms of, you know, who ends up having individual things happen to them, I mean, that gets, that gets shared across, uh, across everybody. Just like, you know, Jeremiah suffers a whole lot. He's the faithful prophet at the time that Jerusalem is, you know, falling to the Babylonians. Uh, but he still gets thrown down a well and he still gets, right? Um, and so this is, this is part of the understanding of what happens in the resurrection and the final judgment, right? Is that, uh, looking at individual earthly lives and even sometimes collectives, depending on how big of a collective you look at, earthly lives, you don't always see justice in that span. Yeah. Right. You see this in the Psalms. There are wicked people who prosper, right? And go to their graves fat and happy, right? And there are righteous people who suffer their whole lives and that life is all too short, right? Um, and so this is why, uh, the last judgment, right, is a promise, a lot of the times when it's talked about in the Old Testament, right? Arise, oh God, and judge the earth. This is something we want to happen, right? God established justice, because if you're somebody who has received injustice in this life, right, then that's a promise. That's a hopeful thing that God is going to establish justice. Um, the reason we fear the last judgment is because somewhere deep in our soul, we know that, hey, I might be on the wrong side of this, right? I, I don't know that I'm one of the righteous people who's getting oppressed and suffering. I kind of feel like I have it pretty good. Uh, and, uh, I do more than my share of sinning, right? And so, for us, we look at it with fear because there's something tickling at the back of our head going, you need to straighten some things out to prepare for this, right? Um, and that is the idea of what scripture tells us that if you judge yourself, you will not be judged. Right? If I, if I get things right in my own life through repentance, right, and faithfulness, then I don't have to fear the day I stand before the judgment seat of Christ. Then that will become a promise for me and not a threat, right? Um, but that requires me to make some things right on my own beforehand because if not, anything that's left dangling, Christ is going to make it right on that day. Yeah. Does that help out, Isaac? Does that make things a little more clear? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It's, uh, that, that helps out a bunch. So, appreciate it. Excellent. Excellent. Thanks for calling. Okay, we're going to take one more call here before we roll on with the second half here. And, uh, we've got Paul calling from Texas. So, Paul, welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast. Thank you very much, fathers. Christ ascended. I, I can't remember what the, It's not a common greeting, you know. [laughter] Neither can I. I was hoping y'all would educate me by, I know the truth is, here's the truth. Here's the hard truth that a lot of people, I don't go in for those, orthodoxy in America don't want to face, which is Christ is Risen is the singular universal festival greeting. And then kind of, you know, a decent showing for Christ is Born. And the others, it's fine, you know, but, but they're not, a lot of people are not even going to know them, you know. You can kind of just respond to all of them with, He is and ever shall be. Right. There you go. That's technically true. There's a little greeting creep going on, I think, you know what I'm saying? He's risen and always shall be. He's born and always shall be. He's, [laughter] in our midst and always shall be. It could be, you could be, here's a spicy take. You could be just like those Greeks who come to church once a year and they always just say, "Oh, for everything." Anyway, uh, so yes. So Paul, [laughter] what's on your mind? Okay, so, uh, I had a, uh, my course, like I normally do. I, I have a question and then kind of a bonus question if there's time, but it

Does relate. The second question has to do with justice, which has to do with apocalypses, I it seems to me at least. But the first one, um, we've touched on this before, um, in old, much older, I think, uh, podcasts where we we've talked about the idea and y'all's touched on even here, of course, that the idea of a people, a people group's identity is more caught within their religio, like that which unites them.

Yeah. Um, more than like the idea of ethnicity or anything like that, or even necessarily the idea of like being tied to the land, which y'all definitely touched on the past like 30 minutes. Um, I want to know like when, assuming it happened before the enlightenment. It could have just been after the enlightenment for all I know. Assuming it happened before the enlightenment, I wanted to know like when that kind of thing started to shift because that's so hard for modern people to get now. The idea is that like, basically because that more or less that almost says like the identity of a people was identified with who they worshiped. But even that can kind of get muddy when you're looking at it with pagans and how they kind of like would have a little bit of sacredism, so to speak, with like, I've, for instance, look at the Rome, Romans and Greeks, they have, you know, the, uh, what is it, Saturn and Zeus, or is that Jupiter, but or Mars and Aries and all that stuff. Like there, there seems to be a bit of overlap and it gets kind of confusing. So I wanted to know just how that kind of developed into what it has become now, with like it being, you know, ethnicity, so to speak.

Yeah. I mean, my sense is that, um, that there's a couple of shatterings of that concept. And one of them, of course, is, is frankly comes in the wake of the Reformation, where, um, as I recall, like the first European country to try to come up with some way for like, let's all just get along kind of approach to to religion to some extent was Prussia, where you've get, you've got both Lutherans and, I think it's Lutheran and Reformed that that are both present there and they're like, well, and because, as I recall, like one of the kings and his wife were they were on different sides of this question and so he's like, well, let's just come up with one Prussian church that kind of can incorporate both these things and we'll just, you know, we'll do it all. Um, and so gradually you get this sense of religion being this private thing, and it's okay for everybody who lives in an area to belong to different religions, different churches, whatever. Um, and so then, well, what is it that binds you together? Well, we're all Prussians here. You know, that kind of sense of, um, a localized identity, um, a national identity. I mean, this is when you get the emergence of the nation state, right? Uh, because before that, there really isn't that kind of thing in the world. Um, so, I, I, I think that's part of it. But of, you know, the enlightenment is also an issue there too, right? Where you get pe, where, you know, religious identity is just getting stripped away entirely and so then people are looking for kind of a scientific basis for identity. So ethnicity, often people talk about ethnicity in terms of of DNA and stuff now. Um, even though like ethnicity, I mean, the word is from ethnos, meaning a nation or or a people, originally wouldn't have had that sense and still even kind of technically ethnicity is not necessarily your genetics because like what you inherit genetically is not simply the sum of all of your ancestors like, you know, genes drop out every generation. You don't contain DNA, DNA from every single one of your ancestors, right? But you have a sense of, okay, I'm, you know, like I'll say I'm Lithuanian. The truth is is that only a sliver of me, genetically speaking, is Lithuanian. Um, there's a bunch of other stuff mixed in there as well, but that's the sort of ethnicity that my family kind of sort of remembers, even though we weren't raised with that culture. Um, but yeah, I, I, I think that's that's a lot of where I would put it. I mean, there's still many places in the world where everybody belongs to the same religion. And so a sense of this is just what everybody does and everybody who everybody is, I think that still is present in a lot of places. And indeed, when we talk, we're going to talk towards the end of this half about modern Samaritans, and they are definitely classified by a lot of groups as a lot of scholars as a quote ethno religion, meaning that, you know, if you belong to that people, you belong to that religion. Uh, if you, you can't belong to that religion if you're not part of that people, you know, you're, you're, you're born into it and that's just kind of the way that it, the way that it is. Um, and it's defined by what they, by what they do as a group. So, I mean, that's that's my sense of it. I don't know, Father, what do you, what do you think?

Yeah. Well, to give some more detail, I think so what you're talking about in Prussian stuff comes out in the wake of the 30 Years' War, right? Right. Like, let's stop each other of relig, Protestants and Catholics and different groups of Protestants killing each other, wiping out about a third of the population of Europe in the process and just causing massive destruction. And so a lot of things emerge out of that in terms of, uh, the history of ideas. Uh, you get sort of classical foundationalism that's going to form part of the enlightenment out of that. The idea that we need to base, um, societal structures and civic life on something that is objective and therefore that we all have in common, right? That it's some kind of objective, even mathematical, rational reality, uh, rather than basing our society around religion in general, right? For example.

Yeah. Um, that pursuit ultimately doesn't work. But I'll get to that in a second. The, the, um, the best example though, is not actually a form of Christianity in Prussia. It's what happens to Judaism in Prussia. M. Because in Europe, right, uh, even more than the different types of Christianity, uh, different, uh, that become associated with different city-states and nations, uh, you know, newly forming nations and and, uh, princes and etc. Um, the Jewish people in Europe were because they had this identity as a people that incorporated their religious identity, uh, they were functionally separate, no matter where they were. They were Jews, and no matter what country they happened to be living in, and they were therefore not really part of whatever the other people was that, right? If they're in France, they're not part of the French people, right? If they're in Prussia, they're not part of the Prussian people, the Polish people, they're not Poles, right? They're not Frenchmen, they're not, right? And so the deliberate effort there was an act, I mean, I mean, this is a thing that was negotiated, was the idea that, uh, Jews would be allowed freedom of religion within the Prussian state, provided they, uh, saw moved to seeing themselves as Prussians and not Jews.

Yeah. They were Prussians who practiced the religion of Judaism, just like there are Prussians who practiced, you know, uh, who were practicing Lutherans or Reformed or Roman Catholics or whatever, right? But Prussian came first, and that's where Reformed Judaism was born. Reformed Judaism was born out of the people who accepted the compromise. The Jews who did not are what we now know as Orthodox Jews, for whom their identity as a people and their religion are still tied immediately together.

Um, but so that then, as Father Ed gets kind of transferred to the nation state rather than something actual objective and rational and scientific, it gets transferred to the nation state, which is basically the application of force. Um, and, uh, the idea of a people is ingrained into human nature because humans are unable to live alone. We're social creatures. We're social animals, right? Um, and so we need to have, we have a sense of our people, beginning with our family, our extended family, right? Our people. And so anything that tries to erode that, once that sense is established, ends up not working. And this is why nationalism has only worked historically when that nationalism, basically the line is drawn around a people. So, for example, France, right? Uh, the, the borders of France basically surround the French people, right? Uh, England, it works fine. The borders of England surround the English people. The United Kingdom has had some problems. I don't know if you know about this. [laughter]

I've heard that. Because the line is, that line is drawn around the Irish people, the Scottish people, the English people, the Welsh people, right? Right. Who all have their own sense of identity as a people. Yeah. Right. This is why Yugoslavia didn't work. Uh, this is why Arab nationalism largely hasn't worked, right? I mean, Iraq has disintegrated, right, as soon as the power that was trying to force all those different people groups to be together as a nation went away.

Um, how does it work? And I'll add, and this will make a bunch of people mad, but, uh, one of the reasons why it's going to be so long before we have an American Orthodox church is that there's not an American people.

It's true. And the reason there's not an American people, uh, I mean, there's a whole ton of problems, right? Uh, but we can't even decide how that would be constituted. When you look at nationalist movements in the United States, they have always tried to define the American people as some subset of the American people, and not only as some subset, but some subset from somewhere else. Right? So the early, very earliest nationalist movements, it was Anglo-Saxon people. Then it got loosened up to northern Europeans. Now it's loosened up, most nationalists in the US. Now it's Europeans. Those are the real American people. Well, okay. So, there's a whole pile, soon to be most of the people living in America who aren't in that category. Number one. Uh, number two, that's a people that's not from America. That's a people from somewhere else. And number three, when you draw a line around Europe, you're including like dozens of different peoples.

Yeah. There is no European culture. And trust me, look at the EU. Any attempt to have a European government would fail because they kind of tried that with the EU, at least at a low level, and it's failed miserably, right? So yeah, until there's a sense, until the people who live in the United States of America have a sense of themselves as a people and some kind of unity around something. Uh, you can't have an American Orthodox church because you can't have an expression of Orthodox Christianity that is an expression of the American people because there's not an American people.

Yeah. Yep. Yep. I don't know. I hopefully that, uh, that's helpful, Paul, and doesn't muddy the waters too much. It's obviously it's a huge, huge question with lots of different rabbit trails that one could go down, you know, of course, but, uh, yeah.

Yeah, I appreciate it, Fathers. Thank you very much.

Yeah. Thanks very much for calling. All right, rolling.

Treaty of Westphalia, folks. Treaty of Westphalia. [laughter] No, no reference to the Treaty of Versailles this time.

Um, no, no, I've said enough about that.

Yes. Okay. All right. So, at the end of the first half, we basically get Samaritans as a people. There we go. Uh, coming onto the scene, you know, this kind of merging together.

Yeah. Merging together of these different pagan groups, but then also there's Yahweh worship going on as well. Um, so then we have Samaritans. So what's what's up with those Samaritans? Father Steven. [laughter] So they became a Seinfeld thing. I don't know.

Yes. Exact. Yeah.

Who are these people?

Hacky sack standup. I don't know.

There you go.

What's up with elevators? Why do I keep pushing the button? It doesn't come any faster.

Okay. So, uh, [laughter] well, so part of what happens, right, is is historically Samaria, right? Whatever the Assyrian project was, Assyria doesn't last all that long.

And, uh, gets overthrown by Babylon. And then the Babylonian Empire doesn't last all that long.

Yeah.

And then we come under the Persians. And then, uh, under the Persians, Samaria becomes a, uh, province, a satrap, uh, and then, uh, becomes a province under the Greek Seleucids. It's a, it's for a time a, uh, province under Rome and then it gets merged, but we'll talk about that in a little bit. Uh, but so whatever the the the that original project was of the Assyrian, uh, of the Assyrians in Samaria, that project obviously kind of falls by the wayside, right? And the the land and the people there come under this, uh, series of, uh, dominions. But the other thing that happens in the midst of this is of course Judah falls. Uh, the exile happens, uh, to Babylon and then, uh, and so there's 70 years there where, uh, the Samaritan people, right, we've now had a few generations of intermarriage and this kind of thing happening, uh, they now their their land starts to extend in a little bit into what was Judah, right, in terms of where people are living and this kind of thing. And then under the Persians, uh, Cyrus allows, uh, the, uh, people of Judah to return. Uh, many of which do, uh, and they get ready.

Not all. Not all. That's why Persian Jews left. Yeah.

Yes. Yes. And Mesopotamian. Yeah. That's why there's a Babylonian Talmud. Yes. Um, so, uh, the, the, the province, the area we're talking about, right, for for most of this period. So the period before Christ, basically. So this the 500 years that we're talking about here, we're basically talking about the area north of Judah, south of Galilee, between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. Okay. Um, and that region, uh, was incredibly fertile in terms of groves of fruit trees, planting crops because it got a lot of rain coming off of the Mediterranean. And so economically, this greatly benefits the Samaritan people because they're growing food to feed not only themselves but the neighboring provinces. And when you have imperial infrastructure, especially once you get to the Romans and you've got Roman roads, but even with the Greeks, as they, as these emp, successive empires build more and more infrastructure, they're able to carry that food, the produce of the land of Samaria north, south, down towards Egypt, right, to different places. Uh, spurs economic activity and growth. Plus, you have trade routes that trade routes that pass through Samaria, uh, on their way to Egypt, uh, and other points south, and then on their way north up into the fertile crescent, up into, uh, uh, Asia Minor, what's now Turkey. So, it's a prosperous area. Uh, but the Samaritans who are there now coming into an identity as a people and starting to thrive, uh, when these Judahites come back to form the province of Judea and start building the city of Jerusalem and especially building city walls around Jerusalem, they get a little nervous.

And that nervousness produces an episode that's recorded in the book of Ezra that is going to be sort of a flashpoint from the Jewish perspective in terms of tension and enmity between these two peoples.

Yeah. So looking at Ezra chapter 4, beginning with verse 7. In the days of Artaxerxes, so that's the Persian king, right? Bishlam and Mithredath and Tabiel and the rest of their associates wrote to Artaxerxes, king of Persia. The letter was written in Aramaic and translated. Rehum the commander and Shimshai the scribe wrote a letter against Jerusalem to Artaxerxes the king as follows. Rehum the commander, Shimsh the scribe, and the rest of their associates, the judges, the governors, the officials, the Persians, the men of Erech, the Babylonians, the men of Susa, that is the Elamites, and the rest of the nations whom the great and noble Osnappar deported and settled in the cities of Samaria and in the rest of the province beyond the river. This is a copy of the letter that they sent to Artaxerxes the king. Your servants, the men of the province beyond the river, send greeting. And now be it known to the king that the Jews who came up from you to us have gone to Jerusalem. They are rebuilding that rebellious and wicked city. They are finishing the walls and repairing the foundations. Now be it known to the king that if the city is rebuilt and the walls finished, they will not pay tribute, custom, or toll, and the royal revenue will be impaired. Now, because we eat the salt of the palace, and it is not fitting for us to witness the king's dishonor, therefore, we send and inform the king. In order that search may be made in the book of the records of your fathers, you will find in the book of the records and learn that this city is a rebellious city, hurtful to kings and provinces, and that sedition was stirred up in it from of old. That was why the city was laid waste. We make known to the king that if the city is rebuilt and its walls finished, you will then have no possession in the province beyond the river.

So, uh, yeah. So, they're concerned, right, that, uh, and these are the people, right? These are going to be the Judeans from which we get the term Jews. So, this is the beginning of people who would identify as Jews, right, in in. And now we have the Samaritans who have this sense of identity to the north of them. They are threatened by the returning Jews and by their establishment of fortifications, right? And so they send this letter for their concern and basically, right? So you know, you know about the salt if you've seen 300, right? This is part of how you submitted to Persia had to do with the, uh, the salt.

Um, they basically say, "Look, we're loyal vassals. We love you guys. You guys are the best, uh, [laughter] best emperor ever. Uh, and, uh, we're totally loyal and faithful. And so because of that, we just want to warn you, like, there's a reason this city got wiped out by, uh, Nebuchadnezzar, [laughter] right? Like, these people are a problem, right? Like they caused trouble. They're not going to submit to your authority, right? They'll be nothing but trouble. They'll get an insurrection, right?" Kind of suggest. Now, notice they say, right, "Your servants, the men of the province beyond the river," and they end it with, "If you let them finish their walls, you'll have no province by the river." They're basically signaling they're going to take us over, right? That's the first thing.

They're going to invade and [laughter] establish their big kingdom. Yeah.

Yeah. They're going to try to reestablish their whole kingdom here and secede. Them rebuilding this stuff is step one, right? You can't, you can't trust these guys.

Yeah. All right, picking up with verse 17. The king sent an answer to Rehum the commander and Shimshai the scribe, the rest of their associates who live in Samaria and in the rest of the province beyond the river. Greeting. And now the letter that you sent to us has been plainly read before me. And I made a decree, and search has been made. And it has been found that the city from of old has risen against kings, and that rebellion and sedition had been made in it. And mighty kings have been over Jerusalem, who ruled over the whole province beyond the river, to whom tribute, custom, and toll were paid. Therefore, make a decree that these men be made to cease, and that the city be not rebuilt until a decree is made by me. And take care not to be slack in this matter. Why should damage grow to the hurt of the king? Then when the copy of King Artaxerxes' letter was read before Rehum and Shimsh the scribe and their associates, they went in haste to the Jews at Jerusalem and by force and power made them cease. Then the work on the house of God that is in Jerusalem stopped, and it ceased until the second year of the reign of Darius, king of Persia.

You don't want to be British and pronounce that Duras.

Darius. Yes.

Yes. Like Constantine. Uh [laughter] um, yeah. And so the letter works, [laughter] right? And, uh, Artaxerxes writes back and says, "Yeah, let's just shut this down until I say otherwise." Right?

Uh, better safe than sorry. And so it gets shut down. And so this begins. So what we're seeing in Ezra here, this is from the Jewish perspective. This is the beginning of enmity, right, uh, toward, uh, their, uh, northern neighbors. Okay. So what happens then, and right, the, uh, the Judahites, right, returned to establish Judea around 515, uh, BC. So we're getting into the beginning of the fifth century now. As eventually, right, the Jerusalem is rebuilt and then eventually the temple is rebuilt in Jerusalem, right, there is sort of a, uh, a reaction going on among the Samaritan people, right? So they, as a people, are now sort of reforming their group identity.

Yeah.

Uh, under, right, because now at this point, they don't remember, oh, this family was brought here from Babylon, and this family is descended from Israelites, and that family. It's all been intermarried, right? And so they're forming their identity as well. They're the successor of the kingdom of Judah. We are the successor of the northern kingdom of Israel.

Yeah. Right. And just as they are now saying they are the real heirs of the Torah and everything about it, right? And beginning to say, and and you, uh, Samaritans are not, right? The Samaritans do essentially the same move.

Yeah. The Samaritans say, "No, we are the real heirs of the Torah. We are the sons of Joseph. We are the sons of Ephraim. You guys are not." Right?

[clears throat]

And so as a second temple is built in Jerusalem, uh, the Samaritans build what they consider to be, in the fifth century, around the same time, what they consider to be the real second temple. Uh, and that temple is built on, uh, Mount Gerizim. Uh, and, uh, they are going to point at things historically in the Torah and in, uh, the book of Joshua and other things to argue that Judah and Benjamin were always not great people, [laughter] right? They were always the problematic ones, not the northern kingdom, right? Uh, it was the southern kingdom that was that was the issue. They have their temple now at Mount Gerizim. Uh, they begin a high priesthood that is headquartered at Shechem.

Yep.

And if you remember, uh, in the Old Testament, before the taking of Jerusalem, the tabernacle was at Shechem, right? So that was the place of worship. It's where the high priest like Eli lived, right?

He's going to come up again.

Yes. Uh, multiple times. Yeah, that's maybe, um, but so there's a high priest at Shechem, and so obviously the, the, the Samaritans have no political independence whatsoever at this time under the Persians,

Or at any time.

For a long time, frankly.

Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] Yeah.

They never get political independence, really. Uh, and so they don't have a political leader. They're governed by a governor from Persia, slash the Seleucid, Rome, right, slash mostly Rome, uh, then later various sultanates. Um, but, uh, they do have a high priest. And so that high priest is sort of the leader of the people, right? The Samaritan people look to leadership. Their cult and culture is led by, and this or by their leadership as a people with an identity is that high priest at Shechem, who is the one who is the high priest at the temple on Mount Gerizim, right? Uh, and so Shechem is, is, and the area around Mount Gerizim become the, the religious center and the center of the people's identity, while Samaria had been rebuilt as a city, and that's where the provincial governors were, right? That was the center of civil government for whoever the imperial government was at the time was at the city of Samaria. Um, but that's why we have, you may never have thought about this, but when we get to like the New Testament and stuff, they're the Samaritans, but Samaria is not all that important to them.

As a people because that's just the government center and it's not their government.

Yeah.

Is it, right? So, the heartland for them is Mount Gerizim, Shechem, right? The this area, uh, not the city of Samaria per se. Um, central to both their identity as a people and the functioning of this religion, right? Uh, of this religious practice, which is worshiping Yahweh, the God of Israel, at this temple on Mount Gerizim.

Yeah. And it seems like that the idolatrous bits have kind of fallen away by this point.

Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Samaritan people as such, right?

Not the fractured different religions they were practicing before they came together to have a collective identity as a people.

Um, and so, uh, at the core of that is their version of the Torah, what we now call the Samaritan Pentateuch, usually in,

Yeah. Like in scholarship when they refer to the text.

And, and, and for them, this is the, those five books, their Torah, this is the canonical scripture. They don't,

Yes, it's the whole.

Like they have a version, they have a version of the book of Joshua, right? But they regard it as kind of like, like Protestants would say like, oh, interesting historical, you know, whatever, but it's not scripture.

Yeah. Yeah. Nothing else is on the level of the Torah for them at all, even close to it. Yeah. There are other ancient historical texts and that kind of thing, but, and sort of their perspective that means they could very easily say those contain errors, right? [laughter] Or biases.

Yeah. Because they don't have any,

Pro-Jewish biases, right?

Right. They don't, they don't have any, uh, stake in in those texts, you know.

Yeah. And so the, the original of the Samaritan Pentateuch, of their Torah, was in Hebrew, but the very earliest copies were written in a Samaritan script. So the, the letters you see, the alphabet letters you see when you look at a Hebrew Bible today or even that modern Hebrew uses are Aramaic block letters. Okay? That those aren't around right at the time we're talking about. So early biblical manuscripts are in what's called Paleo-Hebrew. That's the script, right? That's the way of writing the letters. Uh, there is a Samaritan script. Uh, and that Samaritan script was used both for the Samaritan Hebrew dialect and for Aramaic in some cases.

Yeah. And you can look this up. It's really interesting to look at. You can just see pictures of it on the on the internet.

Yeah. Um, but we have translations, uh, of it, ancient translations of it, I should say, and some of them for reasons that we're going to talk about here into Aramaic, right, which you'd expect in the Persian period because Aramaic is the imperial Aramaic is the language of the Persian Empire, and then Greek, and then Arabic. Um, when, when you look at the Samaritan Pentateuch, the reason it gets talked about most often, uh, like in the US, right, is primarily, uh, when you, when you're doing text criticism in biblical studies. Uh, so the Samaritan Pentateuch, it has its own little, uh, Gothic font letter that you get in text critical apparatuses or apparati, uh, in, uh, books. So when you compare it with the Masoretic Text, which is sort of this today's standard Hebrew of the Torah, right? There are 6,000 differences.

That seems like a lot.

You say, "Holy cow, right?" but or great googly moogly. [laughter] But, uh, most of those sort of like when you hear how many text, you know, you hear a friend of the show, Bart Ehrman, say there are more text variants in the New Testament than there are words in the New Testament and you go, "Wow, that's, but [laughter] how can that even be?" Most, most of these are very minor, right?

Yeah. Like spelling, right? Slight grammar differences,

Spelling, grammar, conjugation. And part of that is dialectic.

Yeah.

Meaning, right, like the Hebrew of the Masoretic Text of the Torah and the Hebrew and Aramaic used by the Samaritans are different dialects. So, [snorts] as you could imagine, different dialects spell words a little differently or use certain words a little differently or phrase things a little differently. That's most of it. Okay. Of the 6,000, uh, the vast majority. Interestingly, when you compare it with the Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint, and this is the actual Septuagint because we're talking about the first five books. We're talking about the Torah.

There you go.

Um,

Or in their case, the only five books.

Yeah. Uh, so we know now for sure. I mean, people hypothesized this for a long time, but we now know for absolute certain because of the Dead Sea Scrolls that the, uh, Septuagint Greek is translated from a different Hebrew text than the Masoretic Text tradition.

Yeah.

That there were at least those two Hebrew texts that existed side by side, right? What became the Masoretic Text and what was translated into Greek and became the Septuagint. Okay. So, when we're comparing the Septuagint, we're trying to figure out what we're really trying to figure out because it's two different languages. Compare that to the Samaritan Pentateuch. We're trying to figure out how close the HebrewVorlage, the the the Hebrew original behind the Septuagint translation was, how close that Hebrew was to the Samaritan Pentateuch. And what we find is that 2,000 of those 6,000 variants, so about a third, and 6,000 and 2,000 in this case, by the way, are both round numbers. It's not exactly 6,000 or exactly 2,000.

But so roughly a third of the variance between the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint or Masoretic Text and the Samaritan Pentateuch are shared by the Septuagint. M.

So the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint agree with each other over against the Masoretic Text. Yeah. And in many ca, yeah, again, it mostly doesn't matter. Um, but, but it's interesting, you know, that there's this overlap, this kind of Venn diagram.

Right. Well, here's, here's why I think it matters. Here's why I think it matters. Uh, it shows that, uh, there is a family tree of Hebrew manuscripts. Right. And Hebrew manuscript traditions.

Yeah. Even though we don't have too much of it. Number one, uh, it shows us that the Samaritan Pentateuch is not just, uh, um, someone taking the Torah from the Masoretic Text and fiddling with it, which was our hypothesis for a long time, right? Was that basically the Samaritans took the Torah. That the Torah that existed at the time in the in the fifth century BC looked pretty much exactly like the Masoretic Torah and the Samaritans took it and just deliberately changed things and fiddled with it. Right? This is evidence that that's not the case. Right? That some of the, that at least a third of those variants for the Masoretic Text are based on already existing Hebrew variants. Uh, and it also is further evidence that one of the old theories about the Septuagint, that it's basically a bad translation of the Masoretic Hebrew, is also false. Right? That it's more evidence that it's based on a different Hebrew original that was in, in circulation and that elements of that found itself in both the Samaritan Pentateuch and, uh, in, uh, Septuagint. So, uh, yeah, so we've got those variants that are shared. We said most of them are very minor. What are some of the interesting and important ones? Okay. So, I'm pretty sure it's been on this show. I talk too much in too many different places. So, I never remember what I said where, right? But, uh, I know in Whole Council of God in Deuteronomy 5 and Exodus 20, and I'm pretty sure at some point on the show, we've talked about the Ten Commandments, uh, or the Ten Words, uh, and the fact that one of the really interesting things about them is that there aren't 10.

Right. Right. They're actually like, just grammatically in the text, there are nine. Uh, nevertheless, even though you only get nine things grammatically out of the text, everyone has always referred to it as the 10 words or the 10 commandments.

Yeah.

And so historically, different groups have split one of the nine into two in different ways, right? Or incorporated another piece of the text as a tenth one. So, and, and, uh, Rabbinic Judaism does that one way, Orthodox Christianity does that one way, Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism do that one way. Uh, the Reformed Protestant tradition does that another way. Um, so there are different ways to divide them to get to 10. So the Samaritan Pentateuch takes a different approach. They just add a tenth one. So they use the, the grammar to say, "Well, here's nine." And then they add a tenth one. And the tenth one that they add is all sacrifices have to take place on Mount Gerizim. Okay. Uh, that one looks like a deliberate change, [laughter] right? It's hard to imagine how that was just a text variant that they found. And they got left out of literally everything else.

Yeah.

Um, but, but before we write off just, oh, okay, they're just changing everything to make their temple legit.

Yeah.

A little bit more to think about. And this is one of the really interesting things to me, but I'm a nerd, so your mileage may vary. But

Well, I mean, why do people tune into this show?

Yes. [laughter] [sighs and gasps]

This has to do with Deuteronomy 27:4-7. And what Father Andrew is about to read is basically what you will find in pretty much any English Bible.

Yeah. That you look up Deuteronomy 27:4-7 in.

Okay. And when you have crossed over the Jordan, you shall set up these stones concerning which I command you today on Mount Ebal, and you shall plaster them with plaster, and there you shall build an altar to the Lord your God, an altar of stones. You shall wield no iron tool on them. You shall build an altar to the Lord your God of uncut stones, and you shall offer burnt offerings on it to the Lord your God, and you shall sacrifice peace offerings and shall eat there, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, right? So that all sounds normal, right? This is when, uh, this is right near, not right at, but near the end of Deuteronomy. Uh, and Moses is telling the people, hey, when you cross the Jordan, you come to Mount Ebal, you put these standing stones there, you build an altar there and offer thanks, uh, to God there. Uh, you offer sacrifice there. This is going to be the first altar that gets built in the land of Canaan, right? In the promised land after they cross the Jordan.

But here's the interesting thing. As you might expect, right? You probably can anticipate, I'm going to tell you that in the Samaritan Pentateuch, right? In the Samaritan Pentateuch, uh, when you read these verses, it doesn't say Mount Ebal, it says Mount Gerizim, which is right next to Mount Ebal,

Which you'd expect given their sort of,

Preference for Mount Gerizim. That's where they're temp.

Yeah, exactly.

So, you can say, "Oh, okay. Okay. So, this is them, you know, changing it up so that this first altar that gets built in the promised land is built on Mount Gerizim to justify them, uh, having their temple and worshiping there." But one of the very important scrolls we found among the Dead Sea Scrolls is 4Q Deut. [laughter]

Yes, that's that's the reference. Yes, the Deut is for Deuteronomy.

Yes. [laughter]

Right. That's right.

Because it is a scroll of the book of Deuteronomy.

Four means it was found at Qumran. And the four is the fourth cave.

Right. Fourth cave at Qumran. 4Q is the Deuteronomy scroll where it has preserved, uh, in Deuteronomy 32, that when God divided the nations, he divided them according to the number of the sons of God. Right? Which was very important because that explained why in the Septuagint it said he numbered them according to the number of his angels.

Right?

The Masoretic Text says according to the number of the sons of Israel.

Right? So in that place in Deuteronomy, it records this older reading that had been shifted in in the Masoretic tradition. That older reading was also testified to by the Greek. Right? Well, when you look at that Dead Sea Scroll of Deuteronomy 27, instead of Mount Ebal, it says Mount Gerizim.

So, basically the Dead Sea Scrolls agrees with the Samaritan,

Torah on this point. Yeah.

Yes. Which means in this case, this may have actually been changed by the Jews. Huh? Because the Samaritans were pointing at it, not vice versa.

We don't know. But it's interesting. [laughter]

Yes. Yes. At the very least, the Samaritans did not change it. The Samaritans were pointing at something that they found there in the text, right? Um, whether why the Masoretic doesn't reflect that. Yes, that is the subject of conjecture. Um, and then in general, another feature you see that accounts for a bunch of the variants is that, uh, we've talked before on the show when we were talking about, uh, Christological Old Testament Christology when we did those episodes, uh, we talked about how, uh, like in the Aramaic Targums, any place where God was appearing directly or God was doing something directly or God was talked about in some physical sense or as having body parts, it would add the word *memra*. So it's like the word of the Lord instead of just the Lord.

Yeah.

Um, well, the Samaritan Pentateuch kind of does that too, except the way it does it is anytime it, there's this physical sense or God appearing directly, it says angel of God instead of just God.

Yeah.

So it adds angel to the front, basically. But it's a similar kind of thing. And so that falls into that whole second power in heaven idea. The Samaritans kind of had that going as well, right? This is evidence of that. So, uh, that text again is then at the core because of course, in terms of what they're doing at the temple, they're following the sacrificial regulations of their version of the Torah. These are the commandments that are shaping Samaritan life, at least are supposed to be, right? We have no reason to suspect they were more obedient to their Torah than the, the, the Jewish people were to the Torah as they were using it, but in theory. Um, and so as we go forward in time, as we mentioned, very fertile land under the Seleucid Greeks. Uh, they're feeding the whole region, uh, with food grown there. But during that period, some of the same tensions start to arise in Samaria that were arising in Judea. That in Judea that ended up bringing about the Maccabean Revolt.

Right? So, but in Samaria, it doesn't quite get there for reasons we'll talk about in a second. In Samaria, though, there are Samaritans, members of the Samaritan people, who are attracted to Greek culture and Greek learning and Greek, and so sort of want to become Greeks and so they start Hellenizing. They start adopting Greek practices, worshiping the Greek gods, right? This kind of thing. And that, of course, creates a tension with the Samaritan people, the Samaritan high priest, right? Their existence, they're wanting to retain their identity as a people and their way of life and their religious identity, and there is this Greek cult, imperial cultural force, right, uh, that is impeding on that. Um, but before that can reach a crisis point in Samaria, it reaches a crisis point in Judea. We talked before, we have the episode not that long ago about the Hasmoneans. The Maccabean Revolt happens against the Seleucid Greeks. Uh, and they managed to establish an independent Judea for a time, uh, under a series of, uh, Hasmonean kings, which you're not supposed to have, but anyway. Uh, that's, we talked about that there. Um, and once they become independent, they start to impinge upon Samaria. They also become expansionist. Uh, and there comes to be this idea among the Hasmoneans of sort of a reconquista, uh, that we're going to take back all of the lands that were promised to all of the tribes and those Samaritans don't have a legitimate claim to them. Uh, draw any parallels you'd like. Um, and that culminates in, as we mentioned in the Hasmonean episode, uh, John Hyrcanus around 150 BC, who is both the king and the high priest at the same time.

Yeah. In Judea. Not good. And is in battle killing people and is the high priest. Um, but he goes and conquers Samaria, destroys the city of Samaria, and destroys the temple on Mount Gerizim.

Yeah. And we should say the ruins of that temple are still there,

To this very, very day.

To this day.

Yeah. So it never gets rebuilt.

That's right.

Um, so this, of course, right, we, we already saw, you know, the record in Ezra of the letter writing to the Persian emperor that caused some of the, uh, of the Jewish people against the Samaritan people. After John Hyrcanus, you could see why the Samaritans would have a grievance against the Jewish people, right? Uh, their destroyed temple in particular. Um, and so, uh, you have a fundamentally, this is, this is a relationship that from this point on is destined to never be good. Right? That, uh, both of them self-identify as the true Israel of God to the exclusion of the other.

Um,

The, the, the Judeans view the Samaritans as at best mixed.

They're sort of at best mixed race. Uh, many of them, even in the first century, like Josephus and stuff, deny that there's a drop of Israelite blood in any of them, even though we now know for a fact that's not true.

Because they take, you know, completely literally those hyperbolic passages that we read earlier.

Right. Right. And use those as proof.

Um, and so they're, the idea that they have any claim whatsoever, right, to anything is completely rejected, right, by, by the Judeans throughout the whole period. Um, Rome doesn't help the matter. Uh, because so Rome comes in, uh, it's actually Pompey, uh, be during his tension and before his war with Julius Caesar, uh, who comes in and annexes both Samaria and Judea.

Is this when he went into the temple in in Jerusalem? Yes.

And was like, "Wow, there's nothing in the Holy of Holies."

Yes.

Yeah.

And so, uh, but then in, uh, AD 6, uh, the Romans decide that there's no good reason from their perspective, uh, because again, they don't care about the people. They just care about the land and its produce. There's no good reason to have Judea and Samaria be separate provinces anymore. And so, they just merge them.

Yeah. And so Samaria becomes part of Judea in terms of the Roman civil government. Okay? Uh, and as you might imagine, that doesn't help because the Samaritans and the Jewish people still hate each other. So, [laughter] um, they also, the Romans also rebuilt the city of Samaria, the city Samaria that John Hyrcanus had destroyed. Um, and that city, uh, gets renamed Sebaste, right? The Sebaste.

Yes. So all of you folks when you see Sebaste or Sebastia referred to, uh, in early church history, that's where they're talking about.

Yeah.

Uh, that is the city of, uh, Samaria. Um, but, right, even though they merged the provinces, neither Jews nor Romans consider the Samaritans to actually be Jews. [laughter]

Yeah. Well, it also should be just remembered that that Jew is a subset of Israelite anyway. You know, they're not simply,

Judah is a subset of Israelite. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. Um, but the importance for that is that even now, though, now, now the Samaritans are living in the province of Judea and therefore technically also Judeans.

Yeah.

Uh, the Roman laws of tolerance and stuff that applied to the Judeans do not apply to the Samaritans.

Um, this is one of the reasons why the Romans didn't let them rebuild their temple. Um, and so once, once, uh, the Samaritan lands become part of Judea, again, draw any connections you'd like, uh, the actual Judeans, right, the Jewish people, uh, begin an aggressive, uh, series of settlements moving into traditionally Samaritan territory and establishing Jewish villages, uh, to gradually take territory away from the Samaritans. But that doesn't have a chance to get very far because in, uh, AD 70, well, actually in, uh, starting in '64, but the Jewish revolt happens.

Yeah. And the Romans show up, uh, to take care of this, uh, in AD 70. And now the Samaritans, not being Jews as far as the Romans are concerned, works in the Samaritans' favor. [laughter]

Yeah. Because they're not going to get put down as, you know, revolutionaries, whatever.

Don't have any problem with the Samaritans right now. Their problem is with, uh, the Jewish people who have started this revolt. Uh, and so, um, the, uh, the settlements as they move

Through Samaria, uh, the region on their way into Judea proper, uh, the Romans just depopulate those settlements. And by that, I mean kill everyone, right? Uh, they go through, and they wipe out about 50% of the, uh, Jewish population, uh, in regions where Samaritans lived in AD 70. And then when the Bar Kokhba Revolt happens, uh, 50 years later, uh, the Romans kill every single Jewish person they find. Yeah. So literally, it goes to zero. That's not hyperbole. [laughter] Right? Uh, the Romans at the time of the Bar Kokhba Rebellion, it's literally massacres because the Romans had had it at that point.

I mean, they had been repressive and brutal in AD 70. And so when they find out that didn't work and there's another uprising, they just, they literally go scorched earth, right? And so that's when the, the, uh, the Jewish people who don't live in or who escape from the Romans [snorts] uh, coming through Judea are banned from Judea. Can't return. The name of the, the province is changed to Palestina. Yeah. And the city of Jerusalem, you know, becomes Alia Capitolina. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so, yeah. So, but the Samaritans are untouched. Yeah. I mean, incidentally, I'm sure, but I mean, in general, right? They have no beef with the Samaritans. The Romans have no beef with them and and leave them largely alone, right?

Um, so, uh, in the wake of all of these things, right, uh, for the Samaritan people, in the wake of the destruction of their temple, really, right, and and following that, and then through the, the Roman period, and therefore through the New Testament period, um, the real center of their life once again is not Sebastia, right? That's that was rebuilt by the Romans, but that's the center of Roman government, right? Uh, is the area around what comes to be called Nablus. And Nablus is really a corruption of the name, uh, Neapolis. Yeah. The new city. Yeah. And because, because it's ultimately, it's, it's from Arabic, and, and Arabic does not have a P sound. So, you know, Yeah. So, Nablus, Neapolis, and, uh, uh, Neapolis is of course most famous for having even segments of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream. [gasps] [sighs] Um, yes.

So, uh, but that, that region around obviously Nablus is a Greek city with a Greek name that means new city. So, it's a city built by the Greeks. Surprise. The Greeks named a lot of stuff with that name, like Naples in, you know, in Italy. Yeah. Anytime they build a new city, it's the new city. Nap. Yes. Napoli is Neapolis. Nablus, which, I mean, so this is where, and you could go there. That's the name of the town now. Um, you know, so Jacob's Well still there. Yeah. So Nablus is there. That's where Jacob's Well is, but that's also the region where Mount Gerizim is, Mount Ebal, Shechem, right? So that, that is the region, heartland, always the center of their religious life, even though they haven't been allowed to rebuild the temple on Mount Gerizim. It's still a religious center, uh, even though they don't have the temple. And this is, you know, major figure, obviously, the, the obvious figure in church history is St. Photine, uh, we'll talk about her a little more in the third half, uh, who's living in this region, right, and who Christ encounters here, uh, in St. John's Gospel. But St. Justin Martyr, uh, is living in and writes from this region. Um, so, uh, this is a significant place, right, for, uh, this area for some time to come.

So then in, uh, later history, um, and this is now much later, right? So it's like, well, what happens to those Samaritans? Because the Samaritans stay living there, right? Um, so eventually they do revolt against Rome, but it's not until the sixth century AD. So, it's Christian Rome now, by this point. Yes, it is. What is commonly called the Byzantine Empire at this point. Uh, and there are two revolts, one in 525 and one in 555, both of which are cracked down upon by St. Justinian, uh, when he was the emperor. And, uh, shall we say, especially the second crackdown in 555 depopulated the region quite a bit. Yeah. Uh, and St. Justinian, unlike the Assyrians, right, or some of these other, uh, rulers, empires, did not himself resettle and repopulate the area. Uh, the, the troops withdrew, just sort of leaving this void, right, within the population. But this is still very fertile farmland. This is still, right, good land and everything. And so what happened was in the middle of the sixth century, uh, a number of, uh, nomadic Arab tribes moved into the region and settled there, just of, of their own accord. And so it was sort of repopulated by these nomads who put down roots now that they had this land available. They're sort of like frontier settlers in the United States, right? They went just went in there and just sort of staked a claim, built homes, put down roots, right, and started working the land. Um, gave up nomadism.

But, uh, it's not that long after this that the, uh, Muslim conquests begin. And so there was not enough time before the Muslim conquest for any of these new settlers to sort of be inculturated and come to think of themselves as Samaritans. Yeah. Right? So you have the Samaritans who are left after the second revolt, still living there, still identifying as Samaritans, still practicing Samaritan religion, but these other people who come and settle don't really get integrated before the Muslim conquest. And so when, when, uh, Islamic armies conquer Samaria, uh, these groups don't have any particular allegiance to Samaritan religion. They have whatever tribal religion they had as nomads. Uh, and so there's just this huge mass conversion to Islam. Yeah. So those new settlers pretty much all convert to Islam. And a lot of the actual Samaritans up to that point also, along the way through history, end up converting to Islam, right? Um, because, and, and hey, I mean, honestly, there's not a huge radical difference at this point. Yeah. I mean, Islam at that period. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In the 7th, 8th century, there's not a huge difference between Islam and Samaritanism religiously. Yeah. Right? Obviously Christianity, big differences. Right. Right. Smaller differences with Judaism. But with, with Samaritanism, since they don't have a temple and stuff, it's not a huge pull, right? When the Muslims show up and are claiming the God they worship is the God of Abraham, I mean, that's not a huge lift for a Samaritan, right? So, yeah, there's there's not a huge barrier to conversion. And so, there's a lot of conversion.

So, by the time you get to today, to 2026, uh, there's estimated to be less than 1,000 Samaritans left. Yeah. There's about nine. Yeah. Around 900. And I, I looked at, so, where do they live? Like, so the largest group is there still in that same place, which is amazing. And then there's also, um, an almost as big group near Tel Aviv. Um, and, um, so I was really interested in this. So I went and looked up, I was like, okay, what is the modern shape of Samaritan religion? These 900 plus people. So there's some interesting differences with Judaism that people might find, find fascinating. So, number one, they regard Moses as being the final prophet. Right? So that's a big difference right there. Right? Like all these other prophets that, that, uh, Judah has, you know, recognizes that, and that we would all think of as Judaism, and certainly part of Christianity. They don't have that. It's just Moses is the last one. And then, as we hinted at earlier, they, they regard the, the break as having happened with Eli, the, the priest, right? That Eli was this kind of rebel figure. And they say that he offered, uh, illicit sacrifices, um, that he, he made his own copy of the Ark of the Covenant. So he made like a, you know, the, the ark that, that, you know, that the Judeans always regarded as the ark. Um, they say that he, he copied that, that so that's just a copy that they had the real ark. Um, and that he made a copy of the, the, the Mount Gerizim temple. So again, you see it's sort of this idea of they're the breakaway religion, right?

Um, well, also, I mean, Eli not a good guy, right? Right. So, not entirely implausible. Yeah. Right. So, yeah, and so in First Samuel, the solution to Eli is sort of Samuel, the prophet. Yep. But if you don't accept any prophets after Moses. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yep. Um, so they do continue to maintain a priesthood. So this is interesting because that's different from Rabbinic Judaism, which does not have a priesthood, right? They have rabbis, which just means teachers. They don't have a priesthood. Um, and, uh, the priesthood is traditionally, they don't have, they don't hold down jobs. So it's sort of like this Levitical idea, right? That you don't, they don't work except doing the priestly stuff. Um, but, uh, there's a kind of practical problem amongst the modern Samaritans, which is that about 28% of the total population of that people is part of this priestly family. So you can't have 72% of the population supporting 28% who do only this kind of stuff, right? If you have 900 people, it's it's hard, you know? So as a result, a lot of them do have jobs. Um, just for pure, purely practical reasons. There is a high priest. So there's multiple priests, but there's a high priest, and the high priest is whoever is the oldest male member of that family. So it's not father to son. So like, for instance, the current high priest, uh, the sort of heir apparent, I think, is a younger brother of his. So if he dies, then that younger brother will become the next high priest. It will not necessarily go to one of the sons of the current high priest. Um, they do still offer sacrifice, but the only sacrifice they offer is Passover. So, all the other Levitical sacrifices, even though that's in their version of the Torah, they're not doing those things. Yeah. Right. That's because of the temple. Yeah.

Um, what's interesting is they will go to the ruins of that temple on Mount Gerizim and, uh, and they will do the Passover there. There's like, there's photos, you can see photos of, of, of lamb, you know, lambs lined up to ready to be roasted and stuff. So, um, so they're, they're doing that. It's very interesting. Um, how do they understand the, why there's only a few of them? Like, they regard it as actually a confirmation of a prophecy that that there's supposed to be this dwindling that occurs before the end of the, uh, ethical remnant. Exactly. Exactly. It's exactly that idea. So then, then the final thing that I want to mention about this before we take our second break, uh, is, um, so the end of the world. Okay. So they have an eschatology, right? There is an end of the world that's going to come. And at this point, then there's this figure called the, and I have no idea how to pronounce this, but I'm going to say what I think it is. The Taheb. T-a-h-e-b is the way it gets anglicized. The Taheb will emerge. So this guy is another prophet, but he's like, he's a Messiah. Um, so like Moses, he's going to be a prophet for 40 years. He's going to restore the kingdom of Israel. So then the, the faithful remnant will become the basis for this restoration. Uh, the dead are all going to be raised. Taheb means the restorer, by the way. Oh. Oh, really? Okay. Okay. Who repairs or restores? Yeah. Yeah. And you'd expect that, 'cause Messiah is the king, right? King. They have no connection to the Davidic King. [laughter] Yeah. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Um, he's going to discover the tabernacle, which is hidden all this time, and he's going to bring it to Mount Gerizim. And then when his mission is complete, he's going to die and be buried next to Joseph, right? So the father, truly almost like a second Abraham in some ways, right, to the Samaritans. Um, so he's going to be buried next to Joseph, and that's going to be the, the restoration, the completion of everything. So it's really interesting. And, uh, you, we talked about, of course, the Samaritan Pentateuch, Samaritan Torah earlier, that's on the internet. You can sit there and read it. And of course, there's translations you can read of it on the internet. So if you're interested in going and looking at that and just seeing what that's like, you can, you can go have a look. So all the spot and make a complete list of all 6,000 variants. There you [laughter] go. Exactly. A lot of them probably would not be noticeable to someone who reads only English because like, you know, Hebrew spelling depends on how good the translation is. Yeah. The translation makes a point of following the word order and stuff. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

So, yeah, this is still a group that exists. Um, there's not a lot of them. Um, but, uh, but, but they're there, still holding on after all these years. And they have some interesting distinctives from, from Rabbinic Judaism. Probably the most, uh, notable one to my mind is that they continue to have a priesthood. When would they say they are descended from Aaron? Um, so, yeah. Yep. Yep. So that kind of brings us up to the, the present time. So then what we're going to discuss in the third half is, does this mean anything for Christians? Like, where, where are we going with all this? So, uh, we're going to take our second break and we'll be right back. Yeah. Father Andrew Steven Damick and Father Steven D. Young will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-2346. [music] That's 855 AF radio. Blinded by rage. We live in a [music] world that commonly sees the passion of anger as a virtue that can be used to help right wrongs. But what do scripture [music] and the fathers say about anger? Is expressing outrage at societal ills a true reflection of God's attitude towards these evils? Or does it instead [music] blind us to his presence? Father Theodore Pchini and Oswraton join together to examine how anger affects our journey towards [music] theosis. Find it today at store.ancientfaith.com. That's store.ancientfaith.com. [music] We're back now with the Lord of Spirits with Father Andrew Steven Damick and Father Steven D. Young. If you have a question, call now [music] at 855-237-2346. That's 855 AF radio.

Hey, welcome back everybody. We're talking about the Samaritans. And, um, in the first half, we covered, um, you know, what the Bible says about the formation of that people. And then the second half, we kind of talked about them as a people as they developed over history and finished up talking about their, their current existence, their beliefs, their practices of those 900 people. I mean, it's amazing, it's amazing that they're still around. Um, but, um, so, yeah. So, all right. So, where are we, Father? Um, should we go back to Genesis? What do you think? [laughter] First, I have to relay some tragic news. Uh-oh. They closed the local CC's Pizza. Um, do we need a moment of silence? I will soldier on through the rest of this episode, but if I seem off, people, [snorts] it's probably good you're not on camera at this time. Yes. Yes. Yes. Um, yeah. Unfortunately, that break was long enough to mostly pull myself together. Uh, [laughter] [sighs] no calls. Well, we have one that's really off topic. I mean, do you want to take it? This person is still hanging on. Mike hasn't hung up on them yet. Let's do it. Okay, let's do it. All right. So, just belay what I said, uh, to [laughter] in our private chat. Mike, let's take Nikolai from Texas. I see you're passing notes in class. I know. Absolutely. Oh, all the time. Welcome to Lord Spirits podcast, Nikolai. Oh, you fallen for my trap, fathers. No, thank you. Um, thanks for taking my call, fathers. Um, man, [clears throat] that Paul guy won't leave you alone. Um, I can get him to knock it off if you want. He's my godbrother, so, um, just let me know. So, is there a Texan conspiracy going on? A solid noogie. Um, [laughter] but he, he goes, he goes to the same, he goes to the same, uh, same church as I do. Wow. Yeah. Well, what's up, Texas? On behalf of Texas, hello. Um, but yeah. Um, [laughter] so this is, uh, kind of relating to, um, the previous topic. So, I'm sorry. I tried to get in, but I couldn't quite make it under the wire. Um, so I was listening to, um, you know, this always comes up with, uh, our, um, you know, dear, uh, Protestant family members, the question of icons. And one of the things that comes up in the debates, of course, um, and in Father's, uh, Father [clears throat] Steven's debate with, um, Gavin, um, he, Oh, you're on a first-name basis with Dr. Orland. You just call him Gavin. I mean, I mean, we all know who he, we all know if anyone has been [laughter] to find Dr. I'm just messing with you because it's fun. I, I appreciate that. Um, I'll take it as a compliment. Um, but yeah, so usually it comes up either St. Bernice or St. Veronica. Anyway, so he has a passage. Um, well, the two things they quoted are the anonic letter to, uh, Constantina, where he appears to criticize her for requesting icons, I think either of Jesus and possibly of Peter and Paul. Um, but then, um, in his history of the church, um, he talks about, he, he brings up, uh, a statue from the region where he was from, uh, supposedly commissioned by, uh, St. Bernice or St. Veronica, uh, the woman with the issue of blood, uh, of like, of her touching Jesus's robe, and then there's like, um, a plant that would grow by that that had, you know, miraculous, uh, medicinal qualities, and so people would come and venerate the statue and, you know, take a cutting for the plant, kind of like the, the manna at St. John's tomb, kind of a deal. Yeah. Um, and so, but Father, but Father Steven was saying that he does not think that that account is authentic. And I was just curious why, if I may dare to pull us so far off the tracks. All right. That's all you, Father. Well, so there's no evidence of it outside of Eusebius at all, right? Like no local records at all, no other fathers mentioning it, no remains of it, no record of it being destroyed, right? Like the stuff at St. John's grave, you could still go there, right? Like Jacob's Well, you could, you could go there. It's in the sort of the basement of a church now, right? Like these kind of sites, we pretty much know where they are and they're still there, or we know when they were destroyed, right? We have, we have some kind of record, and there's just nothing about this except this one mention in Eusebius. And Eusebius is super unreliable. Uh, Eusebius, there's a lot of clearly agendaized stuff where he shapes things based on his own personal opinions and beliefs. Um, like this all this, he, he literally invents people [laughter] like John the Presbyter to try to argue against the acceptance of the book of Revelation as canonical. Right. He invents a historical personage. Um, there, there's a lot of stuff like that in Eusebius. So I, in general, don't hang my hat on anything that you can only, and he's also a heretic. There's a reason he's not St. Eusebius. He's an Arian. People say semi-Arian, but I think I've got the goods on him because I've actually read his, uh, his, uh, elaboration of the Gospel, not just his Church History, and I think he's a full-on Arian. Uh, who disguise, who, who deliberately tried to get sneak around Nicaea I as a semi-Arian. Um, but anyway, he's a heretic. So, uh, yeah, uh, uh, anything that isn't corroborated by someone other than Eusebius, I am dubious of, just in general. And, uh, rhetorically, like if I'm debating a Protestant and they are trying to hang their hat on something that's only attested to by Eusebius, I might be want to point to something in Eusebius that I know they're not going to want to believe is true to use as a counterargument. Push back on a couple, on a couple, um, fronts. Um, one, um, of course, you know, with historical accounts, we, we're always asking like, you know, do they have any reason, uh, any reason to lie? Um, yeah. Uh, and so I would think it would be the opposite of that because if the letter to Constantina is correct, is is authentic, then it seems strange that he would bring up something that seems to support, uh, icon veneration, um, on the other end. And then the other thing that I would, uh, the other phone I pushed back on was, um, there's a, again, I'm not, I haven't read the original sources, but apparently there's this guy named Sazmanus, um, who was, uh, active like, kind of in the mid, uh, fifth century, I believe. Um, and he, uh, says that, uh, Julian the Apostate, um, destroyed the statue. Yeah. So Sazmanus cribbed things from Eusebius. Um, so I mean, we have no, we have lots of records of things Julian the Apostate did while he was alive, not from centuries later that don't mention that. Uh, I would be prone to think that that could very well be right. See, I have nothing hanging on this. Like, if we dig up the statue tomorrow, I'll be like, "Cool. That'll be really helpful in argumentation." [laughter] Right? But I, I'm thinking about this in terms of like, is pointing to this at all useful to me? Right? Like, do you think if I brought that up as an example to Gavin Orland to prove iconography was apostolic, do you think he'd, he'd accept it? Um, I have my doubts. Probably not. [laughter] So that's, you know, like, I mean, I would be totally fine with it being true. I'm just saying there's, there's plenty of reason to doubt it such that I wouldn't hang my hat on it. That's why I use that language of hanging my hat on it. Gotcha. Gotcha. Do you know anything about the Phisto, I'm not sure if I say this right, uh, Photius Dorius, uh, account? Supposedly he also mentions it, but, yeah, I don't know if you know anything about that. Yeah, I don't know anything about that one. I know, I know Sazmanus is an apologist in places for Eusebius, right? So someone could argue, right, like if I tried to use that, could use that and say, oh, well, he's trying to support Eusebius's claim that it was there. By someone objects and says, "Well, where is it? I went there and it's not there." Oh, well, Julian the Apostate destroyed it. Right. So, you know, it may be true that it was there and Julian the Apostate destroyed it. It's just I don't have anything to really hang my hat on that in terms of proof. I mean, for, for me, when I was, you know, doing research before my conversion, I, I did find it helpful. But I mean, you know, it's depends on like, you know, you, you have to be, it depends on the disposition of the person, how like willing they are to, of, to actually like reconsider their their position. I guess that probably depends on what, that probably influences the amount of weight they're willing to give stuff. I mean, I think in terms of using it to argue against the letter, right, in terms of saying like, "Hey, are you saying this is the same guy? This doesn't seem to match." I mean, I think that's a valid usage of it because regardless of whether it's true or not, Eusebius did write that. Yeah. I was someone else. Yeah. I was hearing someone else. I was hearing someone else saying, "Oh, well, the letter is fake." Yeah. So, I was just, So, Right. And see, that's the easy way to overcome that. But that could be helpful if the person you're arguing with is hinging their case on the letter being real. Now you've gotten them to admit the letter's fake, right? That's good. Well, uh, thank you for sharing your take, Father. I, I appreciate that for you, uh, taking the time to depart, uh, from that. Um, and next time for Father Andrew, um, I'm not going to, uh, bother you guys any longer. I'll let you guys finish up. Um, but next time for Father Andrew, I do have a question about Christian Kit. So, um, I'll [laughter] I'll be saving that one for later. You should have led with that one. Well, anyway. Oh, yeah. Well, um, I hadn't quite collected my thoughts, um, for that one, but I know the, the saint, the saints, the, the little, the little saints plushies I'm seeing in some of the church stores. I don't see, I didn't see that in Eastern Europe when I was growing up over there. So, I don't, So, anyway, we'll get to that later, maybe. Unless you want to answer it now, it's up to you. I mean, I am not in favor of Saints plushies, if that's what you're asking. Yeah. Yeah. Same. Um, Okay. It came up, it came up to me when I saw a guy, um, was like making, um, was doing like some kind of Kickstarter for like playing cards but with icons on them, which, yeah, I mean, like, I'm not against the idea, like if people are making toys for kids, like actual, like toys for kids, I, I, that wouldn't bug me, but like to make them collectibles or something like that, no, no, no. Well, well, I would, I would push back on that, Father, 'cause you, you know, that, uh, kids are not naturally responsible with their toys. And so if they're, you know, like, I'm, I'm thinking of like the, um, resurrection playset complete with Jesus action figure that, uh, me and my brothers received on Easter one year in the '90s. Yeah, I don't know anything about that in particular, but I mean, but that's different than, that's that's different. Like, for instance, I've seen like especially [clears throat] for small kids, like I've seen, uh, like, I, I saw a St. Moses the Ethiopian doll, and it's actually was a brilliantly done. So like you kind of flip the skirt of the tunic up and here you have him as the robber, and then you flip it the other way and he's sort of now he's a saint. He's, he's depicted as older and looks like a monk, and so it kind of represents his conversion. Um, and, um, yeah, it just really kind of depends on the nature of the thing. And so I, yeah, yeah. Just like your Jesus action figure gets, gets left laying around. It just doesn't seem very respectful. Is, I don't, Yeah. I wouldn't be in favor of a Jesus action figure. I mean, an action figure, right? Like, what are action figures? That, that's not the same thing as like, like what I just described, you know? So, it just would really kind of depend. Um, yeah, there's a whole world. I, I, I'm, I'm like, I'm not personally super engaged with these things, but some of them have come into my house because my wife knows way more about children's toys than I have ever in my entire life even considered. But then also, um, like, you know, working for a publisher, um, there are some toys and some of these kinds of things that come through our store, and, um, people who know way more about these things have, have, you know, have selected some really, I think, some good stuff actually. Uh, but there, yeah, there is a way to kind of commodify, you know, commoditize or whatever that I think is not, not okay. You know? Well, well, I would push back on that, Father, 'cause you, you know, that, uh, kids are not naturally responsible with their toys. And so if they're, you know, like, I'm, I'm thinking of like the, um, resurrection playset complete with Jesus action figure that, uh, me and my brothers received on Easter one year in the '90s. Yeah, I don't know anything about that in particular, but I mean, but that's different than, that's that's different. Like, for instance, I've seen like especially [clears throat] for small kids, like I've seen, uh, like, I, I saw a St. Moses the Ethiopian doll, and it's actually was a brilliantly done. So like you kind of flip the skirt of the tunic up and here you have him as the robber, and then you flip it the other way and he's sort of now he's a saint. He's, he's depicted as older and looks like a monk, and so it kind of represents his conversion. Um, and, um, yeah, it just really kind of depends on the nature of the thing. And so I, yeah, yeah. Just like your Jesus action figure gets, gets left laying around. It just doesn't seem very respectful. Is, I don't, Yeah. I wouldn't be in favor of a Jesus action figure. I mean, an action figure, right? Like, what are action figures? That, that's not the same thing as like, like what I just described, you know? So, it just would really kind of depend. Um, yeah, there's a whole world. I, I, I'm, I'm like, I'm not personally super engaged with these things, but some of them have come into my house because my wife knows way more about children's toys than I have ever in my entire life even considered. But then also, um, like, you know, working for a publisher, um, there are some toys and some of these kinds of things that come through our store, and, um, people who know way more about these things have, have, you know, have selected some really, I think, some good stuff actually. Uh, but there, yeah, there is a way to kind of commodify, you know, commoditize or whatever that I think is not, not okay. You know? It just feels like, yeah, the American evangelical culture. Um, I mean, you know, just flowing with with the wave of converts kind of flowing into, um, we're find, we're having like an interesting melding of like, you know, it's, it's this whole thing of like, uh, the gradual emergence of American Orthodoxy and trying to find there, and we're like, yeah, we're working out what our American Orthodox culture is, and, and there's come some missteps. Like, I mean, the thing is, like, you may not be aware, for instance, if you're from, I, I don't know where you're from originally, but, but like, for instance, there is, there is this figure in Greece called Kyria Sarakosti. So basically Mrs. Lent, right? And Kyria Sarakosti is a doll with seven feet, and you tear off one of the feet during each week of Lent, uh, to mark. So it, it's a kind of like Lent calendar of sorts, like an Advent calendar kind of thing, but it's for Lent. And it's a doll that is, you know, it's like a paper doll, um, that is that is in Greece. So I mean, it is a thing in some traditional, this kind of stuff is a thing in some traditional Orthodox countries. Um, it's not a doll of, it's not a doll of a specific saint or, uh, you know, holy person. It's, it's just like this random figure with seven legs, right? As far as I know, yes. But like I said, I, I think it's okay to let these things work themselves out and just to watch as it sort of sifts, you know, and think about, okay, what is this actually accomplishing? Is this respectful? Um, the truth is is that, you know, I, so I have four children, three of whom are boys. And while there's never been a Jesus action figure lying around in my house, I will not say that every single icon in my house has always been treated completely respectfully at every single moment. Does that mean I should keep icons out of the hands of my children? Because they're not going to treat them perfectly? No, it just means I have to teach them, you know, about icons. But the, the icon is designed with a certain, with a certain, you know, of course, uh, if I'm, if I may abuse Greek terms, I guess, uh, whereas like, you know, action figure. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Uh, I, I'm, I think the key is just to, you know, to try to be sensitive to what's appropriate and rather than making categorical pronouncements, especially because like, I'm the kind of person that likes to make categorical pronouncements based on my taste, and my taste is not necessarily the overriding thing. Like, there are children's books that I think are ridiculous, but are actually are great, you know, but it strikes me as ridiculous. There's nothing blasphemous about it, nothing heretical about it, you know. So, yeah, I, I, I think it's like I said, we just have to be sensitive about these things and, and, um, and, you know, allow some room for mistakes. It's okay. It's okay. These things sift out. Say it's a mistake. What's that? Doesn't someone have to say it's a mistake, though? Yeah, may, absolutely. Absolutely. But like, you know, like give some space. Let, let, let creative people do what they're going to do and, and, you know, allow the process of the church, church's culture forming to sift through these things. It will. It's going to be okay. I'm sure it will be. It's just, uh, my personal preferences get annoyed in the meantime. But, I mean, the truth is is that even traditional, even traditional Orthodox cultures are not perfect at this, you know. Like, yeah, maybe, but, but how, like, go to any traditional Orthodox culture in the Mediterranean, and you will find easy access to evil eye, uh, you know, amulets for thousands of years, they've had these around. So they still need to work on that, clearly. So, yeah. Yeah. Somehow we manage. It's okay. So anyway, all right. Well, thanks for your call. Last sub question. Will there, will there be an Orthodox Holy Land Experience Park? [laughter] Yes, probably a recreation of Constantinople. There we go. Yes, people would be into that. [laughter] That was great. Anyway, I want to ride the, the beast that goes in the Bosphorus, right? That should be a whole, like, absolutely flash ride. The Beast of the Bosphorus. All right, thanks for calling, Nikolai. Okay, we're gonna take one more call and we have Caleb calling from Kenosha, Wisconsin. Welcome to Lord Spirits podcast, Caleb. This, this better be good, Caleb. We're two hours past his bedtime. That's right. I was about to say it's an extra late night tonight, and I still have an hour and I have to drive an hour home after this. So, just putting that out there. I believe in you, Father Andrew. [laughter] I'm like Tinkerbell. You know, you have to believe in me so I could continue to exist. Mhm. I'm throwing up my hands, giving you all my spirit energy. I'm an egregore. [laughter] Anyway, what's on your mind? Um, I, um, was just talking with some friends a couple days ago about Yom Kippur, the modern, you know, process that, that the Jewish, the Jewish people do. And I don't know if this is a weird translation into English or if it's certain, uh, Rabbinic circles, but the prayer that's prayed when the people are swinging the chicken above their head, in English, it's translated on multiple sources saying, "This is my exchange. This is my substitute. This is my expiation. The rooster shall go to death and I shall proceed to a good long life and peace." And to me, that sounds a lot like substitutionary language. I know, uh, most Jewish folk, and at least in Orthodox Jews that I've heard talk, don't like the penal substitutionary element, but this sounds an awful lot like, you know, that. So I'm wondering, am I missing something? Did they go wrong at some point? Has this always kind of been the view of this more modern kind of way of, The view of the chicken? So I ask you, Father Stephen, is there poultry substitutionary atonement going on here? Well, so, that's what the P really stands for, as we all know. Obviously, [clears throat] this is not a remotely biblical ritual, right? [laughter] This is discussed nowhere in the Hebrew scriptures, right? Uh, so this is a, a practice that developed later. And so it's based on understandings that developed later. Um, but, and, and honestly, you, this, this is something I should probably ask my Orthodox Jewish friend about, right? Because this is such a late development in Rabbinic Judaism that, like, I haven't studied that far forward into the future. Um, but, uh, even if, shall we say, we take a completely literal reading and that is some kind of substitution, in that case, it would be the substitution of the chicken for a person, which seems weird. Um, and, uh, it's also technically not a sacrifice. It's not a sacrificial ritual, or they wouldn't be allowed to do it. Yeah. So, it's, it's weird on a number of levels, right? It's [snorts] weird in the fact that it can't technically be a sacrifice. So, even with that modern Rabbinic practice, it wouldn't be sacrifice penal substitution. It would be some kind of penal substitutionary ritual that's not a sacrifice. Um, and, uh, also their, their big objection of Orthodox Judaism to the idea of penal substitutionary atonement, their objection is the idea that a righteous man would suffer for the sins of a wicked person, right? That God would punish an innocent person, right? So, I don't know that they'd have the same qualms about God punishing an innocent chicken. Um, this seems related to pardoning a turkey at Thanksgiving. Like, uh, [laughter] I mean, honestly, what crimes did that turkey commit that he must be pardoned? Yes. Honestly, I, I think I'd have to ask a, a modern Orthodox Jewish person to explain this, but to me, it smells like a good luck ritual killing a chicken. Yeah. Like it smells like a little bit like folk magic and it smells like a kind of superstitious good luck thing. Uh, I was talking about with some friends and like, it's definitely not a sacrifice. And I've never heard any, any serious reformed Christian ever try and use this as an argument as to, Right. [laughter] Like, no one. [gasps] No, yeah. Well, yeah, because it's so post-biblical, right? Like, I mean, best case scenario, you prove that like modern Rabbinic Jews believe in some kind of penal substitution, but that they, they believe in a lot of things that Christians don't believe in, and vice versa, right? So, Mhm. That doesn't get you much. Yep. Exactly. Exactly. All right. Well, thanks for calling, Caleb. All right. You two have a good night. You too. All right. Okay. Just got to fry that chicken up, man. Get these rituals. [laughter] All right. Uh, yes. Third half. Third half. You got some toothpicks you could put in your eyelids there to keep, keep going here. I might just, I might just, I might just drive home and you could just, you know, talk off into the sunset. I'll just finish it out. I'm going to be, I'm going to be on my own recognizance then, though. I'm going to be, That's true. I can't, I can't say to Simon and Mike, cut him off. Cut him off. Yeah. [laughter] The plot. Okay. All right. All right. Uh, back to Genesis. What's going on here? Yeah, we're going back to Genesis. As we promised, we're looping back to the historical Ephraim, uh, to Joseph's son Ephraim. And this is, this is kind of review, right? But, uh, because we have talked about this on the show before, uh, but basically what we want to talk about now here as we draw the episode to a close, eventually three hours from now, uh, is, um, what is the theological significance of this? Right? So, we talked about the history of the Samaritans, right? Like the Old Testament era history, a little bit of the New Testament background of the Samaritans, lots of cool tidbits that'll color your reading of different parts of the Bible, hopefully give you some added depth. We even gave you some fun facts about the Samaritans today and stuff. Uh, but at the core of it, what is there any real theological significance to this? The answer is yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, and here we, and so to get at that, we have to start with the role Ephraim plays, right? Uh, in the, the biblical text. And to get there, we're going to start with the actual original Ephraim, right? The Ephraim, the son of, of Joseph, the patriarch. And so, the first really important place, uh, to go is, uh, Genesis. So, Genesis 48, we've talked about several times. 48 and 49 are sort of the testament of Jacob. Uh, chapter 49, Jacob is blessing his 12 sons. And it's sort of the blessings are sort of prophetic about what's going to happen with the different tribes. We've talked about that. Chapter 48, he blesses Joseph's two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. And so, there's a couple sections of that that we want to revisit here. So, first one is is Genesis 48:5. Okay? Which says, "And now your two sons who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt are mine. Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine as Reuben and Simeon are." Right? So, this is the speaker here is Jacob, right? Yeah. And so he says, "Your," and the "you" is Joseph, right? So, "Your two sons, Joseph's two sons, he's saying are now mine." Meaning this is adoption language. Meaning Manasseh and Ephraim would not be reckoned as his grandchildren through Joseph but as his sons, right? If Manasseh as his sons, and not just his sons, right, in terms of the tribes, right? Uh, but as Reuben and Simeon are, who were his firstborn sons. Yeah. So, in Genesis 48:5, this is part of what I was talking about way back in the long ago time when this episode started about when you get to the end of Genesis, this verse is basically saying that Jacob considers Ephraim his firstborn, right? So, what would you expect coming out of this? So, Ephraim unbelievably prominent here. And then in verses 14 through 20, we get to the actual blessing that, uh, Jacob gives to Ephraim in particular, which says, "And Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it on the hand of Ephraim, who was the younger, and his left hand on the head of Manasseh, crossing his hands, for Manasseh was the firstborn. And he blessed Joseph and said, 'The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my lifelong to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the boys, and in them let my name be carried on, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.'" Let's pause there a second. So, [clears throat] just a couple things to notice in the blessing. First of all, Manasseh is actually the older son, but Ephraim gets the right hand blessing. There's going to be more of that here in a second, right? But again, if we're, if we're just tracking through Genesis, right? Abraham has Ishmael and Isaac. Isaac becomes the firstborn. Uh, Isaac has, uh, Esau and Jacob. Jacob becomes the firstborn. Uh, Jacob has the 12 sons. Joseph is the firstborn of his preferred wife, right? He sort of becomes the one the story follows. And now Joseph has two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. And it looks like, oh, Ephraim is becoming the firstborn, right? If we're just tracking through Genesis and the patterns. Okay. The other thing worth noting is, and this is, remember our, our Old Testament Christology. Remember, uh, some of those theophanies were like the angel of the Lord who wrestled with Jacob. Notice he identifies the God of Abraham and Isaac, the God who is his shepherd, and the angel who he wrestled with. He's identifying as the same person. Or not the same person, but the same being, right? Yeah. Okay. So, continue. Okay. Continuing on with verse 17. "When Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, it displeased him. And he took his father's hand to move it from Ephraim's head to Manasseh's head. Joseph said to his father, 'Not this way, my father, since this one is the firstborn. Put your right hand on his head.' But his father refused and said, 'I know, my son. I know he also shall become a people, and he also shall be great.' Nevertheless, his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his offspring shall become the fullness of the Gentiles." So he blessed them that day, saying, "By you Israel will pronounce blessings, saying, God make you as Ephraim and as Manasseh." Thus he put Ephraim before Manasseh. Okay. Uh, so now a couple things here. Not only does he, he give this blessing, he gives this blessing to Joseph's sons before he blesses his own sons. Yeah. After adopting them, gives Ephraim, the younger one, this special blessing. So pronounced a blessing, right? He says that Israel, by you Israel will pronounce blessings. He's Israel. Yeah. Yeah. That's his name, [laughter] right? Right? So he's saying, by this, the people, all the descendants will bless each other by saying, "God make you as Ephraim and Manasseh." So this is more than like, Ephraim, you'd think this is the most important, right? They're kind of it. And then there's the detail of the prophecy, which is kind of cryptic here, as most of the prophecies in chapter 49 are regarding the tribes until you read the later history. They're kind of cryptic, right? Like, why does he keep calling Benjamin a viper? Like, what? Benjamin, he's a kid. You find out later, right? [laughter] So the stuff about Dan, you find out later. Um, right? But so here, "his offspring shall become the fullness of the Gentiles." I know a number of you already know where this is going because we've talked about it before, and you recognize that phrase from St. Paul. We'll get there. Indeed. Right? But that phrase is important. Okay. So, Ephraim has this great destiny. It seems like, right, at Genesis, and as you track through the Pentateuch, they're the biggest tribe, as we said, the most numerous. Take the land, big, numerous in the land, right? They become the basis of one of the two kingdoms, the larger of the two kingdoms, the more powerful of the two kingdoms. Uh, all of this. And so you might think, well, okay, but then the Assyrians wipe them out, and so that's

Done, right? Tons of potential, kind of wasted, right? Uh, like most people thought about me when I was in college. But that's not actually what we see when we read the text of the Bible after the destruction of the northern kingdom. So, what are some of the things that the prophets have to say after the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel about Ephraim?

>> Yeah.

>> And the first one we're going to read is from Jeremiah 31. This is in most Bibles. This is not the chapter numbers are weird.

>> Yeah. Jeremiah Orthodox Study Bible,

>> but this is general dice differently.

>> Yeah. Jeremiah 31:15-20. And Jeremiah 31. Remember, this is the new covenant passage. This is this is the chapter where God is talking about what's going to happen when he renews the covenant with Israel. All right, starting with verse 15. Thus says the Lord, a voice is heard in Rama, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children because they are no more. Thus says the Lord, "Keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for there is a reward for your work, declares the Lord, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future, declares the Lord, and your children shall come back to their own country. I have heard Ephraim grieving. You have disciplined me, and I was disciplined like an untrained calf. Bring me back that I may be restored, for you are the Lord my God. For after I had turned away, I relented, and after I was instructed, I struck my thigh. I was ashamed, and I was confounded because I bore the disgrace of my youth. Is Ephraim, my dear son? Is he my darling child? For as often as I speak against him, I do remember him still. Therefore, my heart yearns for him. I will surely have mercy on him, declares the Lord."

>> Yeah. So, everybody immediately recognized the first verse, I'm sure. In fact, a caller referred to it earlier. Voices heard in Rama, lamentation, bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children. Right. How how many of you have gone and read the next several verses?

[laughter]

>> Right.

[clears throat]

>> So it talks about her drawing her tears. Right. But then in verse eight, because there's hope for the future and her children, who who was Rachel's firstborn, Joseph?

>> Yeah.

>> And then verse 18, I have heard Ephraim grieving. This is Jeremiah writing this.

>> So this is at the time of the fall of the southern kingdom. This is like 140 years later after the destruction of the northern kingdom and it's gone. But how is it described? Because Ephraim speaks to God. There's this convert dialogue here between Ephraim and God. Ephraim doesn't say, "I'm destroyed. I'm done." He's he's been disciplined like an untrained calf, which is an amazing analogy when you think about Jeroboam, son of Nebat.

[laughter]

>> Right.

[gasps]

>> Right. He describes the sin of the northern kingdom as the sin and shame of his youth. That is Ephraim's childhood that history since of his youth. And he had to be disciplined. But God says what? God says he still loves him. He's dear to him. He's his dear son and he's going to have mercy on him. The end of the punishment. meaning that destiny for Ephraim that was prophesied back there in Genesis by Jacob, right, is still pending and God's going to bring it about, right? And so the story of Ephraim of the northern kingdom of those 10 tribes does not end in 7:22 BC when the Assyrians take them out. Right? That's the end of the childhood. That's the end of the misspent youth. Now, another passage that talks about Ephraim. This one's from Ezekiel 37:15-28. This is the passage that comes immediately after the dry bones passage.

>> Okay. The word of the Lord came to me. Son of man, take a stick and write on it for Judah and the people of Israel associated with him. Then take another stick and write on it for Joseph the stick of Ephraim and all the house of Israel associated with him. And join them one to another into one stick that they may become one in your hand. And when your people say to you, "Will you not tell us what you mean by these?" Say to them, "Thus says the Lord God, behold, I'm about to take the stick of Joseph, that is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel associated with him, and I will join with it the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, that they may be one in my hand." When the sticks on which you write are in your hand before their eyes, then say to them, "Thus says the Lord God, behold, I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from all around, and bring them to their own land, and I will make them one nation in the land on the mountains of Israel. And one king shall be king over them all, and they shall no longer be two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms. They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. But I will save them from all the backslidings in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall walk in my rules, and be careful to obey my statutes. They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived. They and their children, and their children's children shall dwell there forever. And David, my servant, shall be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forever more. My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel when my sanctuary is in their midst forever more."

>> Right. So there's lots of other stuff we could read too obviously. Uh, but again, Father Andrew is liable to lose consciousness at any moment.

>> It's already happened.

>> Um, so that's why I have to keep him reading just to keep him awake.

>> Um

>> yep.

>> So uh, right. But but here's another one. Right. So the the promise is not I'm going to bring the Judahites, the Judeans, the Jewish people from all over the world back and place my Messiah over them. That's not the promise.

>> No, the promise is explicitly Judah. Yes. Right. Is one stick, right? And Joseph Ephraim is the other stick which is also going to be brought back from the nations according to this prophecy and they're going to be united and they're going to be united by the Messiah who is going to come and be king over both of them. So there are these prophecies in the Hebrew Bible as we're coming right into uh the period of the New Testament, period of Christ's earthly ministry. Uh, how did they think this was going to happen? Right? Because the I mean the Judah part is easy relatively right. There are people who are practicing udeismos who are you know following the Torah who are part of consider themselves part of the Jewish people who are following the nomos of the Jewish people the Torah right? They're in different parts of the world okay? We just get them all together and the Messiah comes and he's their king right? I mean not simple but I mean within the realm of possibility over the course of history surely right? Uh, but the other part. Where are we going to get Ephraimites,

>> Manassens, Reubenites, Gadites,

>> the 10 lost tribes, quote unquote?

>> Yeah.

[laughter]

>> Where where are we going to get them? How are they going to How is the Messiah going to do that? Right. Um, is it right literally in the resurrection that that happens? Right. It's only after every was resurrected from the dead. Well, the Israelites will be resurrected from the dead too, right? The Messiah will rule over the resurrected people maybe. Um, the uh, now we we already saw a little bit in the history of the Samaritans how the Hasmonians understood this. The Hasmonians, you know, especially like John Hannanis considered himself to probably be the Messiah, right? And so, uh, his motive that was reconista. All of the land that used to belong to the 12 tribes now belongs to the Judahites essentially, right? And again, make any connections that you'd like, right?

[laughter]

>> Um, all of this land that was promised to the 12 tribes was promised to the Jewish people. Um, now there is obviously there's there's the problem we already alluded to with the fact that those promises were land promises were fulfilled at the end of Joshua, but also an even bigger problem in terms of the Torah for this approach is that that land was never promised to Judah,

>> right,

>> or Benjamin. And no land was promised to Levi.

>> Sorry, dispensationalists.

>> Right. So if if the land that was promised to Ephraim, unless you've got me some Ephraimites, there's no biblical claim whatsoever at any point in history for Judahites, Jewish people to claim Ephraimite land. Right? And not just at the tribal level. Remember, go through numbers. The land aotments are granular. It's not just at the tribal level. It's the tribe and then the clan has certain lands within that. And then each family had particular land within that. That land was promised to that individual family.

>> Yeah.

>> And was supposed to revert to them every 50th year. So if that family has no surviving heirs under the Torah, no one has claim to that land period, possibly ever regardless of it being fulfilled in Joshua. So before Joshua, they didn't have any claim to it, right? Uh, so that doesn't really work, right? But that hasn't stopped the Hasmonians and those with similar ideologies from trying to do so uh in history. Um, but the model we find, and if you're a longtime listener of the show that you'll be at least somewhat familiar with from other places we've talked about it, that you find in places like the Testaments of the 12 Patriarchs, is that this is the meaning of Ephraim's destiny to become the fullness of the Gentiles. That essentially the people of the northern kingdom of Israel were scattered among the nations like seed is scattered and they merged into those nations but like seed as St. Paul says for a seed to grow it has to first die, right? So they as a people died, right? But now they as a people are going to be resurrected, right? By people from those nations coming to worship Yahweh, the God of Israel and reconstituting those 10 tribes, right? And this, of course, as we've pointed out, is what St. Paul is doing in Romans 11 when he says that the heart of the Jews, the Judeans, Judah, has been hardened until the fullness of the Gentile has come has come in. And so then once the fullness of the Gentiles, Ephraim, has been added to the faithful remnant of Judah, then as St. Paul says, all Israel will be saved, all 12 tribes. And contained within that that I don't know if we've brought out before, remember St. Paul says that in the context of in Romans 9 through11 an extended argument about he's answering the objection well wait if Jesus of Nazareth is the Jewish Messiah why have most of the Jewish people not accepted him as the Messiah and why already within St. Paul's ministry were Gentiles, people from the nations, non-Jewish Christians, quickly starting to outnumber Jewish Christians. If Jesus of Nazareth is the Jewish Messiah, but think for a second, if St. Paul sees non-Jews, Gentiles who become Christians as being Ephraim, the resurrected, reconstituted Ephraim.

>> Yeah.

>> Ephraim was the most numerous tribe.

>> Ephraim was always bigger.

>> Ephraim always outnumbered Judah by a lot.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. So it makes perfect sense, right? From St. Paul's perspective.

>> Yeah.

>> And so, you know, St. Paul there makes it kind of explicit. He's writing a letter, but there are also places narratively in the narrative of the New Testament. So, we're talking about the Gospels in Acts where this is exactly how the Samaritans appear. The Samaritans in Samaria are the pivot point, the connection point between Judea, the Jewish people, and the faithful from the nations and particularly in terms of the ministry of Christ himself. One place where this is clear, where you've probably been waiting for us to go this whole episode is in John chapter 4, right? Uh, which uh is where Christ meets St. Fotini, the Samaritan woman at the well. We're not going to read that part. You just heard that a few weeks ago in church hopefully. Uh, the the first part where he's talking to St. Fini, that's where most of the homalies go, including mine. I'm not talking trash on anybody. Most of mine do too. You either preach about uh the conversation between Christ and St. Fotini or the part that comes after what we're about to read, which is where it talks about Seotini going and telling all the other people in her village about Christ and them coming to see him and saying, "First we believe because of your word, now we have seen with our own eyes." Right? So, we talk about that element, but there's this section in between that I think gets neglected a little bit. That's the part we're about to read to see something that I think is important.

>> Okay. John chapter 4 starting with verse 27. Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you seek? Or why are you talking with her?" So, the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, "Come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?" They went out of the town and were coming to him. Meanwhile, the disciples were urging him, saying, "Rabbi, eat." But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." So the disciples said to one another, "Has anyone brought him something to eat?" Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work. Do not say, there are yet four months, then comes the harvest. Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life. So that so that swer and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true. One sws and another reaps. I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored and you have entered into their labor."

>> All right. So a couple pieces here. And I was actually rereading this this year that inspired me to do this episode. It would be a behind the scenes thing.

>> All right.

>> Um, so, uh, notice the harvest language, right? And he talks about, oh, someone planted the seed, someone else a long time ago. He's in Samaria and talking about the Samaritans, right? The seed was scattered a long time ago, but now it's time for the harvest. And he says he's already doing the work. That's how he characterizes his conversation with St. Potini. He was beginning the harvest with her. The harvest of Samaria of Ephraim, right? And Christ is getting ready to send the apostles out where? To the nations to harvest. Right? But remember, if you're harvesting, that means something was planted. It was planted a long time ago. Was planted a long time ago. Um, and that language of I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor, right? Others have labored and you have entered into their labor. That's the language that God uses over and over again in the Torah to describe him bringing the people into the land. You're going to eat from vineyards you did not plant. Right? You're going to harvest fields you did not sew. So this is deliberately using language of the reconstitution the the restart of Ephraim of the people in the land. Right? So St. John and a number of places in his gospel he doesn't write in Acts. None of the other gospel writers write in Acts of the Apostles, right? Just St. Luke gives us that second chapter. But St. John all through his gospel telegraphs these things to us in other ways. For example, say it's in St. John's gospel that Christ breathes on the apostles and tells them to receive the Holy Spirit. You might say, "Oh, wait. That didn't they didn't receive the Holy Spirit till Pentecost. That was the whole point. They're supposed to wait in Jerusalem till they receive the Holy Spirit." Right? This is St. John telegraphing that. And so here, St. John is telegraphing the apostles being sent out to the nations and the conversion of the Gentiles and connecting it to seed sown in Samaria. Pardon my alliteration. But now let's go to actual Acts of the Apostles, right? St. Luke's act of the acts of the apostles.

>> Uh, starting in chapter one, let's begin at the beginning. Uh, you also if you went to liturgy for uh the ascension have heard this recently.

>> Yeah. So starting with verse six. So when they had come together they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth."

>> Right? So, couple things to note here. Notice the question. Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? Remember what we read in Ezekiel? How is the kingdom restored? Well, the kingdom is restored to Israel when David, right, the Messiah, who they now are identifying Christ as the Messiah very firmly. This is after the resurrection. So now they're starting to get it right.

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>> Um, you're the Messiah. Are you now going to restore the kingdom of Israel? Are you now going to restore Israel, not Judah? Israel, the whole thing, all the tribes, right?

>> And he says, "It's not for you to know the times and the seasons, right? But they're going to receive power of the Holy Spirit comes upon them and then they're going to go out. They're going to go out where? Judea and Samaria." At this point in history, Judea and Samaria are not separate Roman provinces. Right? So Judea and Samaria, when Christ says it, those aren't separate places. There's not a border between them on a map at the time he says that. So he's talking about the people. He's talking about the people. You are going to reunite the Judeans and the Samaritans. They're going to do that by going to the ends of the world to all the nations in order to reunite them so that he as the Messiah can rule over them. Right? And then we see this pattern play out right there. It's sort of set forth as the plan, but we see it play out in the actual text. See that? We go to Acts chapter 8 and St. Phillip.

>> All right. Starting with verse four. Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ. And the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philillip when they heard him and saw the signs that he did. For unclean spirits crying out with a loud voice came out of many who had them. And many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. So there was much joy in that city. But there was a man named Simon who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the people of Samaria, saying that he himself was somebody great. They all paid attention to him from the least to the greatest, saying, "This man is the power of God that is called great." And they paid attention to him because for a long time he had amazed them with his magic. But when they believed Philillip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God in the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Even Simon himself believed, and after being baptized, he continued with Philip. And seeing signs and great miracles performed, he was amazed. Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. For he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles hands, he offered them money, saying, "Give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit." But Peter said to him, "May your silver perish with you because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money. You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. Repent therefore of this wickedness of yours. And pray to the Lord that if possible the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity. And Simon answered, "Pray for me to the Lord that nothing of what you have said may come upon me." Now when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem preaching the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans.

>> All right. So, people are probably familiar with Simon Magus, right? And and that part of the story um after whom Simony the uh

>> Yes. Yes.

>> You s named um but uh may not remember that he was a Samaritan and that that's where they ran into him. But again, I don't want to focus on that more familiar part. part. I want to focus on the less familiar part which is St. Philip comes and starts preaching to the Samaritans and notice he calls for St. Peter and St. John to help him. These are the two surviving because Herod had killed St. James the son of Zebedee shortly before this. two surviving members of Christ's innermost circle of disciples and apostles who come here and at the end we're told go with St. Philip and are preaching the gospel in many villages they're going through all the villages of the Samaritans and preaching the gospel and notice that St. Peter doing this. There's none of the Sturman drawing that we get with Cornelius. There's like, oh, well, these are Samaritans. I mean, should I do this? Should I go into their homes? Should I preach to them? Should we?

>> Yeah. No, there's no question.

>> There's no question.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. Which means that Saints Peter and John, and I think we saw this reflected in St. John's gospel, right? Um, who were there at Christ's words at the ascension understood prophetically Samaria's role, right? Exactly how that dovetailed into the Gentiles, I think, took a little longer to work out. I think St. Paul is the one who really presents that ultimately to to the apostles at the Council of Jerusalem, right? And and everyone is then on board. But Samaria, they understand, right? And so the the pattern that we tend to have in our head of what happens with salvation in the New Testament is that it goes it begins with the the Jews and then goes to the Gentiles. But really, it's the Jews and then the Samaritans and then the Gentiles.

>> Yeah. And Samaria is this pivot point but also with apologies to Msie Pou. We want to talk about the symbolism of the Samaritans, right? What is a pattern that we see emerging in the history of the Samaritans tonight? They are a people who is emptied and then refilled, who is disciplined and then restored. Happens repeatedly through their history, right? And so within that symbolism, the idea that they are the vessel, they're being emptied and refilled where ultimately the nations will come to worship the God of Israel, right? Is the fulfillment of that pattern. It's the ultimate and final form of that pattern as the testament of the 12 patriarchs predicted that it's through Joseph who the Babylonians the Assyrians the Greeks etc will find a portion of the inheritance of Israel the inheritance of Abraham the promises to Abraham and so this is an incorporation that happens through Samaria And one of the questions I get, this will end up being my final comments too, I think. Uh, one of the questions I get a lot when I'm when I'm talking about St. Paul and the Torah and this element of the Gentiles being the resurrection, the restoration of Ephraim. And by that I mean you and me. I mean, Dutch guys like me, Lithuanian guys like Father Andrew, uh, and whomever else, right? Uh, Abraham, the question I get is, well, wait a minute. If if we're part of Israel now, doesn't that mean we're not Gentiles, right? Doesn't that mean then maybe we do have to follow the commandments of the Torah that were just directed at Israel? Right? And the missing piece there is the one that I want to get at here in my final comments tonight, which is notice that the goal once Ephraim is restored from the fullness of the Gentiles, right? Is that all of the nations would bless the name of Yahweh, the God of Israel. If all of the nations have become Israel, then it would just say Israel will bless the name of Yahweh, the God of Israel, right? Because the Ephraimites, right, while on one hand are the core of the promise, are also always not quite Israel. They're not where the temple is. They're not where the Messiah comes from. They are and they aren't. They are and they aren't. Why is that? Well, this goes to something even deeper starting in the Torah in the scriptures, which is that the salvation of Israel is not an end in itself. Everything God does to, in, with, and for Israel is done for all the nations. And so there is always there is the priesthood which is a minority within the people of Israel. There is Judah which is a minority within the overall pe history of Israel. There is the smaller portion and then there is the larger portion and the smaller portion benefits the larger portion. This is a pattern and this carries forward to today. The church, Christ's church, the Holy Orthodox Church is a portion of the population of the earth. But what God is doing in to with and through his church is for the benefit and for the salvation of the whole world for the life of the world and for its salvation. People who become part of Israel through Ephraim do not lose their identities, but those identities are transformed and reshaped to become followers of Christ. And people who come into the church do not lose their identities. But who you are as a person when you come into the church is transformed as a follower of Christ. Not as an end in itself, but for the benefit and the salvation of the world. You can't save the world by yourself. It's not going to happen. You're not Christ. You're definitely not going to do it on social media. But you could be a part of saving your world, meaning your family, your friends, your co-workers, the people in your life. And it sounds hard, but it's not going to be as hard as you think if you really dedicated yourself to it. Because what makes it sound hard is that you're thinking you're going to have to change all those people or you're going to have to convince all those people. You're going to have to talk things through and argue things through and work things out with all those people. That's not the case. Really, all you're going to have to do is work on yourself. Let's work out your own salvation. Make that transformation of who you are, of your identity real. Truly dedicate yourself to following Christ. And when you do that, that transformation of yourself and who you are will leak out into the world around you and will start to transform it too. Transform the people around you too. It will happen as soon as we get serious and focus upon it. So if you want to be a worker of the harvest, first harvest yourself, first let yourself be ground down and baked into bread. Then you'll have something to use to feed the people around you who are in need. So those are my final thoughts. The thing that occurs to me here at the end is um

[clears throat]

>> you know the one uh really prominent Samaritan in the scriptures that we didn't really talk much about is of course the good Samaritan. And um one of the things that occurs to me is that you know in in the gospels Christ he uses this image of the Samaritan the good Samaritan as the one who who brings healing to the one who you know is beaten up by the side of the road. And and if you read I mean like I've read a number of petristic commentaries on this passage and and often what they basically will say is you know this the good Samaritan is Christ uh the the the man who's beaten up is is the soul you know um and so forth. And um that of course is a very powerful and and good interpretation. But one of the things that that occurs to me is that this story that we've described this evening about Samaria and the Samaritans about how there's this broken kingdom. There's idolatry and adultery. There's um tension, there's rivalry, there's mutual anti antipathy, there's being smashed, there's conquest, there's all of these things, right? That that plays out. Of course, we've looked we've looked at it play out in terms of this actual literal people, but as as you know, as father just described it, it's works out in a really the beautiful theological sense in terms of the church that the church is the fullness of the Gentiles is is Ephraim is the return. But I think this also plays out again to borrow some some peasovian language. This plays out fractally. It also plays out on an individual level like in your life in my life. Even if you've been a Christian your whole life, but if maybe you haven't, this story is playing out for you and for your for your family, right? that there's this um not just imperfection but maybe even adulteration, right? Like all of us are all of us are unfaithful and to some extent faithful at the same time. All of us are in that sense heretical. Right? All of us have this mixed baggage. All of us have times when we're crushed, when we're conquered. All of us have times when we feel like we're just barely hanging on. All of us have times when we have revolted. And yet we're all called to become this return to become the gathering in in St. Paul's language that all Israel may be saved and yet also to be the nations to be who we are. that that our experience through our lives is not erased and then replaced, but we bring all of it with us and it becomes transfigured, perfected. That the darkness we've experienced, the hurt that we've experienced, the hurt that we've caused and repented of becomes for us the basis of wisdom and the basis of compassion. And that as we look at Ephraim coming in in terms of the whole church that this story plays out on an individual level as well and within a family as well, within friendships as well. And that Christianity ultimately is this faith of hope that if if the people who are hated by the Jews, can be redeemed, can be Israel as well, and can even be an image that Christ uses that the church fathers interpret as being Christ, this good Samaritan. If all that's possible, then that means that wherever you've been, whatever you've done, however you've failed that can be you as well. You can participate in that. I can participate in that. And the key is that faithfulness, that transformation that Father Steven was just talking about. Samaria becomes Israel again when Samaria is faithful to Yahweh. And the good Samaritan is good because he is the one who does what is right. So, wherever you are at this point in your life, whatever your history has brought you to, whatever your relationships are at this moment, whether they're in good shape or so so or maybe pretty bad shape, this can be our story. We can become Samaritans in this sense as well. We can be the the reathering of Israel. So, you know, it's late, but tomorrow is another day for repentance. And tonight, we have our evening prayers of repentance. And that's what we have to do to worship Israel's God. Because just as the Lord said to St. Finei at Jacob's well there in what is now Nabas, it's not about worshiping only in Jerusalem. It's not about worshiping only on Mount Kerism. Now it's everywhere. And worshiping God in spirit and truth is possible for everyone. So every day you wake up and you say to yourself, "Today I begin again. Today I look at my mixed, messed up, broken, spotty, whatever you want to call it, whatever it actually is, history, and my history still has this tidos that is aimed at Christ and in Christ and thank God for that. So that's our show for today everybody. Thanks for listening. If you didn't happen to get through us through to us live this time, we'd like to hear from you. You can email us at lord of spirits ancientfaith.com. You can message us at our Facebook page. You can leave us a voicemail at speakpipe.com/lordofspirits. And if you have basic questions about Orthodox Christianity or you need help to find a parish to do this stuff in 3D cuz that's where it's done, head over to orthodoxintro.org and join us for our live broadcast on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month

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