All Skips No Hits (Transcript)
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Chris Sims: This is the list of the Israelites, the heads of families, the commanders of thousands, and the commanders of hundreds, and their officers who served the king in every matter to do with the divisions that were on rotated military duty each month throughout the year. There were 24,000 in each division. 1 Chronicles, chapter 27, verse 1.
[Music: He-Man by Ludacris]
C: Hello friends and neighbors and welcome back to Apocrypals. It's the podcast where two non-believers read through the Bible but we try not to be jerks about it. My name is Chris Sims. With me as always the other half of your humble Sons of Thunder, Benito Cereno. Benito, how are you?
Benito Cereno: I'm good, Chris, and much like the American rock band Stained, it's been a while.
C: It's been so long since we've done an episode of this show that I have had forgotten that there was a bit. And then I remembered and you immediately subverted it. So congratulations. That's how you make comedy, folks.
B: Thanks, buddy.
C: Yeah, welcome back, folks. It's been a while. We're going to get into the whys and hows of that in a little bit. But what matters now is that we're back with a brand new episode of the show. And we're back to Canon Bible for the first time in some time.
B: Who even who even can say how long? What was the last book we... I guess it was second Kings probably right?
C: Two Kings I think.
B: Two kings yeah... let's not...
C: I could tell you exactly how long it's been. Is Hosea in canon bible?
B: Yes.
C: Then I think that was it. That that was November of 2022?
B: Indeed.
C: That doesn't matter if you're listening to these at some future time, if you're listening to these in a series, that doesn't matter we're here now to talk about Chronicles. Benito, I have to say, before we get into the actual meat of the the the Book of Chronicles, which you said, since we said we were going to cover it because when we were talking about coming back I was like oh do we want to do something different? Do we want to do what we said we did? You were like well, we did promise First Chronicles, we should do First Chronicles. Congratulations on picking the most boring book of Bible for our big comeback. We're really gonna get the listeners in with this one.
B: Yeah.
C: What was the first thing I told you about this show when I when I asked you if you wanted to do it? What was the first thing I told you Benito?
B: How do I make more money, right? Was that it?
C: I mean, look that was part of it. How do I make more money, how do I get right with Jesus because it's 2018 and I don't know, the way things are going...
B: Yeah.
C: ...it's looking pretty rough. The first thing I told you: I don't want to do any begats.
B: You did say "no begats," that is absolutely true, and I thought we had mostly gotten past the begats, and then I forgot like Chronicles is the biggest begats of them all.
C: It is a chronicle of begats.
B: It is. Obviously we'll look at the details when we dive into the actual main portion of the show, but I did text you Chris, and I said just skip the first nine chapters.
C: Of course I'm not going to do that.
B: Yeah.
C: In the time since we did the last episode, I read all of Dragon Ball. I started at the beginning. You know I'm gonna the whole thing.
B: Yes, the other whole the other holy text. Yes.
C: I'm not saying it would be a better book, or that it would have more cultural significance. Wouldn't it be a more entertaining book if Jesus stayed dead for a while and then only came back for a fighting tournament.
B: I mean, yes. I realized you meant you meant Bible and not specifically Chronicles and I was like...
C: I mean that would also be - I mean it would be wild if Jesus showed up in this one.
B: Yeah, boy would there be some pretty excited christians if Jesus showed up in Chronicles. They would they would be dancing in the street.
C: All right well, before we get into Chronicles itself, we do have a couple things to talk about. It's been a bit, dear listener, Theophiloi, since we've done one of these, but life has continued apace. And Benito, I know you had a couple of things you wanted to talk about.
B: Oh yeah. Just, you know, I wanted to make a couple of quick book recommendations, some of the stuff that I've been reading since the last time we recorded, just for anyone who wants to update your reading list or whatever. First thing I wanted to mention real fast, and I'm sure we'll find an opportunity to talk about this at more length, but I wanted to give a shout out to a brand new book from friend of the show, MultiPal, Dr. Aaron Higashi. He has a new book out in conjunction with the people behind the Bible for Normal People, which is a podcast and broader learning initiative whose mission we support. And he has a new book called "First and Second Samuel for Normal People: A Guide to Prophets, Kings, and Some Pretty Terrible Men." And this is available now in paperback and also in ebook form, or there's a free preview chapter on thebiblefornormalpeople.com. It is, as it says here, "give yourself permission to read 1 and 2 Samuel honestly." And that's kind of what we try to do on this show. We try to engage with the text on its own terms, try our best to recreate the motivations and contexts of the original authors and that kind of stuff. So I think it's very cool that there's a new book like that about an interesting section of Bible by a person that we like very much. So please check that one out.
B: Another one that I've been reading that I got a copy of for Chris, but that I've been reading myself recently is "God's Monsters: Vengeful Spirits, Deadly Angels, Hybrid Creatures, and Divine Hitmen of the Bible" by Dr. Esther J. Hamori. This one is definitely written for general non-academic audiences. It's got references to sci-fi and horror movies and stuff in there to try and explain some of these things, but it's got chapters on what are the seraphim? What are the cherubim and how are they different from angels? But then also what are actually biblically accurate angels and why are you wrong about what they are?
C: Where are you wrong for tweeting them at us?
B: Yes exactly. There's chapters on giants, on leviathan, and then the final chapter on the biggest monster of the bible of them all: God Oooooooh.
C: Saw that one coming.
B: Yeah. So I do recommend that one. It's very fun very easy breezy kind of read with a lot of good information in there. And then also another book I want to recommend that I've been reading is "Christmaker: A Life of John the Baptist" by Dr. James F. McGrath, and this is...
C: Now was Christmaker – I can't remember – was he on Justice League Task Force or was he on the Secret Defenders?
B: Yeah no, Justice League Task Force. Te had like really big shoulder pads, and he shot like anointing oil out of these tubes on his arm. But yeah, this is a really interesting book. It is a reconstructed biography of John the Baptist, which it turns out is perhaps more possible than we might have previously thought. Really interesting book, and it talks about not just John, but Jesus from the perspective of Jesus as a disciple of John the Baptist and how Jesus's teachings would have been influenced by those of John the Baptist and how he would have been a rebel and a radical against the institutions of the temple system. It's a really interesting book that I would recommend. Dr. McGrath is a New Testament language and literature scholar at Butler University. And this is a really cool book. It's not that long. It's maybe 150-ish pages. I would definitely recommend checking that one out as well. So yeah, I wanted to throw those out there because I know people are always asking about book recommendations. So there's a couple. Chris, did you have something?
C: Well, Benito, you remember that you used to read reviews that have been left of this show.
B: Yep.
C: Many of which were very positive. Many of which were deeply hurtful specifically to me.
B: Right. And the main reason I stopped is that people have stopped writing them. Not because I have changed as a person.
C: Oh, I thought maybe you decided that hurting my feelings was not a thing you should do.
B: No, that doesn't sound like me.
C: That's true yeah that's that's that that's that scholarly attitude that you bring to the show
B: Okay, all right so like...
C: You just don't care who you hurt.
B: Let me this if you're listening to this show for the first time. There's a recurring bit.
C: There are 110 episodes you should probably listen to before this one.
B: But there's a recurring bit about how this show is made by a scholar and a clown, which is not even the wording of the original tweet. But that is what has become the meme. And I insist it is impossible to know who is who, although I will say only one of us has a 102-day streak on the New York Times crossword puzzle. And only one of us has this. And I'm going to send you this, Chris, in the chat. And I want you to look at it. See if that link works.
[Chris laughing]
B: Okay. All right. So, okay. So I guess the link worked.
C: Uh huh.
B: Yeah. So one of us has, has a 102 day streak on the New York times crossword puzzle. And one of us has a certificate of completion from Dr. Bill's Clown College for successfully completing all requirements in quote unquote Clowning.
C: My counterpoint to that would be that that makes another college that you completed that I did not.
B: [Laughing] Yeah. Um, yeah. You know what, I usually forget to include this one on my resume and actually...
C: You should absolutely put it on there.
B: Absolutely gotta add, "did you know I have a certificate of completion from Dr. Bill's Clown College?"
C: Here's my question about Dr. Bill: he is listed as Dr. Bill Tober, Master Clown.
B: Yeah.
C: Is his doctorate in clowning, and if so, what is the difference between a doctor of clowning and a master of clowning?
B: Well it's a couple of extra years and a dissertation, I think, so...
C: Does he have both a master's degree and a doctorate in clowning?
B: Maybe so and I assume it's...
C: I thought one of those kind of replaced the other?
B: Yeah no, I don't know. I have to assume it's from Ringling College, but I don't know. I don't know if that's true.
C: Interesting. So, point being, we got another review that i'm very excited to share.
B: Yeah
C: You will not find this one on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else because it's
B: Ooo, 'sclusy.
C: Yeah this one was given to me in a phone call with my mom. I mentioned looking for sponsors for the podcast, and she asked me, "oh are you still doing that one where you tear down the Bible" and then insisted that that is how I had described the show to her.
B: I don't know that either of us has ever described the show like that.
C: I know whether either of us has described the show like that and the answer is no. That is explicitly the opposite of what we say the show is.
B: We've probably mentioned it on here before, and you may have seen it but people still send it to us there's a meme. It's a photo-manipulated cassette tape and it says...
C: Thank you for respecting the brand name of Adobe Photoshop and not diluting it...
B: Oh, sorry.
C: ...by not using it as a generic term. I appreciate that. It's a photo manipulation.
B: Yeah. Right.
C: Using image editing software.
B: Yeah. It is an image editing software'd image of a cassette tape. And it says "the Bible as read by a 15 year old atheist" or something along those lines. Right. And that image, I first saw it, I don't know when it, but I know I first saw it, I think like in the week or two between us recording the first episode and the first episode coming out. And, like then and there I was like, we are never being that. Like, that's not us. We are the opposite of that. And that is our goal, right? We, we want to present the Bible in a way that makes sense of it, and presents it in a literary and historical context.
C: We are looking at it as literature.
B: We look at it as literature. And not as a handbook of how to live life in an inerrant, univocal history of the universe. But, you know, we're not trying to tell anybody how to live for the most part.
C: I mean, I will.
B: Yeah, yeah.
C: If they want to know. I'll tell them.
B: But also, you know, the Bible is the most important book in human history, probably. So it's like, we're not trying to tear it down. That's very silly. That would be a very silly thing to try to do. We're just trying to look at it in a way that is helpful to people and also funny because we're clowns.
C: You, certified.
B: I'm a certified clown.
C: Seven days a week.
B: And that's why I really get offended when people say, when they imply that I'm the scholar. Because it's like, no, I trained with Dr. Bill. I didn't spend four weeks of church camp with Dr. Bill's Clown College to be called a scholar.
C: Wait, hang on, hang on. So this was also church related?
B: Yeah, I told, I'm pretty sure I told this story before.
C: So you are both a biblical scholar and a biblical clown.
B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I told this story before. It was part of a church, like kind of a day camp. It wasn't like a sleepaway camp, but you would do classes. And I did a clown class. And immediately after it, I had a basketball class. And so I had to play basketball with my clown grease paint on my face and my protective athletic goggle glasses.
C: This is great because I have only known you as an adult, so I am picturing bearded six foot six Benito...
B: Yeah, no.
C: ...with clown makeup with Rec Specs on trying to dunk.
B: And at that point, probably in the, in the upper fives somewhere, no beard, but mullet, probably.
C: I did end up explaining, what we actually do on the show to my mother. I did explain the concepts of Caesar real and Robin Hood real and, and the tagline of the show. And her response was, "Oh, I'll have to check that out," which I don't think is going to happen. But mom, if you're listening, get ready to have your mind blown. And with that, I think you're all caught up on what's going on in our lives for the most part.
B: Yep. I don't think there's anything else happening. No other news or significant events in the world or in our personal lives.
C: Well, in that case, before we get into the book of Chronicles, let's pass the collection plate.
B: Okay.
[Music: "Take A Chance On Me" by Stephen Mann of English Martyrs Church]
C: Hey there, friends and neighbors. I mentioned it's been a bit of a gap over the past six months. And I have good news and bad news.
B: Give me the good news first.
C: The good news is that there are no longer specific circumstances that are eating up my time that will keep me from doing the show. It has been primarily me being busy as well as some health stuff with both of us. I got covid – did you get covid this past year?
B: Not in the past year, but i have had covid.
C: I got it for the first time in May and it was bad. We were going to – I finally had some free time and we were going to record this episode and then I got covid and could not even concentrate on Vampire Survivors, let alone the Book of Chronicles.
B: So you have more time to work on the show. That sounds like an unequivocal good that couldn't possibly have a depressing twist.
C: Ooh, yeah. The bad thing is that the thing that was eating up my time that was keeping me from doing the show was my job, which sharp-eared listeners may have clocked the past tense in that I am no longer gainfully employed at the moment.
B: Yeah.
C: That's great for you, listener. That means more content on the way. Still at an irregularly updated schedule, but definitely more frequent than twice a year. Kind of bad news for me. So if you enjoy the show I would certainly appreciate it if as we pass this collection plate, if maybe you wanted to leave a love offering for your heavenly hosts.
B: That would be a great idea. And to do that, you might go to ko-fi.com/apocrypals. That's ko-fi.com slash apocrypals, the name of the site slash the name of the show. And there you can leave donations of any amount of dollars. You can set up recurring donations or you can do one-time donations. You can leave us a little message. And sometimes I reply. A lot of times I say thank you. Especially, the larger the number is. That increases the likelihood that I will reply to your message. Sorry, but that's just the way the cookie crumbles. We are heavily money motivated here at the Apocrypals Factory.
C: Here under capitalism.
B: Yeah.
C: If you really want to get down to it, that is where we are heavily money motivated.
B: Yeah, no, that's true, but yes, please leave us a donation at ko-fi or you can buy some of our merchandise from our TeePublic store and you can find...
C: That money doesn't go to me.
B: It can if you want.
C: That money goes to Erica.
B: Well yeah, but I don't... Erica's doing fine, I'll send it to you.
C: You can find merchandise there by podcaster and three-time Eisner Award winner.
B: Three times.
C: America's favorite.
B: ...Erica Henderson so good they awarded her three times. That doesn't rhyme but it's true.
C: I think I mentioned this to you that the hosts of Friends to the End now collectively between you have a total of slightly over one Eisner each.
B: That is true.
C: If you average it, it's like 3.07 Eisners
B: Yeah, Matt and I share like one 15th of an Eisner each, I think. Yeah. But anyway, yeah, use use the link in the show notes or off of our wiki to get to our store on TeePublic, that's the easiest way using that link makes us more money than if you get there via other means, so that is another way to support the show. But yeah we have designs by Erica Henderson, Tom Fowler, and one by me and Dylan Todd, the Holly Trinity, which is a personal fave.
B: But yeah, you can do that otherwise you can always support the show just by... you could leave us a rating and review remember I mentioned no one has done a review in a little while? Well that's true. You can do that. That helps people find the show, bumps us up...
C: I mean look that's fair we haven't done a show in a while.
B: We haven't done a show in a while. I do get emails about like international charts that we appear on, and so like every now and then we're hitting the charts in Finland, Estonia – I don't know man the Baltics were popping off I guess. But like if you're from one of those countries, give us a shout. Just say hey or however you say hey in the language that you speak in the place that you are. Thank you for listening to our international listeners.
B: But yeah, leaving ratings and reviews, downloading the show, all that stuff helps with the charts and all that kind of stuff. Please tell your friends. Word of mouth is the most important way that independent projects like this get spread around. It's how people find out about them because we don't have an advertising budget. We're not on a podcast network anymore. It's just our listeners. So, you know, in person online.
C: I'm so curious what that Elon podcast is up to these days.
B: I, I don't, I don't know. I'm, I don't want to know, to be honest.
C: I feel like it's going to be like that one episode of Star Trek where you see bad universe Riker, who was my Twitter header I think on on that website still to this very day.
B: But yeah I do appreciate everyone when I get a Google alert that someone has posted about us on reddit although I will throw out I did not go to Bible College I know people keep saying that this is the premise of the show I went...
C: No, you went to a you went to clown college at Bible camp...
B: I went to a Bible camp clown college, but then I also went to an accredited university. Not Kentucky Mountain Bible College with Kenneth Parcell. Also, I've never been Catholic. You don't have to tell people that on Reddit. That's not true. Southern Baptist since the moment of birth until I wasn't anymore. And yeah, I didn't go to seminary. That's also not true. I studied ancient literature.
C: Where is all of this coming from.
B: This is what people understand the show to be when they talk about it on Reddit for some reason.
C: That's right, Benito, an ex-Catholic who went to seminary tears down the Bible.
B: That's what the show is. Seminary Bible college for Catholics. There's a big sign on the door. It says Catholics only, no Protestants. Anyway. Yeah. That's the bit. Yeah.
C: Anyway, give us money.
B: Give us money.
C: ko-fi.com slash Apocrypals. Remember that as Enoch says, and we all love Enoch.
B: We do.
C: Whoever of you spends gold or silver for his brother's sake, he will receive ample treasures in the world to come. The brother is me. In this case.
B: And Enoch is right. He's a smart guy. He wears those jeans.
C: Got them diesels, baby.
B: It's hard to argue.
C: But you can only see the jeans when his health is low.
B: That's right. Yeah, that's right.
C: All right, let's get to it. Let's get to Chronicles.
B: Okay.
[Music: "Take A Chance On Me" by Stephen Mann of English Martyrs Church]
B: All right. Yeah, let's talk about Chronicles and how it got made. So if my research is correct, Chronicles was written by Max Landis from a story co-written with director Josh Trank.
C: No wonder it's so boring. And it sucks.
B: Okay, anyway.
B: No, the real book of Chronicles, or as it is known in the original Hebrew, it is...
C: I like calling it the real book of Chronicles to distinguish it from Filmation's Chronicles.
B: That's right. That one has a gorilla in it. I wish we had read that one. Sorry. So book of Chronicles, as it is known in the original Hebrew, Divrei Hayamim, which is the words of the days. And I probably said it wrong. I'm sorry, please. It's fine. Just pretend I didn't. Or as it is known in Greek, it is called the Books of Paralipomena, which means "the stuff that got left out." I guess with the idea that this is like a book of miscellanies or corrections or even commentaries and midrash on other stories. The name Chronicles comes from the Vulgate. It's still called Paralipomena in there, but elsewhere, Jerome refers to the book as a Chronicon...
C: Who named this thing? Greek David Lee Roth?
B: He did. Yes.
C: That was a better joke than the one that I definitely cut out, but it's still not good.
B: It's good. No, I think that one's good. I think that's the keeper. I did lose track of what the Latin title of this was.
C: I think you're talking about the Vulgate.
B: Yeah, I was. I can't find it, but I'm pretty sure it was Chronicon totius divinae historiae, I believe, is what Jerome referred to it, which is just the chronicle of the entire divine history. And so that seems to be the source of it being called Chronicles. As with Samuel and Kings, in the Hebrew Bible, it is one book, and it got split up into two in the Septuagint. And in the Hebrew Bible, it's actually separated from those books. It's not in the same section where Samuel and Kings are part of the Nevi'im, the prophets. The book of Chronicles is part of the Ketuvim, the writings, which include the Megillot, which we've covered like Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther, as well as the poetic wisdom literature like Psalms, Proverbs, and Job, and then other more literary historical accounts such as Daniel and Ezra and Nehemiah, which we will probably be covering fairly soon on the show.
B: So it is actually the last book of the Hebrew Bible, the way it is arranged. But in the Christian Bible, it is pretty much the middle of the whole thing because they put it right after Samuel and Kings and before Ezra and Nehemiah, which mark the end of the historical books before the section of the Old Testament, as it is called in the text of the Christian Bible, where it turns over to the wisdom literature like Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and so on. So different placements, depending on whether you're looking at the Hebrew Bible or at the Christian Old Testament. But yeah, I think being at the end of the Ketuvim kind of puts it in a different kind of context, right? Because a lot of the Ketuvim, the writings, as they're called, they're more literary. And some of the stories would have been understood that way. And I think versus being put in a larger section of historical books as they are in the Christian Bible, I think that kind of puts them in a different framing.
B: Anyway, yeah, as Chris said, it's..
C: Profoundly boring.
B: It's boring, especially to read right after reading Samuel and Kings, because it is basically a retelling of that same material but with a lot of the more interesting bits cut out like the stuff that's really interesting about the life of David. You know, if I were like what are the stories you remember about King David you'd be like "oh he kills Goliath ,oh Bathsheba, oh his son Absalom," and all of that stuff is cut out. Anything that makes David look bad gets cut out of Chronicles. We don't see anything from his youth. But yeah, so this is meant to be a complete history from the beginning of humanity until the Persian period, basically until the return of Judah from exile. And so that obviously gives us a framing for the dating. Obviously it can't be any earlier than the exile, but there are a number of things like language and then some of the genealogies that can be used to help date the text. It is probably from about somewhere between 350 and 250 BCE. So kind of the early Greek period, the period right after the Persian period. The traditional author on this text is Ezra, the scribe and priest, who wrote the next book of the Bible as the Old Testament orders it. He is thought to be the author of Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah in tradition, both Jewish and Christian tradition. However, scholars now refer to the author or redactor of those texts now just as an anonymous chronicler. So if we talk about "the chronicler," we mean the author of this text. And then Ezra and Nehemiah, which were also, if not written to be a single text, they were redacted to be a single text and possibly Chronicles along with it, but that's harder to say. But there is something of a unity of narrative, including the fact that the end of Second Chronicles is repeated word for word at the beginning of Ezra. So, um, that has definitely led some people to think maybe these were originally part of the same text.
B: So this very clearly uses Samuel and Kings as a source, or at least they share common sources, but Chronicles is definitely later by probably a couple hundred years. And it makes some changes, usually for theological purposes. Sometimes they're trying to do clean up a little bit on contradictions within the text of Samuel and Kings. And then sometimes they create new contradictions between the texts as a result. But it's pretty clear that the priorities of the author of this text are pumping up David as the holiest person in the history of Israel and really building up the importance of the Jerusalem temple and the Levites, the priests, which leads me to believe that probably this book was written by a Levite living in Jerusalem and who wanted to make David from the line of Judah seem like the best guy ever.
B: And so most of the changes that are made between Samuel Kings and Chronicles are to make David look better. I don't know. Am I missing anything, Chris? Any essential information that you feel like I should be including here?
C: Just that every time this book brushes up against being interesting, it isn't. Like, don't get your hopes up. I would say, hey, Ezra, tighten it up.
B: Right. Again, we are not endorsing the idea that Ezra is definitely the author of Chronicles. But we'll just, we will say that for the ease of it. We will just say Ezra is the chronicler. He's not. But let's say that he is.
C: Well look. There are books of Bible that are all hits, no skits, right?
B: Yeah.
C: Just... Ecclesiastes is a banger all the way through. Psalms. Banger after banger. Isaiah. I have, my tattoo is of a verse from Isaiah.
B: That's true. That's true.
C: Lots of great stuff. This is the most this has felt like school.
B: Probably since we read Jubilees, which is a very similar thing in that it is a repetition and amplification of material that we have already covered.
C: But we're going to get to a bit where it mentions something extremely dope and then does not provide any detail whatsoever. So I will talk about that when we get to it. But I mean, like you said, the first 15 chapters are pretty skippable. I did note that since we've got pages upon pages of people's names, it's interesting to see the names that caught on and the names that didn't.
B: Yeah, as like regular-person personal names in the modern times?
C: Yeah you don't see many Zeruiahs anymore.
B: Yeah.
C: But that'll be right next to Jesse and Dan.
B: Or Caleb, yeah.
C: You're not getting a lot of... this one might be "Jai Alai"?
B: Yeah it's probably Jai Alai, that the sport is named after him. Yeah. So as I told Chris, you can basically skip the first nine chapters because they're just genealogies. But the point is trying to lay out the genealogies of all of the 12 tribes, starting from Adam. Literally the first word of 1 Chronicles is Adam. Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. That's the first verses.
C: That is when I knew. That is when I was like, "oh, it's going to be a long day at the office."
B: Yeah. And then it looks at the descendants of Japheth, the descendants of Shem, the descendants of Ham. And yeah, and then it breaks off that way. Then it looks at the different descendants of the 12 tribes, starting with Judah, because like I said, it's trying to amplify Judah and Jerusalem, the Southern kingdom. And so of course that's where David is discussed. A notable thing here is that it in Chronicles, it calls David the seventh son of Jesse, but in Samuel, he is the eighth son of Jesse. What could this mean? I don't know, but that is a, what we would call a, I don't want to sound like I'm tearing the Bible down, but a contradiction between books. So just something to think about.
C: Could be there was a secret son.
B: Could be there was a secret son that, that David raised and pleased the one.
C: No, that's a rule. That's a, that's a show rule.
B: Yeah.
C: While we're on the subject, I did want to mention in chapter four here about Judah's descendants. We do have Jabez? Jabez?
B: Yeah.
C: And it says here in chapter 4, verse 9 and 10: Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother named him Jabez and said, I gave birth to him in pain.
B: Yeah.
C: A, I feel like that's a pretty common situation.
B: There's usually pain involved, yeah. And not every kid gets named Jabez as a result.
C: Yeah. B, that's a rough one to go through life with. If that's what your mom says...?
B: Yeah.
C: You're carrying that one.
B: You got to carry that weight, yeah.
C: By the time we get to chapter six there's a part where it's just going through the men David put in charge of the music in the lord's temple, and this is like the part of the live show where the lead singer is like, "all right everybody let me introduce you to the band over here, on saxophone, that's right, from the Kohathites: Heman the singer. Give it up!"
B: That's right. But yeah, apparently the most important musician in the era of King David was named Heman. It's "hee-mon," but it's spelled He-man so if we call him He-man, we're just we're just...
B: So it goes through the different tribes, the different sons of Israel and that's the first nine chapters.
C: That is a lot and none of it is interesting.
B: Yeah, right. I mean, because...
C: I can see its value as a historical record it is not interesting.
B: Right, and I mean it's not literally just names every now and then it will include a little something that is like a little snippet of an anecdote or something. But yeah, for the most part, it just lists, it's just genealogies.
B: So chapter 10 is really where the narrative starts. And it's also where we figure out that this is not a, this is not like a complete retelling of Samuel because it starts with material from first Samuel chapter 31. The author of this text, Ezra, has zero interest in King Saul. So it pretty much starts with Saul's death. And it doesn't - we don't get any of the childhood of David, or any of his time as a mercenary, um, and all that stuff. Because again, like I said, the author of this text really wants to make David basically a flawless king and person. And so anything interesting about David is pretty much cut out.
B: So yeah, we get a retelling of the death of Saul where he falls on his own sword because even his own sword bearer... hesitated to kill him. And then his head and body is put up on the wall by the by the Philistines. There's some minor changes in detail here...
C: Buddy, I definitely highlighted this one.
B: Yeah, which part?
C: His last words.
B: Okay, yeah, the in chapter or in verse four.
C: Yes. I don't I don't care if we've covered this before in other versions of the story. It's still funny.
B: Yeah. Why don't you read it?
C: This is chapter 10, verse 4. "Then Saul said to his armor bearer, draw your sword and run me through with it, or these uncircumcised men will come and torture me."
B: Yeah.
C: Oh, who among us? We've all been there, right?
B: We've all been there.
C: It's just like, it's even in the context of this book, in which circumcision and, I mean, I was trying to think of another way to say it, but foreskins are brought up a lot in ways that I have to think were weird even then. That's still a wild way to refer to someone.
B: I mean yeah he just he does just mean like non-israelites...
C: Yeah, but like, he could have said Philistines.
B: He could he could have not referred to their ding-dangs at all.
C: Yeah, correct.
B: He could have said foreigners.
C: Those guys.
B: Migrants.
C: Our enemies.
B: The bronze age-collapse-causing sea peoples... Any of those things. But yeah, so we get the death of Saul, and it just it feels like Ezra was like "check. That's all I have to say about Saul." Because now we're talking about the real show: David. And basically David is immediately king without any of the kind of battles and struggles he had including. you know, mourning his his dead boyfriend that he had in the end of First Samuel and the beginning of Second Samuel. He just very easily... they just make him king, no problem. No problem.
B: And yeah and then from there we kind of start talking about his mighty warriors and this is all stuff from Samuel as well. if you want to compare 2 Samuel chapter 23 we get the names of a lot of these great warriors who headed his different divisions: the three, the thirty..
C: Yeah we we've got a Jashobeam which is of course the name of Joshua's signature attack.
B: Oh yep.
C: "He was the chief of the 30 he wielded his spear against 300 and killed them at one time." that's - I would like to learn more about that!
B: Yeah, that's a real technique right there.
C: I mean historically I have often enjoyed - not always but often - enjoyed stories about 300 people getting killed. Not always!
B: Not always! I can think of a notable exception.
B: Yep. But we get some names that we might recognize. Benaiah son of Jehoiada who was a main major character in Samuel, and here notably he's described as, "he killed an Egyptian, a man of great stature five cubits tall" - that's seven and a half feet tall - "the Egyptian had in his hand a spear like a weaver's beam, but Benaiah went against him with the staff, snatched the spear out of the Egyptian's hand and killed him with his own spear." That phrase, "a spear like a weaver's beam, of course, is applied to Goliath" in Samuel when David fights him. And then also when Elhanan fights him in second Samuel.
C: He also went down into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion.
B: Correct.
C: No additional details provided.
B: That's all we need to know.
C: There is by the way... Jashobeam is not the only guy who's like yeah he killed 300 dudes with a spear.
B: Right.
C: Not trying to tear it down, mom.
B: We're building it up, buttercup.
C: I'm not trying to tear it down. I do feel like, from a narrative standpoint, if you've got a guy and you're like, "that dude killed 300 people" and then one paragraph later you're like, "this dude also killed 300 people with a spear," that does make it seem less impressive.
B: Yeah.
C: ...makes it less impressive that there's another seven and a half foot tall dude with a giant spear that also some guy I've never heard of killed.
B: It feels like these this is like an accumulation of various tales of like local heroes, you know? You're like well we've got a guy and he did this, and he's like oh yeah he was one of David's guys.
C: Yeah. But also he had special wizard armor. I will say slightly less impressive this guy was five cubits - Goliath as we all know: six cubits and a span.
B: Six cubits and a span or four cubits and a span, either way.
C: Both not as impressive as Goliath, and also makes Goliath less impressive.
B: Yep, that's correct. More on Goliath later, but...
C: Maybe throw in some details tell me why he killed those 300 dudes?
B: Because they were philistines.
C: I mean yes.
B: What else do you need to know?
C: Yes I know why. Well, I mean it is narratively unsatisfying. That's all i'm saying, right? You can agree with me on that.
B: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We need them deets. They're definitely giving us genealogies when they could be telling us exploits of rad dudes killing giants and they're not doing that.
C: This is shortly before we get a a part where some Gadites defected to David, and these are like strong dudes, experts with shield and spear. But it also says their faces were like the faces of lions?
B: It does say that. I think that's a metaphor.
C: I don't.
B: Yeah, it could also possibly not be.
C: I think they were... in my notes here I just wrote "meow!"
B: Yeah and there was...
C: I think they were they were kitty cat boys.
B: And they were swift as gazelles, so I mean, let's say we can take that literally. I don't see a reason not to - there's not even a footnote telling me not to, so... Unfortunately they are one of the lost tribes.
C: You don't see too many cat girls around these days. Not in the not in the west.
B: Chalk that up as another fault of the Neo-Assyrian empire.
C: Remember what they've taken from you.
B: Remember what they've taken from you. What else is even going on here?
C: It's just like a bunch of... it's like reading a bunch of file cards for G.I. Joe's before Larry Hama punched 'em up.
B: It is kind of like that, but, which is crazy...
C: This guy had a spear he killed 300 guys.
B: Which is wild because the more fleshed out colorful version already exists and is being used as a source for this text, so it's kind of wild.
C: I guess if you've got the more enjoyable version - I mean people still wanted the Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe, but they could just go read those stories although I guess that was more difficult at the time.
B: Yeah, but anyway, let's see... chapter 13. We get a retelling of the, um, David bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem and the bit where it's falling over and the guy tries to hold it up and he gets killed. Then they put it in this guy's house and the guy's blessed for the rest of his life as long, or for three months, as long as the Ark was in there. Who knows? His whole life could have been three months given how things shake out in these kinds of stories.
C: Uh, this one also includes, uh, the line "David was angry because of the lord's outburst against Uzzah so he named that place outburst against Uzzah as it is still named today."
B: Yep.
C: We should go back to naming things like that.
B: Yeah, well, yeah. I was gonna say we do have - you know there are definitely names like that in english but we don't really do it recently right it's...
C: Yeah.
B: You kind of have to go back until like the 1800s.
C: Also it's rarely a complete sentence
B: That's true. usually there's not a verb. Yeah usually you get like, you know, Monkey's Eyebrow or whatever, which is a real place in Kentucky.
C: That also happens a little bit later in the next chapter when he names a place, "Lord bursts out." That sounds cool.
B: God busting loose! That's what I would call it.
C: As it is still called to this day.
B: As it is still called to this day. So yeah, the emphasis on David bringing in the Ark to Jerusalem is part of trying to set up David as the secret true establisher of the temple, right? Because, like I said, the priority of the chronicler is building up David, kind of smoothing off the rough edges of David, building up the importance of the Jerusalem temple as the official house of the Lord, the presence of God on earth, and also the Levite class of priests whose job is to maintain the temple and perform the sacrifices and such there.
B: So by tying, you know, the story is massaged, we'll say, to make David seem more integral to the creation of the temple than he does in Samuel and Kings.
C: I'm going to tell you a joke.
B: Okay.
C: And you tell me if you think we should cut it out.
B: Okay.
C: Because this is... folks look we keep it clean here on the show as much as we can.
B: Just like Mario C
C: Exactly. So this one is a little blue. If we don't end up cutting this out, let me just, you know, turn it down, tell grandma to cover her ears. You're talking about the Ark coming to Jerusalem and that happens in chapter 15 where it says that David prepared a place for the Ark of God and pitched a tent for it. So, wow, he must have been excited.
B: Yep. He was. He really was.
C: I need to cut that one out.
B: No, leave it.
C: Okay.
B: It's too good. It's too good.
C: That's on your head then. It also says that David assigned, he's like, "hey, no one but the Levites may carry the ark of God, because the LORD has chosen them to carry the ark of the LORD and to minister before Him forever." So basically David was like:
[Clip from Raiders of the Lost Ark: "We have top men working on it right now." "Who?" "Top. Men."]
B: That's right! Top men. And I'll just throw out that historically speaking the Levites did not exist as a separate specialty priest class at the time of David. And they don't actually get mentioned at all in the source material for this. So this is what we will call a retcon to make the Levites more important. And by coincidence, that's the group that I, Ezra the Chronicler, am part of.
B: We get lots of talking about, so not just the priests, but also the Levites whose job is to play music, including that's right. He-Man son of Joel.
C: And there's somebody else mentioned here as well.
B: I mean, there's a, there's a lot of somebody else's.
C: Well, yeah, but I mean, there's somebody specifically who is listed as the music leader of the singers, which is.
[Music: Opening notes of "Man! I feel like a woman!"]
C: Chenaniah.
[Music: Shania Twain saying, "Let's go girls."]
B: Yeah. So, I mean, they bring the art to Jerusalem. They have a service and they dedicate it. And then there's this psalm that David performs. And it's kind of a pastiche psalm. It's cobbled together from bits from Psalm 105, 106, and 96. But, you know, it's pretty nice. And it lays out kind of like a structure for worshiping. So yeah, that's pretty much 16. Heman and Jeduthun, they had trumpets and cymbals with them. So obviously they played them.
B: 17 is where, and this is adapted from 2 Samuel 6, where David is like, "why am I living in a palace, but God lives in a tent?" The tent being the tabernacle, of course, right, that we saw through the Moses sections of the Torah where as they're moving through the desert, they create a mobile house of God with this tent, with the Holy of Holies, with the Ark of the Covenant in it. And so he's saying, why does God live in a tent? And I live in a big bed with my wife. And he's like, let's go build a temple. And God is like, please don't do that actually. And the reason is given that David is a man of war and his son will be a man of peace. And so his son will build the temple. And I think, and I think Chris, it's for the same reason that I argue that David could lift Mjolnir and Solomon could not.
C: Because he's a, he's a man of war.
B: Yeah. He's willing, David is willing to pull the trigger in a way that Solomon would not be.
C: I think this is interesting for a couple of reasons. First of all, we've talked about this before, but the idea that the Ark of the Covenant isn't just... Like, it's already a container for a thing, but it's also where God lives.
B: Yeah, and this is in the Esther Hamori book, God's Monsters. She uses the exact same example that we used on the show, which is that it is God's special chair like Sheldon on Big Bang Theory.
C: I don't know about that.
B: Well, Old Sheldon...
C: That was not a request to explain.
B: Old Sheldon has...
C: I'm just assuring the listeners that I don't know about that.
B: Old Sheldon has a special...
C: When you say that we use that as an example, what you mean is you use that as an example.
B: I use the example of old Sheldon sitting in a special chair....
C: I'm just going to just pot you down for a little bit while I go on to my second point. So I, I feel like that's interesting. This idea that like, that there is a physical thing that we have where God lives.
B: Right.
C: And you know, you see that with a lot of stuff. Like, obviously, there are relics and reliquaries and pieces that are thought to have, like, something of the divine in the physical world. Joyeuse, for example, to talk about something that we frequently talk about. Because a lot of our conversations do involve swords.
B: That's true.
C: It seems to me that referring to... it's not just that he wants to build a palace for the Ark of the Covenant that contains the Ten Commandments that were, hey, you've seen the movie.
[Clip from Raiders of the Lost Ark: "Top. Men."]
C: You know what it is. That he's referring to it as God lives there. Like that's his house.
B: Right.
C: That is like really interesting to me because then like, then yeah, you probably shouldn't just keep it in a tent.
B: Yeah, the Ark of the Covenant, I mean, the bit on the lid with the cherubim is called the Mercy Seat because it's literally where God is supposed to sit when he comes to earth, right? And it is mobile when it's part of the tabernacle, and then it becomes fixed as they build the temple and they put the Ark in there, guarded by much bigger cherubim.
B: And speaking of the Esther Hamori book, when she talks about cherubim, she talks about how these are kind of guardian figures whose job is to guard the threshold between kind of the regular material world and the spiritual world going both ways, right? It protects the holiness of the covenant from humans who might touch or tamper, but also helps contain the radiant and deadly power of God's presence. So that's really interesting. But yeah, and then when we get to Ezekiel, when he's talking about that bit where God's throne becomes a chariot, right? That's where the wheels within wheels come from and where the cherubim there, which are the living creatures with the multiple faces, who make the throne mobile, that's because, that's the people of Judah who are going into exile, having to cope with, we are physically away from our temple, which is where the presence of our God is. This is like, we're going to be separated from God.
B: Well, Ezekiel says, no, God is portable now. He put wheels on his chair and he can go anywhere. And then also at the end of that vision, he rockets up into the sky, right? And so it's like, God is now in heaven and his presence can be anywhere. And so, because also the temple had been destroyed at that point. And so it's like, well, there's nowhere for God to go. And so Ezekiel is like, well, actually he's in heaven now. And that means he rules over all 72 nations. And so that vision in Ezekiel is kind of theology evolving to deal with the material reality of the people of Judah at that time. They have to give God new powers and stuff to make sense of what their living situation is.
C: So yeah, that was that was something that I thought was really interesting the idea of not just a holy site and not just a holy place but but god existing in physical space to the extent where like there's a little house, but the other thing was that David's like "hey I want to build a temple." God's like, "no not you bud," and the reason that is listed here is as you said he's a war guy so can't do it but your kid is going to do it, and one of the interesting aspects of the way stories are repeated in Bible and the way that you and I have gone through them non-sequentially is that i'm over here being like, "So you didn't want the war guy who killed all those people because you told him to, to build the palace? But when the other guy rolls up with all of his enslaved demons, you're like, absolutely, this is the dude."
B: Yeah.
C: Hey, Abizithibod, get to work. That seems kind of whack. Or at least weird. Look, I'll downgrade it from whack to weird.
B: Yeah. You know, I mean, that's part of the thing of the multivocality of not just the Bible, but of Bible, right? The distinction between the Bible and Bible. You know, something like the Testament of Solomon, which is written so much later in a completely different, you know, historical and theological context. They're, you know, they think about things differently. And, you know, similar, I mean, similar to what I was just saying, right? Like about Ezekiel has a completely different conception of the nature of God than the author of, you know, the, the non-P material in the Torah. It's a much less, um, anthropomorphic view of God, a much more cosmic, you know, thing building towards the modern conception of a, you know, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God, which was definitely not something conceived of in the time of basically the composition of any of the Bible what you might call post-biblical innovations.
C: Also if they really wanted something that was like befitting of God that they could still keep mobile: gundam.
B: Man what if god had a gundam?
C: Yeah, that's easy. Easy solution.
B: Yep. Let's see, more war stuff. Let's skip to 21. Chris can...
C: You don't want to talk about the springtime when a young king's fancy turns to war?
B: Yeah, actually we should talk about 20. We need to talk about 20. This is, you know, more kind of snippets about the mighty men of David fighting the different Philistines, many of whom were giants because they just were and most notable...
C: This is a bad for me to have talked about that review from my mom, because... because... go on, and I'll get to it.
B: Okay, so chapter 20, verse 5, this is the chronicler's attempt to try to straighten out a continuity issue in Samuel, right? So again, there was war with the Philistines, and Elhanan, son of Jair, killed Lachmi, the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam. So this is a small change from 2 Samuel, the bit where it talks about Elhanan being the one who killed Goliath.
B: And so what we talked about in our Samuel episode is that probably the story of Elhanan killing Goliath is a story that is later attached to the legend of David in order to amplify his story, make David seem bigger and better, have more bigger accomplishments. But what's happening here is once it becomes known that David is the one that killed Goliath, what do you do when you have a source that says that Elhanan the Bethlehemite killed Goliath?
B: Well, you smudge a letter and you turn the word Bethlehemite into Lachmi the brother, which "Lachmi" is not a name. It means "my bread." And it is not a name. It's just the last couple letters from the word Bethlehemite. So this would have originally said Elhanan son of Jair, the Bethlehemite killed Goliath. But by kind of like fudging the letters a little bit, they can make it look like he killed a different giant who was Goliath's brother. But this is the specific phrasing, like word for word, his "the shaft of his spear is like a weaver's beam." That's like word for word the description of Goliath in Samuel. And then we get the additional details about the giants of Gath descendants of Anak who have six fingers and six toes and all that stuff, really cool interesting details. But what did you want to say?
C: I like that it says that they have six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, and then there is a quick aside that goes "24 in all."
B: Just in case.
C: I'm like, wow thanks thanks
B: Just in case.
C: Because I can't count that on my fingers. I only got 10 of these bad boys.
B: That's right. You could get most of the way there but not all the way.
C: Yeah. The part that I wanted to talk about was where it says that when David goes to Rabbah and demolishes it, and then David took the crown from the head of their king and it was placed on David's head, he found that the crown weighed 75 pounds of gold. No, it didn't. No, it didn't.
B: You don't think he put on a 75 pound hat?
C: I don't think he put on a 75 pound hat. I'm sorry. No, he didn't.
B: Picture Odin in the good hat. Do you think that weighs 75 pounds?
C: No.
B: No.
C: No. Unless it's made of uru.
B: Yeah, obviously it would be made of uru - obviously.
C: Like, that's where i'm like, because, because, look, because that is not attested to as a miracle. There is nothing like divine about that. It's just that David found a 75 pound hat and put it on his head and was like wow that's heavy. No he didn't.
B: Yeah
C: Come on.
B: He's got really good neck strength.
C: It's 75 pounds.
B: There's a midrash about his neck muscles, probably. I don't know. I just assume.
C: I'm sure it was a very impressive crown. You could have just said he found this great gold crown with a precious gem in it and put it on as the sign of his victory. You didn't have to say it was 75 pounds, because now i'm not - no he didn't - no it wasn't. No it wasn't.
B: Yeah.
C: Come on.
B: Yeah. All right, Chris, can you do me a favor please.
C: Can I stop tearing down Bible?
B: That's right can we please? We are harming the souls of our listeners. No, can you please read aloud first chronicles chapter 21 verse 1
C: 21:1
B: Yep.
C: Okay Satan...
[Music: Instrumental opening to Van Halen's "Runnin' with the Devil"]
C: ...stood up against Israel and incited David to count the people of Israel.
B: Thank you. All right. Two things to note about that. Number one, this is the first time in the Bible and possibly the only time in the Hebrew Bible that Satan is used as a proper name and not as a title...
[Music: Chorus "Runnin' with the Devil"]
B: ...to indicate an individual versus, you know, the adversary came to God and they decided to experiment on Job. Or God sent an angel as an adversary to stop Balaam and his donkey. Right? So this represents a late later development and the conception of Satan, not the Satan, not the adversary, but as a figure. But then can you then flip back to 2 Samuel chapter 24 and read verse 1?
[Music: Instrumental opening to Van Halen's "Runnin' with the Devil"]
C: The Lord's anger burned against Israel again, and he stirred up David against them to say, go count the people of Israel and Judah.
B: Yeah. Do you see the change?
C: Yeah. It seems like God and the devil are the same thing.
B: Yeah. In the original version, it was God who killed a bunch of people. And then by the later version, it seems like they're a little less comfortable with that. And they were like, what if Satan did this? Like, and neither version, is it clear that, uh, why David doing a census stirs up God's wrath, but it does.
C: Big government.
B: Big government. That's probably what it is.
C: That's the only thing I could come up with. I, I just, there are question marks in the margins here for me, bud. Cause I could not figure out why this was so bad either. That's the only thing I've got.
B: Yeah, no, no, no idea why that is. And, and in fact, you know, like I said, most of this book is about scrubbing David's past. Like, this, this material, it skips over, it skips over so much of any misdeeds on David's part, the bad stuff, his sons do the rebellion of Absalom, any kind of weakness of personality, Joab as his commander and his influence over David, anything that would make him look weak, him going and executing Saul's family and all that kind of stuff, all that's cut. All of that is cut. Bathsheba is cut. And we'll see in a minute, the succession crisis is cut, right? It's just, he just straight up hands that 75 pound crown to Solomon. And he's like, this is my son. He's king now, which obviously there's like a several chapters long succession crisis where Solomon has to like outwit his brothers for the throne of Judah, right? Or Israel and Judah at that time.
B: But so this is like the one bad thing that they leave in is David doing this census, which is bad for reasons we don't know. But it's left in because in this version, they tweak it so that it is what leads into the creation of the temple. Because again, they want to give David the credit for being the real founder of the temple because they're really trying to emphasize the greatness of David.
C: Pretty weird that they're like, yeah, Satan told him to do a census and then he did.
B: Yeah, and he does. And then God is like, I don't like that you did a census. And he forces him to pick his method of punishment. It really feels like a horror movie where like you're being tortured and the guy is like, "tell me where you want me to stick this hot poker?" But it's like, "Do you want three months of famine, three weeks of invasion or three days of plague?" And David had to be like, "I'll take the three days of plague, I guess and and so...
C: Hey mom, if you're listening, which I don't think you are, but if you're wondering who's tearing down the Bible that's Benito - was the one who just referred to God as being like Jigsaw from Saw. That was him, not me.
B: Arguably it's the authors of Samuel and Chronicles by presenting the story this way. But anyway, David picks the plague and God sends a big angel who stretches from heaven to earth, who has got a big sword. That's an innovation from Chronicles. He doesn't have a sword in Samuel, in the passage in Samuel, but here he's got a big, cool sword. This is the destroying angel, the destroyer. This is a figure we've seen before in Exodus who killed all the babies because God said kill the babies. But remember, God is omnibenevolent, Chris's mom.
C: You're not making the case for the show right now.
B: I'm just reading the Bible. i'm just presenting the Bible on its own Terms and the things that it says...
C: It's a real tough one for us, this one.
B: Yeah. But anyway there's a whole thing about this giant angel and then he starts swinging his sword towards Jerusalem and that's the point at which God is like, "no wait - don't destroy Jerusalem. I love that place." and he tells David that he should build an altar to him and in the place where the angel was standing or, you know, floating above, I guess. And it's a threshing floor on this guy's farm. And so David buys the threshing floor and the material to build an altar from the guy and he builds it.
B: And then we learn, and this is another innovation of Chronicles. This is not just an altar to God. This is like the very end of second Samuel, by the way. But it's not just an altar. It is the altar that will become the altar in the temple. So again, really trying their best to connect David to the temple. But even then David is still afraid of the sword of the angel of the Lord.
B: And then he calls Solomon in and he's like, "Hey man, you got to build this temple. I want to build it, but I can't, but you're a man of peace. Your name means peace. Shlomo. And so God wants you to build the temple with great pains. I have provided for the house of the Lord 100,000 talents of gold, 1 million talents of silver and bronze and iron beyond weighing.
B: This is like 4,000 tons of gold and 40,000 tons of silver, possibly hyperbole, but I would never.
C: I mean, how many 75 pound crowns is that?
B: Don't make me do that math, but I think it's a lot.
C: I feel like it is our remit to point out passages that are poorly written. They could have used an editing pass.
B: Sure.
C: There's a part in here where David's like, I got you all this gold. That's for the gold parts. I got you all this silver. That's for the silver parts. I got you all this bronze. That's for the bronze parts. I got you all this steel. That's for the steel parts. You don't need that. If you provide the gold, we know it's for the gold parts.
B: Yeah.
C: Like, by definition that is self-evident dog.
B: I mean, you're right. When you're right, you're right and you are right.
B: And then, kind of like how we skipped the first nine chapters, basically we can skip the next couple ones. 23 - wow it's the division and organization of the levites. And then chapter 24 is the organization of the priests within the levites. Chapter 25 the organization of the musicians within the levites - guess who shows up again? That's right: He-Man. Then chapter 26 is the organization of the gatekeepers, treasurers, and other functionaries of the temple. Then in chapter 27 David assigns people to the organization of military and civil affairs. You know who's in charge of the donkeys? That's right Jehdeiah the Meronothite. Over the flocks? Jaziz the Hagrite.
C: Oh boy.
B: We're almost done here gang. Chapter 28...
C: Are we not done after that because...
B: We're almost done. We're basically done. Like I said it's the straight up smooth transition from David to Solomon. David doesn't become a weird old man who dies while a young woman is stroking his skin or whatever, and there's no succession crisis. He just is like "I'm King David, and this is my son Solomon. He's cool, and he's gonna build this temple, and he's the king, and we're gonna have a party and I'm gonna die now," and that is what happens.
B: "And thus David, son of Jesse, reigned all over Israel. The period that he reigned over Israel was 40 years, seven in Hebron, 33 years in Jerusalem. He died in a good old age full of days, riches, and honor, and his son Solomon succeeded him. Now the acts of King David from first to last are written in the records of the seer Samuel, and in the records of the prophet Nathan, and in the records of the seer Gad, with accounts of all his rule and his might, and of the events that befell him and Israel and all the kingdoms of the earth."
B: And thus ends First Chronicles. You can probably see why the editors of the septuagint split it up there. because it's the division between the reign of David and the reign of Solomon and then the subsequent kings of the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah which is what we will see in Second Chronicles when we get there.
C: I would like to not do that.
B: Like you don't want to do it at all, or you don't want to do it next.
C: I mean, I definitely don't want to do it next because this was very boring.
B: Sure.
C: Well, hopefully we made it fun. Was there anything that was in here that we didn't cover that you found notable?
B: No, I got to say, I kind of struggled to find the notable things we did talk about, to be honest.
C: Yeah. So maybe we'll bop around a little bit and get back to Second Chronicles.
B: I do want to get back to it because I want to just get that stuff done and then do Ezra and Nehemiah. And that reaches the end of any kind of historical narrative in the Hebrew Bible. We will have done all of the narrative stuff in Bible, Old and New Testament.
B: And also because there are two additional books of Ezra that are really weird that I would like to talk about after we do Ezra and Nehemiah. so I would like to get back to it, but yeah maybe we'll take a break before getting into Second Chronicles.
C: There was one more thing that kind of stuck out to me that I wanted to mention, which is a phrase that I really think we should bring back legitimately. This is in chapter 23 verse 1, it talks about David being old and full of days.
B: Yeah.
C: And buddy I felt that one. I am feeling real full of days lately.
B: Yeah. And the days are full of years.
C: Seasons pass slowly years go flying by.
C: That does it for First Chronicles, a book that is undeniably in the Bible.
B: But at the very end depending on the Bible you're looking at.
C: Yeah, but it's in there. Keep looking. You'll find it - it's in there. Benito!
B: Yes.
C: We are going to do something a little bit different next. We're not going directly into Second Chronicles because if all goes according to plan, this is coming out right on the cusp of the holiest eight nights of the Apocrypals calendar - that's right: it is approximate week.
B: That's right!
C: Which is of course the span of time between my birthday on August 12th.
B: And my birthday on August 20th, which is approximately a week.
C: That's right from sundown on the 12th to sundown on the on the 20th, you can celebrate your parasocial pals Chris and Benito. So, for that we were really kind of struggling to figure out what we wanted to do. We wanted to do something that would be a a nice fun birthday thing but in previous years we've done the books of Enoch, we're all out of those.
B: Yeah.
C: We've done we've done all the Enoch that there is to do. Last year we did - what did we do last year? I only wrote that there were no spoilers on our last approximate week episode.
B: That's a great question. Is that when we did El Shaddai?
C: I think that one might have been El Shaddai, yeah.
B: Yeah.
C: This year we're going to - should we say or should we leave it as a surprise?
B: Let's leave it as a surprise.
C: All right, but it is going to be a graphic adventure.
B: Right, a non-conventional episode which I know some of you guys enjoy those. Because people do do be asking for more video game episodes,
C: Of what?
B: I don't know.
C: Oh yeah, I mean, I don't know. Look, suggest... We did get fight of gods, where you can play as a buff Jesus who punches people with pieces of the cross, but there's not really enough of that to make an audio podcast's worth. Maybe we'll get into streaming.
B: That's right. That's where we're gonna set up a Twitch account. We'll get a partnership no problem.
C: Hey, if you are wondering, we will sell out for so much cheaper than you think.
B: That's true that's not a bit.
C: Prime energy? Monster energy? Any energy? Nuclear energy? You're from Kentucky - I'll shill for coal.
B: Oh. Okay, I... solar I would prefer, but..
C: Look we all we'd all prefer other things, but I prefer to live indoors
B: Not a bit: Liquid Death, I will promote you for very little money.
C: I actually love Armless Palmer Liquid Death, for real.
B: I love Liquid Death. I love your product. Give us money. Please. I will talk about it every episode.
C: I'm going to reach out about a sponsorship as soon as we're done recording.
C: That's it, everybody. Thank you for listening. Benito, until we are back with our next episode celebrating the 2024 approximate week holidays, where can everybody find us online?
B: The best and easiest thing to do is go to our wiki page, which is apocrypals.wiki. And if you go there, you can find links to pretty much everything. You can find links to all the episodes of this show. You can find show notes. You can find transcripts of some episodes, but not all of them. You can find suggested reading from us and from our multi-pals guests. You can find our social media, the show's social media, including our presence on Blue Sky. We're just @apocrypals.bsky.social. We're also on Tumblr where people tag us and all sorts of stuff. But you can find all of those links on the wiki page. And if you want to be an editor on the wiki and help out our boy Jemal, you should be able to contact him via the front page on the wiki. And you can also find the links to our merch store and the Ko-fi and the link to the Discord. You can join the discord and come and talk with us and a bunch of weirdos parentheses affectionate. And yeah, hang out with us. Chris doesn't really go in there, but I'm, I'm in there all the time, which is less of a selling point. People want to hang out with Chris. I understand.
C: I mean, dang, I got time.
B: But anyway, yeah. I think most of the stuff you need is there. So go and check that out. And thanks again to all the contributors to that wiki, including and especially Jemal.
B: And yeah, if you're looking for me, find me on Blue Sky: @benitocereno.bsky.social. And I've got a link in my profile there that'll take you to pretty much everything else, including my Patreon, patreon.com/benitocereno. And you can find all the work I'm doing there. I update multiple times a week with all sorts of stuff, including that I am doing a translation that I'm serializing of a late Latin science fiction novel called The Underground Journey of Niels Klim about a guy who falls in a big hole and ends up inside the hollow earth and he lands on a planet full of talking tree people. And it is a social satire of contemporary European mores. Um, and I'm also..
C: More-eees?
B: Yeah. More-ees, more-ays, customs, styles, morals, ethics of the time. But, uh, I'm also serializing a complete rewriting of my Christmas book, the Yuletide treasury, which will probably get a new title, but it is a considerable amplification of what came before. So if you want to learn as much as possible about St. Nicholas and so on, you can do that. You can also join for free. I've got a free tier subscription where you can get updates on stuff I'm doing, without paying any money whatsoever. Chris, where can people find you?
C: Well, I'm currently in the process of rebuilding my website which has been destroyed. The years of comics blogging are lost to time and to the internet archive. But you can always find me right here at Apocrypals and on the War Rocket Ajax podcast available every Monday at noon at warrocketajax.com.
C: That's gonna do it, everybody. Thank you for listening. Please join us for approximate week celebrations. Benito, happy birthday.
B: And happy birthday to you.
C: Until then, dear listeners don't forget: black lives matter.
B: Trans rights are human rights.
C: As are abortion rights.
B: Drag's not a crime.
C: Cops aren't your friends.
C: For Benito Cereno, I've been Chris Sims. Benito: peace be with you.
B: And also, with you!
[Music: He-Man by Ludacris]
