¶1has issues with how he reads the Bible. >> Oh god. >> Yeah. >> A lot of people a lot of that going around. >> Yeah.
¶2There is a lot of that going around >> reading the Bible >> struggling struggling with it and >> and having problems with Yeah. >> how they read the Bible. >> Okay. Yes, we are here. Okay.
¶3So, um, today, um, I I have extra help because, um, well, I I could say that it's because Joe Schmid reads the Bible badly and to the degree that I felt like I needed reinforcements, but the truth of the matter is is that I really just want to hear Joe talk about the Old Testament and watch Kip's uh, and watch um, Kip's soul leave his body. because it will, trust me. Um, but the other reason why I wanted um Kip Davis to come on here is because Dr. Davis in addition to um studying the Dead Sea Scrolls also spends a lot of time yelling at people who read the Bible badly. The difference is >> like I do I think >> exactly the the difference is is that a lot of those people have bad Protestant readings and Joe Schmid has a bad Catholic reading and those are different.
¶4So we need to be prepared for all kinds of bad Bible readings. Um I have a um hard stop time of four o'clock because I have to take my daughter to dance lessons. Um so um I would Oh good. Uh David's already started drinking. So >> Tur Coke Turke.
¶5>> Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. So um David also teaches religious studies and has actually survived a Catholic seminary. So he so he was taught how to read the Bible in a good Catholic way, which is also worth pointing out.
¶6>> See, I assume I assume my experience because I I my only experience with with Catholic biblical scholarship comes from interactions that I have on the regular with Catholic biblical scholars. So I right I just assume that uh that that that y'all are coming to the text from the right from from the same places well and and and most of the time we are and then you get some special people. Okay. So I've gone into screen sharing and I'm going to hit play. Just yell whenever you want me to pause.
¶7Okay. So here we go. >> And uh biblical problems. So so the next kind of category is just biblical problems. Okay.
¶8And I guess >> like old testament violence. >> These fall into two main categories. So one is just like objections to inherency and then another one is like old testament violence and whatnot. Um so you know as Catholics we are dogmatically committed to a version of inherency that I just like to call Catholic inherency. Okay.
¶9to like get out of your mind what like fundamentalist preachers and highly literalistic people tend to think like get that out of your mind. Get also get out of your mind like views where like you're super liberal about the Bible like oh yeah like maybe they just the author has been radically astray in all these different ways like get get all this stuff out of your mind. Here's what the Catholic is committed to thinking with respect to inherency. Whatever the sacred writers intended to assert is true. is protected from error given of course the genre that they're using given the various literary devices that are available to them given their context given their audience etc.
¶10You have to take all those things into account uh when you're trying to assess you know like the authoral intent or the writer's intent. There's I still have to like resolve some questions in my mind about whether or not like inherency might the sacred writer might be able to be attached to like the redactor for instance. So the actor might have >> okay >> I just I just like to point out as a as a professional Bible reader um >> um Kip your volume is a little bit I I somebody said your volume's a little bit low. I don't know if that's a me thing or a you thing, but >> it Yeah, my gain is just about all the way up. >> Okay.
¶11Yeah. >> So, let's see. Is there something else I can do here? Uh test test. It looks output volume.
¶12Yeah, it looks it looks okay. Um I could Oh, so maybe if Oh, no. It doesn't allow me to automatically adjust my >> mic volume. It might be um the noise removal. I could probably turn that off.
¶13Um >> for reference, I hear you just fine. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Yeah. Okay.
¶14I you're fine on my you're fine on my end. So >> yeah, I I think it I think it probably is what it is. >> Yeah, >> chat. Sorry about that. Um so uh but I will speak up.
¶15>> Yes, >> but um I just as a professional Bible reader uh I just want to point out that one of the most difficult things to grapple with is authoral intent. Uh we all like to think that we know and we understand what the authors of the texts were doing, what they wanted to achieve through their writings. But this is all just just educated speculation when you get right down to it. Uh for the most part. Um, and I I mean, and we all do.
¶16We certainly all do it. Um, but these these are the sorts of things that we tend to hold fairly lightly uh with an open hand compared to to some of the other elements of the text that that we are working to uncover. >> Yeah. And one of the things that you'll notice is that um Joe is very very confident that authoral intent is easy to figure out. Um and it's not authoral intent is probably the hardest thing to figure out.
¶17Okay. So I I am going to hit play. This is that like intentions for including things in a text that might diverge from what like the original person wrote on a pyite. I still have to like resolve some of those things in my mind. But like the broader point is that whatever the sacred writer intended to assert is protected from error given the genre and literary devices and whatnot.
¶18Okay. So we're committed to that sort of thing. And so I don't know. I just worried about lots of different things concerning the Bible. There just seemed to be lots of different objections.
¶19>> Justy flavor the point for a second. >> Uh I just >> Yeah. >> I I just the I mean the fact that we have no idea and I'm just so um I'm uh I'm I'm an Old Testament scholar. So, I I I rather famously uh tend to uh avoid the New Test Well, I I shouldn't say that. I um I I don't make a habit of reading the New Testament, although it feels like I spend an inordinate amount of time doing so in view of uh my YouTube work.
¶20But in so far as the Old Testament is concerned, the Hebrew Bible, in so far as the Hebrew Bible is concerned, um we don't actually even know who the authors are like for 100% of all the books of the Hebrew Bible, you can't know what the authoral intent was without knowing even who the authors were. I just I'm I'm just belaboring that point. Yes. And and it's a point that's worth belaboring because um you know when you're just like oh I can just read it and see what the I think the guy meant and it's like uh no not not quite so much. Okay.
¶21this kind of inherency um where like ah aren't there like puditive contradictions across the gospels and aren't there like puditive contradictions in the old testament and like what about some potential historical inaccuracies in books like you know Daniel or various other things and like you know >> was Moses a real >> Moses a real person yeah or like you know they're saying like these people lived 800 years and I'm like that seems kind of ridiculous like you know that seems incompatible with everything that we know from biology or like you know what about these like incompatible genealogies you know like this person said you came from him this person said you didn't come from or like that you came from someone else uh and so I'm like what am I to do there are so many of these it's like so um that was the inherency problem maybe we can just pause on that and then we'll go to uh Old Testament violence >> sure so here once again there was a cluster of higher order considerations and first order considererations that led led me to basically be able to resolve or at least sufficiently diminish the force of the subjection of my mind. So some of the higher order considerations were like um >> I think like uh pause to take into account that uh >> I I I I think in in in my mind in my mind is is is an important qualifier here too. Uh so I would say uh at at this at this stage as well that that uh a useful approach for Joe perhaps to take if he's if he's met with um a high number of Bible problems that uh interfere with his theology, then it's probably worth his while to investigate. um and and to do the work and to read the scholarship on the nature of the problems and why uh biblical scholars actually think in the ways that they do. My suspicion is that he's not done that, that he's not going to do that.
¶22My suspicion is rather uh that that he will accept the accept the apologetics which also means accepting the straw man that apologists invariably construct uh in their responses to all critical problems because it's the only way that you can make the critical problems go away. Um I I just wanted to uh um uh Yakantius Institute. Is that an I or an L? >> It's an L. >> Okay.
¶23Lactantius Institute. Uh I just uh I'll I'll just respond and say I'm not I'm not sure at this point. Maybe I'll have a better handle when uh when we're done as to whether or not Joe is a fundamentalist. Right. >> Yeah.
¶24And it should also be mentioned that if that was the way that he was reading the Bible where it was like, "Oh, yeah. Everything's like literally true." And the fact that it's not literally true is a problem means that whatever religious education he got was kind of lacking. Because like one of the first things that they generally tell you in like you know like Catholic religious education class when you're like a little little kid is like some of this is symbolic. Um but we'll see. God may very well have uh certain purposes in promulgating revelation that um concern his like broad the broader distribution of evidence that he wants out there for kind of lulling people to belief.
¶25So like what do I mean by that? Well, I came across this that Ethan use he has this like divine hiddenist model of God's activity in the world. So basically God epistemically fine-tunes the level of objective evidence out there um that he gives through both um general revelation and like special revelation. uh he epistemically fine-tunes the level of objective evidence to basically provide enough objective evidence to make the ascent of faith rational or perhaps rationally obliged but enough >> he fine-tunes the evidence >> enough like psychological factors and various >> what >> he fine-tunes the evidence what am I hearing what is he saying >> oh okay >> Jesus fine the evidence is that what did I hear that correctly >> yes you heard that correctly basically Ethan Muse who's like Joe's bestie his like best friend in the whole world. >> Yeah.
¶26um has this really interesting sort of theological philosophical position that says that God provides us with just enough evidence of his existence that people are in fact still obligated to believe in God, but not so much evidence that like there's just no question that God exists There always has to be like some amount of doubt that the person can feel. >> Interesting. >> But >> okay. Yeah. >> Yeah.
¶27Yeah. It It's probably the worst argument for belief in God that I've heard. >> It's May I interject to say that? >> Yes, of course. >> No.
¶28Um, it's very important to recognize that Ethan Muse and Joe Schmidt, they really do treat the questions of faith as propositions first. And so they're trying to find out arguments. And Katie and I spoke about this earlier, and this gets even into their miracle discourse. They need these things called motives of credibility. And that's an old apologetic argument.
¶29It's a dogmatic theology argument that there are things which not in of themselves create proof but are the underlining motives by which you can say this must be true based on so many converging data points. Um so if it's a discrete issue with the older new testament that could be subsumed into this greater humanuitic. Um and it's something he does a lot a lot in his his like methodology. He doesn't he doesn't want to focus too uh acutely on one biblical issue or one doctrinal issue. He'd rather just continue to go and kind of float over them.
¶30And the problem that is the devil lives in the details, right? You know this as a good scholar as well as I do. You cannot just simply dismiss um certain acute pro or discreet problems when you know but people do. They have interpretive lenses which they use. Um but what's so aggravating if we can say that about Ethan's kind of point of view is that um faiths aren't faith we we in the Latin tradition make a distinction between the fedes quay and the fedes qua in other words faith as content versus fa and faith as proposition versus faith as a a gift or a means of living a means of interacting with divine things.
¶31And so everything is being piled onto this fetus quay, including the propositions of the magisterium in regards to the Bible. And it it's just it creates this mess because once you begin to tug on on one thread, the whole thing can be begin to unravel. And I think it's a very dangerous place to be. >> Yeah. Yeah.
¶32I I think that it's just a absolutely pernitious and it gives people this incredibly brittle faith that like as soon as you know you start looking into the objections to Padre Pio or you you know start looking into the the objections to Fatima, the Bible falls apart because they've made it all in one into one coherent current system that doesn't work. >> Okay, I'm going to hit play >> barriers that preserve the freedom of the ascent of faith and that basically preserve the psychological possibility of doubt. So like uh >> which is in itself a good >> right. Yeah. No and it's yeah I mean it's in itself a good to like basically preserve the freedom of the ascent of faith.
¶33It's also basically having that kind of level of obscurity where there like there are psychological factors that can like significantly temper the rational force of the evidence that uh basically that that kind of level of obscurity posited by this model can allow basically us to be able to um you know like help other people in their faith journey when they're struggling with things or like help other like help other people come to knowledge of God and the truth and whatnot. like also allows us to make significant differences in each other's lives. Um, and you know like there are also various biblical passages that make this model very plausible. One is like it's the glory of God to conceal you know like Jesus is giving parables and he's like his apostles might come like why do you speak in parables and he's like his answer is always like because they're obscure so that the people who are real sincere seekers like you guys who are coming to me and asking me about them all then I like explain further to them what what's going on. But like other people, you know, uh >> um >> like allows them to choose whether or not they're going to seek further and try trying to go >> I want to inter is that is that really what Jesus said?
¶34Um I mean on my reading of on my reading of the Gospel of Mark and again not a not a New Testament scholar here but I'm fairly sure that uh Jesus said that he spoke in parables as so as to ensure that uh those who uh did not have ears to ears to hear would stay outside of the kingdom. It was and maybe I I'm probably putting maybe I'm putting too fine a point on this, but that seems to me to be uh different from this uh this is a tactic to ensure um uh seriousness or earnestness of the uh of of the believer. less so that and more so a a a uh like when I read Jesus, I see these statements as reflective of judgment. It's part of he says it, you know, this is part of the fulfillment of the scriptures which say that those who um th those obstinate Israelites are going to remain in their uh uh in their obstinate rejection. >> Yeah, it it's different.
¶35And I mean and and I think to the degree that you're accepting that like okay some of you know that these meanings are hidden and they are obscure that then means that it's an obligation of somebody if you believe that what you're supposed to be doing with your life is following Jesus to really study these parables and to learn and to think as opposed to just going oh Well, this is obscure because it's meant to be obscure. >> Let's this becomes, in my opinion, particularly perverse because in this conception, the god ofnosticism is more beneficent in revealing things about divine truth than Jesus Christ is. And I find that very troubling. Um, how can you say that? I mean I can see completely Katie someone saying you know uh God wants sincere hearts fine you know but of course when he is taught by sincere hearts like his disciples he then speaks plainly it's pretty quick right uh when someone approaches him he just shifts gears and tells them what they need to know but if you say that propositionally God is resistant to knowledge and wants you to chase him down for that to happen um to me it's like God is less epistemically generous innostic demiurge.
¶36Um >> yeah, >> and that is really troubling to me because the one of the one of the crucial elements that Catholics say is a claim to divine revelation is that it is public. Like the very definition of the deposit of faith is that it was given publicly as they say through Christ to the apostles. So then to say, oh well, you know, we got to withdraw that epistemic possibility because of divine hiddenenness and God needs to prove humanity. It just seems like this, it makes God out to be this like sadistics sadistic epistemological monster. Um, and that that is not I don't think appropriate to the God of scripture as revealed in Christ.
¶37>> Yeah. Well, and and with Joe and Ethan, both of them, like, and I'm glad you brought up the Gnostic demi urge because in a lot of ways, it feels to me like that's who they're worshiping, right? They're worshiping this like small little petty god that, you know, his like favorite thing is like playing practical jokes only. Oops, it's hell. Okay, I'm going to hit play past the obscurity.
¶38Um, so it allows the goods of sincere seeking. It allows the goods of like difference making responsibility to each other's lives and coming to knowledge of the truth and knowing God. It preserves the freedom of the ascent of faith. There are lots of goods that are enabled by this kind of divine modus operandi at least in general. There's like at least a general modus operandi that God might take.
¶39But and given that model which is at least anticedently like reasonably likely under Catholicism given the various biblical passages the goods that I just mentioned and also like I don't know it's just like not a very implausible agential >> okay th this is just small and petty on my part but whenever he wants to say da da given Catholicism I'm always like what does that mean right it's like given the truth claims of Catholicism If so, what truth claims? You know, are there levels of Catholic truth claims that you can believe part of this and not the other part of it? what he means when he says given Catholicism is not in any way clear, but he's treating it like it's a logical proposition like in the same way that you might say, you know, given >> but but that's also how that's also how the church >> in terms of theological system teaches scripture. Scripture is a product of the church. Right.
¶40Right. Right. >> So, >> yeah. But, but but yeah, but that's different, I think, than just saying scripture is a product of the church. Instead, he's talking about given Catholicism is like this like overarching structure that's all one thing.
¶41Okay, I'm going to hit play motive that like a like a being might have. Um given that this is kind of like anticedently plausible conditional on Catholicism given Catholicism uh it's then actually not very surprising that if God is going to give us a book which is uh even inherent or inspired it wouldn't be prespicuously so. It wouldn't just be like obvious in a way that like compels rational ascent. Um and like you know just imagine if we had like yeah 40 different authors across like what 1,500 years and differently there's like no issues whatsoever historical facts across the entire thing for all these different genres for 500 people then start to be really sus like predicting like demonstrabably true like the man that might start to compromise the Uh yeah, a ways >> okay a ways back there uh he said he repeated this wellworn apologetic trope that I have been hearing since I was 15 years old about 40 biblical authors spread over a period of 1500 years. Uh, this is nonsense.
¶42There are an there is an unknown number of biblical authors, but that number is certainly greatly in excess of 40, especially in view of how problematic, how troubling it is to identify or isolate what an author is in the period in which these texts were written. you know, between the the the late Iron Age and um you know, the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. Like in this in this critical period, even the question of what an author is um and teasing out or separating an author from what a scribe is doing is is a much more complicated proposition than it seems on the face of it. So whatever you want to define as an author creates problems for how you want to limit this number. But the 1500 years stuff because I I assume that uh let let's I I'll be generous here and say that I suspect Joe has in view uh the the tail end of the first century CE as the concluding point when all the biblical texts have been written.
¶43It's wrong. Uh I think it's demonstrable that there are texts within the New Testament that we can date to the second century and uh um sorry I saw I saw this comment from uh Petite Flower. Um but I'll I'll uh yeah uh that that has distracted me. Um so uh there I think it's demonstrable that there are texts in the New Testament that were written in the second century. Uh but even setting them aside, let's grant the '9s.
¶44Uh that would mean that over the period of 1500 years extends all the way back to before the beginning of the Iron Age. all the way back to roughly 1,400 BCE uh which is a period of time in which there was not even an identifiable group of people known as the Israelites. Uh there is no Israel prior to 1400 BCE. the even the most uh charitable among critical scholars will say that there's nothing that we can uh track within the Bible further back than at best probably 1100 uh BCE and and it's it's small fragments of stuff like you find in the uh song of Moses or perhaps in um uh the song of D'Vorah. Uh beyond that, uh it's it's wild guesswork.
¶45So to to to that end, the the the 1500 number is is silly. The the number of authors is silly. Uh these are apologetic tropes. And it's interesting to me that these are apologetic tropes that were um popularized by Protestant apologists. Uh I heard this the first time as a teenager in a youth meeting uh in front of a um a a uh a teacher of uh of apologetics and and uh youth ministry from the Master Seminary.
¶46If you're not familiar with it, the Master Seminary is the notorious school that was operated by the the terrible uh now deceased human being uh John MacArthur of Grace to You Ministries and Grace Church in Southern California. So um yeah, that's all I got. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, and and it's worth pointing out that um Joe and Ethan and this kind of like extremely conservative Catholic apologetics world um is kind of the place where like Catholics and evangelical apologists overlap and cross-pollinate in like some really destructive ways.
¶47Um so yeah >> may I also just make one note also on the motivated reason it's like >> sorry uh the motivated reasoning is for in unlike in most of Protestantism especially evangelicalism there is no centralized quote unquote magisterial authority that he feels well they would feel they have to defend but just to give Kip an example I don't know if he knows like a difficult biblical commission back in the early 20th century defended as a matter of uh closeness to faith the Mosaic authorship of the Torah. Right? >> And Pope Pas had said that the proclamations of the Pontipical Biblical Commission were to be considered um an active magisterium. So, it's interesting that in my and and that's probably why God bless you. You're probably not as exposed to it as some of us are.
¶48But there's still a significant amount of these people who haven't had it who haven't had to grapple with the fact that there's a serious problem here. Um, now a lot of people have tried to airbrush that and pest the 12th tried to air airbrush that and take steps to distance themselves from those proclamations, but they're still on the books. Um, and they need to find a way to do exactly what you're saying, which is defend some of the more literalistic ahistorical interpretations of the scriptures. And um, it is interesting, isn't it, to see how these evangelical arguments are reborn because now them, you know. >> Yeah.
¶49I'm glad I'm glad you brought that up about Mosaic authorship because I I'd also like to point out that even amongst uh conservative Christian scholars uh there is there certainly still is um a school uh a camp of uh of evangelical and conservative uh Christian scholars who hold to an exodus um in the 15th century. uh BCE and a Moses of the 15th century BCE. But as far as I'm aware, this is a minority view and it's one that is not uh I I would say neither of them are scholar or especially scholarly respectable scholar scholar something like that. Um, but it's it's at least I I will say the the the stronger view is setting Moses in the 12th century BCE. Um, even though that it's it's littered with problems, uh, it's still at least somewhat tenable, granting a whole bunch of things that are, uh, fairly unlikely.
¶50Uh, but at least it's historically tenable as opposed to to an earlier dating. And uh that uh Joe's um time frame here uh is presuming something that's that's just I I mean even amongst uh some of the most conservative scholars and and apologists is is viewed as as just historically um implausible. >> Okay, I'm going to hit play again. be too surprising even conditional on Catholic inherency and even conditional on um you know on Catholicism more generally that even if there's like a an inspired book it wouldn't be prospicuously so like there very well be certain like apparent difficulties uh and basically like if you have if then it's not very surprising that there would be apparent difficulties. Yeah, some of them would be resolvable upon further inspection, but like the further and further you get from the facts and from a genre and whatnot, like you may very well have some that like slip through the cracks and that seem kind of intractable and whatnot.
¶51So like even under Catholic inherency, it wouldn't be very surprising if there are certain seemingly intractable apparent errors. So like actually there's this like again it's almost like a debunking story. There's like this unified explanation for why there may very well be apparent errors in the Bible uh including ones which are seemingly recalcitrant. Um so like I was like okay that seems interesting. Um, at the very least, I can't be super confident that this model is false.
¶52>> Yeah. >> Okay. It seems to me that he is basically positing a trickster god and not just a trickster god who is, you know, like occasionally does, you know, like, you know, causes weird coincidences to happen in your life. but a trickster god who deliberately [ __ ] up the Bible. And I'm not monetized.
¶53So, by the way, you can swear as much as you want. Um, just so that people would have the option of not believing in God. And that that's just weird. >> Yeah. Yeah.
¶54I I I don't >> I I mean I mean I think that's that's like the the the value of critical scholarship I would think uh the theological value of critical scholarship uh in my estimation is for the um the the grounding and the creation of theological models that are at least um you know, historically uh culturally, socially defensible and plausible. But by taking this tack, he's basically just opening himself up to to a whole lot of a whole lot of [ __ ] that um you know, is is just not uh is is not defensible on on a variety of uh of pers from a variety of p perspectives. Oh, somebody made the the real question. Parents all over the world would be sad to learn they will never be able to truly love their own children since they have been shown too much evidence for the existence of their children. And yeah, that that that that I I think yeah like kind of sums it up.
¶55>> Uh again, I'm not just here to try to mitigate the evident force of of the of the counterveailing considerations. So there's that was just like a higher order consideration that was like leading me to think hm okay that's interesting uh and that also means that I couldn't be treating this is another crucial thing you can't treat all these apparent difficulties as like independent objections right because there may very well be some unifying story under Catholicism for why the apparent the apparent difficulties are there right so you can't actually treat these as like compounding an evidential force again it goes back to the intuition point like you can't just like treat these an intuition about homosexuality and transgenderism as like these independent objections that somehow like it like massively increased the evidential for >> Okay. And this is one of my like main gripes with Joe is that he'll say that two of his biggest objections were like the Catholic Church's teaching on like human sexuality broadly, right? The thing is is that you don't get from the way that he reads the Bible to and therefore the Catholic Church is right that um you know all sex outside of marriage is a mortal sin. Um like one does not follow from the other.
¶56And if you go back to like looking at the text, one of the things you find is that pretty much in fact the only thing that the Bible is regulating is penis and vagina intercourse. It's like if the train doesn't go into the tunnel, the Bible doesn't care very much. So, you know, >> um I I would also I I would qualify that um a little bit in in in terms of I I think it it's yes, you're correct, but it's also um contingent on the particip like like uh the social status of the participants too is a factor. Um there are things that you can do with enslaved people or with um uh with like like like unmarried or unbrothed uh women that you you can't do with uh a woman who is is already um married or or coupled or betrod to a man, right? like things things like that.
¶57So, um yeah, but but there is a there's a whole bunch of stuff here that that's that's just left untouched. Uh I was a little floored. I was watching um uh Shang's uh latest video I think yesterday and was a little floored to discover that um uh masturbation is is is like is it a is it a mortal sin? >> Yeah. Yeah.
¶58Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Basically, the current teaching of the Catholic Church on sexuality is that anything that you can do with your genitals for fun that does not involve a married couple that is not using contraception, having intercourse is a mortal sin. This wow yeah this has not always been the teaching of the Catholic Church.
¶59Um for example there were points where fornicate where adultery w was only adultery if the woman was married and that therefore simple fornication yes it was a sin but it was a mortal sin. Um, I'm sorry, not a mortal sin, it was a venial sin. Or to um actually go back to Joe's comment about transgender people. There's actually um a seventh or eighth um century um English um penitential that has different penalties based on whether or not the woman has a penis. Yeah.
¶60B b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b basically in England, like in like pre-Christian England, there were transgender women. And this penitential has a different amount of penance depending on whether you're whether a man fornicates with a cisgendered woman or a transgender woman. I I don't want to get into that, but there is dispute about that. Um because some people believe that sodomy, if you want to call it that, was so unmentionable as a gloss, they would simply say a woman with a penis as a way of sidest stepping the issue. I don't I think it may be a little inaccurate, a little isogetical to impose that upon that text, but it is a reading.
¶61I'm not going to dispute that, but I think >> Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, but but but the the the but yes that there there is some debate about that. Um in the case of England though we actually have graves. Um that you know it's like you have somebody who based on their DNA would have been assigned male at birth.
¶62They're buried with a completely normal female like culturally normal female burial. like this is a 40year-old this is a 40-year-old woman who is buried the way that a 40-year-old woman would be buried. Um, so anyway, but the point is is that the the Catholic Church's view is not consistent on a lot of these issues that Joe wants consistency on in a really desperate way and in a way that frankly makes me really concerned for like his psychological health because um he is apparently a you know unmarried be because to the best. He's never mentioned publicly that he has a wife. Um, and there's a whole lot of issues that I think he's struggling with to a degree that is perhaps a little bit beyond what he's strictly speaking required to struggle with.
¶63He's making problems for himself. Uh I'll just I'll just say uh one more thing quickly here and that is that uh the Bible does not have a lot to say uh about masturbation. Uh be beyond the fact that uh uh nocturnal emissions are something that requires um ritual purification. uh this is and I think people have a tendency as from from this uh historical point of view that from from this cultural point of view from the point where we are now people struggle with this but um the sin um as a condition that requires more um uh ritual purification is not um I I think a moral condition or a moral failing is the wrong way to imagine what this is. uh especially given that a a huge number of the rules and the laws um within the book of Leviticus have to do with um accidental and unintended sin uh which requires purification.
¶64It all requires purification, right? It's it is a it is a a kind of like a like a a maybe a physical or an ontological condition that interferes with your proximity to deity which is why you have to you have to deal with it. That's that's what it is. So it's about it's much more so about just ensuring that you are uh able to stand in the presence of God in his uh in in his temple or or in his his holy community than anything else. So, um, yeah, but nocturnal emissions.
¶65>> Yeah. But yeah, it's but yeah, it but it's also Yeah, exactly. So you're working with a model that is worried about impurity, but impurity isn't necess like being in like a physically icky state isn't something that's like really like moral, but it's not like it's not you did something morally wrong. It's you did something that made your body icky. So anyway, I'm going to hit play again.
¶66of the objections, you also can't do that with respect to the biblical problems. And I was like, "Oh, whoa." So, okay, there's a probabilistic correlation between all these potential errors and that's going to significantly damp the evidential force of any objection to um inherency. So, I was like, okay. Um but it won't altogether remove it. So, I was like, okay, I need to like work through some of these first order issues.
¶67So, then you basically you just take some ones that that might bother you and you just see if you can resolve them. And if you start to find that like no actually like I took a few of them and I was able to resolve most of them just like very diligent careful study and whatnot. You start to be like oh you start to almost like inductively generalize like you know if I actually put myself to it maybe I would be able to resolve at least lots of these or most of these. >> Yeah. Uh and then you also start to become >> I I also uh have figured out how to resolve >> um virt virtually all of these problems and that's by recognizing that they're there and that the resolution is to just take a step back and go yeah uh the Bible is an especially flawed I I don't know about especially but it is a it is a a a demonstrably a flawed text on multiple levels.
¶68Problem solved. Uh as soon as you come to that point of recognition or realization, you can start to navigate the text in order to um uh determine uh uncover theological truths through the noise. Now, I would like to point out that it's important to note that he's talking about Catholic inherency, >> which is, you know, special inherency because it's like, and this is what I think annoys me the most about the way that Joe reads the Bible, right? is that because like it's okay that there are contradictions as long as you know it's like basically you know to paraphrase Jesus's paraphrase of Hillel you know love God love your neighbor the rest is commentary right so if you so if you're taking that as your starting point for inherency the fact that there are contradictions and that they just are contradictions doesn't have to be a problem. And what makes me ups makes me aggravated at Joe is that he is coming from a faith tradition that does not require him to leave to read the Bible like he's an idiot.
¶69And yet he is still managing to read the Bible like an idiot. I don't I I'm just going to hit play. bound to what the authors were intending to assert. And there's lots of interpretive leeway with respect to authoral intent. Right.
¶70>> Right. Because even if they write down some proposition P and P in a strict and literalistic sense is false. That's no threat to Catholic inherency in and of itself because maybe the sacred authors, the sacred writers weren't intending to assert P in a literalistic manner when they were writing that down. Maybe they had some other intention in mind. Maybe they were trying to make a theological point.
¶71Maybe they were trying to um kind of elicit some practical effect in the reader. Maybe they were trying maybe they were using some kind of like established literary device that's like totally within the bounds of the relevant genre by which you can like change certain facts or by which you can do those sorts of things. They're like, "Oh, that's interesting." So that actually allows us a pretty significant degree of leeway with respect to um uh our interpretation of of scripture. And thankfully, you know, like we have a magisterium which gives us bounds um >> unlike some other people. Um we can see where that takes us.
¶72>> That was that was a shot at at the Protestants, wasn't it? >> Domination. >> Yeah, that that was completely a shot at Protestants. Um and and actually I I do have to say, you know, speaking at, you know, speaking for my people here, um I do think that to a degree it is good that the Catholic Church has a hierarchy because when you get people to come up with some truly bizarre and unhealthy way of reading the Bible or thinking about theology or somebody says, you know, the angel Gabriel showed up and said blah blah blah blah blah. You have an authority structure that exists that can tell people to sit down and shut up.
¶73>> I would agree. I think that's uh I I think that's a much better uh way to go about this. Um, I just as he was talking there, I was just struck by how similar uh this level of argumentation is to uh some of the like the the stuff that I'm reviewing presently uh on on my own channel in the uh in the works of uh Richard C. Carrier. Um it's it's just you know it's it's the same I it's the same kind of of fuzzy uh [ __ ] through which you can you can provide for just about anything.
¶74Um just in a different direction. >> Yeah. Absolutely. Um and and and it's just yeah it's credul all the way down. And I will say that actually one of the reasons why >> Joe is getting away with shooting his mouth off on the internet is because one of the few areas that the Catholic Church le has left up to this point broadly unregulated is social media.
¶75Like social media is like just anybody can just hop on, call themselves Catholic and just say all kinds of stuff. Um, and there have been rumblings for the last several years that like the diccastri for the doctrine of the faith is considering like some sort of regulatory system. The problem with that is that everybody knows that for a certain number of people on the internet that as soon as the Catholic Church tells an individual to sit down and shut up, the person that they've just told to sit down and shut up automatically becomes either Martin Luther or Galileo. So, you know, it's kind of a, you know, lose-lose proposition in that regard. Um, but I would also not be surprised if we eventually end up with something.
¶76Um, to to uh regulate it, but we'll see. Anyway, I'm hitting play again. >> Anyway, um, so like we do have a very significant, >> but they're more unified than we are. >> Indeed. Totally.
¶77>> Yes. >> We're literally just talking about that. >> I know you're more unified to the extent that you allow disunityity. Okay. But I started to see that uh you know I could work through some of these individual problems by attending to literary devices or at least by like seeing not terribly implausible literary devices that they might be using.
¶78So like the genealogies you know they're like using established literary devices of compression by which you can just like completely omit certain people and just say like yeah you're d you're descended from this person even though that person's like way earlier on the chain say or like you know so they can use compression. they might have some other kind of uh theological purpose in in including certain facts or like changing the dates of something or you know like when someone says like oh yeah I am Daniel. Uh firstly I mean we could just think that like that particular portion was indeed written by Daniel say but you could also say that like maybe there was some sort of established literary convention at the time by which um let's say like a follower of Daniel or someone who's receiving a tradition from Daniel can actually say that they're speaking instead of Daniel or something like that. Or maybe it's some kind of like unique like backwards retro retrodicting like prophetic kind of like visionary account or something like that where it's a super obscure genre that we have very little knowledge of and like again we already there's this huge cloud of unknowing about the sorts of genres that were uh operative in like the ancient near east. So like okay maybe maybe like there just is some kind of like interesting literary device that we don't know about that they're utilizing or something like that or the genre allows for this sort of thing or like we have so little And I don't think and like I don't think there's anything really wrong with what he's saying here.
¶79The problem that I'm seeing in it is the way that he's just kind of throwing up his hands and going, "Oh, it could be a literary device. It could be this. It could be that. It could be a scribal error. We don't know.
¶80So, we just don't have to worry about it." Right? when in fact everything that he's throwing out are these are answerable questions or at least these are questions for which it is worthwhile to seek an answer and you you're not just you know going it could be anything throw up your my hands so it can say whatever I want it Yeah. So, somebody said in chat, "We are all Daniel." >> Yeah. Um, and I just before that, I was never here said, "That's why I support normalizing scriptural rewriting. One can be inspired by scriptures, but don't need to copy and emulate everything from scriptures, if that makes sense.
¶81Uh and I would I you know I would wholeheartedly agree and and just you know point out that this is this is merely a continuation of a wellestablished um scribal and exeetical traditions inherited from from uh Judaism. >> Yeah. and from you know the oldest uh layers of um uh religious practice that we have uh for u Judaism and Christianity. Yeah, I'm gonna hit play again. >> Knowledge of the genre that like we were having to use.
¶82We have to like reconstruct the kind of genre that it is based on like two other papy from a time or something. So it's like there's such a cloud of unknowing about like at least some of the Old Testament stuff certainly. Uh but then also just like there's a lot of leeway with respect to like authoral intent given literary devices and genre and whatnot that I was like okay you know like I can actually see like working through these various problems and you know as I said I was like working through them I looked at this 800y year thing I was like come on like that seems ridiculous doesn't it? One thing you could say is like God just miraculously preserve them for that long. But also you just look and actually at the time we do know now that it was just a totally established literary convention that if you just want to >> if you want to like show great honor to someone like a patriarch, you just exaggerate how long they live.
¶83So we have like I think it's like ancient Assyrian things where they're saying about their like kings or something like Babylonian things like yeah they live like thousands of years and whatnot. Um so it's a >> there's a there's a little bit more to it than that. It's not just about uh it's not just about reverence. It's about uh a couple things. Um it's it's about uh illustrating the the the vast shift uh in the condition of the antidoluvian world with from the biblical writer perspective the contemporary world.
¶84Um this was part of demonstrating that that fundamental shift. uh people lived uh a like like monumentally much longer because the the the the antidolivian world was was viewed um as almost like a well it was viewed as as really like a like a mythical place almost like a like a fantasy place. Um, so there's that, but the a a careful reading of texts like these will also show uh levels of some pretty intricate mathematical precision that were shared by uh a number of these these sorts of texts. um which uh which were intended uh to communicate things about uh the relation about the I I guess the uh um the divine mandate of of of the flood. But importantly, this is a feature that also speaks to the dating uh and the the authors of uh of some of these texts as well.
¶85Um, I'm relatively convinced that something like uh the long ages in uh in Genesis chapter 5 uh has to has to belong to the henistic period uh like the 300s uh BCE. And the reason for this is because of the way that the numbers are laid out uh and what their their intended function is relative to um other contemporary uh pieces of literature that we have. >> Yes. Exactly. So, and I hope that people notice that like when you go to, oh, these ancient ages, what do they mean?
¶86That there's a whole lot that they mean >> and there's a whole lot that can be understood. It's not just you don't you can't it's not something where you just go to the point of, oh, this is why it's not a problem, and then stop. Mhm. >> At least it would be if Joe loved the Bible. But Joe doesn't love the Bible.
¶87And Joe doesn't even really fetishize the Bible. Joe just wants the Bible to be there and look pretty on the shelf. mentioned, but I like that you can you're not intending to assert in a literalistic fashion that yes, if you like had a timer and you put the timer there from the moment that they were born to the moment they died, it would say 800 years. Like that's not what they're even doing. By the writer's own lights, right?
¶88By the writer's own lights. >> Um, no, hold on, hold on. >> I not the literalistic person. >> Okay. I think I think that if you want to make the claim that the authors didn't intend for the text to mean what they say plainly, you need to demonstrate that first and foremost.
¶89Um, so I I mean I guess it's it's possible that the authors did not intend for the readers to think that these figures uh from the uh the antidolivian period actually lived as long as they did. But again, you've got to demonstrate that and just it and just pointing to the fact that these numbers are um exaggerated for symbolic reasons or that they appear so for symbolic reasons isn't enough. uh because symbolism can be in effect a uh a communication about uh the truth of reality for the from the perspective of of these writers. >> Right? So if it's symbolic so so once you figured out it's symbolic the first question is what is this meant to symbolize?
¶90>> Interject as well. There's something here that is he's not even discussing as somewhat important too, which is we can debate all day as scholars and as people of goodwill about what a particular text means. That's totally valid, right? Based on evidence or even even hermeneuical traditions, right? That's fine.
¶91But what is troublesome to me is like for instance, let's use I think Kip said this earlier, you know, um like we talked about Mosaic scholarship. Let's use one thing even more important. Let's say the Exodus, right? As I understand it, most scholars do not believe that there is archaeological evidence for there being an Exodus. Is that correct?
¶92>> Correct. >> Right. So, here's the thing, right? So, we agree that there and there's no evidence and mass migrations of people tend to leave a lot of trash among other things, right? Um that this would have happened.
¶93There would be a record of it, right? The thing that is that that claim is not as dangerous well it's more dangerous than to say well how do we interpret the patriarchal um lists of the of the of the genesis right because if you say that that is false so much is predicated on that in terms of sotiology um uh archetypes there's so much predicated on Exodus happening literally happening that if you pull pull away that Jenga piece, the whole thing collapses. So you we may not see it here explicitly, but there is a tier in terms of what biblical things may be recast, reinterpreted, but if you say things like for instance, there was no King David, which is probably true. There was probably wasn't King David. Um, but like Exodus is is a biggie.
¶94Um, and and let's be real. I mean, even you alluded to this earlier, a lot of these discussions regarding the prehistory of Genesis, these questions were solved by origin or by Augustine. Um, these are old questions and the fact that we're going over them again is is kind of sad because we've had ways of looking at this that didn't require us to beat our heads against the law. It's just sad. >> Yeah.
¶95Well, and again, we come back to the fact that like I mean Joe has apparently read, you know, quite a few of Lydia Mcgru's books. >> Um, but that's it. Like he published his bibliography >> um in one of his longer form videos and it's all it's like basically he's read Lydia Mcgru. He is shockingly w when it comes to talking about this kind of stuff, he is shockingly poorly read. >> Mhm.
¶96>> Okay, I'm going to hit play again. Lived 800 years, but instead like this person was a big deal. That's what they're saying. >> Yeah. And so then like just like notice it gives you again a proof of concept like whoa okay I thought that there was something which is like a very big problem for like Catholic inherency but I was like oh no actually >> like the strict and literalistic content just diverges from the authoral intention given established literary conventions that the genre allows.
¶97So that sort of thing once you see it in a few cases and you're just like you have a like a pretty decisive objection that you think is like a demonstrable contradiction you're like oh I was wrong or at the very least there are lots of like non-silly stories according to which I could be wrong then you can basically be like okay you know it wouldn't be terribly surprising if that's the case more generally and then you add that to the higher order considerations and then you add in all the miraculous evidence and this is just like like a trivial objection I mean like not not trivial but >> I mean that's just that's what he's talking about right the the miraculous evidence is not you did earlier like you see Jesus you know >> the the miraculous evidence that's like the that's like the stuff um from like Fatima and Padropeo and Lords and things like that right >> it's also more fundamental because if he if if these things are questioned I was mentioning to Katie John Henry Newman's work on biblical and ecclesiastical miracles which is a pretty dense and well done theological work and he's pretty clear about saying that there are works which like the resurrection of Jesus is a miraculous event without is a sea quanon of Christianity. >> Um I think this what he's saying right now tacitly or not so tacitly reveals the threat it poses. Um so I think that that's important to recognize too. >> Right. Well, and when and particularly the way that he talks about miraculous evidence, he tends to say like things like, okay, well, there's more evidence for Padre Peio than the resurrection, right?
¶98Which, you know, in in like the very limited sense that, you know, we don't have Roman newspaper reports about the re about the resurrection, right? Is broadly true. But it's like but he's saying because Padre Peio is is true that he can believe in the resurrection which from a Catholic point of view is like ass backwards because it's like you believe in the resurrection. >> It also goes back to the point you said about epistemology and a trickster god. You're telling me the the miracle of miracles that proves that Jesus is the Christ of God has less evidentiary ceiling than some dude in the 20th century in a monastery in Italy.
¶99>> Right? >> That's crazy, >> right? And it especially since like one of the fundamental things about um the Catholic Church is there's this division between public revelation which is basically the Bible and then there's private revelation which is everything that's happened since the Bible. So basically he's trying to raise private revel some private revelation private revelation that he likes to the level of public revelation which you can't do like just you know as Joe would say given Catholicism public revelation which is basically the Bible and then there's private okay anyway I'm going to hit crucified and he rise rises from the dead. You go and eat lunch with him and you see him and you hang out with him for 40 days and then you're like but Jesus what about the you know you're like yeah but John says that there were two angels and Matthew says that there were one and you're like dude like if you saw >> okay I'm sorry but like as someone who believes in an afterlife Right.
¶100One of the first things that it that I will do when I get to heaven is I am going to track down the apostles and I'm going to be like, "Yo, Matthew, what was up with the two donkeys?" like that the the the the you know the possibility that like you know like you that like like when I think of heaven like heaven is like a like you know neverending Bible seminar where like you know Zachchariah is teaching you the book of Zechariah. So the fact that you wouldn't ask so it's like why wouldn't you ask those questions? I'm sorry. >> You'll finally learn the identity of the bad woman in the jar. So that's that's good.
¶101>> Yeah. >> Um yeah. Uh it's like it's it's um it's hard to it's hard to take anyone seriously when they laugh at uh at these elements which are critical to the story that stories that are being told as if they're trivialities. Um, and I I mean it it certainly doesn't lend me to uh think that I should be taking Joe or Cameron seriously. I I already, you know, was quite certain that they should not be taken seriously, but this is only reinforcing um that opinion.
¶102>> Yes. Okay. I I'm going to hit play. Jesus do all that like just think okay maybe maybe I'm just making a mistake there or like yeah saying that there was an angel there or there was one angel is compatible with there also being another angel right >> temple cleansing happens earlier >> like you wouldn't say that if you're there palpating Jesus's hand it would be ridiculous to reject Jesus even if he says yes it's inherent are you going to reject him are you going to walk away after you saw him get crucified and felt his hands >> no you would walk away like all right I was wrong >> yeah I is wrong. Maybe there's some sort of literary device that they're using or maybe like yeah, somehow the author for whatever reason was not intending to assert that or like or maybe they're just trying to there's another there's just so much leeway.
¶103Maybe the author was intending to give the general gist of the story without intending to because we do this like I'm telling you a story. Is there is there room >> that I think that's that's that's where where like the question I would ask at this point is is okay so you've you've opened the door and you've come to the recognition that there are these actual inconsistencies at least within uh the gospel presentations of the the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Uh is on your model, are you still also entertaining the possibility that these um these differences which exist between the individual gospel stories are uh the product for the purpose of uh theological instruction. that this is not as this is not primarily about history. This is about promoting the right theology and then by that token the side recognition that there are different theologies preserved within the Bible.
¶104That's the question I would like to ask of Joe at this point. Yeah. Yeah. And and and I think that he's convinced that the theology of the Bible is consistent. Um which is another problem.
¶105>> Well, it's a univocal, too. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah.
¶106He he he's he's assuming a certain kind of univocality. And also again, the idea that you would see Jesus do these miracles and you would be so overwhelmed that you wouldn't dare ask him questions about anything. It's like, have you actually read the Bible? Because the apostles are asking him questions like all the time. I mean, sometimes, yeah, it's like Jesus asks Peter something or Peter asks a question and it's kind of a dumbass question because, you know, it particularly in Matthew, Peter can become kind of a dumbass.
¶107But the point is is that Peter's like, "Master, what does that mean?" Or, you know, or like the Samaritan woman at the well when you know, he's like, "Well, I can give you water." And she's like, "Oh, cool. You'll dig it up for me." He's like, "Well, I mean living water, right? People ask him questions all the time." Um, I'll also uh just point out that at the very end of Matthew's gospel, one of the things that uh that we're told, the one of the one of the things that's that's said at the very conclusion of this story of uh of Jesus is that some of the disciple deciples watched Jesus ascend into heaven but still did not believe. Yeah. And I I think that's I think that's an that's a really really important uh text for uh for everyone for uh believers and non-believers alike in assessing uh what to do with these texts and what to do uh with uh with this person.
¶108Um the uh be from from a a modern apologetic perspective, especially one like uh like what Joe is promoting that the miracles are enough to demonstrate emphatically uh the truth of Catholic doctrine. The Gospel of Matthew says straight up it did not work uh for everyone. Uh even the people who watched Jesus with their own eyes uh go up into the clouds were like, "Yeah, >> but it but it gets even better. Jesus himself endorses the idea that God closes ears less they believe." >> Yes. which is even crazier.
¶109>> You really take it seriously, >> you know. >> Yeah. Okay. Um, so I'm going to hit play again. We've only got a few minutes left.
¶110We might actually finish this. I don't know. >> That P. It doesn't automatically mean that I'm intending to assert the P. Like you might just like nitpick certain details.
¶111I'm like, dude, I'm not actually in trying to like assert those particular details. I'm just trying to give you a gist of the general story. Right. So if that's like what they're intending to do in certain places, then like >> even if there are things like which as I said are like strictly and literalistically speaking false, like that does not show that what the authors were intending to assert what they're intending to do was mistaken, >> right? >> And so like again, if you saw Jesus do all those things, you should just conclude that maybe I'm maybe I made some mistake here or maybe there's something about the genre, maybe there's something literate devices and you just have this huge disjunction of things each of which is like not silly.
¶112uh and then you can just totally mitigate the force of the objection. >> But again, Joe didn't see Jesus do any of this. He is choosing to accept the gospel accounts, at least in broad strokes, which is fine, but he didn't see any of it happen. Um, you know, even according to Luke, Luke didn't doesn't say that he saw this happen. He said he talked to a bunch of people and wrote it down.
¶113You know, Luke by Luke's own account was doing history and that's how I overcame that one. So, that's inherency. And then there's Old Testament violence. I can even be shorter with this one. So, >> yeah.
¶114Yeah, let's cover that one a little bit shorter because I mean a lot of what you've already said is >> Oh, yeah. most of what I already said is just going to apply. Um, so like yeah, I mean there are all these conquest narratives where you know it seems like at least on like a very primacia superficial reading that God's like commanding genocide and there are various other things that seem like yeah there's just lots of violence that seems to be divinely sanctioned. It isn't that implausible. One way that you could go to say >> this is not a superficial reading.
¶115>> This is not a superficial reading. Uh, this is what the text says. That's just it. It's what the text says. Um, if Yeah.
¶116Sorry. >> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No.
¶117No. You're right. It is what the deck says. >> Deputize people to take pick others lives. That's one way you could go.
¶118I didn't find that very plausible at the time. And so like I just wanted to go in for something which is much more along the lines of like um >> I'm interested to know >> the kind of moves I was just mentioning with respect to >> I'm interested to know why Joe doesn't find that plausible. Um, I think I and if I hear him correctly, he's saying it's not very plausible that the text could mean what they actually say because on his view of God that would be uh monstrous. >> I'm kind of guessing here. >> Yeah.
¶119Yeah. and and and you know and to be fair like the conquest of Canaan as written is monstrous. On the other hand, Joe believes in Masadamada. He believes that the overwhelming majority of human beings who have ever lived and who will ever live are going to suffer eternal conscious torment. So >> with his understanding of God, the conquest of Canaan isn't a problem because the God that his image of God is a God who would totally be fine with genocide.
¶120>> Yeah. Wow. Um so I um I think they so on this on this question of plausibility. Um it always seems like the the the best thing you can do when reading the text is to uh take them uh take them seriously for what they say. Um, and of course like some of that's difficult through through translation and through um gaining a proper perspective, a a proper cultural, historical, social perspective, which is where people like I come in.
¶121Um, you know, biblical scholars are here to help you achieve that. But then at that point uh instead of handwaving that away and saying well this is unlikely because you know it would uh it contradicts with my own views of of who God is or or how he operates. Um that that's probably true. But then that would then for for my for for my lights I just think a a better approach is to explore further uh what that means for the text and where it came from and who wrote it and why and um these these sorts of things, right? as opposed to just, you know, twisting yourself into a pretzel to uh ensure the safety of the text by making it say things that that um just straight up it it clearly didn't.
¶122Okay, we've got about five minutes before I have to go, but I am going to hit play because I I think we can finish up this section on Old Testament violence. >> You know, and even even here there's like textual indicators within some of these texts, for instance. They're like where one passage they're like, "Yeah, we totally destroyed them. They were completely wiped out down to every last baby and whatnot." But then like a few passages later, the people show up again. Like, no, they weren't totally right.
¶123Like, okay, clearly something is something funky is going on. They weren't actually >> Yes. It's called source criticism. Joe >> is like, they're not morons. Aren't morons?
¶124>> Yeah. >> Which he doesn't want to admit actually exists. >> Obviously see that like this thing says that they were totally wiped out and this thing says, "Oh, they're back just like a few minutes later." Like they're not morons, right? Um so like clearly there's something else going on. there's some sort of something literary that's happening here and then it's just like open it's open to the exigy to try to figure out what that might be.
¶125Some people think that like >> yeah maybe like these these passages serve some kind of just like prop propagandistic um end. So like actually they're not intending to depict strictly and literalistically a kind of historical genocidal conquest, but it's more so like it has like a practical intention. Or some other people are say things like um oh you know uh maybe like we should allegorize this or maybe there's some historical core like there maybe were some skirmish skirmishes between the Israelites and Canaanites and whatnot and maybe there's like very significant hyperbolizing or maybe um uh yeah like maybe maybe there's some like allegorizing like like maybe this serves some sort of theological end where like the point of the story what the authors are actually intending to convey when they put these words in God's mouth is just that God hates idolatry. Don't do idolatry, you know. >> And maybe God hates sin and stamp all the sin out of your life.
¶126>> If I could if I could just uh for a moment um like a lot of what he says there is in broad strokes I think uh useful and uh productive. Um and just to just you know to give you uh a sense of where scholars land on on this question of the conquest in where where we currently are. Uh scholars are are generally agreed that that the the the stories in the book of Joshua are entirely fiction. There may be some I mean they're based on uh echoes or or memories uh deep cultural memories of things that actually did happen uh in this tumultuous period at the end of the the Bronze Age and and the beginning of the Iron Age during what we call uh the Bronze Age collapse. Um lots of cities got burned and destroyed um in the Bronze Age collapse.
¶127uh there was uh a a lot of terrible displacement and slaughter that accompanied this. Um so this is a narrative that's uh embedded into this historical reality. Uh but it's still entirely a fiction. There are a couple of uh different scholarly approaches to this. Everyone tends to agree that the the the reason for the the purpose of of these narratives of these stories is for propagandistic means.
¶128Um it probably has to do with the actual displacement of people in the real world on some level. Um but then the historical situation of that some scholars will situate the the the the conquest narratives in uh the 7th century as part of an expansionistic program of the Judahite kingdom like a big land grab uh to you know dispossess people and to gain uh more territory which is terrible. Um, others will situate it much much later uh just prior to the uh uh the the henistic period or right near the beginning of the henistic period with much the same ends but directed against the Samaritans. So when you get right down to it, it's all like like the text is is all bad from from my perspective because even though it's fiction and even though uh these actual people were not slaughtered wholesale, which I always tell Christian apologists, the easiest thing you can do when it comes to these texts is just start from there. to start from the recognition that this is fiction and none of it actually happened.
¶129That way you don't have to put yourself into a position of defending the undefensible. But then on that point we also have to recognize that the intended purpose of these texts is still awful. it is still uh part of a program of dispossession. Whether it was successful or how successful it was, we're not sure. But uh but but that's that's what's happening here.
¶130Um yeah. >> Yeah. On the other hand, you know, I do have to say that for all of his, you know, and maybe this is a good place to end is that for all of the problems that with the way that Joe is reading the Bible, we can say that at the very least he's not a genocide apologist >> that >> and and he's apparently and he's not a slavery apologist. So, you know, maybe that's one way where the Catholic willingness to read the Bible symbolically actually is a good thing because at least he doesn't it doesn't make him feel obligated to um justify the conquest of Canaan or try to prove that the conquest of Canaan happened. Um but um yeah, so that's how Joe Schmid reads the Bible.
¶131Um, we didn't quite get to the end of that section, but um, there wasn't really anything else. He was just kind of wrapping up the how the conquest of Canaan is totally symbolic, y'all. So, um, I would, um, like to thank Dr. Kip and David for being here. Um, >> my pleasure.
¶132Just real quickly, um I can't imagine that there is anybody here who doesn't already know who you are, but um if you can just tell the good people where they can find you. >> Uh uh over my my channel is my name, Kip Davis. It's it's easy to find and uh I [ __ ] love the Bible and I talk all about it every week. >> Yeah. And David can be found where?
¶133Um, I'm found on Apisa Fidelis, my substack. I'm a writer usually who well I consider myself a Christian but uh becoming more and more a heretic. So if you're interested in what that means uh check me out a fidel. >> Okay. And on Thursday R.J.
¶134will be back. We will be continuing our delve into the thoughts of Joe Schmid and um maybe trying to figure out what's going on at Princeton. Um so um yeah and then on Sunday it will be the 27th Sunday in ordinary time. So that'll be exciting. And then on Tuesday, um the um an ordinary ruined Catholic um that YouTube will be coming over and talking about what h what's going on with her what was going on with her parish in the '9s because she's done some really great research there.
¶135So, um, thank you to everyone for, um, coming and I'm just going to end this