We continue in Genesis with chapters 19-26. In this episode, Christians try to explain how the patriarchs an their wives lived to be over a hundred, Esau sells his life for some soup, and the Old Testament reminds us to avoid Hittite women. Find us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AtheistStudy
We continue in Genesis with chapters 19-26. In this episode, Christians try to explain how the patriarchs an their wives lived to be over a hundred, Esau sells his life for some soup, and the Old Testament reminds us to avoid Hittite women. Find us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AtheistStudy
Hey Everyone, I'm Nicole.
Ashton:And I'm Ashton,
Nicole:and welcome to our atheist Bible study where two atheists revisit the Bible stories we grew up on. And some of the ones that they tried to slip past us,
Ashton:because they were too incesty. So the story we're starting with today is the story of God planning to destroy all of Sodom and Gomorrah because it's filled with wicked people. And Abraham sort of starts to push back against this. God essentially has this, I would say, by modern standards, clearly unethical plan of destroying entire cities, commiting genocide against them over what he sees as sin among them.
Nicole:I would agree with that as being Yeah, God is genocidal.
Ashton:Yes. And it seems that Abraham recognizes this. And he says, God, surely you would not destroy an entire city, which must contain some good people over the actions of some within it, and says, Would you do it if they were just 50? Good, you know, he goes all the way down to 10. And God backs down and then I guess Abraham decides at 10 he's not gonna push his luck any further. Yeah.
Nicole:Um, and then I don't know I think some other stuff happens but I basically Are you ready?
Ashton:We have Lot and the angels.
Nicole:Which is another one that gets downplayed. I think a lot like I when I read this, I was like, I've never heard this story before.
Ashton:I'd say this is the most quoted in my mind by atheists who are like, What the fuck is wrong with your Bible? Yeah. Is they quote this story and the later story that's similar to it. Okay. So they go into the city, and they're staying with lot and his family, the angels two angels come into lot's house. And the people of the village are very immoral. They come in and they knock on the door, and they say, show us these angels again, where we want to know them, meaning they want to have sex with them they want to sodomize them.
Nicole:Okay, when you first read it, did you did you get that right away?
Ashton:Oh, I knew that right away.
Nicole:See, I yeah, I read that. And I was like, I'm like, typing up my notes. And I'm like, they just want to know them. Like, they're just like people who were like, Hey, you got a couple of angels. Why do you get to be the only one to meet angels? We want to meet some angels. That's what I first interpreted as, and
Ashton:then it wasn't clear to me that they knew they were angels, but
Nicole:Okay, well, yeah, none of it is really that clear? And then I only figured out that because it says, Adam knew his wife. And I was like, Oh, yeah, they wanna fuck those guys.
Ashton:Lot decides that. The idea of these men, sodomizing these male angels, is terrible, though. He says, Don't take them. Take my daughter's virgin daughters. Yes. They're even better because they're virgin. Yep, nothing ends up happening because God strikes them blind, apparently. But what is the moral of this story? What are we trying to say? That was a lot a good man for protecting these angels with his daughters. It's just another one of those. There's.
Nicole:So I saw a thing that was like, so we just we've just been learning. This is kind of a weird segue, because we've just been hearing a lot about Abraham and Sarah. And Abraham and Sarah are clearly people who are favored by God. And I, like I read that this is to show like, this is what it's like, if you have certain characteristics, like it seems like lot is kind of foolish. And he's clearly not favored by God, because his story gets even weirder, later on,
Ashton:to close out the lot and the angels thing. Okay, I just want to say, Christians don't really talk about and they don't necessarily say that what Lot did was right, they generally say, I think that that was wrong. And lot is meant to be a counter example to Abraham. But it does feel a lot like this scene here. Just this idea really is an expression of a repeated theme throughout this chapter, or throughout this book, when you see Abraham offering up his wife or using his wife as a shield, right, and then and then these these, and then lot's daughters being offered over the angels, whether it's explicitly condoning that or not. There is just a general idea more or less of women aren't as important. It's not as big of a issue if something terrible happens to a woman if she's been abused whatever.
Nicole:Yeah, and in these women have no opinion about anything, they never talked about them. protesting about like, this is wrong or anything. They're just the most, like personality we see is when Sarah is jealous, it gets jealous and mad at Hagar.
Ashton:Right. And when they do protest at all, they get sort of counseled. Right, right, sort of this patronizing. You do not know the will of the Lord. And how could you question my truth? How can you question what I say? That kind of thing? Oh, next, Sodom and Gomorrah.
Nicole:Oh, that sorry. That was another thing I was gonna say. So. So the fact that these are sodomites, and I think there's a lot in the Bible, speaking against sodomy, and basically against gay people. And I think, again, in the story, it kind of like, tries to further this narrative that people who are gay are just like, raging, overly sexualized people who just don't really have any morals and like, they're just out here to have pleasure and have sex.
Ashton:Absolutely. Yeah. So yeah, essentially, they leave the city. And God destroys both of the cities. And Abraham, his wife looks back
Nicole:Lot's wife, right?
Ashton:Yes, Lot's wife looks back and gets turned
Nicole:into salt, salt. So do you have anything to say about the story? I did.
Ashton:The only thing I had to say was that lot protests for a moment where he says, I have family here in the city. Uh huh. And we know that the Bible believes a lot to generally be a righteous man, even if more foolish than Abraham. So it seems to me to imply that probably his family, we're not all wicked people. So it seems like God didn't hold to his promise of if there are just 10 but that's speculation.
Nicole:Yeah, I was gonna say this feel like its plagiarized? Are you? Okay? So you're saying, like, these Greek myths came after these stories?
Ashton:Yeah, the Greek, ancient Greeks were
Nicole:to me this felt like the story of Orpheus and Euridice, you're just where you know, the story where basically his lover what was it that you'll both die? dies, and he goes down to hel to get her back. And the not Sa an what is the Greek one? Ha es. That if you look, if, if yo look back at her to see if sh's still following you up there the or she'll die, and then you'll go back up. Without her,
Ashton:you'll lose her forever,
Nicole:lose her forever. And this felt like a version of that, you know, like the whole you can't look behind you or, you know, a punishment. And in except in this one, it's his wife, of course, it's the woman, the wife is the one who chooses to look back, and then gets turned into a pillar of salt.
Unknown:Yeah, I think there were probably a lot of oral myths that existed. And that became a part of the canon of multiple cultures as probably where all of these came from, and then split off is a Greek telling of a story, I would say is, I mean, it's very different telling a story in the sense of what it
Nicole:was more romantic, you know, and I would, in my opinion, a better story, because this one is, it's like, Okay, again, we just have another foolish woman who just is told not to look back, and then looks back and then gets punished for it.
Unknown:Right. So Sodom and Gomorrah get destroyed. A lot, doesn't want to go to the mountains. So they say you can go to this other city instead. And he gets scared inside that city. And he runs off to a cave in the mountains where he said he didn't want to be in the first place with just his daughters. And now we get into Lot's naughty daughters. Don't call them that. So I there's a couple like theories. So either lot's daughters think that they literally think that they are the last people on earth, or that they think that they are just never going to get to see another man again. So what they decide is they're going to have sex with their dad, so they get him really drunk. And the first night the older daughter has sex with him and gets pregnant, and then the next night, they get him drunk again. And then the younger daughter has sex with him and gets pregnant. Which What the Fuck, like, why is that in there? And they don't give that's just in the Bible. And then they move on to the next thing.
Ashton:So I think this is a dis. I think that's what it is.
Nicole:Okay.
Ashton:Part of it. Because
Nicole:Right, because this is the origin story to other.
Ashton:Yeah, the origin story of the Moabites and the Alright, keep going. mmonites, which are enemies of the Jews. And so they're like, hey're the kids of - they have incestuous origins. You don't wa t to be a Moabite or an Ammoni e.
Nicole:Yeah
Ashton:Also, here's the thing. Real world version of this story... It probably didn't happen. It's probably just a story, and if it did happen and got written, here's what really happened. Lot raped his daughters. Yeah.
Nicole:Yeah Lot raped his daughters, they got pregnant. And then this is the story. And I imagine this never really happened, but I'm sure it was happening where fathers were getting daughters pregnant. And this is how the story gets told by the Bible is that these promiscuous daughters went and seduced their fathers.
Ashton:"He was totally innocent, he was drunk, he had And they're extra explicit about it because instead of ju t having them both do it, and sa ing that they both did it, they ell the story twice to re lly emphasize it. Then they s y Lot did not know when they l y down or when they got back u, saying "he had no idea hat was ha no idea what was happening." They're extra extra explicit about that. It just does not happen in the real world that daughters want to have sex with their fathers this bad. And it definitely is not-
Nicole:Just to know a man, like, just to be like, what is sex like? I gotta know. So I guess I'll have to find out by doing it with my dad.
Ashton:Yes. There's no way that they both wanted to have sex, then. One is even - no way, but both of them. That's ridiculous. Another thing about this that I read is a is a thing called Genesis Rabbah, which is a sort of oral tradition in Judaism of sort of this commentary around the Bible, that includes a lot of other root understanding of how this all happens. So essentially, in this tradition, David is a descendent of Lot, and it's believed that Jesus is a descendant of David through his father, which kind of makes no sense because he had no father, apparently. But that's part of the prophecy. And so the daughters in that understanding of it, maybe knew this and wanted to make sure that their father's lineage was preserved. And then there's an idea that maybe they thought there was nobody else in the world.
Nicole:Mm hmm. But basically, it was like, the whole kind of like the moral is, like, the ends justify the means. Which is they did this one really weird, wicked act to secure the line of David.
Ashton:Yeah. I also think there's this interesting idea here, that is reflected modern day, and it's based on the understanding of who Lot is. In the Bible, it kind of sees him as someone who's righteous, but foolish, like we talked about before. And so the sin is not that he raped his daughters, which is what clearly happened. The sin is that he was foolish. He went alone in a cave with both of his daughters, knowing that they might try to seduce him in this way. And it looks a lot to me like Mike Pence, "I won't go in a room alone with a woman without my wife or without her permission." Right? This idea that we see all the time of a man shouldn't be in a room alone with a woman. People teaching you men you should avoid-
Nicole:That's what Trump said about the army. He was like when, you know, it was starting to come out that all these sexual assaults were happening in the military, not the Army, specifically, but like in the military. He was just like,"what did you think was gonna happen when you put men and women together like that?"
Ashton:Yeah, that's the common right wing discussion about sexual assault, and how you prevent it is just don't let men be alone with women, either because men can't control themselves or women will seduce them and then blame them. It's that our solution in our military is not that we should teach men to respect women and to get consent and not be hyper sexualizing them. It's that we need to just keep them separate because men shouldn't be expected to control themselves and women are just going to go and ask for it anyways.
Nicole:Right? Gross. Are we done with Lot?
Ashton:Yeah, we're done with Lot.
Nicole:Okay, so Abraham and Sarah go to another city and do the same thing again, because it worked out really well for them last time. So Sarah poses as Abraham sister rather than his wife. And then again, the person- which Okay, aren't they like over 100 years old at this point?
Ashton:Yeah.
Nicole:And people are still looking at Sarah, like, damn, gotta wife that up? Not saying like, old - No. You know what? Old women don't need to be hot. Alright, just let us age in peace. Don't need to be hot forever. Yeah. So once again, Sarah gets wifed up. And the guy gets cursed, but this one is different. And so God is going to curse this guy, but he hasn't slept with Sarah yet. And then this guy makes the good point of saying, "God, are you really going to curse me when I am the one who didn't know and I haven't even done it yet, but I didn't know that she was Abraham's wife." And then God says like, "you know what? You're right. Not gonna curse you." And then the guy. So he goes back to Abraham. And again, it's like, "Why didn't you tell me that she was not your sister and that she's actually a wife." And then he makes a point of"well, I thought this was a lawless godless place." And that if you thought that she was my wife that you would kill me to take her." And then again, they get to leave with gifts or do they leave with gifts that time? I don't remember. But basically, there's no punishment for them for doing that again. And, I forgot this part. Abraham says,"Well, I told you she was my sister. That wasn't necessarily a lie, because she's actually my half sister."
Ashton:Lawyering it up again.
Nicole:Yeah, I just, why did you need to...
Ashton:They have to go back and revise what they said before to maintain Abraham's virtues.
Nicole:Well, and again, you're making a lot of weird points, because earlier we're saying incest is bad thing and we shouldn't like incest. But now. I don't know. Maybe, I still think that someone having one parent the same as you is still incestual.
Ashton:Yeah
Nicole:I mean, like, I guess-
Ashton:I don't think it was seen like that in Abraham's day.
Nicole:Sure, but it's still just, like, you know, you're gonna punish one thing and then the other thing is, like, totally cool. Totally fine.
Ashton:Then Sarah has Isaac is the next thing.
Nicole:And she remembers Hagar again and thinks about how she also has a son. And then she's like, "You know what? I don't want them to have the things that my son was going to have." So we need to get rid of them.
Ashton:Yep. And God tells Abraham, go ahead and do that. The quote is, "but God said to Abraham, 'do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman. Whatever Sara says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac, that offspring shall be named to you'" So, you know, essentially, just don't worry about Ishmael cuz you got a better son. And you know, you're married to her. So let her do what she wants with this slave. And then Hagar and Ishmael run off and they run into trouble and it looks like they're gonna die. Then God comes in and says,"Hey, you gave birth to one of the sons of Abraham, so we're gonna take care of you don't worry. We're gonna take care of Ishmael, because he's the son of Abraham." So, it's again, this sort of theme of it's not so much about the morals of these people, it's about them being chosen by God. You get special treatment if you're chosen by God.
Nicole:Right. Okay, so then the next thing that happens is Abraham trying to sacrifice Isaac to God.
Ashton:Yep. "Abraham, sacrifice your son Isaac, JK."
Nicole:Haha yeah, so the story where they go up to the mountain, on a father-son hike, and the son keeps asking him,"we didn't bring anything to sacrifice dad." And he's like,"well, we'll pick it out when we get up there, Son, God will provide." And then yeah, he says, You know what, it's actually you. I'm gonna kill you for God. And I guess Isaac's okay with this.
Ashton:I don't know if he says anything.
Nicole:Okay, doesn't say anything. Just kind of goes with it I guess. And then right before he's about to kill his own son. God says, "Just kidding. I knew you. You're a faithful man. And here's a ram for you to kill instead." Okay, what I want to know is... Christians believe that people who worship Satan, sacrifice children and sacrifice animals, to Satan. But what we see in the Bible is that people actually use to set - one, for sure sacrifice animals to God and, also, almost sacrifice their own children. So is that why we, like, -and I know there's like a thing later on where I think Jesus is the one who says, "stop killing animals for God. We don't do that shit anymore." Is that the point when Satanists are like, okay, now that they don't do that we do that.
Ashton:Umm, I mean... It's projection. Again, kids are not being sacrificed in any real religion. But there is a lot of victimization of children in all kinds of ways by family members, people they trust, and by the church.
Nicole:Oh, we could get into - you want to get into Catholics right now?
Ashton:We can probably save that for another time.
Nicole:Yeah, I think so too. But yeah, I just thought that was interesting that it's like -
Ashton:People need someone to blame.
Nicole:Well, yeah. And it's just such a weird thing. You point a finger at someone you got three fingers pointing right back. But it is weird, though, right? That they were just like... He was so accepting of that. He was going to do it up until God said, okay, "actually, I don't need you to do that." But he was going to kill a child for his God. That's a Christian thing.
Ashton:Apparently.
Nicole:And that's something that you all want to say that evil people are doing, which again, it's not happening, people aren't sacrificing anyone.
Ashton:Yeah, I've heard some accounts by Jewish interpreters and some Christians that Abraham knew God wasn't gonna do this, right. This is - they're all doing a little song and dance, right? They're just playing along with the story. And so it's okay because Abraham was never going to do it. And God was never going to make him do it. They're just playing the game, which is just bizarre and weird. Because they - if you look back, this whole story doesn't make any sense.
Nicole:Yeah.
Ashton:That's a common theme. But it doesn't make any sense because when you look back at Isaac's birth, I read the quote already, but the statement is"for it is through Isaac, that offspring shall be named for you." So God has already prophesized and promised Abraham that he will have offspring through Isaac, so he couldn't possibly sacrifice him and kill him now, because Isaac is supposed to give him further heirs. Another interesting thing about this is based on biblical criticism, specifically the documentary hypothesis of the Bible, where you have multiple major, early contributors that sort of got meshed into the Old Testament that we know today. And to summarize the conclusions they make, some interpreters think that there could have been an earlier version of this in which Abraham actually did disobeyed God. He wasn't told don't sacrifice your son, he just decided not to, which makes sense based on, you sort of have that earlier push back of Abraham, as we said, bartering with God a bit and pushing back against this plans. Another idea is that an early version of this may have actually had Abraham sacrifice his son. Where he actually does kill his Isaac, which still doesn't quite make sense with the prophecies, but could have also been other editors.
Nicole:It really makes sense for them to cut that part out then, to be like, "well, we can't go in this direction if he actually kills his son."
Ashton:Yeah. And it, the theory is that there was a editor who saw that this was problematic, or a lot of people weren't gonna be able to stomach this and took that out or changed it. Another thing that I thought was interesting is Muslims have a different understanding of this story, the main difference being that in their story it's Ishmael, who is potentially sacrificed, as opposed to Isaac.
Nicole:That makes a little more sense, since he's not the favorite son.
Ashton:Right? I thought that too. It makes more sense because there's not the major prophecies surrounding Ishmael, although there is some discussions about offspring coming from him.
Nicole:Right.
Ashton:So the next story I have is where Abraham is trying to buy land to bury Sarah in. She's just died. She was around 120. He goes and talks to some locals who own a cave, and he wants to buy the land that the cave is on. They have a debate about it, in which they try to give it to him for free, but he refuses and wants to buy the whole plot of land that the cave is on. The main note I had on this is that what is believed to be that cave is still around today. It's currently in Israel, and it's split in half to be part synagogue, part mosque. And it was transferred between Christian and Muslim control for decades, and there have been fights over it. And just in 1994, there was a massacre in which a Jewish man came from the synagogue side and killed 29 Muslims who were praying in the mosque. So it's still pretty heavily contested as like a religious site, because basically, you have three different religions who all like claim it as having religious value to them.
Nicole:Yeah, I love that people try to locate these sites from the Bible, because I just always wondered, like how they did that?
Ashton:Yeah, I mean, this one they built on top of it a really long time ago, during the Herodian. Era. So there is a long history of people thinking this is the right cave.
Nicole:Right, which doesn't necessarily mean that it is the right cave. Yeah. So I want to know how the first people were like, "Oh, this is the cave."
Ashton:So another thing about this is trying to sort out why they felt it was important enough to discuss. It seems like maybe it's just to show how much Abraham respects or love Sarah is what some people interpret it as.
Nicole:Okay. Yeah, cuz it is kind of like a boring part. Like, I'm surprised you got anything out of that part to talk about.
Ashton:Yeah, it mostly was just because it connected to more recent events. With the -
Nicole:with the site
Ashton:Yeah. And the massacre that occurred there.
Nicole:Yeah. Yeah, the only thing that I pulled from that story, which I could have gotten from several other places, too, but I finally noticed is how old Sarah is when she dies. So she's 120, which isn't the most absurd number of years that we've heard people live in the Bible. So Noah apparently lived close to 1000 years, and then his son Shem was around 600. Sarah was 120. Abraham was a lot older and died at 175. And then basically, throughout the Bible, you see people's lifespans declining, and some Christians actually think that they could have lived this long, which is so wild to me. Because, like, when I heard these stories growing up, and they were like, "Yeah, Noah was like 1000." I was just like, okay, whatever, I guess time was different back then, like, they weren't keeping track of the years like we do now. But some people really, truly believe that they lived to be close to 1000 years. And there's like a couple different theories. Some of them are just, you have to believe in God to think they're true. Like one of them is God - people needed to live that long to create enough people to fill the world. Which is like, okay, so you have to believe in God to believe that. But there are a couple like kind of sciency ones that they have. So the first one isn't a sciency one, but some people think God created people to live forever in the Garden of Eden. And then once we had original sin, sin just kind of eroded our lifespan.
Ashton:That's the one I'd always heard.
Nicole:Yeah, the sciency ones that I like, some people think it's because there was less diseases. So since the world was just created, there wasn't enough time for disease to have developed into serious ones. Which my understanding is that every time I get sick, that doesn't mean I'm shortening my life, every time I catch a flu or something that doesn't shorten my lifespan. I mean, obviously, if I catch a deadly disease, and I'm going to die from it, but yeah, so I don't... That one doesn't make sense. And then another one is that it was just a different climate back then. It was like a more tropical climate, and also, the ozone layer was intact, so people were protected from the sun's rays, which I don't see how living in more humidity preserves your life to be longer, either.
Ashton:Yea, they're all stupid.
Nicole:Yeah. And then the last one is, they thought it was because of their diet. So this one is, this one is really reaching. So they could have potentially been vegetarian, even though the Bible doesn't mention anything about them being vegetarian, not specifically anyways. Yeah. So it's theorized that they could have been vegetarian, even though there's no record for that one. And when you look at this one, so vegetarians do live longer than other people. But it's not necessarily because they're vegetarians, I think because like picture of vegetarian right now. It's probably some wealthy, upper class, white lady who does yoga and shops at Trader Joe's. So it's more to do with the people who are vegetarian have a certain lifestyle that just lends them to being healthier.
Ashton:Also, all of the patriarchs in this part of the Bible are shepherds.
Nicole:Yeah.
Ashton:They have livestock.
Nicole:Yeah, I don't know. And there are literally parts in the Bible where they talk about them eating meat, so I don't know why they threw that one out there, too. But yeah, those are the only three that are, you know, make an attempt to base it in science and like why people could have lived that long. It's weird to me to think about how people genuinely believe some of these things. Yeah, I can't wait for us to get into the New Testament when there's literal magic going on.
Ashton:Yeah
Nicole:All right. So next story is Isaac needs a wife.
Ashton:Yeah, the start of this story is my favorite part. Because if you read Genesis 24:2-4, "Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his house, who had charge of all that he had, 'Put your hand under my thigh, and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I live, but will go to my country and to my kindred and get a wife for my son, Isaac.'" So the line where he says, "Put your hand under my thigh." I was very confused by that, and I decided to look into it. And what this actually means is that he actually had his servant put his hand on his testicles and penis and swear on his - on his penis and testicles.
Nicole:They're like, we don't have anything holy to swear on. What's the holiest thing we have available to us? A man's penis.
Ashton:I guess, apparently, because that's where the covenant is, right? The circumcision, the covenant. That's what he's swearing on.
Nicole:Hahaha, amazing.
Ashton:So that part was hilarious. I think there's another part where that happens too. Also the whole discussion of how strongly feels about"don't get a daughter of the Canaanites for my son and go back to my kindred, and find us- find a wife for him." So I was trying to figure out why he feel so strongly about this. And it seems to be that it's another sort of reminder of Jewish superiority. It's meant to be a reminder that their blood is - they don't have Canaanites in their blood. And that is really important because they're setting up for the genocide of Canaanites.
Nicole:Right
Ashton:So if you have Canaanite blood in you, and you're trying to make a case for the wickedness of Canaanites and why they all need to die, it muddies that water a little bit. It's easier to justify a story of God needing to wipe these people out if they're not mixed in with the Jews who are the holy, chosen people.
Nicole:Yeah, it's like that whole idea of so people who do 23andMe or those genetic tests. If it comes back that they don't have any trace of black countries or cultures in their blood, it makes them ,ore racist actually. And then if they find out the other way, like if they find out oh actually do have some black in me, it makes them less racist.
Ashton:Interesting.
Nicole:Yeah.
Ashton:I always figured it would just make them feel justified. "Oh, I'm black too."
Nicole:Oh, yeah.
Ashton:So the servant goes back to their homeland and he goes to a well with his camel. And he has a prayer to God that whatever woman comes to him first and offers him water for his camel, that offers to help him out. Let that be the wife of Isaac. And so Rebecca comes and finds him. And he offers just as he says, to give water for his camel. And he gives her a bunch of jewelry and nose ring and says take me to your family and all this stuff. And she - my favorite part of this is that she runs back. She gets all these -
Nicole:She's so excited to get out of her small town and go see the world.
Ashton:Yeah, she gets all this gold and she's like, "OH MY GOD"
Nicole:Probably her first nose ring too, how exciting?
Ashton:Yeah, I forgot the nose ring. I didn't know they used nose rings back then.
Nicole:I was so excited when I saw that. I was like, does this mean nose rings or Bible sanctioned. Can people, can religious people get nose rings? And I'm sure they ruin that later on in the Bible, because I feel like Christians are pretty judgy about nose rings. That's probably gets ruined later on, bu...
Ashton:Anyways, Rebecca ends up coming back with the servant after they meet her family, he asks their permission, and she comes back to be the wife of Isaac. She puts a veil over her face when she sees Isaac, and she becomes his wife. She's a - I believ a second cousin of his.
Nicole:Yeah, so I made a note about how she sees Isaac, verifies that it's Isaac, and then she covers her face to go see him. So side note on that is that's kind of where the veil tradition comes from covering your face before you see your husband. But I also saw some notes. Some people seeing it as her keeping her independence before meeting him like as like a show of her independence from him. She's keeping a part of herself from her husband before they get married, which is cool. That's not that bad of an interpretation. But other people interpret it as her deceitfulness. So like her a foreshadowing of her keeping things from her husband, which she does later on. And the other thing I noticed is like, I just don't like this chapter, or verse or whatever ends with it saying like, "and so Isaac was comforted after his mother death." And like, that is so...
Ashton:I totally forgot about that.
Nicole:I understand after you lose someone, you - it does help maybe to like find new relationships and like, talk to people and connect with other people. But that's clearly not what is going on here. Because it's just saying that he has sex with her and was comforted. Like you just got a mail order bride sleeps with her and then like,"Oh, now I feel better."
Ashton:Yeah, I remember reading that like, "Oh, so that's what this whole story was about." I thought it was just for him to like, have that sort of - you know marriages back then were kind of a political alliance so I though it was like, it's time for him to become a man, have a wife, make a family.
Nicole:Mm hmm. No, just so he could feel better about his mom dying - which like, ugh. It just, it just puts women in a position of being objects to serve a man in some way with their body. Which Rebecca sounds pretty cool. She could have done it with her mind. Alright, so moving on in their relationship... Oh, no. Before we get into the relationship, Abraham remarries. And so he married somebody named Ketura. And some people theorize that this is actually Hagar, for two reasons. So one reason is that, in that verse somewhere, it says concubine as in singular. So that would imply he only had one concubine, which we know that he already slept with Hagar, right? But in our version, it's not concubine, it's actually plural. But another reason why people think it might be Hagar is because it's not uncommon for people to change their names in the Bible. We saw it before with Abraham and Sarah. Anyway, so back to this whole concubines versus singular concubine. Ours says concubines in the NRSV version. So I thought that maybe Abraham actually had a harem. So I looked into that. Turns out, he doesn't have a harem. Boring- No, just kidding. They just say, concubines, to show that they are like less than Sarah to show that they, like, have a lower status than Sarah did. Because the part that I'm talking about specifically is like when he's like giving things away. He's like, giving his possessions away. And he says,"he gives this to his concubines."
Ashton:Oh, right.
Nicole:Yeah, just to show like he gives Hagar and Ketura the stuff and he just called some concubines to show that they're lower status. All right. Now moving on to Jacob and Esau. Isaac and Rebecca they think Rebecca is barren, so they pray and then magically she's not bearing anymore. Probably what happened is she just - they were having a hard time conceiving, and then they just weren't anymore. So she has twins. And they're causing her a lot of pain because they're like fighting in her womb. And so she prays the Lord, and God tells her that they will lead to separate nations and that they won't get along. Oh, and at the oldest will serve the youngest. And she does not tell Isaac this prophecy. Keeps us to herself. So Esau is firstborn. Jacob is second born, and he's born grasping his heel, which is actually a Hebrew idiom, for deceiving someone. So to grasp someone's heel, kind of like our version like pull someone's leg. It means to deceive them. So they grow up. Esau is more of a jock type character, Jacob's kind of a nerd. Isaac loves his tough and manly older son, which is Esau, and Rebecca loves for quite thinker, little Jacob. Also, probably she loves him more, because God told her that he would be the better one.
Ashton:Right. So I had a note on this about them saying that Rebecca was barren. And then she's not. Because it's a really common theme in the Bible for these women who are married to the patriarch, or major male characters to be barren, even while giving very few other details about the women. Barren seems to be a major detail, based on this idea that the main purpose of the wife of a woman is to conceive offspring for the man.
Nicole:Right, we're just baby makers.
Ashton:Yep. And also, it's like, they definitely don't have the medical ability at this time to determine if a woman is barren. They absolutely do not. Probably they were just having difficulty conceiving and then could, like you said, but they can't tell if a woman is barren. Which means it's equally possible - probably more possible because I think it's more common - for the men to be sterile. The men may just not may not be at their prime or something.
Nicole:Yeah, they noted that he was 40 when he married her. That's not terribly old.
Ashton:Right. Regardless, it's just - none of the men are ever sterile, or...
Nicole:Right, it's always a woman.
Ashton:Yea, they never have difficulty making children. It's always the woman, which they couldn't have known.
Nicole:Right. Alright, so when they are older, Esau is out hunting. And after he's done, he goes into Jacob's tent where Jacob is cooking a stew and he asks for some and Jacob tells him, only if you give me your birthright. When I read this, I kind of assume Jacob was half joking. But Esau exaggerates, and says, "I'm about to die of what is a birthright to me." And so he gives his birth right away for soup. And then the last kind of line of that is, "and so Esau despised his birthright", which doesn't necessarily mean that he hated that he had a birthright or that he was the oldest, it just means that he just didn't place a high value.
Ashton:Right. I, when he, when Esau says that he's about to die, right. Originally, I read that as hyperbole. But I just started to wonder is he literally about to die, because he says that and then gives away his birthright. You know, he says, What do I care about my birthright if I'm about to die, which seems a little more literal?
Nicole:I don't know. I think he was joking. I just think he genuinely does not care. Because like, the whole point of this story is that it's supposed to be. Alright, so from a Christian perspective, it's more about you're putting your fleshly desires over your spiritual ones. So Esau cares more about his like immediate hunger needs than he does about this kind of larger idea that he will one day inherit his father's everything. Which to me now, as an atheist, it's just feels more a story about someone who's smarter and more conniving, able to outsmart someone who is short sighted or maybe kind of dumb.
Ashton:True, so next Isaac goes to Gerar. And we have our third, THIRD wife/sister story, in which Isaac sells Rebecca out as his sister. And this time Abimelech, catches him in the act, sees him fondling his quote, sister, and realizes that he's been tricked. So why all of the wife sister stories?
Nicole:Yeah, and it feels like every time they tell it, if they speed it up. The people, the other people who are being deceived, figure it out faster.
Ashton:Yeah, the tricks not working anymore.
Nicole:Yeah
Ashton:The interpretation I've seen of this is that they're repeating it multiple times to sort of extol the beauty of the matriarchs, of Rebecca and Sarah, and then also to show that the patriarchs are under the protection of God. Because even though they're deceiving people, nothing bad happens to them. It happens to everybody else. That's the interpretation I've seen of it. Another understanding of this is based on biblical criticism. It's that this was probably a variation of a single oral myth that was told. And then when multiple people put together edits to the Bible and stuff like that they had different understandings of the story and then ended up just putting all of them in. Some of them understood it as a story about Abraham, some about a story of Isaac, and then they all got placed into the Bible.
Nicole:That makes more sense, because it's very weird for Isaac to pull the exact same tricks as his father, unless Abraham taught him that lesson early on that, "hey, when you go to a new place, tell them that your wife is actually your sister, and then they'll give you a bunch of treasure and stuff, and nothing's bad's gonna happen to you because God loves us."
Ashton:Yeah. And it seems unlikely that Abraham would try the trick twice after it didn't work. It seems risky. Anyways, they go on, and Isaac is eventually sent away from Gerar because they say he's too much of a big shot.
Nicole:You're too good for us.
Ashton:Yeah, he's assembled a lot of livestock and stuff. And he's really powerful. They send him away, he goes off into the desert, he digs a bunch of wells and quarrels over some of them and doesn't quarrel over others and names them. And then Abimelech comes back and decides that they need to call a truce, because who knows how powerful Isaac's gonna get?
Nicole:Yep. All right. And then, so we go back to Esau who marries two wives. That's not the only thing that his parents aren't happy about. He married Hittite wives, which, it just says a couple times, "they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebecca.
Ashton:Yeah.
Nicole:And they don't go into why. So I had to, of course, look into why these wives are so horrible.
Ashton:I didn't even see anything about them being upset that he had two. Mostly just seemed that they were Hittites.
Nicole:Okay, yeah, you're probably right. So according to the Jewish women's archives, one, I didn't write down their names, but one of them apparently their name means that she wore jewelry. And then the other ones name means that she wore perfume, which, according to Bible times, that's harlot shit. Only harlots wore jewelry and perfume.
Ashton:Wait, but they gave jewelry to Rebecca as a gift.
Nicole:Yeah, I don't know, man. And then, it's also speculated that they were both cheating, which... I don't know, I kind of think if you married two wives, maybe this is an open marriage type situation. They're free to do what they want. And then another thing that apparently was a point of contention was, one of them was an illegitimate child born from adultery.
Ashton:Where are the taking this from? other Jewish texts. It's probably oral commentary on it. There's a lot of additional writings in the Jewish faith.
Nicole:Which always ends up being way more interesting than our version. Okay, so another reason people think that it was so bad for him to marry his wife is that they were also pagan. So they they didn't worship the one true God, they worship false gods. And so his parents were worried that that meant that their God wouldn't bless the union because he's not married to Christian wives. Ok, maybe, but was probably more likely, it's because Hittites are also Canaanites. And so this was a racial problem.
Ashton:Yeah, I was gonna say it seems to be the same kind of Jewish superiority, maintaining this pure backstory of their lineage.
Nicole:Yeah, and this whole kind of purity thing, you know, whether you think it's you should the concept that you should bury some within your same race. That's probably the grossest one. Which I, you know, I have met older Christian women who do think that is the case. And the only reason I could see people wanting to marry within their own race, at least more recently is - I could understand if you are black, not wanting to marry a white person. Because there are some things that white people aren't necessarily going to understand that you go through and may not yet, you know, recognize. Even if they do recognize I'll never truly fully understand what it is to live, the Black experience. And so I can see that as a reason.
Ashton:And dealing with the family too
Nicole:Right, so if you if you kind of feel that way, I can understand that. But if it's just that you just are still living in the 50s and think that, you know, black men shouldn't marry white women or, you know, you shouldn't marry outside your race for racist reasons, like for hateful reasons, then that's messed up. And I do think that Christianity perpetuates that a little bit or at least gives fodder for that argument with this kind of story. And then the other one about marrying within the same religion. I can kind of get that too. I think it would be more okay for a religious woman. Not more okay. But I mean, less conflict. If a religious woman marries a guy who's a good guy, but is atheist, because there's like this whole you know, the whole idea is that the men lead spiritually. And she might be upset that he's not leading spiritually. But she also probably still kind of sees him as being the leader of the house and in some way, and so she's not going to really like
Ashton:rock the boat.
Nicole:Yeah. For me personally, if you ever became religious, I would probably that would cause problems in our relationship down the road, especially if it was it... It wouldn't bother me if you're like, Oh, I think there's a higher power. But certainly, if you started to get into purity culture, and like Christianity in general, and starting to think of yourself as the head of the household, and that you need to be making the decisions because you know what God wants, when it's actually what you want? That would bother me. Yeah. How would you feel if I I started to believe again?
Ashton:Um, I'm not convinced that I would, for sure, leave you, but I think I would be annoyed a lot with it. At this point, the way I see all of the Christian attempts at logic, it just kind of blows my mind and infuriates me. Yeah. So I think there would be a lot of you saying something or talking about praying for somebody and me kind of just eye rolling or something. So I don't know how sustainable that is in a relationship. But the part that I think is different is I do think female Christians tend to have a more generous interpretation of the bible than do male Christians,
Nicole:They're less fundamentalist?
Ashton:They tend to be, especially if they don't have a fundamentalist man that they're married to influencing that.
Nicole:Yeah, well and I think part of that too, is because, God if you're gonna be a Christian woman, you really got to be okay with a lot of shit that they say about women in the Bible. And it's just better to be like, Oh, that's just old thinking or whatever. Try to push a lot of it back into your mind.
Ashton:Yeah, definitely. I guess that's where we'll close out today. And we'll come back in the next episode, talking more about Jacob.
Nicole:Yep, by ya'll.
Ashton:Later.