Bible, the Prequel?

Summary

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The Lord of Spirits Podcast

Episode 99: Bible, the Prequel?
Date: September 13, 2024
Theme: The Seen and Unseen World in Orthodox Christian Tradition—Exploring Prehistory, the Meaning and Origins of Religion, and the Consistency of Orthodox Worship from Prehistoric Times Onward

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick and Fr. Stephen DeYoung journey deep into prehistory—spanning from the Stone Age through the Axial Age—to challenge and clarify what we mean by “religion.” They investigate how the Orthodox Christian experience connects to humanity’s oldest spiritual impulses, discuss the pitfalls of modern definitions, and highlight the profound unity in right worship of the true God from the dawn of human history to today. The episode balances scholarship, humor, and a compelling call to self-reflection for believers today.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Defining “Religion”: Origins, Problems, and a Proposed Solution

• Modern and Ancient Definitions:
  • The word “religion” is a relative newcomer, entering English in the 13th century, originally describing monastics—those “bound” to a disciplined life (13:00–14:00).
  • Pre-modern societies lacked the concept of “a religion” as a separable department of life; religious, social, national, and political life were entwined (21:00–24:00).
  • Ancient Greeks and Romans spoke in terms of “piety” and duty, an ethical virtue alongside courage or justice (16:00–17:45).
  • Religion as a “socket” into which various options can be “plugged in” is post-Enlightenment thinking (26:31).
• Pitfalls of Modern Comparative Religion:
  • Comparing religions often results in vague or forced analogies (e.g., “virgin birth” comparisons between Jesus and Adonis) that flatten differences and obscure true meanings (29:05–33:18).
  • There is a persistent tendency to understand others’ religion through one’s own background, leading especially Protestants and secular Westerners to universalize their framework (e.g., religion as “beliefs” rather than practice) (41:05–45:21).
• A Workable Definition Proposed:
  • “Religion is a way of being in the world that encompasses all levels of reality and expresses itself in practices.” (49:49–55:03)
    1. Way of being in the world (not just belief or worldview).
    2. Encompasses all reality as perceived by that culture (not just “supernatural”).
    3. Expresses itself in practices—worship, ethics, rituals, community structure.
  • This definition avoids false binaries between religion & philosophy and accounts for the fluidity and breadth of religious life.

Notable Quotes:

• “If you say the term ‘religion,’ everybody kind of thinks they know what that means. But if you press people...they can’t tell you a definition.” – Fr. Stephen (6:00)
• “Religion is a way of being in the world that encompasses all levels of reality and expresses itself in practices.” – Fr. Stephen (49:49)

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2. How Comparative Religion Skews Our Perception

• Taxonomies and “Evolution” of Religion:
  • 19th-century European scholars grouped religions (monotheism, polytheism, Abrahamic, etc.), often concluding their own tradition (e.g., German Lutheranism) was history’s spiritual apex (34:00–36:08).
  • The real historical situation is far more complex and locally variable.
• Misconceptions About “Beliefs” and Sacred Texts:
  • Most world traditions—ancient and modern—are not centered on “statements of belief” or a single text as doctrine in the Protestant sense (42:14–45:21).
  • Salvation means different things in different religious traditions; reduction to a single pattern is misleading (42:29–43:19).

Notable Quotes:

• “You can compare a raven and a writing desk. You can compare chalk and cheese...but are you really learning anything?” – Fr. Stephen (29:05)
• “If you love God, you will keep his commandments.” – Fr. Andrew (173:30)

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3. The Axial Age: Worldwide Spiritual Revolution (~800–200 BC)

• What Was the Axial Age?
  • Massive parallel religious/philosophical change across Europe, Asia, and the Near East.
  • In China: rise of Confucianism, Taoism.
  • In India: emergence of Buddhism.
  • In Persia: rise of Zoroastrianism.
  • In Greece: from mythic storytelling (Homer, Hesiod) to philosophy (Plato, Aristotle).
  • In Judea: Second Temple Judaism, synagogue system, textual scholarship (74:25–80:25).
• Key Features:
  • Depersonalization and Relativization of Spirits and Gods:
    • Gods become less capricious personages, more cosmic principles (e.g., Plato’s forms) (81:45).
    • In India/Buddhism: gods become tools or provisional entities, de-emphasized in ultimate spiritual pursuit.
  • Ethics and Community Flourish:
    • Shift from appeasement of fickle gods toward seeking harmony, order, ethical living, the “should” of communal, not merely individual, life (86:32–89:16).
• Example – Judaism:
  • Shift from Torah as the king’s and priests’ administrative manual pre-exile to post-exilic synagogue reading and individual ethical focus (92:27–95:56).

Notable Quotes:

• “We don't understand there was not any real fundamental connection, or even really a sense of ethics [in pre-Axial cult].” – Fr. Stephen (86:47)
• “A new dimension for them”—referring to Torah’s ethical role post-exile (95:45)

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4. The Neolithic Revolution: The Dawn of Paganism

• Neolithic Revolution (~10,000–8,000 BC):
  • Domestication of plants and animals leads to settled life; human population still tiny compared to today (113:41–122:27).
• Religious Shifts:
  • Before settlement, most hunter-gatherers had a single sky or heavenly deity (136:10–136:48).
  • With settlement, mystical reverence for earth and fertility arises—earth goddesses, bull-figures, place spirits. The first step toward multiple deities and “paganism” as seen by the Israelites and early Christians (137:09–138:01).
  • Sacred sites predate settlements; settlements grow around cultic (worship) centers (e.g. Gobekli Tepe, Çatalhöyük) (139:55–146:05).
• Ritual, Afterlife, and Sacrifice:
  • Burials with goods, family ancestor worship, evidence of sacrifice and spirit invocation appear alongside settlement (149:49–151:12).
  • The masculine storm/bull god and feminine earth/chaos goddess—archetypes found in earliest sites and later mythologies (153:19–154:44).
• The Roots of Paganism:
  • Pagan polytheism emerges from the association of various deities and spirits with fixed locations and elements of the natural and social environment, in contrast to earlier, simpler recognition of a universal spirit or god (155:01–155:47).

Notable Quotes:

• “Those megalithic structures were there before anything else...these were built as spiritual sites to which nomadic peoples would come at a certain time of year.” – Fr. Stephen (143:36–145:21)
• “The point is to know and to worship the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and not to worship these other gods.” – Fr. Andrew (172:34)

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5. What About the “Other” Religions?

• Native American and Hunter-Gatherer Religions:
  • Many Native American and Pacific religions, which seem “closer” to monotheism, represent the retention of pre-urban, pre-Neolithic spirituality.
  • Civilizations that underwent Neolithic and urbanization (e.g. Aztecs, Mayans) adopted similar patterns of paganism as Old World societies.
  • Christianity finds resonance—sometimes even a kind of preparatio evangelica—where a memory of a high, universal God is retained (157:35–159:22).

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6. The Consistency of “Right Worship” and Its Implications

• Orthodox Christianity as the Right Worship of the True God
  • The “triumph of Orthodoxy” is not a modern or parochial victory, but continuity with all right worship throughout history, from prehistoric times, through Abraham and Moses, kings, prophets, apostles, church fathers, and the modern Orthodox liturgy (161:00–167:53).
  • Faithfulness in worship, even with poor or undeveloped concepts, is more important than intellectual mastery or “correct” formulae (169:03–173:30).
  • Warning against “absolutizing” formulas and reducing religion to intellectual constructs:
    • True religion requires both right faith and embodied faithfulness; “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (173:30–175:54)

Notable Quotes:

• “Orthodox Christianity is the right worship of the true God...Anywhere in history where the right worship of the true God has taken place, we could say that was Orthodox Christianity.” – Fr. Stephen (163:11–163:47)
• “There is...incredible consistency between Old and New Testaments. Even within the arc of human history that forms the context of the Old and New Testaments.” – Fr. Andrew (175:22)

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Memorable Moments and Notable Quotes

• “Good evening, giant killers, dragon slayers, demon dodgers, and hammerers of homunculi.” – Fr. Andrew, opening greeting (01:05)
• “Even the people who talk about religion the most—by that I mean atheists on the Internet—can’t come up with a good definition.” – Fr. Stephen (06:27)
• “If you ever tried to argue..., you would get these interesting things...non-religious people never go and murder religious people for being religious. [What about Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Lenin?] ‘That’s a religion, not atheism!’” – Fr. Stephen (11:11–12:00)
• “If you love God, you will keep his commandments…” – Multiple times as a unifying refrain throughout.

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Structured Episode Timeline

| Time | Segment / Discussion | |-------------|----------------------------------------| | 00:00–03:00 | Show intro, greeting, course announcements, light banter | | 03:27–16:45 | Origins of the concept “religion” and its early use (Latin, Greek, English) | | 18:06–21:22 | Ancient perspectives: "piety," no concept of "religions" as such | | 23:37–36:24 | Modern taxonomy: religion as separable domain, consequences for modern discourse | | 39:57–45:21 | Common pitfalls: seeing all religion in light of one’s own background (esp. Protestant) | | 49:49–55:03 | Proposed working definition of religion: way of being, all of reality, practices (detailed explanation and implications) | | 61:59–64:02 | No firm distinction between philosophy/religion in the ancient world; practices shape all (with reference to Aristotle, Platonists, etc.) | | 74:25–80:25 | The Axial Age: religious/philosophical revolution, global impact | | 81:45–89:35 | Features of religious change: depersonalization of gods, emergence of ethics, communal flourishing | | 92:23–96:23 | Torah’s role then and post-exile; new layer of ethical/communal obligation | | 113:41–121:23 | Neolithic Revolution, domestication, world population, setup for religious change | | 136:10–138:12 | From “sky God” monotheism to settled life, emergence of earth deities, pagan polytheism | | 139:55–146:05 | The pattern: sacred sites precede settlements (Gobekli Tepe, Çatalhöyük, Jericho) | | 149:07–154:44 | Burial customs, family worship, bull and storm gods—transition to “full” paganism | | 155:01–156:02 | Ubiquity of paganism; exceptions (indigenous hunter-gatherer spirituality) | | 161:07–167:53 | Reflection: continuity of “right worship” as the heart of Orthodoxy, from prehistory to now | | 169:03–175:54 | Final thoughts: the danger of formula-idolatry, the priority of faithfulness and worship |

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Notable Callers & Interactions

• Caleb: Fact-checks on Deuteronomy, asks about public Torah readings pre-exile (124:36–128:15)
  • Fr. Stephen: “The story of Judges is about the people forgetting everything...there’s just this immediate falling away...” (126:23–127:04)
• Catherine: Asks about the timing of the Neolithic period in relation to the biblical flood and Babel narratives (129:20–135:06)
  • Discussion of different models for correlating biblical and archaeological timelines.

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Tone and Style

• Warm, humorous (“giant killers, dragon slayers”), engagingly didactic.
• Self-deprecating banter (e.g., “edible arrangements,” “emotions – usually rage”).
• Academic rigor with approachable language; exemplified by running jokes about Protestant “statement of faith” pages and the Flintstones as a post-apocalyptic fable.
• Continual pastoral application (“if you love God, keep his commandments”) and warnings against spiritual reductionism.

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Conclusion: Takeaway for Listeners

“Bible, the Prequel?” offers a sweeping, deeply integrative look at how humanity’s oldest spiritual yearnings remain fulfilled and unified in the Orthodox worship of the true God. The episode challenges simplifications and warns believers—especially in our age of “meaning crisis”—not to substitute formula or ideology for a lived, faithful orientation to God in worship and life. The take-home message, echoing the Church’s own confession, is that Orthodoxy is not an invention or a late arrival, but the full flowering and faithful continuity of the original, living relationship humanity was always meant to have with its Creator.

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For Further Study:

• See the full transcript for in-depth discussions of ancient texts, terminology development, and anthropological sites.
• Links: Orthodox Studies Institute (orthodoxstudies.org), OrthodoxIntro.org for those seeking to learn more about Orthodoxy.

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Next Episode:

• The Lord of Spirits 100th episode and 4th anniversary—details, special location, and celebration promised.

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Transcript

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He will be a staff for the righteous with which for them to stand and not to fall. And he will be the light of the nations and the hope of those whose hearts are troubled. All who dwell on the earth will fall down and worship him. And they will praise and bless and celebrate with song the lord of spirits. First Enoch, chapter 48, verses 4 through 5. The modern world doesn't acknowledge, but is nevertheless haunted by spirits and angels, demons and saints. In our time, many yearn to break free of the prison of a flat secular materialism, to see and to know reality as it truly is. What is this spiritual reality like? How do we engage with it? Well, how do we permeate everyday life with spiritual presence? Orthodox Christian priests Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Fr. Stephen DeYoung host this live call in show focused on enchantment in creation, the union of the seen and unseen as made by God and experienced by mankind throughout history. Welcome to the Lord of Spirits.

Good evening, giant killers, dragon slayers, demon dodgers, and hammerers of Homunculi. You are listening to the Lord of Spirits podcast. My co Host, Father Stephen DeYoung is with me from Lafayette, Louisiana. And I am Father Andrew Stephen Damick in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, in the beautiful Lehigh Valley. And we are live. So. And if you are listening to us live, you can call us at 855-237-2346 and you can talk to us. We're gonna get your calls in the second half of the show. And our very own Matushka Trudy will be taking those calls before.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Before the commercial.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That new station identification, right? Yes, right before our Trudy. Yeah, yeah. Is we. Her new preferred pronoun?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wow.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't want to commit any microaggressions while we're recording. I thought I'd clarify that before we go live.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, it's the editorial we.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Never mind. Oh, okay. The royal.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, okay, okay. Thank you for clearing that up.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So, this episode.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This episode is sponsored by the Orthodox Studies Institute at St Constantine College, which exists to advance the study and application of Orthodox Christianity and faithfulness to holy tradition. OSI is currently offering a live online course on the Book of Enoch, taught by our very own Father Stephen DeYoung. The course is underway, but by popular demand, OSI has reopened registration, and you can catch up on the recordings of earlier classes and participate in the live classes going forward. So to learn more and to register, go to orthodoxstudies.org Los Registration is now open also for OSI's next course, which is Holy Women of Byzantium, and that's going to begin in October. So Again, go to orthodoxstudies.org los to learn more about the Enoch course.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And on Tuesday night, a participant described this course as lord of spirits in a suit and tie.

Although I do not, in fact, wear a suit and tie.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Do you even own a suit and tie?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I own a suit. I don't think I own a tie anymore. I've been a priest for more than 15 years. I think I no longer own a tie.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So. Well, in the long ago times, there was something called the Stone Age, and this is generally divided into the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods, which just means old, middle, and new people. It is this last period from which archaeology tells us something about ancient religion. But what does this have to do with Christianity? And how should we understand the continuity of religion from that most ancient of detectable prehistory to the orthodox Christianity of our own day? And we should probably start with asking what religion is, though. So I'm assuming everybody agrees on what religion is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Pretty much.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, that's just. That's. The first half has gone.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, there we go. We can roll.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I didn't go to Brady.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh.

Well, I also want you to know, I don't know if you actually prepared for this evening.

I did, by eating my own version of the paleo diet today.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Nice.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So for lunch, I had a pound of bacon and two fingers of scotch.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I said I had breakfast for dinner, which feels pretty. Pretty paleo.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, it depends on what kind of breakfast. Are we talking steak and eggs or eggs and sausage?

That's fair. That's fair.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Was it the cheap sausage with lots of filler?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No, no, this was. This actually comes from a farm out in Western Pennsylvania. Okay. Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So, yeah. Yeah, you're doing all right. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Thank you very much.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

Yeah, so we are. There was kind of a confluence of Lord of Spirits tropes for tonight's episode, because on one hand, we like to start episodes in the Stone Age.

But on the other hand, our topic tonight is the Stone Age. And everyone knows we don't get to our topic until the third half.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Waves of disappointment are now flowing through YouTube.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Right. So which. Which one of those would take effect? Well, the latter. So fair warning, we will, as typical, get to our actual topic in the third half, but until then, we will be laying groundwork.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And as comic books, Star Trek, whatever else. Yes. As. As Father Andrew alluded.

We'Re going to start by talking about what religion is anyway. Right. Because.

You say the term religion and everybody kind of thinks they know what that means.

But if you press people about what that means, often people can't tell you exactly what that means in the sense of trying to give a definition, trying to say, okay, this is what religion is.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Especially something that's going to fit all of the things that we regard as.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Being religions, as being religious, but then also exclude all the things that we generally don't think of as being religious.

So that's actually a lot trickier. Right. Than it sounds. And even the people who talk about religion the most, and by that I mean atheists on the Internet can't come up with a good definition of what religion is. And therefore we could safely say those folks don't know what they're talking about.

But.

A lot of these arguments, you'll hear these sort of broad statements from the fedora gang.

Saying things like, you know, well, religion is responsible for all the war, hate.

Bad things, expired.

Lunch meat in the world. Right. Like, it's just religion. If we just get rid of religion. Right. Then we'd live in this beautiful utopia. Right. Of wonder.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And by meant.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wow. Yeah. And by this, I mean, you know, everyone from edgy teens to Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's true. I mean, it's true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Make these kind of broad, unsupported.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Frankly, childish statements.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

And again, when pressed, right, What. What's religion and what isn't.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I remember back in the late Neolithic era when you and I were undergrads, which I know for you, like lasted a good two months or whatever.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It was a little less than three calendar years.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There we go. Didn't you start your undergrad when you were like 16 or something like that? Is that right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

A little bit later for me.

Yeah. I mean, I remember, I took. I actually took a class.

In philosophy of science, and the whole beginning of the class was the professor essentially eviscerating every definition that a student could come up with that said religion is on this side and science is on this side. And as I told you earlier today, I don't remember the particulars of that class because, again, it was in the late Neolithic period.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But I did come away with a very beautiful sense of, okay, this game is not like what the fedora clan, you know, make it out to be.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Although we're edgy atheists in the early 90s wearing fedoras or more. They're really kind of trilbies, actually. I think not actual fedoras yeah, well.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, trying to think. The atheists I knew.

See, those were the old atheists, right? The guys I'm describing are the quote unquote, new atheists.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

New atheists, yeah, that's true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And old atheists were just a better class of atheists. Right. I mean like, especially if you go real old school, like you're Nietzsche, you're.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh yeah, that guy actually didn't believe in things.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, that's right. Like there were some top level atheists, you know, back in the late 19th and early 20th century, you know, and then, you know, really, I think the first ed, like edgelord publicity seeking atheist who like public atheist to sell books and file law, annoying nuisance lawsuits was Madeline Murray o'. Hare. Oh yes, remember her?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh yes, yes indeed.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Who had an interesting personal life.

But yeah, she was on Phil Donahue show talking about how God doesn't exist, which was a super edgy thing to do even on Phil Donahue's show like in the 80s.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wow.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So yeah, a lot of atheists were in the closet then, at least in the US I think. I think in Europe they were more free to, you know, but they also didn't have the same chip on their shoulder in Europe, I think. I think they just, in Europe they just weren't religious. Yeah, they didn't feel the need to badger anyone about it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

A lot of the new atheist stuff was really not about like presenting any kind of new or better arguments. It was, it was like, okay, let's all point and laugh, you know, is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Honestly, Honestly, Yes, I don't have a religion, but all I'm going to do every day is think about and post about religion. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. So, yeah, but whatever religion is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, whatever, exactly. Whatever. Whatever that, you know, sort of is, you know, and if you ever tried to argue with those people, which I did in the early days of the Internet when the system of tubes had just been connected.

Before I realized it was pointless. You would get these interesting things, you know, because they would say things like, well, non religious people never go and murder religious people for being religious. And you'd bring up, say, you know, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. Right, Lenin. You know, I would get two responses. One, I literally had an atheist once tell me that Lenin's League of the Militant Godless was not a militant atheist organization.

Which was fascinating. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Doesn't do what it says on the tin.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, exactly. It's a sham. And, and.

But more common was they would say that communism or Marxism is a religion.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wow.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So any bad ideology that they don't like, even if it was just as atheistic as them, they would try and say, well, that ideology is a religion or is religion.

So basically everything except science as they understand it. And of course, you know, they've taken like three science classes at high school, so. But.

Yeah, so even there they would get used in a slippery way in the other direction. Right. And there were Christian apologists doing that, too. Josh McDowell at one point published a book called Secular Religions.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, man.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Where he described like, secular humanism and communism and fascism as religions.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So, you know, that's not that. That's not everything I don't like is religion. That was more, in his case, I think he was trying to argue that just everybody is religious. Like people won't admit it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, that's basically kind of valid on a certain level.

[Caleb]

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So then you argue, well, okay, you're a whatever, so that's really your religion. And Christianity is better than that one. Right. I think was his. Was the approach he was trying to take at that point.

So where does the word religion come from? Because it's a relative late comer to English, but it's developed from a Latin word.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. It's only from the 13th. Early 13th century in English. And I don't have the jingle to play Sorry Everybody, which is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm not going to do a whole Latin word.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Late for even a Latin word. And when it comes into English, it's literally from day one, it's being used to describe, like, people who live in a monastery.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Religious.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, right. Which is. Which sounds like a funny way of using it now. Like, you know, especially Catholics talk about the religious and that by that they mean monks and nuns and so forth. But that is the oldest use of it in English is. Is that. But the idea is that they're sort of, you know, bound to this particular life. Right. Which is probably where the Latin religio comes from.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. People argue about this because, you know, journal articles, dissertation.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But the majority opinion, a large majority opinion, is that it comes from. It's the prefix re in front of ligio, which is the same root as ligature, which means to tie or bind something.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

In this case, the re is an intensifier.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. So it's something that binds something together and that fits. Right. With how religion is used. For example, as we've talked about a lot on the show, one of the main purposes of religious ritual, or ritual in general, is to bind together groups of people to maintain, establish re. Establish when broken bonds within a community and between a community and it's God or gods.

So that seems a very.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Apt.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Origin for the term, even if we can't 100% prove it.

Now, before that, though, we start seeing it used in Latin.

Very early in Latin literature.

So.

Cicero uses it, though, in a weird way, by our current standards. But I mean, later on August, St. Augustine uses it. I mean, it's in. It's in Latin. It is a Latin term, albeit one whose meaning shifts over time, like all terms.

Before that, though. Before that, though, you're talking about various words that we now translate with some version of piety, which is based on a different Latin word. Right. So you're not going to find in Greek literature, for example, there's not really a word for religious.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There are some. Sometimes people will translate certain Greek words, like in the New Testament, as religious, but really, if they translate those words, consistency consistently everywhere they translate them, it ends up being something like pious piety. Right, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Which is. Which is like Pius in Latin is sort of like dutiful, basically.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. And so. And piety that's coming, covering the Greek Sebasti, which has a similar idea. The idea is that this is. This is an ethical. Piety is an ethical quality. Right. So we think of religiosity as this sort of accessory that someone may or may not have. Right. In their life.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, he's very pious.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And then some people are less pious and some people aren't at all. Right. But it was considered a sort of ethical virtue.

Right. Alongside things like courage and honor and dealing justly. Right. What made you a good person? Part of that was piety, particularly in the Roman sphere, which is why we get the word piety to translate.

Was, you know, a sense of honoring all of your duties.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, just read, read the Aeneid if you need to know what the Roman idea of piety is like. Aeneas is, he is the pious guy in Roman legend, whereas in.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In Greek circles, it was more seen as another way in which a great man could display his excellence. Right. But Aristotle, for example, will argue that piety, like everything, is a mean between two extremes. So someone can for Aristotle be too pious.

Think religious extremist, I guess.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I don't know, sacrificing one too many goats.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, right. Well, I. I don't know. I think it would more be. I think for him, you'd probably be talking about someone who is like overly obsessed with augury or something. Right. Like who?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

To the point that it detracted from their life or something.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. I've met people like that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's augurs mostly on the Internet. People have stung with augury.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But so like when. When St. Paul says to the people of Athens, it's translated off. And I see that you're very religious. Right.

He's talking about the fact that he sees all these idols and all these shrines. Right. He says it means, I see you take these things very seriously. Yeah. Right. This is something you're. You've invested time and effort as a community in. Right. This is something that is of concern to you. Right.

And so they would have received that as a compliment. Right. Like, I see that you are very courageous or I see that you are very just. Right. The same kind of.

Yeah. So that.

You know, it's important to kind of understand this idea of religion or religiosity of the ancient world. But that doesn't really help us define religion too much.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No. Because, I mean, we're pointing at a certain set of behavior. Well, various sets of behaviors. I shouldn't say certain set of behaviors. Various sets of behaviors. And we're calling all that stuff religion.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right. We're talking about some property of a human who has some dutifulness. Right. Or diligence about something.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, within, like Greek paganism, it's duty to the gods.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But that's not the only religion in the world.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that can take various forms.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Various times in various places that are radically different. Right.

So.

We'Ve talked before on the show about how now our definition of religion as we think about it as modern post enlightenment people, which we all are, whether we like it or not, is very much tied up with the concept of religion. Guns.

Or that there is such a thing as a religion. Right. There are these various individual religions out there. And then if we're going to talk about religion in general. Right. Then like religion is the genus and then there are all these species. Right. Of. Of religions with.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Underneath that. With groupings underneath those. Yeah.

And.

That is a very new way of thinking. So the idea of a religion really.

Starts being spoken of in the 17th century. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, like when ancient people encountered people that we would regard as being from a different religion, they would. I mean, they could certainly see that there's a difference between them. Right. But it was more like, these are your ways. These are our ways. You serve those gods, we serve these gods.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, that was the way that they conceived it. It wasn't like, oh, I have this religion. And you have that religion.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, I practice Greek paganism. And you practice, you know, Indian paganism. Right. Or Persian paganism or Egyptian paganism. Right. Because.

That'S not how they thought of it. Right.

It was, those are your gods. These are my gods. Your gods want you to do XYZ for them. My gods want me to do XYZ for me. Right. And there was a little bit of. Our gods are better than your gods.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sure.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Especially from the Greeks. Because the Greeks, even though their gods were originally Theriomorph, for example.

Are always accusing Egyptians and Indians of worshiping animals.

This proves that our religion is more refined. But what they meant by that was we understand the divine better than they do. Yeah. Not we have a different religion and our religion is better than theirs, and we want to try to convert them to ours.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. That was.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That was not a thing. Right. But so the. The prerequisite in thought for talking about a religion is that there has to be a concept of religion in which religion is an element of human life or human culture that is separable from other elements of human life and human culture.

And this is how we're used to thinking about it.

As modern people. So you have your religion, that's like one basket. You have your politics, that's another basket. You have your ethnic identity, that's another basket. And there may be connections between these baskets. In fact, people would probably argue all of these are connected, but they really are different baskets.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And especially when you look at.

After the 30 years war in Europe. So the 30 years war wrecks Europe, kills like a third of the people.

And then after the thirty Years War. Right. And Catholics and Protestants have finished, for the time being, killing each other and don't want to kill each other anymore. And they take a break from killing, like, Jewish people and other minorities. Short break, but.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They say to prevent this from happening again, we need to reconceive of what binds us together as a people.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. The sort of idea of kind of the secular space on some level is born.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This identity of being, you know, Prussian or something like that, you know, that is above your quote, unquote, religion.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And so it shifts to nationalism. Right. It shifts to nationalism. Instead of, you know, the center of my identity, the center of someone's identity being a Roman Catholic, it becomes. They are a Frenchman.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And so someone can be a Frenchman and be Roman Catholic, someone can be a Frenchman and be Jewish, Someone can be a Frenchman and be Protestant. Right. They had to reconsider this. So that they didn't have to try and kill all the Protestants or in Protestant countries kill all the Roman Catholics. Right.

And so this identity formed and this is, you could definitely see this kind of thinking at the forefront in the United States today.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, totally, yeah. We're Americans first of all.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And then we have all kinds of different religions and different practices, different cultures, but we're all Americans. And that's what's really important. Right.

And what that does is, right, that that shift of identity then relativizes religions, cultures, political views, all of these other things, ethical views. Right. And turns them into these baskets, these ancillary baskets into which different things can be put.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And you get this idea that religion can be a private matter.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That kind of thing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So you have this religion socket, right. And you can plug all these different things in the socket. And once you have that idea that it's a socket with different things you could plug into the socket, then all of those potential plug ins get referred to as religions.

Right, as religions.

And.

So that means.

And it was mainly the Europeans doing this, right? This means that, for example, we're going to talk about a religion, Hinduism.

And we're going to talk about it like it's an organized religion.

Right. And for people who don't know, the term Hinduism is just a catch all. It literally means the religion of the people of the Indus river valley.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. It's not, it's not a religion. It's. Yeah, it's just sort of, it's a whole big collection of traditions of over a billion people.

Most of which are super local.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. And so you get, and we could say the same thing, right, About, I mean, we don't think of it this way, but you could say the same thing about Greek religion.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We've kind of thrown everything into this big paganism pile. Right. But that's, but Hinduism is a religion. Buddhism is a religion, Right. And then, you know, the, the Europeans taxonomize like as if there were denominations of Buddhism.

That had split off or something, as if it was Protestantism.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There's Zen Buddhism and there's Theravada Buddhism and there's, you know.

And so all these, all these things just sort of get.

Normalized. And then once you have that, right. So once we have this idea that there are these different religions that could all be sort of hooked up or that people could choose between, you get the whole concept of comparative religions. Right. And the problem with comparative religion, the idea of comparative religion is not that, you know, you can't compare things. You could compare any two things.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sure.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You could compare a raven in a writing desk. You can compare chalk and cheese. Right.

There are no two things that you cannot compare to one another. The problem is that in order to compare things, you have to have some kind of structure in order to perceive commonalities. So if I was going to write an essay comparing chalk and cheese.

Right. I would have to try to find things that chalk and cheese have in common.

That's tricky. Right. But in order to do that, I'd have to do a couple things. Number one, I would probably have to make those comparisons really broad and not detailed.

Right?

Like, most chalk is yellow or white. Most cheese is yellow or white.

Right. Which is sort of so vague it doesn't tell you anything about chalk or anything about cheese, really. Right. So how helpful is that comparison at that point? Right. Because it's so vague. So that's the first thing that happens. Or you make a comparison in some way that sort of does a little violence to either chalk or cheese.

You can bite off a piece of chalk and you could bite off a piece of cheese.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Many of us out there have done so technically.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Technically true, right? But biting off a piece of chalk and biting off a piece of cheese are two fundamentally different experiences.

And so again, you're kind of having to fudge a little on the side of the chalk, right. In order to make this comparison. And so again, how helpful or useful is that comparison at this point?

Right. And so this is what you find with, with comparative religion, right? You find a lot of square pegs getting beaten into round holes. I think I've mentioned this before on the show.

But you see this, you see this a lot around Christmas and around Pasca, around Nativity and around Pascha. The. Here's all the ways that the story of Jesus is ripped off from fill in the blank pagan story.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, yeah. And first of all, most of them aren't even true, right? Right. Like you get this Mithras had 12 Disciple stuff. There's literally citation needed, like, yeah, making. There is no source for that, Right.

But even the ones that are true, right? Like you'll get the list of people who had a virgin birth.

Right? And invariably when you get that, one of the people on the list is Adonis.

Right? And for those who don't know, the way Adonis was born was Zeus was wandering around one day on his way to probably commit sex crimes. And as Zeus does, as is his want, and he decides to pleasure himself, okay? And from the place where he does that, a tree grows.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. And then given a parental warning at the beginning of this episode, maybe.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't know. I think those were vague enough terms.

And so then years later, a young woman is sitting under the tree. A piece of fruit falls off of the tree and lands in her lap, and she gets pregnant and gives birth to Adonis.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And that's just like in the New Testament, right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, that is exactly like Luke 2. Like, you can clearly see how.

St. Luke stole that to describe Jesus birth. Right.

So you see what I'm saying? This is an example, right? We go. So vague, right? Someone who is born without their parents having participated in conjugal relations. Right.

And then we may say, oh, see, look, Jesus and Adonis.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But then how helpful is that comparison when you actually read the two stories?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It doesn't do justice to either of the two stories. Right. And it just is kind of absurd. Right. But this is because we've got, well, Christianity is a religion and Greek paganism is a religion. So we can sort of chart out and see, you know, how they're similar. This also, and relatedly, this is where you start getting the sort of taxonomies of religion.

And the taxonomies of religion kind of take two forms. One form is, well, okay, we're gonna. We're gonna group things together that we've decided are similar.

Right? So you get these big categories like monotheism, which, again, it's in the 17th century when people start using that word in Europe.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. See episode one of the Lord of.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The Dead podcast, Even though they're Greek words, Monos and theos. Right. So the church fathers could have talked about monotheism all day if they wanted to, but they didn't use the term.

There's monotheism and there's polytheism. Right. So here's two categories. And all the religions that we're gonna say, for the sake of argument, only have one God, we're gonna put the monotheism category, like, what do you do with the hurrah Mazda? What do you do? Anyway.

And then all these other pagan religions where they talk about lots of gods, we're going to put those over the polytheism category, and you start getting these groupings like, oh, the Abrahamic religions.

That somehow involve Abraham. I'll get grouped over here. And you sort of group together things that you think are alike.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But again, your decision that they're alike is based on these sort of bad, awkward comparisons in a lot of cases.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And then also you start getting the taxonomies which lead inevitably to the 19th century German conclusion that all of human religion has culminated in 19th century German Lutheranism.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I feel like I've heard that somewhere before. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because, you know, starting with the most primitive, you know, religion, the most primitive polytheism. Right.

In their, their taxonomies, the crudest, most idolatrous, you know, polytheism working their way up to the stately cadence of the German chorale. Right.

And so once we have these idea of these discrete religions, we could chart them into this evolutionary framework of, you know, religion becoming more and more refined until it inevitably leads to us, whoever us is.

I guess earlier in the show, Trudy is the U.S.

Trudy is the height of all Trishka. Trudy is the pinnacle of development, apparently self proclaimed. That's what's crazy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wow.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And so.

That'S descriptive. All that we just talked about is kind of descriptive. Right. In terms of what has happened and how the term religion and religions came into use and are used. That doesn't really help us understand what religion is though. Right. Because.

As we just talked about, a lot of the fruit of those taxonomies and comparative religion are unhelpful and phony and do violence to the actual religious expressions that they're talking about.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And I mean, and just to kind of like.

Sometimes people say things like, well, religion is about God, but there are religions that don't have any kind of God figure or, you know, religion.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The way we think of God.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. They don't, you know, religion is about spiritual things. Well, you know, like, I mean, not that you should ever take Scientology seriously and. Yeah, never take it seriously. I mean, it does seriously bad things.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. But you should not take it as religious money.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, definitely never give them money. But like their whole deal is that is sort of using this kind of scientific.

Yeah. You know, to measure things. You know, like the whole thing is like that they're kind of a non spiritual religion, you know, like.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Anyway, let me tell you, as somebody who's read all 10 volumes of Mission Earth, L. Rod Hubbard was not even a good sci fi author.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Why did you do that? That I need to know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because I was really bored one summer. Like really bored. And there was. And they had all of them at the local library.

[Catherine]

Wow.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I remember, I remember the ads for dianetics in the 1980s, you know, like with the volcano and all that kind of stuff. Dianetics?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, you're 14 years old, you know, you can only afford so many comic books to read.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And your judgment is not that great at 14.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And it's just like, I'm gonna read sci fi novels. And you know, you've gone through the classics, you've gone through Ray Bradbury, you've gone through Isaac Asimov, you're running out of stuff. Right. There's a long summer yawning out ahead of you.

What are you to do the summer.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Father Stephen hit rock bottom?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, you say whatever. And by book six of Mission Earth, trust me, you're like, why am I reading this? This is horrible. Even as a 14 year old. But now you're six books in out of 10, 60% is a failing grade. Right.

Just stop now. If you're a penny and for a pound, if you win the L. Ron.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hubbard novels, aren't you failing at life?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I, I don't know. I don't know. But I, I, I finished them.

And I am. Even if you like bad sci fi novels, I am not recommending them because they are in places literally pornographic.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, they're not so bad. They're good. They're just so bad. They're bad.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, they're just bad.

Like Elrod Hubbard was clearly just a giant, weird dysfunctional id, like pouring out his weirdest and deepest thoughts and fantasies onto a page.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Could it be Satan's?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So.

Yeah.

But technically they're a religion, I guess.

They have 501C3 status, I think, still. Yeah, yeah, that's.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Although in some countries they're not a religion legal.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

Wiser countries, perhaps.

So.

There'S also a major pitfall here that we have to avoid as we're trying to come up with some kind of working definition of what religion is.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that pitfall is one that almost everyone falls into when they start talking about this and that is that they see religion in general in terms of their own religious background. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They define other religions to be like whatever they're used to, but just sort of trade out some details.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. And so this leads to innumerable understandings, misunderstandings. If you've ever had serious conversations with someone of another religion, even if we're talking about religious stuff that at one point was very close, like trying to talk to an orthodox Jewish person, one of the big obstacles is going to be that they're going to understand Christianity through the lens of rabbinical Judaism.

And you, if you're a Christian, are going to kind of understand Judaism through the lens of Christianity.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. Like one really common thing, for instance, is especially, you know, frankly, you know, Within. Within Protestantism, there's this idea of defining religion in terms of beliefs. Right. And it's funny, I remember this isn't true anymore, but I remember the day that I. That I discovered that Facebook was Protestant because it said you could define your religious views. I'm like, religious views, views.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

These are my views. Yeah. Yeah. But you'll see a lot of that, even an older textbook. Right. Here are the core beliefs or core tenets of Hinduism. Here are the core tenets of Islam.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

Or even the idea that, like, well, everybody's trying to get salvation and they just have different ideas about how you get there. I'm like, no, they're not. The goals of different religions are very different from each other.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And calling it salvation, you have to do one of those really broad comparisons where you're looping in things that are very unlike.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And calling them the same. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

A Hindu yogin. Salvation for him is being released from.

Embodied selfhood and becoming not only disembodied, but no longer a self. That's, quote, unquote, salvation. Within that context, that is a very different goal than your local Baptist. And what he's trying to achieve when.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He goes to church on Sunday, especially if he knows about the bodily resurrection. Right. Is looking forward to eternal life.

They're kind of opposites. Yeah, yeah. And the whole beliefs thing. Right. Again, that's. Oh, well, if you believe xyz, boom. You're a Hindu. No, you're not.

You believe xyz. Oh, now you're a member of Shinto. No, you're not.

Sorry.

Basement dwelling, Weep. Right. Just because you read some stuff about Japan and decided you wanted to be Shinto, that doesn't make you Shinto, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, it does not.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And, you know, just because you read one book about Haile Selassie, you are not a Rastafarian now, Right.

It's not just a question of, you know, I think these are good ideas, therefore I am now a blank. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And, yeah, you also get, you know, in these discussions, you'll see especially again from. And when we say we're not just saying, oh, Protestants do this, we're saying people from a Protestant religious background, people who live in Protestant countries, even if they're not religious. Right. Tend to think about religion in these ways because it's sort of the majority religion of their country. Right. They'll talk about, oh, these are the sacred texts. Right. So, like, Christians have the Bible and Jewish people just have the Old Testament and Muslims have the Quran, and Hindus have, like, The Vedas or the Bhagavad Gita or something.

You know. Right. As if these texts and Taoists have the Tao Te Ching. Right. And these are all just. These books all just function the same way in all of these quote unquote religions that the Bible functions for an American evangelical Protestant. Right. In their mind.

And this is like, no, right. Of course not. And it's one of the most amazing things in the world.

On the interwebs.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And you can see this any day of the week if you watch an atheist arguing with a Christian. Right. The atheist will take like the most fundamentalist possible literal interpretation of every verse of Scripture.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And the Christian of whatever stripe arguing with it will desperately try to explain, like, look, no one reads it that way.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Like, that's not right. No one thinks it means that no one reads it that way.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And get super frustrated. But then if that same Christian goes and talks to a Muslim, he will take the most fundamentalist possible literal interpretation of any verse of the Quran.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

While the Muslim tries to explain. Nobody reads it that way. Right.

And it's because both that Christian and that atheist are Americans. And so evangelical Christianity is what's around them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, so they just assume that that's how everyone reads their sacred text.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And also just the intellectual habit of reductionism.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, which is a bad habit, people.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Yeah. And on the other side, to be fair, so they can't say, I mean, the US Is a majority Protestant and majority Evangelical Protestant country. Right.

But you'll see this sometimes with high church Protestants and Roman Catholics and even some Orthodox people where they'll talk about other religions in terms of, like, hierarchical structures. Right. Like they try to make the Dalai Lama like the Pope of Buddhism or something.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I did notice one time, though, that maybe this is how it works that I actually did. I did a little survey of media, of media that's talking about religion, and I found out that at least American media uses the phrase His Holiness more often for the Dalai Lama than they do for the Pope. I was like, that's really kind of interesting. They're using this indirect honorific for this religious leader and not for the one who's actually probably more familiar for using that title. It's pretty funny. I don't know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think Protestant America is more deeply anti Catholic than they are deeply anti Buddhist.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Plus you have the whole liberal. Well, that's another culture.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Element of.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, that's where.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's how they call him yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Whereas most popes are white people.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So there are all kinds of those misunderstandings. Right. And they, they go in all ways. Okay, so.

What can we, what can we come up with as a definition of religion that is both workable, Right. Meaning there aren't obvious massive flaws in it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Obvious massive flaws would be exclude some things that are obviously religious.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or include some things that obviously aren't.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Like the classic example would be saying, well, religion is about how you relate to God or gods and people saying, okay, well then Buddhism is not a religion because it's sort of non theistic, therefore it's a philosophy. But yeah, I mean, take a look at any kind of Buddhist practice people.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And I don't mean burning incidents, man.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I don't mean California Buddhism. Okay. I mean, I mean Buddhism and where it's native and that is clearly a religion.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Just look at it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Just look at it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, yes. Richard Gere's pool parties are not actual Buddhist rituals.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I know there's probably a lot of disappointed people out there that just.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I know like what, I know what like that means. I've never been to church.

So. And then. But also a working definition meaning a definition that's actually useful for something.

That'S not like so vague in some way in order to not transgress those limits that it's not. There's nothing to be derived from it. Right. So here's what we're proposing tonight, right. As sort of a working and workable definition of religion. That religion is a way of being in the world that encompasses all levels of reality and expresses itself in practices.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So there's three sort of key parts there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

The first one is talking about a way of being in the world, right? Because. And the reason it's framed that way is that we want to get away from the idea of thought or ideas or beliefs, right. That could be included in a way of being in the world.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But sort of isn't required.

Right? So a way of being in the world can include.

Right. Who, who you think God is, a relationship you believe you have with him. Right. It could include all these things, right. Every belief that any form of Christian or Jewish person or Muslim would events and say this is, this is a key part of our religion is believing this, right. That is encompassed in that idea of a way of being in the world. But this also encompasses your peasant farmer who doesn't care about theology.

Right? But who goes and participates in the festivals, goes and participates in the sacrifices, right?

Has the, what anybody Would call the quote unquote, religious elements of weddings, funerals, births, rites of initiation. Right. All of these things. Right, yeah. Has that in a non reflective or pre reflective way. Right. Because religion has to include that too. Yeah. Right. So that's why I use the. A way of being in the world. Not a way of thinking or a worldview, but a way of being in the world. Right.

So the second piece is that it encompasses all levels of reality.

And that sounds, I know, like a weird circumlocution. But if we start talking about the natural and the supernatural or the spiritual and the material.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, that's one particular way of looking at that stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. You're not going to include all.

Religion in that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Most of what we would consider religion throughout the history of the world does not think of the world that way.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Does not make those distinctions. Right, yeah. But the idea is that it encompasses. It encompasses all of reality as reality is conceived by those people.

Right.

So that encompasses everything real. Right. And this is to get away from the idea that religion is just this element that covers this one part of life.

Right. Because it's not really how religion has functioned historically. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And most people who think of themselves as religious would not say, oh, well, that's just this little part of my life over here.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, there are people like that for sure. There are, but most. Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In the modern era there are people like that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

But that is. Cover most of world history. And then finally we have the. Expresses itself in practices. Right.

And that is that there is some kind of. Not just things you do and things you don't do, but that those form a routine or a habit or a cycle or. Right. Repeated. Repeated practices. And we're using the term practices because this encompasses things like worship. Right. But also encompasses things like ethical considerations.

And political considerations in the classical sense. Right. Now, politics classically was just ethics at the level of community.

Right. So the way a person should govern their own life was seen as being of a piece of. With the way a ruler should govern a city, for example. Right. Aristotle writes his ethics, then his politics.

So we're using practices because it encompasses all that encompasses everything from fasting and dietary stuff to how and when you worship and who leads it and how you structure your family unit and how you write. All of these things are encompassed by this idea of practices.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And practices are kind of inescapable.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Like, I mean, and this is. And this again, not to pick too much on our Protestant friends, but there is this idea amongst A lot of Protestants, certainly the kind that I was when I was growing up that had this idea that the practices you engage in, especially like for instance, how you worship is kind of optional. Right. Like they would certainly say you should worship, but the particular way in which you do it. Right. These specific practices of worship, that's kind of a matter of taste or preference, you know, so it's kind of switchoutable. Right. And one of the reasons that on the other side that you can kind of see this is.

Go to the website of almost, frankly almost any Protestant church and you will find a statement of faith if they're going to have include something like this. Right. A statement of faith. And the statement of faith is a list of beliefs. But rarely is there like a list of practices because the beliefs are the core thing. And I remember even hearing a lot of people say, like one major religious practice obviously is music. Say, well, it doesn't matter exactly what kind of music you use as long as the lyrics are expressing the beliefs correctly. So again, it's this idea that practices are sort of variable and optional and all that kind of stuff. But again, historically that's not the case. And early Protestants, of course, would not have seen it that way either. Like, this is a more of a modern Protestant kind of idea.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And this is.

And we want to be fair. And part of it is this thing that's been sort of bred into a lot of our Protestant friends. Right. Like.

Pretty much any Protestant I've ever known. In a low stakes conversation, in a low stakes friendly conversation, if you say, should somebody who becomes a Christian get baptized? They're going to say yes. And if you say if somebody, should somebody who becomes a Christian attend Sunday worship, they're going to say yes. You know, should somebody who's going to be Christian, should they not participate in sexual immorality? No, they should not. Right. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right. But if anyone says that, even with the word should a little too forcefully. Right. Works righteousness, right. There's this blanching, there's this pulling back of, well, no, none of those things are required for salvation. None of those. None of those things, Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, there's just a sort of a should but not must.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. But then if you wrap around and say, well, okay, so wait a minute, wait a minute, let's pause, lower the stakes a second. Right. Are you saying, right, that if someone, you know, comes and says they got saved on this date, but then they never go to church, they never get baptized and they're a fornicator and a murderer, that they're gonna, that they're gonna go to heaven because they got saved on that date and it doesn't matter. Yeah. And they're gonna say, well, no. Right. They're gonna say they never really got saved then, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And if you say, well, then so aren't you saying those things are required for salvation? They'll be like, no, they're not. Right. So that's what I mean by this ambivalence. Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, it's, it's, it's. I mean, we're not gonna solve this tonight, but it's the whole faith works thing we, we've talked about.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

In detail before, but that's where that comes from.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Been sort of bred in. Yeah. And exhibit A, they, I don't know, folks know on YouTube, the good folks at Ancient Faith took a clip from our last episode and.

Of some things I said to that to the effect of what I just said. And the comment section is kind of amazing. Right. In the knee jerk reactions. And I say knee jerk reaction because.

In some cases it's very clear that there was not any intent to try to figure out what I was actually saying. There was just a reaction, like a visceral reaction to this. Sounds like a false gospel of works righteousness, because beware. Right?

But again, it practices, right? Every Protestant I know goes to church at least most Sundays and thinks that does it because they think they should. They go get baptized. Whenever their church offers communion, they participate in it.

You know, they refrain from gross sin as best they can. When they do sin, they ask for forgiveness. Right? Like, I don't know any Protestants who don't do that. I don't know any Protestants who are like, you know, I'm going to do zero good works between getting saved and dying. Right? Just to prove that the one who does not work and is reckoned as grace. Right. I don't know anyone like that. Right. I doubt you do either if you do get them help.

So obviously Protestants aren't that way. And acting like Protestants are that way, like some Roman Catholic apologists do sometimes is just ridiculous and childish. Right.

We get it. But.

You know, we need to stop. Be careful with the knee jerk reaction. Right? Because probably even when I said practices, practices. Well, you got practice it.

Yeah, you do, right? We all know you do. We all know you do. And you can frame it as well. That's part of sanctification, not justification. Whatever you need to do so that we can have the conversation. Okay, cool. But Right. But there's practices involved. Right. There just are in religion. Right.

This definition is also nice because we don't have to worry about this whole distinction between what is a religion or what is religion and what is philosophy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Especially because. Yeah. I mean, this idea of the difference between religion and philosophy, it's like, well, people think of the philosophy department, you know, a bunch of guys sitting around thinking thoughts, writing books about those thoughts and teaching classes. But I mean, ancient philosophy, there were religious, what we would regard as religious practices. I mean, heck, ancient mathematics.

There was religious practice that went along with it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The mysticism of numbers. And on top of all that, the church fathers often refer to Christianity as the true philosophy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. And even people who distinguish between philosophy and religion acknowledge that Pythagoreanism was a religion.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

For example. But Platonists at the academy, they had patterns of fasting, they spent periods of time in meditation. Right. All of these things. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It wasn't Aristotle's school like in.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In a temple of Apollo.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, There you go.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So I know you've been told by the Enlightenment, in the Enlightenment, all of the new, the newfound atheists, or worshipers of pure reason.

Recast Socrates and Plato and Aristotle is like them in togas. Right.

And said, oh, just like I have risen above the superstitious religion of my day, which is Christianity, they rose above the primitive religion of their day, which was Greek paganism. We've talked about this before on the show. That's absolute nonsense.

Absolute nonsense. Now, we're going to talk a little more about that in the second half. They thought they had a more refined version of religion.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But they didn't think it was a separate religion. They didn't have a concept of a religion, but they didn't feel like they had absented themselves from the general civic and religious life of Athens, for example.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. They weren't dissenting by doing that. They weren't Quakers living in the midst of Anglicans.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

And last sort of note.

Within practices, another reason why the term practices, I think is good is that when we talk about practices, practices within the same sort of religious milieu can admit of variation based on time and place. Right. So a good example of that is dietary stuff.

Right. Almost all religious expressions have some kind of dietary stuff. It may be stuff you're not allowed to eat ever, it may be fasting patterns. Right. But there's. There's something connected to eating, and of course that's going to be shaped a little in different parts of the world. Right. Different kinds of terrain based on what's available.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And sacrifices are meals. So we're including sacrifices here. What animals you sacrifice. Right. And what kind of grain offerings you offer are going to vary based on what the local grain is and are going to vary based on. Right. What the local wildlife. Right. What the local domesticated animals are. Right.

And so the fact that there's a difference within that practice based on where you are does not necessarily mean, oh, now this is an entirely different religious expression. Right. Because they're forbidden to eat pork and they're in a place where there are no pigs anyway. Right. That's accidental. The fact that they're living in a place with no pigs is accidental or the fact that they're now offering rice cakes instead of wheat cakes is accidental. Right. The fundamental religious expression, the fundamental religious practice is the same.

[Caleb]

Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep.

All right. Well, having run through all of that, which is much more memorable than the philosophy of science course I took back during the late Neolithic period, we're going to go ahead and take our first break and we'll be right back with your calls on this episode of the Lord of Spirits.

Father Andrew, Stephen Damick and father Stephen DeYoung will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF-RADIO.

[Matushka Trudy]

The existence of fools for Christ in the Orthodox tradition mystifies many people, even some within the Orthodox Church itself. People often wonder what person purpose these sometimes comical and oftentimes tragically misunderstood saints serve in the life of the church, especially given their unconventional and seemingly bizarre behaviors. In Holy Fools by Oswin Creighton, we begin to gain a better understanding of these saints curious manner of serving Christ as we learn about the extraordinary lives of 20 of the most well known fools for Christ in a series of brief hagiographies available [e-mail] Again, that is store.ancient faith.com we're back now with the.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Lord of Spirits with Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung. If you have a question, call now at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF-RADIO.

Hey, welcome back, everybody. It's the second half of the Lord of Spirits podcast and this is episode 99, if you can believe it. Anybody know exactly how many hours we've been talking now? I feel like I've been talking to you for a long time.

Yeah. So next Time. What's that?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's interminable, interpretable. It's probably related to. I was thinking during that commercial, right, Like, I've got the whole misunderstood comical fool part down. It's the saint part. Oh, that's the tricky bit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, it's easy to throw sausages at people and say hypocrite. Hypocrite.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, who hasn't, right?

I've been known to throw the sausage or two at some hypocrites, but, yeah. So, yeah, this is episode 99, and next episode will be episode 100. And we will also be celebrating our fourth anniversary.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That would be a nice round numbered episode to just end the show with, wouldn't it?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Huh? Just a hundred idea. Could just sort of. Yeah. Cash in, take retirement. I don't know. I'm kind of done talking to you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So I'm not actually employed by Faith, so I get no retirement.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'll have to think I'll send you a fruit basket.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Not even a gold watch?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Not even a gold watch.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

A fruit basket. Fruit basket. Or like an edible arrangement, at least. Ooh, Ooh.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'll have to see what's available in your area.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Can we get the AF ur spring for that?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You do kind of live in the sticks.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I do not live in the sticks. I live in a swamp. Oh, excuse me. The sticks are all soggy and rotten. Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like, you do live in a soggy place.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Especially now, the day after a hurricane.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. So. But. But yeah. So next week. Not next week, next time that's two weeks from today is episode one 100. It'll be our fourth anniversary. So I hope everybody will tune in. It'll be a very, very special next time on a very special episode of the Lord of Spirits. And I actually will be not here in the tower of Podcasting in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, perched high atop the gateway to the underworld. That is the building that I actually am currently in. This is a gateway to the underworld. Down far beneath me, many floors beneath. I will be in the very belly of the beast, the very liver of Leviathan. Chesterton, Indiana.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, the poor man's Ohio.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's true. That's true. There's people sing on YouTube, like, don't stop this show.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Father's never.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, at some point, guys, at least one of us is gonna die, and it's probably gonna be Father Stephen.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

First, so probably put your money down. So. Although only the good die young. So.

I probably shouldn't tell you in advance, but the real reason the. The Real reason that next time is going to be a very special episode is that they're luring you to HQ for an intervention.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh.

Like Father Andrew. We know you like Father Stephen, but.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, I think it's more the Tolkien thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh. Oh.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh.

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, it is true. It is true that I'm ending the Tolkien podcast. Maybe they're trying to make that go faster or something. I don't know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I think it's when you started commissioning the icons that we all knew that you had a problem.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, should Balrogs have halos in addition to wings? I don't. I'm not sure yet.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But should it be spelled barlog and should it look like Mike Tyson? These are the real questions.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wow. Oh, man, that's. That's a deep cut right there. Nice. So, anyway, yeah, so next time is going to be episode 100.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Thank you. Thank you. Episode 100 and our fourth anniversary. It's hard to believe. It is hard to believe. We've been doing this since 2020. A lot has happened since then.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We need to get people chanting four more years. That's what we.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Come on, do it on. Do it on YouTube. You guys start chanting four more years in the chats. They're not doing it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, the young Damick. 24.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Disobedience.

Yeah. Okay. Where were we?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, we're working our way back.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We spent a lot of that time right. In the early modern period.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

With a couple dips back into ancient Rome and ancient Greece. Now we're. Now we're going to go back even further.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All the way back to the year 2000.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No, someone on Facebook is saying four more years. So Facebook has outstripped the YouTubes this time. Take that, YouTubes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. There's a very different ecosystem in the YouTube live chats.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, it's true. Oh, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And I say this as someone who has spent hours mostly trolling in YouTube live chats.

There's a whole different vibe.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't know. I haven't seen a lot of quality trolling. When I go back and look at the live chat replay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like, sometimes I can look at the live chat replay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Some other. I say, now they're saying. Now they're saying four more years. And actually one person saying, 100 more years. Look, look, you're not.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm not living 100 more years. You think I'm a vampire.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like, we're going to be lucky to get 20 more years.

Frankly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So the.

Yeah, like, sometimes I Say something during the episode. And so you guys like take down the live stream and then re upload it as a video, like to remove what I said. And so then I can't see the live chat. Like live chat replay disappears when you do. Right, it's true. But the times when I can, the relatively few times where I can go and look at the live chat replay, I don't see a lot of quality trolling.

And. And I'm not looking at it. Right. I'm not looking at it during the show. But Father Andrew is. And Father Andrew is eminently trollable.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Thanks.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

As I prove in every episode.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's because I'm just so tender hearted.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean anybody compared to you is tender hearted.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, that's true, that's true. Yeah. Compared to me, week old steak is tender. But.

I sometimes experience emotions when inebriated.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No feelings.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No feelings, just emotions. And the emotion is usually rage. But.

Just channel everything into that.

But anyway, we're going back to the middle part of the first millennium bc.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Back in the day.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Even further back in the day.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Pre day.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Even further back than the year 2000. I like that now. You know, when I was a kid, the future was always the year 2000.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I know, I know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And now we can say like way back in the long ago time, all the way back in the year 2000.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Where are the flying cars? Where.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But no, we're not, we're not going quite to 2000 BC yet. We're going to go back further than that. But right now we're around 500 BC, plus or minus 250 years before Avery Brooks was born. Yeah. So the middle part. Middle part. Congratulations to everybody on surviving the Bell riots since Father Andrew brought it up.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So the middle part of the first millennium BC which is referred to as the Axial Age.

A X, I, A L.

Not the Axel Age.

Which would be either a Beverly Hills Cop reference or something about Guns N Roses.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Exactly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

But this is the Axial Age. That term.

Came from a. Was coined by a 20th century German. Early 20th century German. And I know what you're thinking. I know what you're thinking. Slow down. He was German. Swiss.

He was the more peaceful, neutral kind of German.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Early 20th century Germans.

Lot of. Lot of not so great stuff. But Swiss. He's Swiss. Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Supplier. He was bodyguards to the Pope.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. He was probably just, you know, depositing the wealth of those evil Germans from Germany proper in Swiss banks.

I'm just slandering this anthropologist for no reason. Like, anyway.

His name is Jaspers, by the way. Good German name. I was like, what is happening?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Anyway.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So he coins this term to describe this period for the center portion of the first millennium B.C. and the reason he wants to coin a term to describe this age or this era is that there's this massive transition, massive shifting of religious forms.

Literally all over the world at that time.

And by all over the world, I mean from China to Greece to Egypt.

Right. To Judea. To write anywhere you want to pick.

What are some of the things that are going on during this period? Well, if we're talking about Judaism, we get really the existence of Judaism proper. Right. During this period.

The Hebrew Scriptures are being compiled, edited, Right. In some cases for some books composed, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. This is post exile, like when they come back from babylon.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, 515 is the exile. Right. That's the beginning of Second Temple Judaism. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean there are of course some people who claim.

And you know, I would just say to people, listen to some of the recent whole Council of God episodes, some people who claim that the whole Hebrew Scriptures were written at this period. But there's all kinds of internal evidence that says that that is not the case.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But that's why I talked about in some cases composition, in other cases compilation and editing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Because I mean the Hebrew Scriptures were written over a long period.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

But you also have in addition to that, right. This transformation in what becomes Judaism over against. Right. The religion of Israel and Judah, Judaism, you see the rise of synagogues, you see the rise of the Pharisees as a class of scribes and textual scholars. Because you have the scriptures being composed, edited, compiled. Right. And the forms. Right. The forms that pre existed, that the forms from ancient Israel and ancient Judah still exist. There's a second Temple there, the temple's functioning, sacrifices are being offered, the same feasts are being. All those things are still happening right from the Torah that were happening before the exile. Right.

In terms of religious phenomena. But you also now have this shift in these new religious phenomena related to the text of the Hebrew Scriptures and related to the scholars of that text and the synagogue system.

As a means of.

Of gathering and religious observance. So that's a change, that's a shift.

There's continuity, but there's also now this new layer, this new phenomenon that gets added.

If you want to go over to Greece at the very beginning of this period, you have Homer and Hesiod writing.

And then once you get to the middle of this period, you've got the rise of Philosophy and philosophical schools in Greece.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And, you know, like, you might think like Homer and Hesiod, like, how is that a big change? Well.

Most indications are that a lot of what they're writing was existed in some kind of oral form.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And now it's being written down.

That kind of fixes it in a way that.

Shifts. It's not quite the same, probably basically the same content, but now you're getting stuff written down. It's a literary function now.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And the reading and interpretation of, for example, Homer's text is going to become the basis of education for a couple thousand years.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Which that would well into the Christian period. Yeah. Right. I mean, and like, that would be very different if it had remained purely an oral thing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Very, very different.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

If you want to go over to China. Right. Lao Tzu is in this period, the Dao Te Ching, the founders of almost every school of what's considered quote, unquote, Chinese philosophy are all during this period. If you want to go to India, Buddhism emerges in this period.

If you want to go to Persia, Zoroastrianism emerges at this period.

So there is something happening all over the world during this period. And that's why there was a need for anthropologists studying this period and studying ancient religion to say we need a term for this era, this, this period of time when these shifts are happening worldwide. Right. And when we look at those shifts, you may have already noticed, as we were giving examples, there are some through lines. Right. There, there are some. There are some similar particular phenomena that are going on in these different places. And so we could talk about some especially within paganism. Right. So Old Testament religion. Right. Ancient Israel's religion and Judaism is a little bit of a special case, but we'll come back to that because there are some through lines there too. But everywhere else we're talking about forms of paganism. Right. And so there are some things we can see. So one of them is.

The depersonalization or the relativization of spirits and gods.

Right. Within paganism. So, for example, Plato's forms. We've talked about this on the show before. Plato's forms are basically the Greek gods and goddesses stripped of all of the anthropomorphic personhood. Yeah, right. Which Plato read the Euthyphro. Right. Believes is unworthy to ascribe to them. Right. So instead of a God of justice who is a philanderer and goes around doing these things. Right. You have justice itself.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And, you know, you even get stuff that's kind of in between, like.

You know, early you get this idea of muses, these very specific goddesses who inspire people to do particular artistic things. But then you also have this sense of like. Like we might describe the spirit of music, but when someone says that, they don't mean a spirit. Exactly. You know, but there's this. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's a deep, as you said, it's a depersonalization, but still with a sense of a spiritual reality.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And the personal elements get relativized. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So you still have Plato and Aristotle engaging in meditative practice. Right. To connect with things that they think are divine. Right. They've just sort of depersonified them. Right. Made them less human in the sense of possessing human foibles. Right.

But you can also see this similarly, frankly, in. In the move of Buddhism out of Hinduism, the way, again, most forms of Buddhism treat the idea of gods and spirits from within Hinduism. Right. Where it's not sort of like, well, we deny all those things exist any more than Plato did. But they become relativized. Right. They become principles. They can become kind of depersonified. They become tools or elements of a ladder that might be useful to someone.

Spiritually at a certain level of their development. But there are sort of more refined forms that go beyond that. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This is not, in either case. Right. A rejection of the preceding pagan religion, but it is a participation, from the perspective of those first participants and leaders is a participation in any more refined or purified or more noble or more worthy form of that religion.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, I mean, sometimes it kind of that religious expression, reinterpretation or additional layer of interpretation.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

You also find a shift.

Away from. So what you find in, for example, a lot of ancient Near Eastern religion and paganism.

Is.

The idea that, you know, the world is full of spirits and gods and over places, over things and do things, and they're. They're fundamentally capricious.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. They're just dangerous beings that exist in your area and you want to keep them from hurting you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And kind of fickle. They'll turn on you. They're easily offended. Right.

Sometimes you just don't want them to know about you at all. Right. You can see this in Greek paganism, too. I mean, this is kind of a through line in paganism. Right.

And so ritual and sacrifice and these things are often aimed at almost bribing or winning over. Right. Gaining the allegiance of these spirits and spiritual forces.

And gods. Right. And you see in these more refined forms that emerge in the axial age, A shift from that to an understanding that there is some kind of order or structure or harmony or path within the world itself.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. There's even. I mean, almost you could say there's a sense that there is the world, you know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That there's something more than just this.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so that. What that means then is that if there is this kind of order, structure, harmony within the world, you can start having the concept of, like, ethics.

Right.

Ethics and religion are so closely tied together.

In our minds. Right. As modern people, because we've come from a Christian society that we don't understand that there was not any real fundamental connection or even really a sense of ethics.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. This idea of right and wrong before the. I mean, really, it's much more like good and bad in the sense of, like, this is a good chair and that. That is a bad chair.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, I'm talking even before that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, yeah, yeah, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Even before that. I'm talking about before the. That starts to emerge at the axial age.

Like before that, in large part, it's right. The, the.

The, you know, the king goes and, you know, posts in a prominent place like the Code of Hammurabi, right? Here's the laws and here's what I will do to you if you break them.

Right? But if you're not in that city.

There'S not a law, Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You're just out there, right? Who's going to make you?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right? And the same thing with the gods, right. There are certain things that you wouldn't do because you thought, you know, right. Like read some Greek tragedy, right? You do certain things and the Furies are going to come up out of Hades and get you. Right. But it was fear of getting got.

Right. It wasn't, how do I need to behave and live in order to live a fulfilling and successful life, Right. As part of a community that is thriving. Right. There was no concept of that.

There was no concept of that. You're either in survival mode or you were enslaved or you were the one doing the enslaving.

But there was not this sense of, like, there's a way I need to live in the world.

And that our community needs to be governed so that it will thrive and grow and be successful.

And that included, when you get that idea coming about in the axial age of these various places that included the divine, that wasn't to the exclusion of the gods. It wasn't like, oh, don't worry about the gods anymore. The gods were included in that, Right.

You were, you needed to be in harmony with your family, your community, with you, with the gods.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

With the divine. Right. All of those things. That's how you wanted to live your life, so that all would go well with you.

And even then, still sometimes bad things happen by chance.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. But there was still this idea, right. That there was a should is the way people should live. And, you know, be careful. Right. Because even as I'm saying that, I'm trying to choose my words carefully because we as modern people want to individualize that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. It's much more like what's good for the community as a whole.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

How can the community flourish?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So at this point in the axial age, things are very communal, and the should is very dependent on your social class, for example.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So if you are a slave, then what you should do is work really hard at whatever you're ordered to do. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And it's understandable that the communal is such a. Is so privileged because hanging together, it meant the difference between survival and, you know, extinction.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So that. Yeah. The kind of ethics we're talking about right now, though, is not, you know, live your best life now.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, like, they fully embraced. They fully embraced in a way that we as modern people will not admit.

They fully embraced on the face of it, that for some people to prosper and have a very high standard of living, a whole lot more would have to not.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Like, they just took that for granted and they had no problem with the idea.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. And everybody was in the social strata that they were, because that's where they belonged.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And even, you know, there were even detailed arguments that certain kinds of people were just sort of born to be slaves or born to be masters, you know, whatever.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or born to be merchants or born to be great generals or born to be soldiers. Right. Like, at all the different levels.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so there's a different ought, there's a different ethic for each of them. And the aim of it is not really at. Right. I mean, they accepted when they went to war that a lot of those infantry guys were gonna die.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And them going out there and dying bravely wasn't so great for them. Right. Or their individual families, but it was great for Athens, and that's what was important. Right. Yeah. So don't individualize this too quickly. But it is still a watershed having this idea of. Of ethics. Right. And having the idea of having a. That there's this harmony and order in the world that is reflected in that. And it's not just the caprice of gods and kings and larger People, right. With more physical strength, right. That govern the world.

Right? And so.

We can see elements of this, though, we can see some elements of this, though, even in this transition from the religion of ancient Israel and Judah to.

Judaism, right. Especially Pharisaism. Phariseeism has a very strong sense of ethics, right? The Torah, when it was given. Because I believe it was given. Well, well, well, pre exile.

The Torah, when it was given, was talking about how to structure the society, how Israel should be structured, right? And what Israel should and should not allow within its limits.

Right?

Because we have to understand that no one in Israel virtually could read the pre exilic period.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The king was to, according to Deuteronomy, have a copy of the Torah and read it because he needed to. Because he needed it. Because he needed to know what to allow and what not to allow and how to structure and maintain order in the people of Israel, how to administer the temple, right? And its rituals, etc. Etc. Etc. Right. The priests needed to know those things, right? In Leviticus, right? These people needed to know it. But your average ancient Israelite or ancient Judahite had pretty much no knowledge of what was in the Torah, contents of the Torah. There were not like Torah readings.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There was no Gideons at the tabernacle.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

If they had done a Torah reading at the tabernacle, only the priests would have heard it anyway, Right? Because the people didn't all go to the tabernacle on Saturday to worship.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Nobody, as we've talked about in the show. That's not how it worked.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or the Temple later. Right? That didn't happen.

And in the Northern Kingdom, of course, it's even worse because they're engaging in all kinds of pagan worship and stuff, right? There's not a Torah scroll to be found, right. For a normal person.

Whereas, right. Post exile, once you have the synagogue system, you do start having public Torah readings.

Right? Ezra does read the Torah publicly.

Started having less writing and literary activity, right? So now your average Jewish person who's going to a synagogue is hearing the Torah.

And so those commandments take on a new pertinence to them, right? So the Pharisees still believed that, that the solution to the problem, the ongoing problem of exile and Roman oppression was that Israel, right, at that time Judeah, had to corporately keep the Torah.

But the way someone participated in corporately keeping Torah was by keeping Torah themselves.

Which Torah they now heard read at a synagogue.

And so the Torah took on, in this period, an ethical dimension.

For Jewish people that it did not originally Have.

Right. A new dimension for them.

So.

These shifts, even though.

We'Re talking about different original religious structures, this shift does still take place. A parallel shift does still take place to produce what becomes Early Judaism, ancient Judaism, Second Temple Judaism, right. In all of its diverse forms.

So what, what causes this? Right. Why does this happen all over the world at this, during this era in history? Right. There's a number of factors that play into it, right? So first and foremost.

You have sort of the stabilization, a stabilization of society during this period. So remember, we're coming off the Bronze Age collapse at the end of the second millennium B.C. that kind of throws everything into chaos.

And I've said, I know I've said before on this show, and I've said to lots of people, when you're envisioning the time period of David and Saul.

And even into Solomon, right at the beginning of the first millennium bc you've got to picture it in as sort of post apocalyptic.

The people are living in and around the ruins of the great Bronze Age civilizations.

And there are people trying to take up those mantles. Like the Assyrians will be trying to sort of, when they show up.

After a few centuries, will be trying to sort of take on the mantle of.

Babylon.

And then they're followed by the Neo Babylonian Empire.

Who are most certainly trying to lay claim to the empire of Hammurabi.

To which they're not related, and trying to rebuild that and reproduce that. The Philistines who you're running into are refugees from the Aegean who have come and settled in the Levant.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Are these the Sea peoples? Yes, yes. Part of the sea.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They're one of the Sea peoples, Right. So they're a bunch of Greeks who washed up on shore who are trying to structure some kind of society now in their new environs because they tried to take over Egypt and got repelled.

Right, along with other sea people's groups in the area. Right? So this is this kind of post apocalyptic and rebuilding period. So once we get into the middle part of the first millennium B.C. things have been rebuilt, right? We've now got the Greek city states.

Functioning in Greece in the classical period, right? After sort of the collapse of the Mycenaeans.

Egypt has kind of recovered economically and financially. The Assyrians are on the rise, trying to rebuild Babylon. Right? So things have stabilized, right? Things have been rebuilt to a certain level, right? And then you're gonna get the Neo Babylonians, then you're gonna get the Persians.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And the Persians during this period are forming their religion, Zoroastrianism They're. All of this is being built, right.

And taking shape. Their whole culture and sense of self is taking place during this. This Axial Age, right? All of this is happening. Similar things are happening in India and China in terms of rebuilding and. And so things reach a certain level of stability, right. Because all of the other factors we're about to talk about that contributed to the Axial Age require you to have some kind of stability, right? Economically in terms of the class structure of your society, right. If you're. If you're being invaded, if you're being attacked, if you're at war, if you're suffering from famine and plague, you know, you're not gonna have time to learn to read.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Or there's not a lot of people gonna be sitting around writing big, long literature. You know, it's like, look, pick up a spear, buddy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So that's why a lot of this starts happening, right, in this period. First we get this stability.

And then, as we've kind of already alluded to, you get an economic situation where you have the emergence of a very strong class system.

Within.

These agrarian economies, right. Mostly based on slavery in various forms. But as we mentioned, they're. They're very conscious about the fact that, yes, for these upper tiers of society to enjoy a certain lifestyle and certain things, to have leisure time, to be able to have time to devote to these other things.

There has to be this great pool of people who are meeting their survival needs.

In terms of food, shelter, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, tribute, taxes, right?

All of this. All of this has to happen. And those structures come into place, right? Those structures come into place so that you can have a class of people, a literate class.

Right? And so the development of this literate class means there's this rise of literacy rates. This is also the period of time where people are now at this time, using alphabetic language. For the most part, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

As distinct from some of the kind.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Of, you know, pictogram approaches, pictographic or consonantal vocabularies, cuneiform. This is important because this is a prerequisite for having a very high literacy rate, right? Is that you limit the number of characters that you have to learn, right. When you're looking at different forms of cuneiform, like simplified cuneiform alphabets have, like, 80 symbols, the simplified ones, right? You're not gonna have a ton of literate people.

Right, in that sort of situation. Whereas an alphabetic language.

Where each symbol represents a sound and there's, you know, 20, 22, 24, 26 of them. Right. Much more workable.

Much more workable in terms of literacy. And so you get this rise of illiterate class that means people start taking oral tradition stories, writing all these things that have been handed down orally, and putting them into writing. And not only putting them in writing, but there are people who are able to read them and they begin to be read publicly. And so you get the rise of public discourse. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And then. And then, you know, because of that, then you get rituals that are connected with this use of texts.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So you start having. Right. The Torah being read in the synagogues. Right. Or you start having Homer being sung and performed publicly.

And similarly, in other cultures, it's not just a storyteller telling their version of the story that's localized and related to particular traditions, but they start to take on this larger form.

And so you get a sort of enlarged religious significance of the text.

So this shift, the reason we've been talking about this shift, there's someone out there who's like, wait a second, I thought this episode was going to be about the Stone Age. And I warned you at the beginning we would not get there. To the third half, they say, why are you. Why are you dilly dallying in the middle of the first millennium B.C. well, so this, that we've been talking about the Axial Age, there's this apocalypse shift we've been describing in. In religion across the world. And this one's really well documented because we've got all these texts from it. Right. So we could describe it, we could research it. You can look at it, you can look at it in various countries, spread out all over the world. You can compare and contrast. Right. It's all documented.

This is not the first major shift like this, though. There was a previous shift in the Neolithic era in the Stone Age. Right. That one is not documented because there was no writing. It's prehistoric. Right. And so we've spent this time here in the second half talking about the Axial Age in this shift to give an idea of how this kind of thing works. Right. Since this one is so well documented, to help us understand now, as we in the third half go back even way further.

We'Re going to go further back from the Axial Age than the Axial Age is from us.

To talk about what happened in the Neolithic revolution and what's going on there religiously.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. All right. We're going to go further back in time in the next half. Lord of spirits. But now we're going to go ahead and take our second and final break. See you in a moment.

Father Andrew Stephen Damick and father Stephen DeYoung will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF-RADIO.

[Matushka Trudy]

People often complain that the Divine Liturgy is always the same week after week. But every ritual, praise and action in the service has meaning and purpose, drawing in worshippers with its hymns and prayers and allowing ordinary people to leave the world and enter heaven for a short time. In the new book Blessed Is the Kingdom, Father Stavros Akrotirianakis, a longtime parish priest, offers reflections on the text of the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom to help readers learn to pray the liturgy and to understand and appreciate the mystery that unfolds each time it is celebrated. Available [e-mail] Again, that is store.ancientfaith.com we're.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Back now with the Lord of Spirits with Father Andrew Stephen Damick and father Stephen DeYoung. If you have a question, call now at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF-RADIO.

Welcome back, everybody. It's the third and final half of this 99th episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast. Next time it's going to be episode 100 and our fourth anniversary.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So what happened to that ad for your new show?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It was too long, apparently.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, I know it was long. Oh, really? Like, no. Okay. So I was gonna say I kind of liked it. I could go get a cup of coffee, eat a sandwich.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's true. It was a little long. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Come back in time for the next half.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Look, we gotta sell books, okay?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, did, did your co host Rip Rogers get in trouble?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No, no, no. He's still, he's still on board.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You know, the weird thing about him is it is now that I've met him in person.

Like, you know, on, on when you hear him on Ancient Faith in a podcast or something, he kind of sounds like he's affecting a little bit of a light English accent, you know?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Think so?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

A little bit. Little bit. You know, but that level of affectation, that's commonplace for a Southerner, right? Like, yeah, we deal with that. But here's what's weird. When you meet him in person, he constantly speaks in this fake Jamaican patois.

And I don't know, like, who he thinks he's fooling like that. That's his Natural voice.

Like, I went to Peugeot Fest. He's sticking his head out of the sunroof of the car yelling, original rude boy. While we're driving around Tampa. I don't know what's with this guy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, I mean, look, the guy's name is Richard Roland. He is literally a living Rick Roll.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

If that is his real name.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So. Yes, yes. I mean, it might be his legal name.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm just saying.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I understand. You have things just odd.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm not going to say it's racist, but it's weird.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Where were we? The Stone Age, Paleolithic, Mesolithic.

Neolithic, Exolithic. Yes. Hyperlithic.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Although I also, I also want to point out some people may be wondering, as soon as you hear Stone Age, if you're of a certain age, you may think of the modern Stone Age family, the Flintstones.

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Which celebrated Christmas.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, well, and here's why. You know why, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I've never really considered that question.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Actually, there's this misnomer. The Flintstones are living in ancient times.

Right. Like that. This is some kind of, you know, Ken Ham does the Honeymooners where you've got, you know, humans and dinosaurs living side by side.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, it is true that their theme song says that they are a modern stony family.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Modern, right. The Flintstones is a post apocalyptic show set in the far future.

They're trying to recreate modern technology with primitive tools.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm on board with this.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that's why they celebrate Christmas.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So Flintstones is actually farther in the.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Future than the Jetsons.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Than the Jetsons.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We can just go home now, everybody.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But we're. We're now back in the past.

We're now back in the past.

So I mentioned the people.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Our first New Zealander tuning in. Hello, New Zealand.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, okay. I thought we had a call.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wow. No, no, no. No calls.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This was completely clear.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So stunned at this revelation about the Flintstones are like. I don't even know what to do with myself.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. They may not even be. I mean, he got visited by an alien. The Great Gazoo.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, yeah. And there's Freemasons and the Shmoo.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like, come on. Okay, so.

Yes, so we mentioned the Neolithic revolution, Right. And this was not a class struggle in the.

Neolithic era. The Neolithic revolution is not a political revolution. It was not televised. But not even written about because as I mentioned at the end of the second half.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It was prehistoric. That's what prehistoric means. Literally.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So there was no one writing about anything. So we know about it from the remains of human settlements and other archaeological remains and certain biological and genetic considerations, not with humans, but with plants and animals. We'll get into that in a minute.

So the Neolithic revolution happens across the Fertile Crescent, which is that sort of green arch on that map that they showed you in seventh grade social studies that goes sort of over the top of the Middle East.

Happened throughout that area between about 10,000 and 8,000 BC in different places at different times. I will give my usual disclaimer. If you don't think the Earth is that old, adjust accordingly.

I find the whole question tedious and boring. So commonly dated to between 10,000 and 8,000 BC.

And that's right after the end of the last Ice Age. Right. And.

Again, feel free to think whatever you want about the relationship between that Ice Age and the Flood. That the evidence of that Ice age is actually evidence of the Flood. That the flood is describing the massive Earth changes that happened at the end of that Ice Age.

However you want to see it. You do you. Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But wow, that's the most Zoomer thing I've ever heard you say.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You do you. Yeah, no cap. Anyway.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You'Ve got such riz. Father Steven.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Did you hear. Did you hear that sound? Father Andrew? The sound of billions of souls cringing and then falling silent.

So.

During this period, the important thing. The important thing and what the. What the Neolithic revolution is describing, the revolutionary thing that happens is that this is the period of time when humans begin to domesticate plants and animals.

People don't think about domesticating plants much. Right. But if you go to.

And there are fossilized examples of this. Right.

And look at what wild wheat looked like before humans domesticated wheat. It's a very different thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Much more difficult to process into something edible.

Right. So, yes, all of the. All of these plants that became agrarian staples for humans in human agrarian settlements existed before human agrarian settlements. Right. But they existed as wild plants.

And wild plants are often difficult to process into edible form.

If not difficult. They're often inefficient to process in animal form. And so humans throughout history and prehistory, because all human beings throughout the history of the world have been just as smart as us.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. How can that possibly be true?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I know. Have been just as smart as us. They figured out, without any knowledge of genetics, how to do selective breeding.

Of plants and animals. Mind blowing. Yes. They figured out how to do this. And it took a long time. Right. The struggle of civilization. We should respect it. This is why I don't go camping. My ancestors fought for centuries so I wouldn't have to live that way.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This domestication of plants and animals is what's required for there to be a continuous human settlement. Right. So before this, people are living in groups, extended family groups, mostly.

Living by hunting and gathering, meaning people migrated nomadically.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Following.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Animals that were going to be used for food because animals migrate. Right. So as the animals migrated, the people migrated to hunt the animals, and then they gathered wild from wild plants, other foodstuffs.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Coconut. Huh? Coconuts migrate.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

So they're following them, Right. If you're going to put down roots, if you say we're going to build a village, put up a village here, right. We're going to build our tents here, we're going to build more permanent structures here. We're going to stay here in this spot, then you're going to need a way to generate food and feed the group of people who are going to be living in that spot.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And since animals migrate away, that's going to be hard. Right? Weather conditions change from season to season. That's going to be hard. Right.

You're going to eventually exhaust the supply of wild berries and plant life. Right. That's edible. Right. So all that's going to be difficult. So the only solution to that problem is we need to start domesticating plants and growing the food we need deliberately in a way that we can grow it season after season, year after year. And we're going to need to domesticate some of these animals. Now, by domesticating animals in this period of history, I'm not talking about, like domesticating horses to ride them, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This is about food that's thousands of years after that. Right. This is. We're going to selectively breed sheep and goats, right. So that they're a little less ornery. And we could get them into a pasture, right. We could get them into an enclosure. Right. We could shepherd them, we could take them around and let them graze. Right. And raise them for food. Right. Etc. That kind of domestication, whether it's sheep, pigs, goats. Right. Livestock. That's what we're talking about domesticating at this point. And history is a food source. So rather than going and finding them, we're going to bring them here, keep them penned up, breed them and eat them rather than hunting them.

So that's. That's what's required.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So we also need to keep in mind that the world population.

At this point is very low.

People debate, like everything else, how low.

Right.

But Everyone agrees. Again, regardless of what you think the relationship between the evidence for the Ice Age and the flood is. Right. What you're completely secular.

Right. Anthropologist will tell you is that depending on their estimate during the Ice Age, at one point, Right. During this period when the Ice Age evidence exists, the human population of the world, they will say, fell to somewhere between 10,000 and 600. 600 is the low estimate. 10,000 is the high estimate. That's not the human population of an area. That's the human population of the Earth.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, my. My town is eleven and a half thousand people.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So that's not quite giving you seven. Right. If you're very literal. Right. About Noah's flood and only the seven people on the ark surviving it. But.

It'S an acknowledgment that something happens during that period that greatly diminishes the human population to a lot fewer people to this tiny amount. Right. Of the whole Earth.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

By the time we get to the period of the Neolithic revolution that we're talking about, Right. You still have this wide variation. The sort of. The low estimate is 55,000 people. The high estimates are between 1 and 5 million. But if we take 5 million as the highest, again, that's 5 million in the whole earth. Yeah, right. 5 million people is probably. I bet there's 5 million people in the state of New York.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, there's 5 million people. There's more than 5 million people in the city of New York.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In the city of New York.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay. Yeah, exactly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm a West coast guy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

8.3 million. Currently.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We spread out a little more. We don't pile up.

So, yeah, so this is. If you think that on the high estimate, the entire population of the Earth was lower still at this point than.

The population of the city of New York.

This is a very different time. By the time you get to. By the way. By the time you get to 1000 B.C. so the time we were talking about after the.

Bronze Age collapse and everything, the time of kings, David and Saul, in terms of Biblical Chronology, 1000 B.C. there were about 14 million people.

In the whole world, which I think is roughly the population of, say, Greece today.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So you're just throwing this stuff out and making me look it up.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think Greece has 11 or 12 million people.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Greece is about 10 and a half million.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

10 and a half. Okay, so it's a little bigger than Greece. Maybe Germany.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, man.

Now Germany is 80, 84 million.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, well, for Pete's sake. Yeah. Cried out loud. We're not going to keep guessing. Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We're not superpower by comparison. Okay?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

A small European country. The population of a small European country that will remain nameless.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Five Lithuanias.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. There we go. Yeah. That's the whole. That's the whole population of the Earth in 1000.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. I don't think we realize.

Right. How small it got, but especially at this point, we're talking about the Neolithic revolution, right. We're talking about, again, even on the highest estimate, way fewer people than live in the city of New York in the world.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

On Earth.

So these are these settlements. Right. These are not even like Sumerian city states.

Right. I know. They made that. They made that movie 10,000 BC which I enjoy for its ridiculousness, where they have, like, the mammoths. They're using the mammoths to build pyramids.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Ziggurats and stuff. That's crazy. But anyway, it's crazy.

So get that out of your head. There are no. Right. We're talking about settlements, right. We're talking about one of these extended family units that had been wandering from place to place, following game, putting down roots and establishing a place.

And when this happens, Right. When this happens, there is a corresponding shift in religion.

That is detectable in the archeological record.

There is a shift that happens. And we've talked about some of this in previous episodes, a little bit, at least from another angle.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

By the way, I just want to interrupt you, Father, because we actually do have some people who are calling. Oh, good. So since we're here in the third half, we might as well go ahead and take some of them. So, yeah, we've got someone who wants to fact check something you said earlier, Father.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So about the Flintstones.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, we have Caleb, who's, you know, he pulled out his copy of Deuteronomy. He's like. Now, hold on a minute. Hold on a minute. So, Caleb, are you there?

[Caleb]

Yes, I am here. Greetings, Pod Fathers greeting Father Stephen and Father Andrew. I had to put the billing so I didn't mess up your names.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Caleb]

Anyway.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. You ready to fact check, Father Steven DeYoung?

[Caleb]

Well, I hate to put it that way. I never would, at any rate.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, clearly you're a liberal, because fact checking is liberal.

Go ahead.

[Caleb]

So as far as the whole population question, that was hilarious. I will say it's getting harder to be someone, but it all works out.

The question I had, I was thinking of which, it also reminds me, Father Stephen, we had one of your chanters visit at our parish up here in the. UP of Michigan a little while ago and really appreciated him.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, it's good someone appreciates him. That's.

[Caleb]

All right. My question is Deuteronomy 31, there's a commandment there. Moses commands that the. The Torah should be read in the hearing of all the people once every seven years. And I didn't hear your whole spiel earlier. I'm actually on break at work. But I was wondering how that fits into. Yeah, most. I mean, obviously it wasn't followed most of the time, but it was followed.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, it pretty much wasn't followed, at least during the.

It looks like it wasn't followed much at all. I would assume Joshua did it. And we have record of Joshua doing it once.

In the book of Joshua. In the book of Joshua, he does it at one point.

[Caleb]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But in the period of the Judges, it wasn't done.

And we know because we know when. When King Josiah, like, rediscovers it.

In the temple.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. It's all new to him even.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Caleb]

Okay. So it was basically like the first generation after Moses, and then it just disappeared until, say, the time.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. It fell into disuse. Right. And you see the same thing happening, I mean, in general. Right. The story of the Book of Judges is about the people sort of forgetting everything. And where the tabernacle falls into disuse.

They start creating other shrines and altars and things.

There's just sort of this immediate following way. And then there's sort of a. And. And Judges, of course, ascribes that to. Well, Israel needs a king. Right. To sort of set this straight. And then sort of helps position moving through the Deuteronomy mystic history into first and Second Samuel or First and Second kingdoms that David is the guy. Right.

But then things fall apart pretty quickly again after David.

Okay. Where even his. We also know from the Josiah story that Solomon puts a. An idol of the sun God's chariot in the temple courts.

[Caleb]

Yikes. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Caleb]

Assume that this was possibly obeyed during the reign of David or reigns of David and Solomon, perhaps.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Solomon would probably be pushing it. Maybe. Maybe David.

[Caleb]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But for the most part, it wasn't. It wasn't being. It wasn't being followed.

[Caleb]

All right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And you know, they also, we know from Jeremiah never kept the Sabbath year either, which, if it was done every seventh year, that's when it would have been done.

[Caleb]

Oh, yeah. Huh. That makes sense. It's tied into that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Caleb]

Yeah. So that'd be a good way of actually seeing or how would you say, extrapolating whether it was actually being done or not.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. Because God tells Jeremiah, you basically, you're going to be in exile for 70 years because you owe me 70 Sabbath years that you didn't keep over the last 490 years.

[Caleb]

Right.

So preach that one to American agriculture.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Good luck.

[Caleb]

Thank you very much. I need to get back into work, but. All right, have to call you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Thanks for calling, Caleb. All right, we have. We have another caller, actually. So since we're paused, we're going to go ahead and take Catherine. So, Catherine, welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Catherine]

Hi, fathers. How are you?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Good, how are you?

[Catherine]

I'm excellent.

I do have. It's maybe an adjacent question.

But it's a, it's a serious question. And I was wondering, in the description of this, of this podcast, I, I saw the word neolithic.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Catherine]

And that just, you know, that just, you know, fired off a couple things in my mind, and I was wondering if, if you could answer them. Since Neolithic, the epidemiology of it, if I'm not mistaken, means new stone. Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, that's, that's sort of like there's like three ages of three parts of the Stone Age, Paleo, lithic, mesolithic and Neolithic. And that's the latest part is the Neolithic period.

[Catherine]

Okay. Because what I was thinking is if there's a new, there has to be an old. And so I'm wondering, that's the Paleolithic. Okay, so. So in regards to that, is that, is that pre flood or pre, pre Babel or, you know, were people writing things down?

You know, I'm just wondering where does that start? Where, like, what is the difference? You know, did they, did they have the Neolithic period after the flood or after Babel or before? In regards, you know, just to writing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

In general.

What do you think, Father? I mean, there's so many different ways you could shake this question out, I guess.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, yeah, so it partially depends on what you think is the relationship, as I mentioned very briefly, between.

The Ice Age, the last Ice Age and the flood.

So there are some people who would say that all of the archeological, geological evidence of the last Ice Age is really evidence of the flood. So they would say that basically that the last Ice Age is the flood.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They would identify those two things. There are other folks who would say that.

The story, that the story of the flood is telling. Right. That sort of when that happens is at the end of the last Ice Age. So at the end of the last Ice age, according to archaeology and geology, there were these Massive earth changes, meaning the Ice Age is called the Ice Age because glaciers expanded over. Like, for example, most of North America was covered by ice or water. Water in some form. Right. There is evidence during this period. Right. So that's why. So the people who say, well, that is the flood would say, well, that was liquid water, it was the flood. Right. But other people would say, well, no, that was glacier. But then at the end of that Ice age, those glaciers melted.

And when those glaciers melted, they released the trapped water. So, for example, there's archeological evidence of a couple of cities at the bottom of the Black Sea.

So there's pretty good evidence now that.

During the Ice Age there was no water in the Black Sea.

And that there were people living there. And at the end of the Ice Age, right, as the glaciers melted, it filled up with water and became the Black Sea. Right. So some people would say, well, no, the flood happens at the end of the last Ice age when the glaciers melt. Right. And it wipes out all of these.

Human civilization as it had stood. Right. Using the Black Sea as an example, there are plenty of other examples beside the Black Sea. Right.

[Catherine]

May I, may I make a point?

I've worked in northern Alberta and a lot of the. In Canada, and a lot of the geological formation is water that was above forests. So if it, if it froze, it was forests there and then it was water.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

Yeah.

[Catherine]

So for me, I don't see it as flood post Ice Age.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, well, in my regard, yeah. However you want to look at it. But so the idea is the Neolithic period is the period right after the Ice Age. So if you connect the Ice Age to the flood, it would be the period after the flood. And so we would be talking about that. When we talk about the Neolithic revolution, we would be talking about. If that's your understanding, we would be talking about the period of time where the population grows to the level that we've been talking about and so starts to build cities and towns and. Right. Well, villages at this point. Starts to build villages. Right. And settle down in permanent places and begins. Begins more intentional agriculture.

[Catherine]

Okay, so it's. So it's. It's after the flood, but before Babel.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I would, I would say yes. Yeah. Because I think the Tower of Babel is actually related to the Bronze Age collapse. Yeah.

[Catherine]

Okay.

Thank you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right, thanks for calling, Catherine.

Okey doke. So, yes, world population, very small.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Very small.

So, yeah, so there's this, there's this transition in religion that happens as there's this transition to.

Settled life.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And to kind of understand that, we have to start with a little bit of an idea of what does hunter gatherer religion look like?

Right. And we've talked about this, we've read a couple of quotes. You can go back to old episodes, very early episodes.

And here's some of the quotes about early, quote, unquote, monotheism. We've already reiterated this episode why monotheism may not be the most helpful category to have in our head, but just the idea that early on.

In the hunter gatherer period.

There is pretty good evidence that we're dealing with primarily one sort of deity or spirit.

That people understand to be associated in some way with the sky, with the heavens.

Right above them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, a lot of the early.

You know, even, even a lot of the early Indo European stuff is the, the main God is, as you said, in some way, kind of like a sky God or a heavenly God or something like that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. And there's sort of one. And then what happens once we start moving to settled life is that the earth suddenly becomes very important because now we're going to live by planting and growing crops. So the idea of kind of deity.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

In the earth or related to the earth, you want that spirit's attention and help.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. The ground, the soil, the fertility of the soil. Right. Becomes eminently important. And you, so you start also getting. And the Neolithic period is when we get these first cultic figures of an earth goddess. Right. And so there comes to be this pairing at the, in this early phase.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And coming out of the Neolithic period, of a sort of masculine sky God and a feminine earth goddess. Right. But that's that earth goddess that gets added.

So it's here where we start moving in. They take that first step toward a multiplicity of gods.

Right.

Takes place within the Neolithic revolution and the move to settlements. And then once you have settled life.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Once you have settled life, this can then give rise to all kinds of spirits and cultic deities, meaning spirits and lesser sort of quote unquote deities that you can invoke, get to do favors, bribe with different things. Right. That, that will cover different aspects of, of settled life. Once you start having villages and then eventually towns and eventually cities.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You start to get this multitude of, of gods and spirits even in an individual place.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Because if that particular place becomes important to you now because you live there, which in nomadic societies you don't.

If you live there and you have the sense of, okay, this deity is associated with this place, then you start to form these Kinds of relationships.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And we see that with the development of sacred sites. Right. Many of the first of which are fountains, springs of water, because obviously you need water to live.

Hunter gatherers do, too.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But when people go to settle, they start to settle at the sacred sites. Right. They don't settle in a place for some kind of materialistic reasons and then sort of spiritualize some elements of that place. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And I mean, like, one of the ways that we know that this is the case is that there are these settlements and places that make no sense in terms of like natural resources or whatever.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And we're going to start talking about particular settlements, the most ancient settlements we've found and that we know of. And what you find in those settlements is that the ritual elements, like megalithic stone structures that clearly have a religious purpose. Right.

Those are there before.

The homes, the residences, the dwellings are. Right. And before the agricultural projects start.

Right. So these sites are sites that are found and encountered by nomadic peoples. And then when the time comes for the nomadic peoples to settle down, they settle down at these sites.

So they find a spring of water. There's a spirit that they associate with that spring of water. Right. They form a settlement there. The spirit they had associated with the spring of water now becomes one of the gods of that people.

Right. They start to worship it.

Right.

And we talked about this in terms of what happens after Babel and the fact that there are angelic spirits. Right. Associated with these different things. Right. But the problem is humans are now starting to worship them as gods. Right. In and of themselves.

So.

Going to the earliest settlements we have.

So one of the earliest sites we have that's become semi famous.

Though sometimes weird things are said about it is Gobekli Tepe.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Which we've mentioned on the show a few times before.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I think it was way back in the long ago time, though. But.

Like the year 2000.

Why. Why Gobekli Tepe was.

Seems to have first been settled around 9,130 BC. Again, if you think there's not that old, adjust accordingly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But that's the traditional standard sort of dating.

It's near the Syrian border with Turkey.

And the main feature there, the thing that gets everybody excited are these.

Massive megaliths.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There are these huge megalithic stones with animal forms carved into them.

And they are arranged. It is an even more. Is it even more ancient? Stonehenge, but with these elaborate carvings.

That Stonehenge lacks.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Which Stonehenge stones are just propped up.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I know Firsthand are just propped up.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And people, if you want to see what those stones at Gobekli Tepe look like, you could just Google it up and have a look at what they look like.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right? And they are arranged in a way somewhat similar to what's going on with Stonehenge in that most people agree now that they were used for astrological observation, right? That the. The stones were put in place for the purpose of. And in some way, the ritual carvings are connected to constellations and things that would be at certain points during certain times of the year.

Getting into super detail. There are people trying to get into super detail on that.

In the sense of.

Exactly where, what constellations were like in 9130 B.C. and stuff.

And that that period. But that is actually really hard to do, especially going back that far, because the Earth kind of wobbles in its orbit.

So things shift slightly.

The stars are not in the same place they were 5,000 years ago, right. Let alone 10.

Relative to any given position on Earth.

So, but it's a general agreement that that's there. But again.

Those megalithic structures were there before anything else that has been found there.

Which suggests that. That these were built as this spiritual site.

Right? As this site of religious ritual and sacrifice to which nomadic peoples would come at a certain time of year. And then at a certain point, a certain later point after these structures were built, then we find other, like, domestic housing units, right. For lack of a better term, domiciles. We find evidence of human settlement there a little later.

Right? So then at a certain point, people start to settle there at the spiritual site permanently rather than just migrate there at certain times of year for.

Ritual purposes, religious purposes.

And this is true of all of these earliest sites that we found that we're going to talk about now.

The ritual site in every case is there first.

And exists as a place that people make what we would call a pilgrimage to. And then only later.

Do people settle around it on a permanent basis.

And this is something that not only happened during the Neolithic revolution. This has happened throughout human history with sacred sites.

Where towns, villages, and things will grow up around.

Certain sacred sites.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There are. There are two more very early sites. One of them is. Is Jericho, like the city of Jericho. That's in Joshua.

This, the city of Jericho. There has been a human settlement there since circa 10,000 B.C.

Again, adjust accordingly, but that's a big circa because rather infamously, the site of Jericho was kind of ruined by bad archaeology.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Dang it. Bad archaeology.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There was a certain period of European Archaeology.

Where.

They got access to especially sites of the Holy Land that had some biblical significance. And there was a rush by dabblers with some money, especially among the British.

To get down there and say, now we can prove that the Bible is true. And.

Being non gifted amateurs, they wrecked a few sites. Jericho is infamously one of them. They just started digging trenches and stuff.

In ancient Jericho. And so that's made it really hard. Just about anything you see about Jericho.

Is super provisional. And for the record, if you see anyone saying anything definitive about the archaeological site of Jericho on either side, right. If you see someone saying definitively there's no way that Jericho was destroyed in the time of Joshua, whenever they think that was be leery because the site's a mess, you can't prove that. But also if they say, oh no for sure the city of Jericho was destroyed at the time of Joshua, whatever they think that was, they're also.

Playing fast and loose. Right. The site's kind of a mess. So we can't learn as much from that as we might from some of these others that rain undiscovered. But the other one we're going to talk about a little more is Chettle Hoyk, which is from.

Circa again 7100 BC. Again, adjust accordingly.

So this one is a little further on by a little, I mean a couple thousand years then Gobekli Tepe, but is a more advanced site.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And it's a sort of fully developed.

Site. Now when I say fully developed, again, we're not talking about even a Sumerian city, but there are clear individual resident family residences there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Where you could lay the floor plan. Like we understand where people lived. The religious site is, is more developed. So progress has been made in terms of human settlement by this point. But it also gives us a window into sort of a couple other aspects of religion. Right. In the Neolithic revolution, one of those is that we have burial sites.

So at Chitalhoyuk, the. In the individual family residences, the burial sites are in the floor. Right. So there's a dirt floor and the departed family members were buried in the, in the floor.

Right. In the, in the family's domicile. And they were buried with some things. Right. They were buried with things like food and extra clothing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Which suggests, hey, you're gonna need this in the afterlife that we clearly have some concept of.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So they had some concept of some kind of afterlife. Because otherwise why would they, why wouldn't they keep those things? Because they would need them, not the dead person.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Valuable Stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And there were also animal remains.

And not of pet animals, of sacrificial animals.

Which implies that there were sacrifices being offered.

In conjunction with the burial.

Right. Which, again, further suggests the idea of an afterlife and the involvement of spirits. Because.

Again, why would you offer a sacrifice for a dead person.

If they're dead and gone? Right.

The other major element is that there are individual shrines.

Inside these family homes.

And these individual shrines take the form of bullheads and sets of bullhorns. Not bullhorn like you yell through while you're picketing outside Walgreens. Like the horns of a bull, like you put on the front of your car. If you live in Dallas.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I'm told they all have that in Dallas.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Yes. Because the Longhorns fans, unless they're Aggies.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Didn't Boss Hogg have that in the Dukes of Hazzard?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think so. I think J.R. ewing did too.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They're actually illegal in most of Texas, but.

They'Re not so good if you're in a car accident.

But so there are these. These bull representations in the shrines within the home. Right. And we know there's shrines because there's evidence of burning incense and sacrificial offerings.

Which implies. Right. There's family worship going on.

And that. That is connected to a bullfigure. Right. And.

By the time we get writing, as soon as we get writing, which is sometime after this, but you immediately see bulls everywhere.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Particularly in terms of your sky or your storm. The sky God becomes a storm God when rain becomes important for growing crops.

And you can see Hesiod records this transition. He has the memory of this transition because he's got that extra layer of.

Gaia and Ouranos. Right. The heavens and the earth. Right. As being sort of that first phase of divinity. And then you get Kronos and the Titans, then you get Zeus, the storm God.

And that's. He's kind of encapsulating some religious history there in his.

Version of the succession myth, the double succession there.

So we immediately find, you know, the bull of heaven in the Epic of Gilgamesh bull, baal. Right. All of this. Right. Bull symbolism gets carried on. So we know it goes back to this period. And then there's also sort of. That is the masculine. Then you find, for example, Gobekli, Tepe. Some of the animal forms are fish and sea creatures. You find the sort of sea serpent. So we've talked about Behemoth and Leviathan. Right. Behemoth and Lotan. Right. The sort of toxic masculinity. And toxic femininity of ancient paganism. But at this very early tier of pagan religion.

Right. Leviathan Loten is sort of this.

Symbol of order and power and strength and virility and.

Lothair Leviathan, the sea serpent, Chaos. Right. Destruction, disorder.

And we see this reflected even in these.

Sort of earliest sites. And so through this process of people settling in places, we get the beginnings of paganism, as we would talk about paganism today.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. People worshiping gods.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. The kind of paganism that was practiced everywhere from India to Egypt to Greece. Right. That kind of paganism that got refined in the Axial age that we were talking about. But that step emerges out of the Neolithic revolution and people beginning to settle.

Right.

And if you compare. Right. This is a question we get a lot because we talk about how pagan. That kind of paganism is kind of ubiquitous in the world.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And so some people say, well, hold on, wait a minute.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

What about like Native Americans with their sort of semi monotheistic belief in a great spirit.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Associated with the sky.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And I mean, some people will say, well, does that mean that these people were worshiping Yahweh and never fell into paganism?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Not exactly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Or certain Pacific Islanders.

Right. Other indigenous Islanders, similarly. Right. Couple things.

Just looking at, say north and Central America. Right. We could probably throw in South America. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

When you look at the cultures that had made the Neolithic revolution. Right. Who had built cities.

Right. It had stone working technology. Right. That's why it's called the Stone Age, because we were using stone tools as opposed to the Bronze Age. Right. Or the Iron Age.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

When you look at them, they all fell into, you know, you look at the Incas, you look at the Mayans, you look at the Aztecs, they basically fell into the same kind of patterns of paganism as everybody else. Right. The groups that maintained.

More of the earlier view are the ones that remained closer to the hunter gatherer way of life.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So that particular shift didn't happen for them. But. But even though. Right. We're not going to say that. Right. The sky spirit that somebody's talking about is identical to Yahweh, the God of Israel. Right. That is closer. Right. So that kind of religion is closer to the religion of, say, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Right. Than paganism is. Right. They're a lot closer to the Aztecs. Right. Like.

And so this movement that happens, right. From the religious movement, from the religion of hunter gatherers to the religion of the settled to paganism represents a sort of religious Falling away.

Right. It is a negative religious development from the perspective of the true God. Right.

Into the worship of many creatures essentially.

[Caleb]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

As opposed to.

Most beneficently, what we can call those other holdovers is sort of a half forgotten memory of the true God. Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But there's still this memory of this most High God out there. And there are reports from Christian missionaries who went to some of those groups of exactly that. Right. They kind of approached it the way St. Paul did. The unknown God. Right. Like, you know, that kind of most high God, that Father God, who you have this idea is, was out there somewhere.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Let me tell you about him.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And, and, and, and also it should be, it should be noted that it's not easy to figure out exactly what some of these groups practiced and believed prior to their contact with.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

European Christians, because frankly, you know, there's often not literacy, you know, and, and.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And, and they were mostly dead from disease.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, mostly dead. And there's some indications that there's a transformation that occurred when, with the contact with Christianity. And so, yeah, there's not any kind of, in many cases, a true pre Christian, a truly pre Christian image of what they were doing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What was the point of this episode? I don't know. I had to think of something to talk about.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. What's the point, Uncle Steve?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Why, Father Stephen?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Why?

I know it's almost three hours of my life. Once again.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. That you'll never get back. No.

So the point is. The point. The point is this. Right? The point is this.

We need to. This may end up being my final thoughts again. I may be fiddling with our whole, fiddling with our whole schema here.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hey, we're getting close to episode 100.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Ready to flip everything upside down, pack it all in. Yeah.

So.

Yeah, this will probably end up being my final thoughts too. But. So what's the point? Well, so the point is.

The point is in our understanding of religion. Right. Understanding of religion, we need to be a little more nuanced than we typically have been.

Because.

Humanity was around for a long time before even the Torah was written.

And we know from the Torah that God was active during that time.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

God was active throughout.

The period when the Torah, as we talked about the caller, was supposed to be read but wasn't being read.

And God was active throughout the Second Temple period. God was active and of course he has been active through all of subsequent Christian history. Right.

But.

We tend to have.

This kind of weird idea that like before God talked to Moses like He'd been forgotten about.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or we've so cast our idea of religion in general around our particular variety of Christianity, whatever that might be, whether it's orthodox Christianity or something else that we're like, well.

I mean, how would a hunter gatherer have gotten saved?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Hunter gatherer didn't have sacraments.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, just the question itself is kind of amazing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, like hunter gatherer didn't have sacraments.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like generations of people. Right. All over the world. Right.

What we're talking about.

When we say orthodox Christianity.

Right. You want me to define orthodox Christianity? Orthodox Christianity is the right worship of the true God.

And what that means in a certain sense is that anywhere in the history of the world and of humanity.

Where the right worship of the true God has taken place.

We could say that was orthodox Christianity.

When we. On the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy. I'd like to say we're not being triumphalistic, but it's called the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, so we got to own it.

When we say we read the Creed together, the nice, you know, Constantinopolitan creed, and we say this is the faith on which the world was founded.

Right. We're not making the claim that 19th century German Lutherans made.

We're not saying, finally, through the long scrabble of human history, we have arrived at orthodox Christianity of the type practiced in my parish in southern Louisiana in the 21st century, which is the pinnacle of all human religion. And all those benighted fools in the past didn't know what they were talking about and didn't know who God was. Right. We're making almost the exact opposite claim.

We're claiming that what we're doing in the right worship of God.

And.

What Saint Nikephoros the confessor of Constantinople was doing in the early 9th century.

And what St. Paul was doing in Corinth when he lived there, what he was leading and what Ezra was doing after the exile.

And what.

David was doing.

And what Moses and Aaron were doing and what Abraham was doing.

And what those people in the genealogies of Abraham and Seth were doing.

And what all the people whose names we will never.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In all those generations past in prehistory, we're doing when they rightly worship the true God is all the same thing.

It's all the same thing.

There are things that we know about God now that they wouldn't have been able to articulate then because God hadn't revealed them yet.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So, yes, nobody was saying the Nicene Creed at Chitalhoyuk.

In 6850 BC.

But if there was anyone there, and probably not at Chital Hoyek because it was a pagan site, but if there was anyone who passed through there.

Who, like Melchizedek or Jethro. Right. Had maintained the correct worship of the true God.

Then the God who that person came to know.

Through sacrifice and prayer is the same God.

That we come to know through the liturgy, through the sacraments, through the scriptures. It's the same God.

That God is the same three persons.

Then is now.

And so it is fundamentally the same religion.

Not the pagans, but those who truly worship the true God throughout all the ages, it's all the same religion. And there are these transitions as texts are written and texts are recognized and texts take a place, the reading of text takes a place in worship. Right. But that doesn't mean it's a different God.

And the fundamentals of worship, of sacrifice and of prayer and of the offering of incense haven't changed.

Same God being truly worshiped by humans who are the same kind of humans.

Just over time, as our way of our human way of life has shifted, there have been shifts to it as we've migrated, as we've multiplied, as we've gone different places and had different experiences.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's taken on different shapes. But if it's the right worship of the true God.

Then it's the same. And as we've always posited on this show, and I'm not embarrassed of, I believe that one religion is orthodox Christianity because that's the God who it is.

That's the God who it is who's the same yesterday, today, and forever. So that's both my. Why this episode and my final thoughts as I mess with the episode structure.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, I.

I think, you know, just to extend a little bit what you just said.

I think especially here in 2024.

Where a lot of us are.

Trying to muddle our way around in a societal level, meaning crisis.

One of the big temptations is to.

Like, super left brain at all, you know.

Give me the precise, exact, formulaic approach to X, Y and Z so I can get this right.

And it's a. It's.

Ironically, even though, like, we think of, we. We tend to think of this kind of thinking as sort of scientific.

Ironically, it's actually very magical kind of thinking. And.

If you look at what the scriptures say about what it means to worship the one true God.

There are.

Ultimately consistent, if you understand it correctly, but varying approaches to that over time. For Instance, everything you see in Leviticus.

Does not all carry forward.

Into the new Covenant. Right. So there's clearly something different going on. But it is, as you just said, Father, it is consistent. It is the same religion. Even though the practices have a transformation.

And with this kind of absolutizing of formulae that.

Gives a lot of us a sense of.

I think it feels safe, you know, like, it's like, well, the world is nutty. And so, you know, give me. Give me the straight dope here so I can get this exactly right, because I want to get it right, because I'm tired of all the wrong.

What you do is you end up absolutizing stuff that in some cases is not supposed to be absolutized or.

Was appropriate for particular time and place and may not necessarily be appropriate for now. For instance, you know, God does not command us to offer up goats on altars now. Right.

I don't think anyone seriously is doing that now. But I'm. Well, I'm sure somebody is actually, probably. But. But most people are not saying that's what we should do. But nonetheless, there can be this kind of. Again, this. This a formulaic approach to religion. And we absolutize things that can be variable, and we often variableize things or vary things that should actually be absolute. And the point. The point is to know and to worship the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and not to worship these other gods. That's the point. And even though the exact shape that that takes over time can alter, the point is to orient ourselves towards him. Right. And this absolutizing.

Impulse is frankly an impulse towards idolatry, and it's an idolatry of our concepts about God.

Now, by saying that I am by no means nullifying the dogmatic inheritance of the church or anything like that, but sometimes people take the dogmas that speak about who God is and they worship them instead of God himself.

Right. That's what I mean. And one of the ways that we could see we're falling into that, or at least having a temptation towards that.

Is if we spend more time, frankly, and more energy on our concepts about God than we do on the actual practices of worshiping him and praying to him.

Because a lot of people have been saved, a lot of people have been saved who were faithful to God but had very, maybe even incorrect or primitive concepts about Him.

A lot of people have been saved that way because they were faithful and did the things that they were supposed to be doing.

But a lot of people, frankly, are.

Going to have some answering to give in the life of the age to come, who spend a lot of time absolutizing particular pictures of God and not actually following his commandments. Right. And so, you know, one of our big themes for this, for this podcast for the last four years now and hundreds of hours now, has been if you love God, you will keep his commandments, as it says many, many times in the scriptures. And I think that looking at this kind of massive arc of human history and seeing how there is this variance over time, there is these changes over time underlines this, right? Because the whole point is to approach the one true God and to worship Him. That's the whole point.

To have that fundamental orientation and to follow through and to do the things that you're supposed to do. Not just to say it, not just to honor him with your lips, as it says in Scripture, but actually to do it, to be faithful. If you love him, you keep his commandments. So this is just another angle from which to make that point and another and in this particular case, to make the point, as we have made many times, that there is this incredible consistency between Old and New Testaments. But even to say that there is this consistency.

Within the arc of human history that forms the context of the Old and New Testaments, again, this doesn't mean that you can say or do whatever religiously and it's all fine. That is not the point that's being made at all, but rather that those who are truly worshiping the true God are truly worshiping the true God, even if the particulars of the way that they do that and the particulars of the way that they theologize about that show some development over time.

So. Well, next time we're gonna, as I said, it'll be our hundredth episode, our fourth anniversary, so I hope you'll join us. But that is our show for tonight, so thank you for listening, everyone. If you didn't speak with us live, we'd like to hear from you. You can email us@lordofspiritsand ancient faith.com you can also send us a message at our Facebook page. You can leave us a voicemail speakpipe.com lordofsp spirits and if you have basic questions about Orthodox Christianity or you need help in finding a parish, head over to orthodoxintro.org and join us for our.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Live broadcast on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at 7pm Eastern, 4pm Pacific. I like the way you walking if you walking my way I'm that Red Bull now, let's fly away.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

If you're on Facebook, you can follow our page. You can join our discussion group and give us reviews and ratings and share this show with a friend.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And finally, be sure to go to ancientfaith.com support and help make sure we and lots of other AFR podcasters stay on the air. I see me with her. No Stevie Wonder. She don't ever wonder because she knows she bad and I got her grocery bag.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Thank you. Good night. God bless you.

You've been listening to the Lord of Spirits with Orthodox Christian priests, Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung, a listener supported presentation of Ancient Faith Radio. And I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders, and the number of them was 10,000 times 10, 10,000 and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and Blessing. Revelation, chapter 5, verses 11 through 12.