Five Gallons of Bread (Transcript)

Chris Sims: Hey everybody, it's Chris and Benito here. Before we get into the show this week, we did want to give you a little bit of a content warning for this episode.

Benito Cereno: Yeah, more than any section that we've done before, this particular passage out of Genesis is going to feature some really strong instances of homophobia, a couple recurring instances of sexual assault, and also the recurring motif of incest. So if those are things that are going to make it difficult for you to listen to this episode of the show, maybe skip this one and we won't be mad at you, I promise.

C: Yeah, and you can always join us next week. And now, Genesis Part 2.

---

C: "Then out of the sky the Lord rained burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord. He demolished these cities, the entire plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and whatever grew on the ground." The Book of Genesis, Chapter 19, Verses 24 and 25.

[Music: "Gay Bar" by Elecrric Six]

C: Hello friends and neighbors and welcome to Apocrypals. It's the podcast where two non-believers read the Bible and we try not to be jerks about it. My name is Chris Sims, with me as always is the other half of the Sons of Thunder, your other heavenly host, Benito Cereno. Benito, how are you today?

B: Pretty good, Chris. How are you doing this week, man?

C: I'm doing all right. I've got a cup of coffee.

B: Yeah.

C: I've got a bottle of water.

B: Yep.

C: I've got the weirdest section of Bible to talk about.

B: Yeah, we got a pretty wild one today, huh?

C: I genuinely do not think we have encountered anything as completely buckwild as this second section of Genesis. We are reading, this is our second episode on Genesis, everybody. Second of a planned three, possibly as many as five, possibly as many as seven. That's the highest number. We are going to be reading chapters 11 through 25. That's not a lot of chapters, but boy, oh boy, is there a lot of stuff going on here.

B: There's a lot going on. This basically — we're covering the life of Abraham. We got Abraham, we got a little Isaac. We actually, at the very end, we're going to get the very beginning of Jacob and Esau, but primarily we're looking at stories of Abraham and Isaac this week. And next week we're going to try and cover Jacob and Joseph and we'll see if we can do it in one episode. Yeah, we'll see.

C: So before we get into that, though, you had some stuff you wanted to talk about from last week when we covered chapters one through 10.

B: Yeah. So last week was our longest episode ever and we covered so many different things, including a great many tangents. And yet, when we finished the episode, I realized there were a couple of additional things that I meant to talk about that we didn't get to. And so since hopefully this one is not going to stretch quite as long as that one, we can maybe fit those things in here at the top of the show.

So here's a couple of things I forgot. One that I, I really thought I said, but I got a note that I didn't. When we were talking about a documentary hypothesis and how the repeated versions of the stories are typically interpreted as coming from different sources. Apparently I didn't mention that the two creation accounts, the one from chapter one and the one from chapter two, the chapter one account that's, that's P that's the Priestly source. That's the, that's Lego God, right? He's the, he made all the Legos and he put it on the shelf. That's chapter one. And then the second account, the one with Eve from the rib instead of from the dust, that's J that's our, that's the Yahwist source. That's the more personal God, who's going to show up at your house. That's, that's J so first creation account from chapter one is P second creation account. That's J. I really thought I said that, but apparently I did not.

And speaking of the documentary hypothesis for people who are interested in that and learning more about that, learning more than you can from a couple of scrubs on a podcast, I would recommend the book, "Who wrote the Bible" by Richard Elliott Friedman. It's a book from 1987, although there have been updated editions since then, that is written for a general audience. So it's for normal people. It is not a book for academic wonks. It is a normal person book that will tell you not just about the Torah, but also other bits. And he goes through the documentary hypothesis and explains it and kind of shows the different chunks and the different elements of the different sources. And he goes with the theory that the Deuteronomist is either Jeremiah or Jeremiah's ride-or-die BFF Baruch, who we have mentioned previously. So he thinks one of those guys is the Deuteronomist, which is cool. But you check that book out, if you're interested in the documentary hypothesis, like we talked about.

Additionally, same guy also has a more recent book from 2003 called, "The Bible with Sources Revealed," which is actually just the Pentateuch, just the Torah, the first five, where what he's done is gone through and highlighted the sections in the Torah with different fonts and different colors to make it really clear which bits come from which source. And so if you're interested in that and kind of seeing how the tapestry of the Torah or the Pentateuch was woven together, that's a cool source for you to check out

C: In the way that we refer to biblical figures as being Caesar real and Robin Hood real.

B: Yeah.

C: I don't think you should refer to books as being for normal people. I think there should be Benito books and Chris books.

B: All right. Well, okay. Who wrote the Bible? It's a Chris, it's a Chris book for sure. And I do recommend it. And I think pretty much anyone who's written or talked about documentary hypothesis would recommend it to someone who is interested in that in kind of a casual way. So definitely check that one out. On a completely different topic, one I cannot believe I left out because it involves Latin, which is my thing. And it involves a pun, which is another thing I like to point out whenever possible. It's the question of Adam's apple, right? Why did we come to believe that the forbidden fruit is an apple? Well, there are plenty of other theories about what kind of fruit the forbidden fruit was. In fact, a lot of older sources think it was more like grapes, which feels really anticlimactic. I don't know.

C: You know, what really makes sense?

B: What makes sense?

C: If it was a fig.

B: Sure. Because then they use it.

C: And then Jesus is getting revenge.

B: Oh yeah. Wow. But also some people do think it's a fig because then they use the leaves from the fig tree to make their fig leaf clothes. And that's supposed to be like resonant thematically. Some people like the idea that it's a pomegranate, a pomegranate, which is a fruit that in a lot of different mythologies is associated with death, which if you've ever eaten a pomegranate makes sense because you cut it open and it looks like blood is spilling everywhere. So, you know, most notably, for example, in the story of Persephone and Hades, right? She's the pomegranate seeds, pomegranates, fruit of death. So some people like that. However, of course, in modern, at least in American culture, we have the idea that the fruit was an apple reflected in the phrase Adam's apple with the idea of being that the, that lump of cartilage around your thyroid gland is a piece of apple that got stuck in your throat that you carry as part of the mark of original sin, I guess.

C: That might be an even weirder bit of biology than, than bears are born made out of gelatin, or whatever it was.

B: Yeah. Yeah. Could be. Yeah. True. A theory that I like that is not necessarily confirmed, but a theory that I like is that the reason why we've come to associate the forbidden fruit of the garden with an apple is because of a Latin pun. The Latin word for apple is borrowed from a Greek word, Malon. It goes into Latin as Malum, which is very similar to the Latin word Malum, which means evil. So because the Latin word for apple and Latin word for evil are incredibly similar, it's, it's a distinction between a long a and a short a that's the only difference. Some people have believed that that little juicy pun is the reason why it's hard to resist making the forbidden fruit an apple.

C: Yeah. Apples are also pretty prominently featured in sort of Mediterranean religions, you know, like a Greek and Roman mythology has the Hesperides and the apple of discord.

B: Yes. True.

C: And then also, you know, in Norse mythology, there are the apples of Idun.

B: Right.

C: So apples: apples get around.

B: Apples do get around and they should. Apples are a very good fruit. And I think both of us heartily endorse apples and it's almost apple season. And I am hype.

C: It's like apple season next week.

B: I'm going to load up on those honey crisps. I'm going to be so I'm so ready. I'm so ready. Cause I just bought a bunch of peaches that were just no good. They were no good. One was too firm and the other ones got mushy. It was bad. It was a bad scene.

C: We had a bad peach situation here. And you know what it is, is we bought North Carolina peaches. Yeah. And no offense to my current home state, but everybody knows South Carolina peaches are the best.

B: Obviously that's why South Carolina is the peach state. I'm guessing I wouldn't look that up to confirm that piece of information. Anyway...

C: First of all, how dare you?

B: Anyway, last bit of thing I meant to mention from last time, I was even right on top of it. We were talking about how the descendants and the tribes of the three sons of Noah, Ham, Shem and Japheth, how they were separated geographically. So obviously we talked about Ham and the curse of Ham and all that stuff and how he's connected with Africa. Japheth was basically Europe, more or less and Asian minor, which would connect him possibly with the Greek name Iapetus, who was one of the Titans. And, but then Shem, this was the one I should have mentioned. Shem, of course, the favorite of the three sons, who covers the, mostly the Arabian peninsula. Of course, the people who live there are called what? Racially, they're called Semites cause they're Shemites, right? The descendants of Shem become the Shemites, AKA the Semites. And so when you talk about antisemitism, you're in theory talking about being anti the descendants of Shem, the favorite son of Noah.

So those are a couple of notes, the things that I meant to mention last week and forgot cause we had two hours plus of other material. Now we have even more and it's time for Abraham. But before we, before we jump into chapter 12 with the call of Abraham, I do want to pick up on something because, I mean, we have the call of Abraham here in chapter 12. It tells us, first of all, his name is Abram at this point. We'll see he gets the name Abraham later, but so Abram went as the Lord had told him and Lot went with them. Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran. And also it's confusing because there's Haran the place and Haran the person that are spelled different in Hebrew, but they're spelled identically in English. And so that's a little confusing, but yeah, Abram's 75 years old. Wow. That's a lot of stuff that we're missing there. If only there were someone who could give us the adventures of Abram when he was a boy.

C: Well, do you mean a boy or do you mean a man between say the ages of 20 and 75?

B: I do. I do mean a man between the ages of 20 and 75. Yeah. So because we have this question, right? If we look at the tail end of, of chapter 11, we see we see Abram has two brothers, Nahor and Haran and Haran is the father of Lot, but Haran died in his native land in Ur of the Chaldeans during his father, Terah's lifetime, which in some translations is in front of his father in the presence of his father. And so the question arises, why did that happen? Like if they left Ur to go to Canaan, why did Haran die in front of his father back in Ur? That causes a continuity issue, right?

And well, fortunately, as our listener and friend from Twitter, Kevin Moroni on Twitter as @womzilla. He says, according to his friend, Abram, a very good phrase that I, I appreciate very much. Fortunately, we have Midrash, Midrashim, the tradition is 2000 years of rabbis scoring no-prizes. So, so fortunately we do have someone to fill in the blanks there. What was going on? Why did Abram's brother die in front of his father? And so we have one of the most famous Midrash stories, which comes from the Genesis Rabbah, the Reshit Rabbah, which we talked about last week, which is a big long document that covers Genesis and explains bits and comments on bits. I kind of skimmed it. I didn't read the whole thing. I don't- I was trying to figure out if it was a thing we would cover for this show, but I don't know. It's got interesting bits, but then some of it will just be like little fragmentary sentences and things that are just comments on particular verses and things. I don't know, maybe we'll see, but it is interesting and cool because it is a medieval document where I did see a part where it was just like straight up, Hey guys, Job didn't exist. And if he did exist, the things we say that he did, he definitely didn't do. That story is a metaphor. You need to check yourself. So I'm like, Whoa, pretty cool.

But anyway one of the most famous stories from the Genesis Rabbah is called Abraham and the Idol Shop. Because according to the book of Joshua, we learn that Abram's father, Terah, was an idolater, that he worshipped idols. And this by tradition was extended to say that he not only worshipped idols, but that he made and sold idols and in fact, own and ran an idol shop. And so in the story of Abram and the Idol Shop, his father leaves and leaves Abram, who is a worshipper of God. He is a monotheist at this point. He leaves him in charge of the store. And so what happens first is a guy comes in and he's like, "Hey man, I'd like to buy an idol so that I can worship it." And Abraham goes, "Hey man, how old are you?" And the guy goes, "I'm 50. Why?" He goes, "You're a 50 year old man and you want to bow down to a thing that I made today?" And he laughs him out of the shop. Not great for sales, but...

C: Pretty much how I used to do it at the comic book store.

B: Yeah, it is very much the style of many comic shop clerks. Absolutely. Then a ladyF comes in with a big offering of flour - flour, not flowers. And she wants to make this offering to some idols. And so I presume Abram just straight up looking her dead in the eye, motionless face, walks over, picks up a stick, and then all the idols. He smashes them all with the stick until the lady just like backs up and leaves the store. Then his dad comes back and he's like, "What happened to all these idols?" And Abram's like, "It's crazy. This lady came in with this offering of flour and the big idol was like, 'None of you guys are taking my flour.' So he grabbed this stick and he destroyed all the other idols. It was insanity in this workshop dad, can't believe you missed that." And his dad goes, "You know, the idols can't do that." And he goes, "Hmm, if the idols can't do that, why are you worshipping them?" And I guess he drops the mic.

But his dad gets mad about that, understandably destroyed the entire inventory of his idol shop. And so what he does is he sends Abram out to go live with Nimrod, the hunter, might remember him, who I guess was living out with the Chaldeans. And so Nimrod says to him, "Hey, man, I worship fire fires real powerful, you should worship fire." And Abraham says, "If fire is so powerful, how come water puts it out?" And he goes, "Fine, why don't you worship water?" He goes, "Well, clouds absorb water." So Nimrod goes, "Okay, well, why don't you worship clouds?" And he goes, "Well, because the wind blows the clouds." And Nimrod is like, "Fine, worship the wind." And he goes, "Yeah, but me a normal human being can withstand the wind, no problem. And so why don't I just worship me?"

C: This basically has the structure of a Pokemon battle.

B: Right? Or really, it's kind of like St. Christopher looking for the strongest man to worship, right? Similar kind of thing. Yeah. So Nimrod is like, "Fine, if you're the big man in this chain, let's find out that's true. We'll put you at the beginning of the chain, we'll throw you in the fire," throws him in the fire. Of course, God protects Abraham. So he survives, he gets out and everyone's like, "Oh, God's pretty good," including Abram's brother, Haran, who goes, "Whoa, God is pretty dope." And so he also gets thrown into the fire. But because his faith was such that he needed to witness the miracle before he believed in God, he burns up in the fire. And that's the explanation for why Haran died in front of his father in the land of the Chaldees. So that's the story of Abraham and the idol shop, one of the most famous Midrashim that there are. And that basically leads us into chapter 12.

C: All right, so chapter 12. We get the Lord speaking directly to Abraham...

B: Yeah.

C: ...telling him he's gonna go do some stuff.

B: Right? And he's going to do that a number of times.

C: Well, we're gonna get a recurring theme.

B: Yeah, that's true. It doesn't matter what you're about to say. There's a lot of recurring themes.

C: But specifically from the next 14 chapters, it's basically God showing up and saying, "Hey, Abraham, do this." And Abraham being like, you got boss, no matter what it is.

B: It's true. We do get repeated covenants with Abraham. And in a way, chapter 12 is the first one. And this is, well, I mean, what we should have learned from last week is when we have repeated elements, it's usually because they're pulled from the different sources and that the agreement where God says to him, this is going to be your land. You're going to have many nations that come out of you. This is considered to be the J covenant. Oh, and I didn't mention we're finally going to see E the Elohist source. We're going to see that one for the first time. Here, he doesn't pop up until a little bit into Abraham's life, but we'll, we'll see how E is going to make some trouble for us a little bit later on. But right now this seems to be the covenant of J, the first of what will ultimately be three agreements between God and Abram.

C: I actually had a question along those lines for you.

B: Yeah.

C: The first thing I have highlighted in this section is in chapter 12, verse eight, which says "he built an altar to Yahweh there and called on the name of Yahweh, not translated, not written as the Lord, not written as God, just straight up Y-A-H-W-E-H.

B: Right. Yeah.

C: Tetragrammaton plus.

B: Yes. Most of the time the HCSB is going to translate that as the all caps Lord, like we talked about last week, but yeah, occasionally when it wants to emphasize, you know, that it's not just like a vague notion of God, but they really want to focus on the fact that Abraham is worshiping this God. They'll, they'll use Yahweh here in the HCSB.

C: So the second thing I had written down was about, Abraham deciding that Sarai at this point was way too hot to be his wife in Egypt, publicly.

B: Yes. Yes. Let's set aside the fact that Sarai would have been at least 65 at this point.

C: Yeah. She's, she's 10 years younger than Abram, but Abram is 75 at this point.

B: Yeah. We know he's at least 75. Yeah. Yeah. So...

C: People seem to be very active well into their 130s at this period. So 65 is the new 20.

B: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. This is like, it is prime marrying age. And yeah, this is going to be one of our repeated motifs. They're called wife-sister narratives. There's three of them in Genesis. Two of them have Abraham. One of them has Isaac.

C: Boy, oh boy, are they.

B: Yeah. So the idea is that if you were traveling, you entered a land. If you're the head of a clan, you might offer a daughter to the leader of the other clan to marry. Right. Abram and Sarai are childless because Sarai, as it says, was infertile. And so the best he can do is say that he has a sister to offer. And because he fears that if he says, you're my wife, they're going to kill him just to marry her. But instead, if it's his sister, then they can make a deal and they can make, they can broker peace that way. And technically he's not lying because we find out that Sarai is his sister. His half sister.

C: I wish you hadn't said it. I wish you hadn't said it because that comes as a third act twist.

B: It is a bit of a twist. Yeah.

C: Which how much of that is, I mean, since we're talking about it now, that is revealed in — I literally wrote the phrase, what a twist in my notes. We will not get that until chapter 20.

B: Yeah. Okay.

C: How much of that is someone going back and saying, well, Abram is, you know, he's kind of the founder of Judaism. So we don't want to have him lying to people. So we better go back and continuity patch that so that he is telling the truth.

B: I would say a greater than 0%. It is a non-zero amount that part of that is going to be a redaction where they want to make, make it look like Abraham's not lying, but also, yeah. So the second recurrence of the, the sister wife narrative, that's, that's in chapter 20 with Abimelech, whereas here it's the Pharaoh in Egypt. They're from different sources. The one in chapter 12 in Egypt is from J the one in 20 is from E.

C: Or possibly as we said last week from Moses.

B: Trom Moses, right, who, yes, of course, I would like to keep that option open for those of you who are pro Moses composed Torah. I don't want to feel like I'm leaving you guys out. So Moses had a reason. And usually the explanation is from, from that tradition. The reason why things are repeated is to show contrast between that time and this time. So yeah, possibility, but anyway, also the other thing that this emphasizes is Abram and his family move around a lot because like we talked about last time at this point, they are sojourners, they're nomads, they're nomadic shepherds, and they're going to move from place to place depending on where the grass is good, where the water is. And here it talks about there's a drought. And so the drought causes a famine because really the only place where there would be consistent water would be along the Jordan river Valley. And so if that water goes down, then you've got to go somewhere else. And so they pull up stakes and go to Egypt.

C: As you said, we see them dealing with Pharaoh here and we get the first appearance of something else that will later become a recurring theme here in chapter 12, verse 17. But the Lord struck Pharaoh in his household with severe plagues because of Abram's wife, Sarai. Plagues, the go-to.

B: Just the way that you deal with Pharaoh, like you can't talk to a Pharaoh just send the plagues. Yeah. Nice little, I guess, foreshadowing of what's going to come in Exodus. And yeah. And then the Pharaoh was like, what's with these plagues? Why didn't you just tell me she was your wife? Get out of here. This is terrible. Why'd you do this? This sucks, dude. And so Abram leaves.

C: Which seems like a pretty reasonable complaint.

B: Yeah.

C: To just be like, hey, you could have just told me she was your wife."

B: Yeah. It does feel like Pharaoh is the reasonable party in this exchange. Right. Anyway. Yeah. And that's chapter 12.

Chapter 13. At this point, Abram is very rich because in his time in Egypt, he's acquired flocks and herds, male and female donkeys, male and female slaves, and camels. Weird to stick slaves in the middle of camels and donkeys, but okay. Anyway, he's accumulated a great wealth from his time in Egypt. And he and his nephew, Lot, who lives with him, because obviously his brother, Lot's father, Haran, died in a fire. And so Abram's in charge of Lot. They each have large flocks of sheep and cattle and other livestock. And at this point, they would be intermingling. And this is causing their various herdsmen to argue.

And so they figure that the only way that Abram and Lot can resolve this is to split up. He says, "let's not have quarreling between you and me." This is chapter 13, verse 8. "Or between your herdsmen and my herdsmen, since we're relatives. Isn't the whole land before you separate from me? If you go to the left, I'll go to the right. If you go to the right, I'll go to the left." And it's nice with Abraham here that he gives his nephew the choice. That wouldn't be normal, right? Obviously, Abram's the head of the clan. It's his job to decide, but he's very generous. We see that as a recurring thing with Abram is that he's a very generous, thoughtful host and friend and father. That's a recurring element of his character.

And Lot, of course, looks and sees the Jordan Valley, which is the most fertile area because it's where the most water is. And so he goes that way. He travels east, which if you paid attention in the first 11 chapters of Genesis, you should know is a bad sign. Only bad things happen when you go east or when bad things happen, you go east, right? Adam and Eve went east out of Eden. Cain was kicked east out of the family after he murdered Abel. Ham goes east, everybody. If it's bad, you go east. Here, Lot's going east towards Sodom and Gomorrah, which of course, now we have the benefit of hindsight and we know that this is going to be bad, but he goes down that direction.

C: We have it here too, because if you want to talk about foreshadowing, chapter 13, verse 10, literally goes, this was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

B: Right. And 13, now the men of Sodom were evil, sinning greatly against the Lord. Yeah. So we know the foreshadowing is there. So yeah, they separate and that's how we're going to end up with kind of a separate narrative threads for Abram and Lot moving forward for the next few chapters. Yeah. We see Abram go to the Oaks of Mamre at Hebron. That's a place he's going to go back to a lot. He builds another altar to the Lord there. Another recurring theme.

C: We get some very choice names in this section. You've already mentioned that we're going to be getting Abenalech later, which is a very good name.

B: Yeah.

C: I know you have a favorite name that shows up here in chapter 14.

B: Yes. Yeah. We're coming up here in a second on what I think is the best name that we've had so far. And we'll talk and I'll talk about why.

C: Can I try it? Because I feel like I've got a really bad track record of this and I want to, I think I can nail this one.

B: All right, do it.

C: Melchizedek.

B: It's Melchizedek. Yeah. Melchizedek, the King of Salem.

C: Yay, I did it.

B: Kedorlaomer section, which is very super history class. It is major mega history class time. I'm not going to run through all the details of it. But basically, the idea is that five Mesopotamian kings under the control of Kedorlaomer, who was the King of Elam, they had come down to the Jordan River Valley and they had taken over and the kingdoms of the Jordan River Valley were subject to Kedorlaomer for 12 years. In the 13th year, they rebel. And so there's a rebellion of the Jordan River kings and there's a war. And that war is called the Battle of Siddim or it's called the War of Nine Kings. Very choice, sounds very Game of Thrones. Or it's called the Slaughter of Kedorlaomer because of what's going to happen. So if you want to just-

C: One of those things kind of gives it away.

B: Yeah, one of them kind of spoils the ending.

C: One of the names that we get in this, by the way, is Arioch, which you might recognize from Michael Moorcock's Elric books as Elric's evil patron god.

B: Oh yeah, okay.

C: If you're a turbo nerd who likes to read novels about elves.

B: Hey, I think we've got very many turbo nerds listening to this show. Shout out to the turbo nerds.

C: We got a couple on the show.

B: Very excellent point. Anyway, yeah, we got some names. Boy, we got some names in here. Ashteroth Karnaim. Anyway, there's a big battle. Lot because he lives on the fringes of Sodom, gets caught up in this. He's taken prisoner. And then the Valley of Siddim contained many asphalt pits. And the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and some of them fell into the asphalt pits, which that is so metal.

C: So we're talking about like burning tar.

B: Yeah. Yes. Like giant burning tar pits just in the middle of this valley.

C: What is happening in the Book of Genesis?

B: Yeah, it's wild. It's wild. Does this scene pre-configure the later fates of Sodom and Gomorrah? Perhaps. Anyway, because Lot gets taken prisoner, because he would be easy pickings, right? He just lives in a tent on the outskirts of the city. Very easy to take him. And his wealth, right? Lot is a wealthy guy. Him and his wealth. You take that prisoner. Somebody escapes, comes and tells Abram, hey man, your nephew is prisoner of King Kedorlaomer, includes the Elamite name Kutir, and then the deity name Lagamar. So I don't know. So he comes and tells Abram. And Abram takes 318 trained men. And in the night, they sneak and pursue the people of Kedorlaomer. And they kill them in the night. And then they take all the stuff back. They brought back all the goods, and also his relative Lot and his goods, as well as the women and the other people. So crazy stealth rescue mission in the dead of night.

C: So we know that Abram is 18 better than Leonidas.

B: Yes. Also, he won.

C: And also wins. Also, he wins.

B: Also, he wins. They don't have to set up a statue saying, what's up Spartans? We did our best. Anyway, peace. And so then, so after Abram returns with all the stuff and the kings, he's rescued the kings. Well, a new king of Sodom, I guess, comes out to meet him. And also Melchizedek, which I think is like the dopest name we've had so far, because A, it sounds rad.

But also, because using what we've learned about Hebrew so far, we can put this together. So Melech is king. I know that. And so that would mean Melch or Malki, like means my king. So does that tangent mean that David Malki's name means David is my king, it might somebody find that out. Anyway, so Melchia would mean my king. And then Zedek is Tzedek, as in the famous verse from Deuteronomy, "Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof," justice, justice, you shall pursue. And so Melchizedek means my king is justice, which is a very dope name to have. I think we would agree is a very pro-justice podcast. I think that Batman would be in favor of this king and high priest. So yeah, Melchizedek, pretty dope name, in my estimation, my king is justice.

All right. Yeah, so he's the king of Salem, which is Jerusalem, right? Salem is related to Shalom, which means peace. So it's the city of peace. And he's the first guy that we see that's referred to as a priest. And he blesses Abram. And he reminds him that it is due to God most high. And so God most high, keep in mind, that's El Elyon, who would have been, according to the theory, would have been the chief of the Canaanite pantheon, and the father of Yahweh. And anyway, Abram gives him a 10th of everything. This is the first tithe, which is going to become a thing later, by the time of Leviticus. And then the king of Sodom is like, "Hey, man, if you give me the people, you can take all the possessions, you can take all this wealth." And Abram is like, "Here's the thing, man, none of my wealth is going to be due to you because you suck and I hate you." And so he's like, "I will not take a thread or sandal strap or anything that belongs to you so that you can never say 'I made Abram rich.'" So yikes, sorry, king of Sodom. Not really, though, because you're evil, apparently.

C: Then Abram hangs out and has another conversationOh with God. And the basic thrust of this conversation is Abram being like, I got no descendants.

B: He's saying here that since he's childless, that his heir would be this, Eliezer of Damascus is one of his slaves. He would make one of his slaves his heir. So that's not even a relative. Yeah.

C: Oh yikes.

B: And so, yeah, he's pretty upset that God hasn't given him any offspring or any heirs. And God's like, no, man, I promise your offspring will be that numerous. I just said that in chapter 12. He tells him to look at the sky and count the stars. Your offspring will be as many as the stars. We all know this. Father Abraham had many sons. Many sons had Father Abraham. I'm one of them. So are you. So let's just praise the Lord. Right arm, left arm. You know that one?

C: Do not know that.

B: Oh, that's a pretty standard Sunday school jam. It's one of those where you repeat it and you add a different like right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot. Like each time you add a different one.

C: So you're telling me the Abrahamic covenant is the hokey pokey.

B: Basically, it's very similar. It's very similar. This covenant, the second one that we see here, which is probably from the E source. So we're seeing starting to see E creep in here, finally. This is called the covenant of pieces because God tells him, bring me a three year old cow, three year old female goat, a three year old ram, a turtle dove and a young pigeon. And then he cuts them all in half and he lays them on the ground with like a space in between them, like an avenue between them. This is very unusual. There's nothing like this anywhere else in the old Testament. Nobody else does a sacrifice like this throughout.

C: Yeah. It's super weird. And it's very specific because it's, it's, it's very specific animals, but then not the birds, the birds don't get cut.

B: Yeah. So I don't know if he puts like the turtle on the left and the pigeon on the right or whatever. And maybe that's, maybe that's how he splits them up. But, but anyway, yeah, this, it's a very strange thing, but it's to represent again, this covenant between God and Abraham. So yeah, this is the second of three. Yeah. This is the covenant of pieces as it's called.

C: So then we get a chapter 14, verse 13. Then the Lord said to Abraham, know this for certain, your offspring will be foreigners in a land that does not belong to them. They will be enslaved and oppressed 400 years. And that that's rough.

B: Yeah.

C: That's a rough thing to hear. But the good news is that was a long time ago. After those 400 years, I'm pretty sure it's going to be just smooth sailing for the Jews from then on out.

B: I think so. I think with hindsight, we can say absolutely following that, that following that period. And of course, in the other translation, I presume King James, that's the famous, there'll be strangers in a strange land. So if you know that phrase that Robert Heinlein is going to borrow later, that's where this, this is where that comes from. And of course, this is, this is God prophesying to Abram the period of Egyptian slavery and captivity, because he's like, I give you this land that is Canaan. That's the promised land. But the problem is there's going to be a time where you're going to be somewhere else for about 400 years, but then they're coming back and it's going to be fine. It's gonna be fine. Just milk and honey, baby. There's milk and honey the whole way.

C: I do feel like maybe God in his infinite wisdom could have given Abraham a little bit of a bigger heads up.

B: Yeah. Like, do you think there could be somewhere in here like, "Uh, yeah, you know, you're going to be the father of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Cabanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Refaimites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Yirgashites, the Jebusites. But anyway, let me tell you about the two state solution that I have here for you."

C: So then we get to chapter 16, which is the primary reason we had a content warning at the top of this episode. I just wrote the word yikes in the margins of my Bible and then drew three arrows pointing at various pieces.

B: Wow. Okay. I wouldn't have guessed this was the primary reason for the, for the content warning, but okay. So this is Hagar.

C: This was the first reason.

B: Okay. All right.

C: This is where it starts.

B: So we, here we have Hagar. Yeah, because Abram doesn't trust in God, right? He doesn't trust that God is going to give him the many sons that he's promised in the Sunday school song. He goes to his wife, Sarai, and he's like, what are we going to do? And she says, well, I have this handmaiden. Her name is Hagar, Hagar the horrible. She's a Viking. She has a shaggy red beard.

C: She has a weird little friend who wears a, like a night shirt and a funnel.

B: Yeah. And a pet duck named Kvack. Anyway, go to my slave, you know, go to my slave and through her, perhaps I can build a family. The idea that then she would have the child and then Sarai would adopt a child. Yeah. What's up Margaret Atwood? Yeah. I mean, this is the source of the, the title for the Handmaid's Tale is this is the idea. This is where the idea of a handmaid, someone whose job is to have a child for you. That's where that comes from is from this story right here. So this is, this is the source. So yeah. What's up Margaret Atwood. I know you're listening, waiting for that clutch retweet any day now. We know it.

C: Hagar gets pregnant. She is going to have a child Ishmael. Yep. Who will later be played by Karl Urban on an episode of Xena warrior princess.

B: Very good.

C: Like, I don't know if you know this, I'm sure I've talked about it before. Xena does the binding of Isaac as an episode.

B: That is bananas continue.

C: It's fully bananas because it's not God speaking to Abram. It's Ishmael setting up a Isaac to get sacrifices and Xena's got to stop it. But then, but then God shows up at the end.

B: Wow. The thing that's wildest to me about Xena is that it's based on the premise that the entirety of antiquity happened over the course of about two weeks because it's just like, yeah, sure. Binding of Isaac. Why not? Also Caesar is here. Anyway, this all happened at the same time within the lifespan of a single person.

C: The binding of Isaac happens in season one.

B: Yeah.

C: Caesar shows up in season two. Also Jesus is born in season two.

B: Great!

C: Cause they meet Mary and Joseph on their way to the census.

B: Perfect.

C: And Santa Claus shows up as well.

B: Sure. It all tracks. That's fine.

C: So Hagar is pregnant with Ishmael and then Sarai whose idea this was gets mad.

B: Well, she gets mad because Hagar is lording it over Sarai because Hagar is pregnant with the clan leader's son and Sarai couldn't do it. So she's been making fun of Sarai. And so yeah, now Sarai hates Hagar.

C: Abram replied to Sarai here, your slave is in your hands. Do whatever you want with her. Then Sarai mistreated her so much that she ran away from her. That was my second yikes arrow.

B: Yeah, that's super yikes. Here's a cool thing though. What we get here in chapter 16 verse 7 is in my understanding, if I didn't forget, this is the first appearance of the angel of the LORD, all caps LORD, which is another different special angel who doesn't get his- get a name, but who is a recurring figure that seems to be different from the other angels, different from Gabriel, different from Michael in that it seems to be an actual physical manifestation of God. So the angel of the Lord, this would be Malakh Yahweh or, you know, Tetragrammaton. So it's like the messenger: God. And it seems to be an actual manifestation of God himself because it will frequently speak in first person, being like, I God wants you to do this. And the angel of the Lord is going to continue popping up. There are different thoughts on this. Is this actual manifestation of God? Is it just a special angel? Christians of course, have their own idea. They like to believe that this is the pre incarnate Christ who comes and appears to Hagar and then later to Abraham and so on.

C: Well, the thing that I was going to talk about with this was speaking of it being a pre-incarnation of Christ. Okay. The last time we got some news from an angel of the Lord was in Luke, right? Specifically news about a pregnant woman. We got in Luke. You might recall it unto you. A child is born glory to God in the highest peace on earth. Goodwill to men. Here, the angel of the Lord shows up and says, Hey, Hagar, go back and keep being a slave for these people who hate you. Also you have conceived and will have a son. You will name him Ishmael for the Lord has heard your cry of affliction. This man will be like a wild donkey. His hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand will be against him. He will live at odds with all of his brothers.

B: Yeah.

C: Not exactly the good news.

B: And she takes that prophecy and she's like, Oh, cool. I'm very comforted by the fact that you said my son will be like a wild donkey and also everyone will aid him. Ishmael means El hears — God hears. And so that's, that's the meaning there. And yeah, so she said she called the Lord who spoke to her, the God who sees because she felt seen for the first time because God came down and spoke to her. This is the first and perhaps only instance of a woman giving God a new name. So that's going on there. And she names the spring where she is "the well of the living one who sees me" — a couple of interesting things going on there. And you have me, you got me wanting to check back in Luke. Now I got to check. We know that the angel who does the Annunciation, who tells Mary that she's pregnant it, we know that's Gabriel, but I wanted to check that the angel who appeared singing before the shepherd, it does say an angel of the Lord rather than the angel of the Lord. So a little hard to tell whether it's actually supposed to be the presence of God announcing the birth of his son to — that one feels more generic, but it's harder to tell in Greek because I suspect that they probably, the fact that it's lowercase Lord means they probably use... they use kuriou, which is of, of the Lord to kuriou the actual word Lord rather than the name of God.

C: So Abraham's 99 years old.

B: He sure is.

C: And God comes down, talks to him. We get another covenant.

B: Yeah.

C: This one, I mean, this is a very famous one. Like this will become the signifier of Judaism for the rest of the old Testament and new Testament. A

B: And the rest of history

C: And the rest of history.

B: It is still considered basically the main symbol of being a Jewish person. We do get the first appearance of the name, God almighty. That would be El Shaddai. We get the name El Shaddai here at the beginning of chapter 17, which does not actually mean God almighty. We're not really sure what it means. It might just mean God of Shaddai and Shaddai is a place maybe, but the traditional translation is God almighty. So we do get that name for the first time here, but yeah, this is the third covenant, and it is of course, the covenant of circumcision.

C: First of all, Abram gets a new name. He is now renamed Abraham. I did want to know if that was another pun.

B: Yeah, kind of. I mean, in that all these names mean something, right? This, the meaning has been a little bit lost, but the traditional idea is that the name Abram, and we should be catching on now. If you see "AB" you should be thinking father, like, like "aba"...

[Music: "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" by Abba]

B: means like Papa or whatever. And so "ab," you should be thinking father. So Abram or Avram would be exalted father. And then Avraham means father of a multitude. And so that's the idea there that he switched from just being cool dad to many sons. But that does seem to be a folk etymology and not the actual meaning of Abraham, but it is the traditional understanding of that name.

C: God says to Abraham, Hey, this is my covenant, which you were to keep between me and you and your offspring after you, every one of your males must be circumcised. You must circumcise the flesh of your foreskin to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and you throughout your generations. Every male among you at eight days old is to be circumcised. That's a bris. Mazel Tov. Here's the thing. This is not like starting now and going forward. This is retroactive. So Abraham at 99 years old goes home, gathers everybody up for a meeting and goes, "Hey, what's up, everybody. Uh, had just had a meeting with God. Here's what we're doing tomorrow." And everybody's like, all right, let's do this. Which... that is a... that's some trust in Abraham. That you have to have at that point.

B: Yeah. It is. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about this covenant. So, the Hebrew term for the covenant of circumcision is brit milah. The Ashkenazi pronunciation of that is bris milah. The Yiddish pronunciation is bris. That's where bris comes from. So the word bris means covenant. It's the covenant.

And so why, why this, is a good question in the Canaanite area. I forget some of the other, some other ancient near East cultures would have also practiced circumcision. And presumably the idea here as part of a covenant is that otherwise you might swear an oath or mark covenant by severing a sacrificial animal. You cut the animal with the implication being whoever breaks this oath will be cut the same way that this animal is. And so the oath breaker suffers punishment. So this is a similar kind of thing. Except you're marking your own body rather than an animal.

Also, we want to keep in mind that one of the main goals of the Jewish people throughout the Torah is to separate the Israelites from the other surrounding people. We talked about how they do that by a focus on their shepherding community versus the agrarian communities of the people around them. We're going to see dietary laws that get instituted as a, as a method of behavioral separation between them and the others. Now we have a physical one here. This is a very clear way that you could look at a person and be like, that guy is different from me, right?

And theoretically, if like we've seen with Abraham and also with Tobit, a main thing that's important for you is making sure that your child is marrying someone within your own tribe. This is a very easy way to do that. Right? It's just like, okay, you want to marry my daughter, drop that trou. Let's see where you're at. If you're in my group or not. And so it does kind of have that element.

However, there are many different thoughts on why circumcision was the covenant of choice for Yahweh and Abraham. The medieval Jewish philosopher Philo offers six different reasons. And Chris, I would just like to gauge your reaction, how you feel about these different reactions for why circumcision might be the thing. First two are completely common beliefs. And it's the reason why I think even up until now, the majority of people in Western culture, at least in America are circumcised regardless of whether they're Jewish or not.

C: By the way, before you get into these six reasons that you want to hear my reaction to, I am so thirsty right now. And I'm terrified to drink a drink of water.

B: Are you?

C: I've got a lot of expensive electronic equipment around me right now.

B: Yeah, sure. No, go ahead. Go ahead and take a drink before we get started. The first two are completely, you're completely normal. So the first, the first one is it's a protection against disease. That's the thing that's, I mean, in America, that's why even, even non-Jewish people in America get circumcised. It's a protection against disease. And number two is it secures cleanliness, right? It's supposed to be cleaner and healthier. Obviously different people have opinions on that now, and that's really changed. That's not the common view anymore. Okay. So I'm going to skip, I'm going to skip reason three, one, two disease, cleanliness. That's one of two. Number three, I'm going to skip because it is buckwild. Number four is a fertility thing. It's the idea that the removal of the foreskin would remove impediment from the flow of seed. So there's that to think about.

C: Okay.

B: Yep. Number five feels accurate and terrible is that is the excision of unnecessary pleasure. You don't want to feel too good. So let's take care of that. Number six is that it would be a symbol of man knowing himself, the idea that man knows what his own limits are. And so he removes this thing as a sign of completion among himself. All right. So that's, that's six. I got to come back to number three. Cause it is the buckwildest one. I try, I'm thinking about, I'm we're staying away from that explicit tag. We're going to do it. Philo medieval Jewish philosopher says the reason God wants you to circumcise your children is that it makes your D look like a heart.

C: [Laughing]

B: Yeah. So, I mean, I guess the idea is that, yeah, it kind of looks, I guess it looks like a cartoon heart if viewed from a certain angle. Anyway, that's Philo, the medieval philosopher. But also, there's no way we can cover everybody's thoughts on the covenant of circumcision. If you want to know more about it, you should Google Bris or Google the brit milah, B R I T M I L A H. You can Google it and you can find different opinions on that.

C: I feel like Philo had five really like solid ideas and did not need the sixth one. Like he could have put that sixth one in the regret box.

B: Yeah. Yeah. Could have. That was actually his third one. So he felt that was the third strongest. He thought that was better than the excision of unnecessary pleasure as a reason. Anyway.

But the other guy I want to turn to is another guy we're going to see again in a minute. One of the most important rabbis of all time. His name is Maimonides he's known as, he's also known as the Rambam, which is a very good acronym for, it's... some form of rabbi for the R and then Moses ben Maimon. So he's Moses, the son of Maimon. And so if you make that Greek, you get Maimonides, which means the son of Maimon. So, he was a very important guy. He wrote a book called the guide for the perplexed, which, the idea is that it's supposed to explain the Torah to you if you are perplexed as we are, but he says the covenant of circumcision is good because one, it's a bodily sign to others. So there you go. That's one. We discussed the possibility. It lets other people, I don't know, in the locker room at the Y I guess? Lets them know that you're covenanted with God, but it also represses the sex pleasure, which like Philo said. So there's that.

And then, I feel like his third reason is a little sketchier biologically. It's not quite on the level of cartoon heart, but he thinks that it's difficult for an uncircumcised man to separate from the union. Like a dog, I guess? Like, I don't know if you guys, I don't know if you guys have seen, uh, how...

C: I would, I would really like to move on.

B: Yeah. So like, does he think there's some kind of like tying period, like with dogs?

C: I would really like to move on.

B: All right. Anyway, so that's enough for the covenant of circumcision, I guess. Oh, also we see his wife's Sarai also, she gets a name change. Her name is Sarah now, which again, if you're going to have a wife, good name to have. Sarah means princess, which I can attest to, sounds right. That tracks for me, 90 year old woman, Sarah, the princess, she laughs at the idea of this covenant. And so God says that their child's name will be Isaac or Yitzhak, which means, "she laughs." And so that one's another good pun there.

C: I've got a question about this.

B: Yeah.

C: Sarah's like, Sarah's like, I'm 90 years old. That's hilarious that you think I can have a kid.

B: Yeah.

C: But like people were living to 900, not that long ago.

B: Sure. Yeah. We definitely are...

C: Noah was 600 years old when he died.

B: Yeah. We're, we're seeing a decrease in lifespan over time. And there's a significant decrease after the flood. Like after... Noah is like the last guy to live to be like 600. And so, it definitely decreases, but obviously we're going to see Abraham live to 175. Spoilers. Sorry. So we're getting closer to a reasonable lifespan.

C: I wrote down that Sarah dies at 127: gone too soon.

B: Yeah. Gone too soon.

C: It is now time for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

B: Abraham gets some visitors, one of whom is the angel of the Lord. So God and two friends show up at Abraham's house and Abraham is the consummate perfect host. As you do, if you're entertaining, he falls on his face and pays obeisance to his guests. So you do that. I do that. We all do that on the model of Abraham. Then he calls for Sarah to make bread. Now I'm not a baker, Chris. I know there are a lot of baking goes on in your household. If I'm not mistaken.

C: Yes.

B: Yeah. He tells Sarah need three measures of fine flour. The literal thing is three seahs, which would be 21 quarts of flour. So that is, that is five and a quarter gallons of flour. Right? Now, again, I'm not a baker, but that would be a lot of bread, right?

C: That's a significant amount of bread.

B: Yeah.

C: I feel like usually when Aiden is making like cinnamon rolls, you know, cookies or bread, I feel like it's usually measured in cups.

B: Yeah. Not quarts?

C: Not multiple gallons.

B: Not multiple gallons of flour. Does God love bread? God is always talking about bread.

C: I mean, bread is very good.

B: Bread is very good. It's the staff of life, my dude, we all know.

C: Well, I mean, God will eventually be made of bread.

B: God's made of bread, god's made of them cheddar bickeys he's of that cinnamon bread from Dollywood. Who knows? But God loves bread. So it stands to reason that, yeah, God wants five and some change gallons worth of bread. And so God and his two bros, but then God gets up from eating his five gallons of bread.

C: Here's the thing. You don't usually measure bread in gallons and that's what's throwing me off.

B: Yeah, sure.

C: But here's, here's the part that I like about this. There's God, there's the Lord hanging out.

B: Yeah.

C: Eating bread.

B: Yeah.

C: And he's also got his bros there, which is weird.

B: Yeah. You know, God's bros.

C: Yeah. God's crew that he brings in with him.

B: God's entourage. Turtle is there.

C: That's the devil's entourage. So God is like, they're getting ready to leave. It's the end of the night. They put away settlers of Catan and God's like, goes out for a stretch and he's looking out and he sees the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which I guess are like a Minneapolis, St. Paul situation. Right? Like they seem, they seem like one metro area.

B: The original twin cities. Yeah.

C: And the Lord God says, "Hey, should I hide what I'm about to do from Abraham?" He says that to his bros.

B: Yeah.

C: Like, "Hey, should I just tell Abraham what I'm about to do?"

B: "I mean, I am about to make this guy a great nation. Maybe I should clue him in on what's about to happen."

C: And then he just kind of casually goes, "the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is immense and their sin is extremely serious. I'm going to go down there and see if what they have done justifies the cry that has come up to me. If not, I will find out." Weird that God in his infinite wisdom does not just know, but this is still, this is still golden age God.

B: Yeah. This is, this is the golden age God who's very anthropomorphic. I mean, this has got to be J. Let me check. Yeah, this is J for sure. This whole section, everything from the visit through God's monologue, the dialogue with God up through Lot'sdeliverance, all of that is J.

C: God's like, Hey, I'm going to go down to Sodom and Gomorrah. If it's really rough down there, I'm just going to destroy it. And Abraham, who again, we have seen is by and large a decent guy.

B: Yeah, for sure.

C: He goes, "Hey, will you really sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are 50 righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away instead of sparing the place for the sake of the 50 righteous people who were in it?" And God's like, "if there's 50 righteous people, I probably won't do it. Which is, it's such a weird, casual thing for God to be like, yeah, probably not. Like I haven't made up my mind yet. And then Abraham keeps on talking him down. He's like, okay, so you won't do it if there's 50, what if there's 45? What if there's 40? And God is bad at negotiation. He's just like, yeah, probably not. Probably not until Abraham gets him down to 10. If he can find 10 righteous men, 10 righteous people in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, they're good.

Unfortunately, that is not what's going to happen. But I do like Abraham's process because at one point he's like, we've seen God "Columbo" Cain, and now we're kind of seeing Abraham "Columbo" God a little bit. Cause he's like, look, since I've already ventured to speak to the Lord, even though I am, but dust and ashes, suppose the 50 righteous last like five, how about 45? He's very like, I mean, as long as, as long as we're talking here, which I kind of like, I like this setup to this, even though it is a not to cast judgment on the judge of all things, it seems unreasonable.

B: Yeah. A little bit. And also I'm just going to throw this out here. Cause I know some people listening are going to be tempted. There's a very obvious antisemitic joke to make about Abraham haggling God down to 10. Please do not tweet this joke at us. It's we know, we all know what it is. Don't don't do it.

C: This is that weird personified God that can change his mind that you can convince not to do something.

B: Yeah, absolutely.

C: But it turns out to be a pretty moot point because, oh boy, here we go with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. This is the, this is the most bananas section of the Bible we have yet read.

B: Yeah. The whole of chapter 19 is pretty rough.

C: We've got Lot. He's living in Sodom. We've seen that he went to the East and set up in Sodom, which is, okay. We all know what it means. We all know the word. We're all on the same page of that. Right. But it's like, I mean, I was going to say it's like Jack Chick-level gay panic.

B: Yeah.

C: But I mean, this is what Jack Chick is deriving from.

B: Yeah, sure. The story's crazy. The two angels, cause God, God sent the two angels to Sodom and Gomorrah and then God himself just peaces out to who knows where.

C: He's like, Hey, can I get that bread to go?

B: Yeah. Wrap up some of that, that unlimited breadsticks, please. The two angels go down and they meet Lot who, again, he's, he lives on the outskirts of the city. So he's going to be right by the gate. He is also a good host. Not quite Abraham level. He's not making five, five and some change gallons of bread, but he makes some bread and he welcomes the men. And then, you know, the normal thing that happens, the young and old men of the city of Sodom, the whole population surrounded the house...

C: "Both young and old comma, the whole population comma." That is very specific.

B: Yeah. The whole city surrounds the house and they shout the very normal thing. "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Send them out to us so we can have sex with them." And here's the thing. So like a whole city of men, young and old see that two, presumably very handsome men from God's entourage have come to visit lot on the outskirts of town

C: Covered in eyes... on fire...

B: Covered in eyes, on fire. They got ox head, Eagle head, who knows? And like, and they're like, yeah, let's do sex to those dudes. And we're going to, it's going to be forcible and it's going to be a bunch of us or it's just like straight up... So here's the footnote. Let me read you the footnote from HCSB. This is going back a little bit, but the Lord would investigate Sodom and Gomorrah for two reasons. The outcry coming from their victims was immense and the city sin was extremely serious. According to Ezekiel chapter 16, the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah included self-centered pride, neglect of the poor and the needy and doing unnamed detestable things. According to Genesis 19, five through nine, one of the quote detestable things was homosexual gang rape. Thank you, editor of the HCSB. I appreciate that.

C: We have said before that we are not here to debunk, right? We're not here to poke holes. I read this part where every man in the city comes to this dude's house and starts yelling, send those dudes out so we can have sex with them.

B: Yeah.

C: From my perspective as a nonbeliever, I do not think that happened.

B: Yeah. So, but the thing that to me that is wild is that for millennia, since this story, people have read this story about an entire city of people who want to run a train on some angels and their takeaway was.

C: Goodbye, clean lyrics tag.

B: Their takeaway is being gay is bad. That's their takeaway from this one.

C: So here's the thing. We can all agree. This situation is bad. If we are to engage with the text literally and go, okay, whole bunch of dudes are surrounding this house, chanting, send them out so we can have sex with them. That's a bad situation.

B: Yeah.

C: I would say Lot is equally bad.

B: Oh, why? Because of his solution to this problem?

C: Yeah. Cause his solution sucks.

B: Yeah. So, I mean, the justification for this is that as a host, his job is to protect his guests by any means necessary. And so if that means in this case, well, as we see sacrificing the maidenhead of his two virgin daughters to a horny crowd, then that's what it's going to be. But yeah, from hindsight, it looks real bad where he's just like, "Hey, my dudes don't do this evil. I got two daughters. So do a different evil." I guess.

C: Verse six of chapter 19, "Lot went out to them at the entrance and shut the door behind him. He said, 'Don't do this evil. My brothers look, I got two daughters who haven't had sexual relations with a man. I'll bring them out to you and you can do whatever you want with them. However, don't do anything to these men because they have come into the protection of my roof.'" I almost swore. I almost said a cuss.

B: Yeah.

C: What, what, there is, there is no, there is no conception of reality in which this is okay.

B: Yeah. Yeah. It's bad.

C: Lot is fully prepared to be like, I know this whole town is out here, which, which how big is a, how big is a town in Bible time?

B: I mean, I don't know what the population would have been. I, I mean, certainly not the size that of like an American town today.

C: Maybe just, maybe just turn the lights off and pretend you're not home, Lot.

B: Yeah. What's crazy to me is that the thing that the townspeople get mad at is they're like, why is he judging us? How dare this guy? Who's not even from here. This guy doesn't even go to this school and he's got to tell us how to live. So yes, the angels are like, "Hey man, you got to go." And they tell him, do you have anyone else here? A son-in-law, your sons and daughters, anyone in the city who belongs to you? And he's like, well, I got these guys that are going to marry my daughters. And he's like, yeah, okay. Take them. And then they do not believe him.

C: I feel like there is a missing, like, is there a dead sea scroll that like, just slide something in here between like verse 13 and verse 14, where the daughters are like, "Hey," and their boyfriends are like, "Hey."

B: I don't know. I have no, I have no personal evidence of that. So anyway. Yeah. So basically a lot and his wife and his two daughters are the only ones who are going to escape the city. Yeah. Does not hit that threshold of 10.

C: It's six, which I feel like...

B: Oh no, it's not even six. Cause the boyfriends don't come, the boyfriends reject rejected. So it's four.

C: Which you can't really round that one up.

B: Yeah.

C: So I guess, I guess Abraham is, is caught on that.

B: Yeah. They go to flee, but even, even lot manages to haggle like Abraham did. And he's like, what if we don't run all the way to the mountains? What if we stop at this city and you don't destroy this little village? And they're like, okay, fine. You can stop in that village. We won't destroy that village.

C: What a weird demand to make when an angel of the Lord is like, "Hey, God is about to rain fire down on the city and kill everyone here. You should leave." And Lots's like that's far though.

B: Lot has an idea of his limits. He knows how far he can run and he knows it is not all the way to the mountains. Yeah. And I mean, we all know like burning sulfur fire and sulfur falls from the sky. Sodom and Gomorrah demolished.

C: I didn't misread that at the top of the show, by the way, "hen out of the sky, the Lord rained burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord."

B: Demolished the cities, the entire planes, all the inhabitants of the cities, whatever grew on the ground. And then just kind of as a casual tag, one verse, the famous story here, Lot, his wife looks back and becomes a pillar of salt.

C: Can I be a hundred percent real with you and make a confession?

B: You may.

C: If you've been listening all along, there has been some debate among both the hosts and listeners of the show about whether, whether the premise of the show is that Benito knows things that I don't.

B: I did not say that was the premise, but continue.

C: I did completely, I knew Lot and his wife were in this one. I did completely read this entire section up to a chapter 19 being like, well, wait, when is lot going to go down to hell to get his wife back and play his lyre? That's not this story. That's Orpheus and Eurydice.

B: That is a different story about don't look back. Yeah. That is a different one.

C: Different story. So I guess, I guess you were all right.

B: So yeah, with Lot's wife now a pillar of salt and Lot escaped out of the city to a cave with his two daughters, the only surviving members of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, we have, oh, it's, it's not good. It's not a good scene.

C: The potential sons-in-law don't come. So the girls are single now.

B: They are, they are available. And also they're worried that they're literally the only people left alive, right? They think the world has been destroyed. We're the only ones, we're the only ones left, right? It's, it's one of those like into the world scenarios that you hear sad, lonely men talk about. "Our father is old. There's no man in the land to sleep with us. This is the custom of all the land. So let's get our father to drink wine so that we can sleep with him and preserve our father's line." So two nights in a row, daughters get their dad drunk and you know what they do. I don't need to say it.

C: Here's what I wrote in the margins of my Bible: Genesis dudes stop drinking wine.

B: Yeah. Bad things happen. Slavery happens as a result.

C: Yeah. It's not great.

B: That's like best case scenario. Best case scenario is thousands of years of slavery. But anyway...

C: Boy, at least we're done with the incest section.

B: Well, so, so both the daughters become pregnant. The first born gave birth to a son and named him Moab. He's the father of the Moabites of today. The younger also gave birth to a son and she named him Ben-Ami, which means a son of my people and Moab, by the way, again, "Ab," you'll be looking for that, means father. So Moab means from my father, super gross thing to name your incest baby.

C: Jiminy Christmas

B: And Ben-Ami is the father of the Ammonites. And so one thing you might notice upon reading the story is like the story casts no moral judgment on the horrible thing that happened. It doesn't say like this was bad, but they don't have to, because if you're an ancient Israelite reading the story, you know who the Moabites are, you know who the Ammonites are, and you hate them. And so, you know, this story is an etiology for two of your most hated enemies. And so it doesn't have to say like, by the way, this thing that happened was super bad because you can look at it and go, oh, the results of this were those gross dudes that I hate. And so, yeah, that's what that story is about. Yeah. Chapter 20.

C: Chapter 20 is where Abraham once again goes and tells Abimelech, "Hey, this isn't my wife. She's my sister."

B: Yeah. Well, this is the first time with Abimelech, the first time it was the Pharaoh. So the first time with Pharaoh, that's, that's our J source this time. This is the E version of this story. This is the Elohist version of the story with the Abimelech. You want to take a stab at what this name means. It's a couple of word fragments we've dealt with already a couple of times this episode.

C: Well, Melech is King, right?

B: Right.

C: Ab is father.

B: Yep. And the I indicates a first person possession. So it means my father is a King.

C: Which is a good name for a member of royalty to have, I guess.

B: Yep. I mean, that's how it works in a lot of places. If your father's King, you're King. We get a doublet of the sister wife narrative, it's the same. It's the same thing, basically.

C: But this time verse 11, "Abraham replied, I thought there was absolutely no fear of God in this place. They will kill me because of my wife. Besides she really is my sister."

B: Yeah.

C: "The daughter of my father, though not the daughter of my mother. And she became my wife." That's new information.

B: Technically I'm not lying. Yeah.

C: Yeah. Caught us in a logic trap.

B: Yep. Very true. Then Abimelech brought sheep and cattle... So they make a deal here. Abimelech says, look, my land is before you settle wherever you want. He said to Sarah, I'm giving your brother a thousand pieces of silver. It's a verification of your honor to all who are with you. You're fully vindicated. Yeah. Abraham prayed to God. God healed Abimelech and his wife and his female slaves so they could bear children. So that's good for Abimelech. God had temporarily made Abimelech's wives and concubines sterile, I guess. Some weird things going on, but of course, Abraham can't just give his wife away at this point because it's almost time as prophesied from the three dude bread party, for Sarah to give birth to her child, the first son of the many sons of Abraham. And so, yeah, we get the birth of Isaac here in chapter 21. And yeah, there's more laughter to remind you what Isaac means. And who would have told Abraham that Sarah would nurse children. Yet I have born a son for him in his old age.

C: They also drive Hagar and Ishmael out.

B: Yeah.

C: They're like, my son won't be a co-heir with this child of a slave. Why did you do all that, though?

B: Well, also, we see that Ishmael is making fun of Isaac. Sarah saw the son mocking the one Hagar the Egyptian had born to Abraham. So she's like, get them out of here. And yeah, so what Abraham does is he takes bread and he fills up a canteen and sends Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness. And when she runs out of water, she's like, well, I guess we're dead now. And so she puts the boy under a bush.

And then the good note that the editor has here is like, if there's a bush there, that means there's a high water table. Just dig for water, Hagar. Dummy.

Anyway. So yeah, she couldn't bear to watch the boy die. And the angel of God, the angel of God calls to Hagar and is like, hey, what's wrong? And she filled the water skin, gave the boy a drink. God was with the boy. He grew. He settled in the wilderness, became an archer. Presumably at some point later, he joins the crew of the Pequod.

But he settled in the wilderness of Peran and his mother got a wife for him out of the land of Egypt. And of course, we know if you follow an Islam, Ishmael is the father of the Arabic people. He's the founder of the line of which Muhammad would be part. So the idea is that Jews and Muslims are basically half brothers. They're from lines of half brothers. And so the descendants of Isaac are the Jewish people. Descendants of Ishmael are the Arab or Muslim people.

C: Abraham's like 127 years old at this point.

B: He's 100 when Isaac is born.

C: Here's what I'm saying. No, you're right. He was 86 when Ishmael was born.

B: Yeah.

C: Well, here's why I bring this up.

B: Yeah.

C: God's like, hey, this guy who I told that he should go full on into circumcision well before any kind of anesthesia was invented at the age of 99 probably needs to be tested for his loyalty. So I'm going to do that now.

B: Yeah.

C: Abraham has been pretty faithful. Like Abraham made him five gallons of bread. Like Abraham has been keeping pretty, pretty faithful for 100 years.

B: Yeah, pretty, pretty ride or die. But, so yeah, we look at chapter 22. Now the sacrifice of Isaac, also known as the binding of Isaac. Of course, one of the better known indie roguelikes of the Bible known as the Akedah Yitzhak in Hebrew, which is the binding of Isaac or the Akedah as it is called, which is also this story is the foundation of the celebration of Eid al-Adha, which the other, the second Eid of the year, if you're Muslim and that just happened earlier this week, it was like Monday, Monday, Tuesday. So Eid Mubarak to any Muslim listeners we might have. I hope you ate a lot of those very cool date cookies that are delicious. But yeah, that's the celebration of this story, the sacrifice and the sparing of Isaac.

C: Yeah. This story, I mean, you mentioned it's the sacrifice of Isaac, also called the binding of Isaac, also called "Altered States," season one, episode 18 of Xena.

B: Yeah. Okay. So I think most people know this story, right? God, God goes to test Abraham. He, he calls him again, appearing to Abraham. He's like, Hey man, take your son, go to the land of Moriah, offer him there as a burnt offering. And Abraham is like, okay. And so he goes and he takes Isaac up and they have wood, they have a knife, they have all this stuff. And eventually Isaac is like, Hey man, where's the where's the lamb, right? Like, isn't that how we do this normally? There's an animal that we sacrifice. And Abraham's just kind of like don't, don't worry about it. Yeah. They get up there and he's ready to do it. And then Abraham reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him, Abraham, Abraham, here I am. And he goes, "Hey, don't do that. Look over there. There's a ram caught in those bushes. Go get that ram, sacrifice that." And then they come back down the mountain.

That's the story. That's the story as presented here. In Genesis. There's a lot of questions about this, right? This is a problematic story for a lot of people. Like why would God ask somebody to do this? Why would he test somebody's faith this way? Why would Abraham be willing to do this? And of course, there's a lot of explanations. The Genesis Rabbah says that the sacrifice was only ever supposed to be metaphorical, but Abraham's imagination ran away with him, is their explanation that it was only supposed to be a symbolic sacrifice, but Abraham took it too seriously. And that's why he takes a knife and everything.

C: Well, that doesn't make sense because Jesus would not invent metaphors for several thousand years.

B: Yeah, so true. However, in more modern times the rabbi Joseph Hertz says that actually at this time, child sacrifice was so common among Semitic people that it's actually more shocking that God would stop the child sacrifice. And in fact, the Canaanites would do this. They would put children into the fire as sacrifice. Like that's part of why Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom is the, the place associated with hell because you would do child sacrifices there. The Canaanites would do that. And so, you know, from a more modern scholarship point of view, it's not unusual for God to ask for a child sacrifice. It's unusual for God to stop a child sacrifice. And I'll get back to that in a second.

Maimonides, our boy, Rambam, he says that this shows two great notions. One, it illustrates humanity's capability to love and fear God, but it also shows that prophets believed with certainty in what God told them, despite their origin, despite, you know, God speaking to them in dreams and visions.

Some people think that this story is meant as a way to clown the Canaanites for their child sacrifice with the punchline being like, of course, God wouldn't ask somebody to do this. Only idiots would do this, right? However, if we look at this from a documentary point of view, it's a little sketchier because most of this story, the sacrifice of Isaac is E. And you might notice that, so verse 10, Abraham reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son, right? That's verse 10, verse 11, the angel of the Lord, all caps, called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. We know that the use of the name Lord, all caps means Yahweh. That means verse 11 is an interpolation by the Yahweh source by J. And so E ends with verse 10 and picks up again with 19. E says, Abraham reached out and took his knife to slaughter his son. Verse 19, Abraham went back to the young men and then got up and went together to Beersheba. E kills Isaac. Isaac never appears again in E. However, J, all these stories about Isaac, Isaac and Rebecca, Isaac and Jacob, those are all from J source.

And so the redactor of the different sources has to look at the fact that E kills off a major character and that another source continues to feature him. And so we get this very good continuity patch where the angel of the Lord, IE the Lord, or possibly the pre-incarnate Christ show up to be like, just kidding. This was a prank. It was a prank. Yeah, it's wild.

C: Here's what got me about this story.

B: Yeah.

C: And this might have something to do with the, I hadn't considered it being a documentary hypothesis problem. When the angel of the Lord shows up and literally goes, Abraham, Abraham, which is exactly how you should react if you see someone getting to stab their child with a knife. Hey, hey, no.

B: Yeah.

C: Then he said, do not lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him for now. I know that you fear God since you have not withheld your only son from me. What's the problem with that? Did you spot it, listeners?

B: What do you think, Chris?

C: He's got another son.

B: Yeah.

C: He has two sons.

B: Yeah. Well, he's got...

C: He very clearly has two sons.

B: ...a legitimate son. Well, I mean, Ishmael is his legitimate son in the sense that he married his concubine Hagar, but yeah, for God, yeah, Isaac is, is the only son that counts really. Except of course we keep seeing, he's like, no, by the way, Ishmael, you're going to be a great nation. It's cool, man. But like, seriously, my real son.

C: Like, like I think two, like two or three times in this section, Isaac is referred to as Abraham's only son. Definitely not. It was one page ago.

B: Yeah. It's yeah. It's, it's pretty rough. It's really interesting that if you look in E, it follows up this bit with like, oh, by the way, look at all these children from Rebecca's family. So there's other children that he, he wasn't the only child, the one that just got killed. There's all these other children that are part of the family. Anyway, chapter 23, Sarah dies.

C: 127.

B: Yeah. She's the only woman in the old Testament or in the entire Bible whose age at the time of her death is reported. So it's a big deal, I guess. 127, which we know puts Abraham at 137. And the rest of the chapter is dealing with Abraham purchasing a piece of land with a cave in it so that he can set up a family burial pot basically inside the cave. And yeah, we get, he's like, I will pay absolutely whatever, like he doesn't even hear the full terms, but he agrees to pay for it. But the important thing is at the end of this, Abraham owns a piece of land, a cave with a field and some trees in Hebron in the land of Canaan. Now he like has a legitimate claim to a piece of land in Canaan. We've seen before this, he's been a nomad. He's a sojourner, right? He lives here and there, but he hasn't owned land, but now he does. And so that gives Abraham his legitimate claim to the land of Canaan, which will be the promised land of his descendants.

C: Chapter 24 begins with what might be the hardest I've laughed at the Bible in a while.

B: Yeah. Okay.

C: Abraham was now old.

B: Yeah.

C: Now?

B: Now, just now.

C: He's 137 at least at the start of this chapter.

B: Yeah. Yeah.

C: Abraham has been old the entire time we've seen Abraham.

B: He's getting on in years as it says.

C: So obviously he needs someone to make a pact with him. So he does the thing that we all do when we make promises. He calls someone in and says, "Hey, put your hand under my thigh."

B: Yes. And that seems the, I mean, the commentary editor of HCSB says the reason for that is because of where the thigh is on your body. Because he's making a promise that is related to the line and descendants of Abraham. And so the thigh is an intentional choice. Like it's not place your hand on your heart, place your hand on my thigh. And it seems sexual because it is sexual.

C: So they need to go find a wife for Isaac. This is the introduction of Rebecca. Basically, Rebecca is very beautiful and has a nose ring and they get married. The end of chapter 24 that takes two pages.

B: The thing is the reason Rebecca is chosen is because she's the most courteous and hospitable to the servant of Abraham. She not only offers him water, but also offers water for his camels. And as the note says, a thirsty camel can drink as much as 30 gallons of water in 15 minutes. Since 10 camels accompanied the servant, it is possible that the young woman had to draw 300 gallons of water from the spring in order to pass the test. So yeah. So also she's strong maybe, but anyway, yeah.

So he rewards her with bracelets and a ring. She's chosen. She's also related to Abraham's line. So that's a good sign. She's cousins with Isaac and her brother is Laban. He's going to be a player later on. So hold on to Laban in your mind. But yeah, Rebecca is chosen as the wife for Isaac. And yeah, that's basically chapter 24. 25, Abraham remarries, takes another wife named Keturah and has a bunch of other sons. And they're not important, basically. How do I know that? Because Abraham gave everything he owned to Isaac. Sorry, other sons.

C: I wish it said, like, after the angel stopped sacrifice, the angel was like, hey, we know that you're not going to give your only son that you care about.

B: Yeah, the only important son. Sorry, Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah.

C: Those sound like fourth world characters.

B: Yeah, I can't wait until we get to a point where, like, new parents are reaching back for these to get names for their kids. And like, there's going to be a daycare full of Zimrans. Hey, Zimran H, put that down.

C: This is the length of Abraham's life, 175 years, which again, I weirdly find less believable than 930.

B: Yeah.

C: Because it's like 930. That's that's like how long elves live. I've encountered that before. 175. Come on.

B: Yeah, come on, man.

C: What do you think he died of?

B: Ooh, good question.

C: Parachuting accident, I think.

B: Yeah, probably. Probably. So we get another instance of the Toledot. So this is one of 11. This is the seventh of 11 family records. We get the line of Ishmael. And then we cut to the birth of Jacob and Esau because Isaac, despite being one of the three patriarchs of Judaism, is barely a character in this book.

C: Which makes sense if he died two chapters ago.

B: Yeah, true. Yes, it's true. So for the E source, he's not, except he has to be around to have Jacob and Esau, who are going to be the major characters coming up next. So like, if we were just following the life of Abraham, obviously, we'd cut it off here. But we do want to hit this tail end of chapter 25, which kicks us into the material that we're going to be covering next week, because we're going to be mostly looking at Jacob and his rough relationship with his twin brother Esau, but and then also Jacob's many children, including, of course, Joseph, the most famous. But we do want to hit this because we're going to be covering enough material next week as it is.

So let's look at the birth of Jacob and Esau from verse 19 in chapter 25. Yeah, so Rebecca gives birth, they're twins, they come out, the first one is red looking. And this is noted because the Hebrew word for red sounds like the name Edom. And as we know, the Edomites are going to be another historical enemy of Israel. They're to the east of Judah. If I recall correctly, we encountered them when we covered the war in Isaiah. We talked about the Syro-Ephraimite war. We talked about Edom. And so that because that word means red, they mentioned that he's a red looking baby, and he's covered with hair like a fur coat. And so his name is Esau, which means hairy boy. And when he comes out, his brother is holding on to his heel, and he gets the name Jacob, Yaakov, which means he grasps the heel. And so the word hair sounds like the word Seir, which is also another geological region full of people that the Israelites hate. So we should already be getting an inclination about which one of these sons is going to be God's favorite twin.

So yeah, he's got so he's a red baby covered in fur. Terrifying. This happens when Isaac is 60 years old. And then here in chapter 27, the very last thing we're going to cover is we get the very first but certainly not the last of Jacob's Brer Rabbit style adventures, where we see that Esau is an expert hunter. He's an outdoorsman. He likes to go outside. Jacob is an inside boy. I can relate. He liked to stay in tents, as it says. Isaac loved Esau, but Rebecca loved Jacob. I mean, that feels like really confirming gender conforming standards, right? The father loves the outdoor boy. The mother loves the quiet, gentle domestic one. So anyway, Jacob gets his revenge, though. He's making the stew. Esau's been out in the field. He comes in exhausted and he goes, Hey, Jacob.

C: I want to talk about this. This is my favorite verse in Genesis.

B: It took the whole time this time to get there. But here we are. Yeah.

C: I enjoy finding pieces of Bible that I can relate to.

B: Yeah.

C: Porky party being like, Hang on. I'm sorry. What's happening? Who's Jesus?

B: Yeah.

C: I find very relatable. I find hangry Jesus himself very relatable in the Gospels. This is what is written. This is how it is translated in the HCSB. It's extremely good. This is chapter 25, verse 30. "He said to Jacob, 'Let me eat some of that red stuff because I am exhausted.'"

B: Yeah. He's peeking through the fridge. He's like, Hey, man, what we got? Oh, you know, soda, red stuff, Sunny D. Oh, red stuff. Give me that red stuff. Yeah. And so again, we're doubling down on the etymology here again. Red. He's a red baby. He likes red. He sells his birthright for red food. And so Edom. And it sounds like red. And so that's the connection there. And so, yeah, as I said, Jacob is like, Oh, how hungry are you? Are you hungry enough that you would sell me your birthright? Which means his Esau being the firstborn twin is the firstborn son. He has a right to two thirds of his father's property. And Jacob says, How about you give up your entire inheritance to me in exchange for some red stuff? And Esau's like, Yeah, man, what good is an inheritance if I die? Yeah, red warrior needs red stuff badly.

C: I was convinced that we were going to have to have a conversation about like millennia of scholarship trying to determine what red stuff was so good

B: that he a man would sell his birthright for one bowl.

C: I was like, oh, man, is it, is it like like that habanero salsa that I get at the farmer's market?

B: Yeah.

C: What is it? No, we find out in verse 34. It's lentil stew.

B: It's lentils.

C: Which is good! If you have not had lentil stew in a while, it's good.

B: Lentils are good man. But like still lentils. For your inheritance.

C: Not a, not like an exciting dish.

B: Yeah. So you can already see we're getting the foreshadowing how they're going to have something of a fraught and contentious relationship, those twin boys. And Jacob's going to continue to be a bit of a trickster that's going to continue when we get into our next section. And theoretically, for next week, we will be finishing out the book of Genesis, which is going to be 26, 26 through 50, which, yes, is twice as much as we have done in either of these previous two episodes. But we'll see how it goes.

C: Yeah, I got some bad news for you, Benito. That's not going to happen because this recording session has also been two hours long.

B: Yeah. Okay. Well, who knows? Yeah, maybe we'll break that up into we'll let you guys know. Follow us on Twitter and Tumblr. We'll let you know if we decide to break it up. If you're the kind of person who's reading along with us.

C: I don't think we have any selected readings for today that we haven't already covered because everything that happens in this section of Genesis is buck wild.

B: Pretty much.

C: I got to say, like, I wasn't prepared for it. Like, I again, much like with Noah, like I know the broad strokes of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

B: Yeah.

C: You know, like, but I had forgotten the bit of Lot being like, I do have these two daughters. I did not know about Lot and his daughters. I didn't know about Abraham and Sarah being half siblings.

B: Yeah.

C: That's a real giving a smooch on the bridge of the Millennium Falcon situation that they find themselves in.

B: Yeah, except they know about it. So: weird.

C: We talked about this a little bit last week. It is weird in the way that folklore and mythology from the distant past is weird. It doesn't quite feel like capital R religion yet. Because again, we have God walking around, coming to your house, changing his mind about stuff, being talked out of things, almost making deals with people.

B: Right.

C: It is a very different conception of what we're going to be getting from God. I would say like, even like, even after the Pentateuch, probably, right? Like, based on my recollection of...

B: This is definitely a different conception of God than we get even in Isaiah, which, you know, is still relatively early, although it would be, yeah. And certainly very different from Daniel, which we know is composed very late. There's a real clear development. I think that you can see when you look at these things closely.

C: It's an interesting journey that we are taking with Genesis right now. We will get a little further into it, possibly complete it next week, but don't count on it. Cause you know, Genesis, it's a big deal. Until then, where can everybody find us online?

B: Yeah. If you want to get a bonus information, things like maps, we have a very excellent map of all the events of Genesis that was put together by a friend of the show, Ben Rowe, that you can check out as well as things like fan art. We've got some excellent St. Christophers for us that we have shared. You can find our Tumblr at apocrypals.tumblr.com. We've got all sorts of supplemental materials there, links to things, readings and such as well. Check us out there if you don't get enough stuff from just the show, but if you like the show, if you enjoy it and you'd like to help us continue doing it, you can go to ko-fi.com slash apocryphals, Ko-fi dash apocryphals. And there you can just give us a tip in increments of $3, anywhere from $3 up to $300 million, if you like it that much, but, anything divisible by three, it helps us host the show helps us pay for music cues and other audio clips that we use, and that kind of stuff.

If you don't, however, want to drop some cash on us, but you do want to support the show in some way, you can always help us out by going to iTunes or Apple podcasts and leaving a rating or review. Five stars is great, but you can be honest. It's fine. I'm not mad that the one person that left us a three-star rating. That's fine. I'm not even mad about it.

C: I'm a little mad,

B: But the ratings and reviews that you guys leave do help things with like getting us featured on the charts. If we want to be one of the "what's new and hot" in the realm of religion and spirituality on iTunes, you can help us out by just dropping a review. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. We get some really excellent ones that make me very happy, but you can just be like the latest one we have is a guy who's like, it's got everything I want from a Bible podcast, including Roy Thomas. And you know what? Dope. I approve that very good review because it's true. We're the only Bible cast with Roy Thomas. I feel confident about that.

C: You're concerned about getting us featured. That's going to be irrelevant once we get that clutch @Pontifex retweet, it's going to happen.

B: We get that very clutch Margaret Atwood retweet that I know we're going to get. Anybody who's tweeting about the show, we appreciate it, using #apocrypals, recommending us to your friends. Very great. Very choice. We appreciate every single one of you who do that. We do check the hashtag and we try to share the best tweets. A lot of you guys get in some really excellent goofs that we're honestly, I'm frequently very jealous of some of the excellent goofs you guys make when the new episodes come out. So I always like to share the best ones. So we really do appreciate everybody using #apocrypals on Twitter.

C: Yeah. Speaking of you mentioned the St. Christopher art that we've gotten. Nobody's drawn, nobody's drawn Benny in the bushes.

B: Yeah, nobody did.

C: Nobody's drawing big Benedict.

B: That's fine. Look, it's fine. It's not a contest.

C: It's not. But if it was, I would be winning.

B: It's not a contest. Not a contest though.

C: I do want to say we did get a very choice drawing from Jared Pechaček who drew Satan.

B: Yeah.

C: The king of hell as a little kitty cat under a bread blanket.

B: Very choice.

C: I love it.

B: Yeah.

C: I might get a tattoo of it, honestly.

B: It's very good. That one's only on Twitter. I haven't posted that one on Tumblr yet. I need to post that on Tumblr, but...

C: Thank you for that. That's extremely good. And obviously both of us retweeted that. So as for my stuff, you can find it all on the-isb.com. That's got links to the other podcasts that I do as well as columns that I write around the web. Comics that I do. I've got a couple that are in previews now. There's Infinity Wars, Sleepwalker, and the Army of Darkness Halloween special. Benito, you also have a story in that.

B: It's very true.

C: You're the headliner. Well, me and Chad.

B: You and Chad are the headliners.

C: So you can definitely tell your local comic book shop that you want that. But again, links to everything are going to be on that site. My Amazon wishlist is up there if you want to go look at the notebook paper and Bible books that I want to get. We'll be back next time to talk about Jacob and Esau and maybe Joseph.

B: We'll see.

C: Until then, for Benito Cereno, I've been Chris Sims. Benito, peace be with you.

B: And also with you.

[Music: "Gay Bar"]